Looks Loch Her 10 Favorite Authors of 2008, Nae?

While most girls are glitzing up for New Year's Eve (that's Jana getting her eyebrows waxed), I've been etching a few new wrinkles in my forehead narrowing down my favorite books of 2008. This was far from a record-breaking year in terms of quantity (86) and the few books I read "of literary merit" -- like The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Juan Diaz and March by Geraldine Brooks -- disappointed me. If "you are what you read" is true, I am mainly a crime-solver in the British Isles with one foot planted in 1943 and the other in an anthropomorphic future.

My 10 favorite authors in 2008 hail from the United States (4), England (3), Australia, Japan, and Zimbabwe/Rhodesia. That's where they were born anyway. One of the English authors now lives near Minneapolis and the other resides in Edinburgh, Scotland; the author born in Zimbabwe also lives in Edinburgh now; dinnae think I should go there soon?

My list is surprisingly gender-balanced with six women and four men, and you might think it even more gender-balanced if you didn't know Curtis Sittenfeld is a woman. Now you do.

The authors I liked this year were born between the years of 1930 (Ruth Rendell) and 1976 (Curtis Sittenfeld). Although I have a hunch Hitori Nakano is a child of the '80s, I can't verify that. Hitori Nakano is a pseudonym constructed from the Japanese words naka no Hitori ("one of those people"). Anyway, half of the authors are older than I and the other half are younger. Yes, the fact that half are younger bothers me but I rejoice in their creativity and success.

I think all the authors except Ruth Rendell attended college. I think Ruth Rendell has, by a long shot, had the most books published and has enjoyed the steadiest income from writing. The irony of this tickles me. I hope she, P. D. James, and Martha Grimes all outlive me.

1. Mary Ann Shaffer, The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society. This former librarian and bookstore worker from Martinsburg, WV, did not live long enough to see her wonderful book published. The book was completed by her niece, Annie Barrows.


2. Elizabeth Strout, Olive Kitteridge. This book of connected short stories is set in Maine but I suspect Ms. Strout spent some quality time with my mother before she wrote these stories.


3. Markus Zusak, The Book Thief. Australian Zusak, the comely son of an Austrian father and German mother, was only 30 years old when this book was published and it was not his first.


4. Kate Atkinson, Case Histories (2004), One Good Turn (2006), and When Will There Be Good News? (2008). She won an award for Behind the Scenes at a Museum but I didn't like it nearly as much as these three featuring PI Jackson Brodie.


5. Alexander McCall Smith, 44 Scotland Street (2005) and Espresso Tales (2005). These are the first two compilations of the daily serial he wrote for an Edinburgh newspaper. I will definitely be reading the third and fourth volumes in 2009 if only to find out what happens to precocious six-year old Bertie and his obnoxious mother.


6. Neil Gaiman, Anansi Boys. This is an intriguing new genre for me. I think it's what 19-year old boys must read when they take a break from playing World of Warcraft.


7. Curtis Sittenfeld, American Wife. She won the Seventeen Magazine fiction writing contest when she was 16 (she's 32 now). This is a book about Laura Bush that's not about Laura Bush.


8. Hitori Nakano, Train Man. This entertaining transcript of a Japanese internet forum spawned a TV show and comic series. What's not to love about geeky kids advising one of their own on how to start and carry on a relationship with a girl?


9. Carrie Brown, The Rope Walk. What a difference five years makes! After I read Rose's Garden five or six years ago, I never imagined Carrie Brown would ever earn a place on one of my Top Ten lists. She's a professor at Sweet Briar College and has three children.


10. Ruth Rendell, The Babes in the Wood. I read this in May and it haunts me still. I think she put more effort into this book than most of the others in her Inspector Reginald Wexford series. I liked them all but this plot is especially memorable.

Today's entry was made possible through the underwriting support of the Michael J. Krentz Endowment for the Arts which paid for shelving, traditional and electronic books, a steady supply of booklight batteries, an off-site storage locker, and an Amazon Kindle. Reading family members and friends also played instrumental roles, including Kathryn Cavender Dykgraaf (American Wife), Colleen and John Gilstad (Train Man), and Catherine Lefere Sykes (The Book Thief). Matt, I'm glad you like pizza.

The Clock is Ticking

During our whirlwind trip to Michigan last week -- when we gave my brother a book and he gave us the flu -- I had the pleasure of introducing my new friend Ann to my favorite used book store, The Book Exchange. She was appropriately enthralled and we shared a lovely "small world" moment when she reached for a Ruth Rendell book that had my signature on the title page. Since I pass all my Rendells along to my sister, I know whom to thank for the thrill of re-encountering a book I read more than a year ago on the other side of the world. And, since I was thinking of my sister, I used her name at the register to get $1.50 off each book I bought for Kyoko.

This time of year, the waning days of December, I tend to waste an incredible amount of time staring at my bookshelves and trying to calculate how many pages I can reasonably expect to finish before midnight on December 31. I know this sounds nuts, but the thought of starting a book in one calendar year and not finishing it until the next calendar year is inexplicably painful to me. It makes me squirm. It brings bile to my throat (although that might be Jerry's flu). What if I pick a book that demands to be savored? How many pages might I have been able to read in the time I've spent shuffling through my backlog?

Matt has taken advantage of my distraction. Jonathan arrived at Union Station yesterday, lugging his computer. Lest you get the wrong mental picture, I am not talking about a laptop but a full-size PC. While I zoned out in front of the bookcase, Matt and Jonathan moved Matt's computer down two flights of stairs and set up quite a bachelor pad in the basement apartment where they are now engaged in a marathon World of Warcraft session. They promised to spend at least two hours a day visiting monuments and museums with me; the smirk on Matt's face is probably because he knows I won't hold them to the promise until after midnight on December 31.

Actually, She's MORE "Qualified" Than Hillary

One of my best Christmas presents ever was the Jackie Kennedy doll Santa brought me in 1960. If this makes me biased, blame it on Santa Claus. Had he come through with that Barbie in 1962, I might be singing a different tune today. But probably not.

Caroline Kennedy has expressed interest in filling the Senate seat Hillary Rodham Clinton is vacating to become Mr. Obama's Secretary of State. Lots of people are saying that Caroline lacks the qualifications to be a senator. Lots of people apparently need to read the Constitution because the last time I checked -- about five minutes ago -- Article I, Section 3 of the Constitution specified only three qualifications for that office: No Person shall be a Senator who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty Years, and been nine Years a citizen of the United States, and who shall not, when elected, be an Inhabitant of that State for which he shall be chosen.

When I read somewhere that Hillary herself questioned Caroline's qualifications early on, apparently wanting to add a fourth qualification to the Constitution (No Person shall be a Senator representing New York who did not support Hillary Rodham Clinton's desire to be the democratic party nominee for President), I was alternately puzzled, troubled, and irked. It's not like Hillary was really a New York resident when she was elected senator in November 2000. According to the White House website, she was First Lady from January 1993 until January 2001. If we are all going to turn our heads and shut up about Hillary being a carpetbagger in 2000 and then twiddle our thumbs and whistle while Congress twists a Federal law in order to permit Hillary to accept the office of Secretary of State, which will place her fourth in the presidential line of succession, then I think maybe Hillary needs to be a little more gracious toward Caroline. Come to think of it, most women could stand to be a little more gracious towards other women.

In her foreword to The Best Loved Poems of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis (2001), Caroline wrote "One of the greatest gifts my brother and I received from my mother was her love of literature and language" . . . and ". . . the power of ideas, and the ability to express them, is the greatest power we have." Wouldn't it be novel to have someone in the senate who has read something other than a law book and their own press coverage in the past couple of decades?

"I See Why Dad Calls Her Aunt Weirdo . . ."

My social conscience kicked in about three hours after Mike calculated the raise he'll be getting come January 1. "Gosh," sighed the Party Pooper, "do you feel sort of guilty about getting a raise when so many Americans are losing their jobs?"

"Not at all," insisted America's answer to Mma Ramotswe*. "I am not the only American who'll be getting a raise in 2009. What's important is that the people who get raises spend that money to stimulate the economy and keep other people working."

Three minutes later we set off for Bed Bath & Beyond to do our patriotic duty. Because stores that are big boxes in the suburbs are hidden underground in the nation's capital, I get to write a really fun sentence: We bumped into Alan and Maki Ross in the District's bowels. The Rosses left Japan last summer and are now stationed at Camp LeJeune, NC. When Lori Christiansen, another former Yokosukan, offered them the use of her apartment for the holidays, they leaped at the chance to explore D.C. with their two little boys.

Thanks to people like us and the Rosses, those of you who make welcome mats and toilet paper holders can go to bed tonight feeling a little more secure.

* Alexander McCall Smith's fictional Botswanan who believes in sharing good fortune. When Mma has three pennies, she'll hire a girl to clean her house for a penny. When Mma has four pennies, she'll employ a secretary and a cleaning lady. I hope you will all remember this when we run out of pennies to buy toilet paper to store in our fancy new holders.

Voila! Explained

My sister gave me a family heirloom for Christmas. At first I thought it was the poodle skirt my cousin Patty wore on American Bandstand, but it's a quilted Christmas tree skirt. I'm a little sketchy on the details--did Grandma make it? Aunt Chris? Mom (gasp)?--so hopefully Suzi will fill us all in at her earliest opportunity.

Today Mike and I discovered the E Street Cinema, a gem of a movie theater where you can slug down a latte while watching a film that might not appear at your mall multiplex. The address Mike pulled off their website was 555 11th Street so we spent a few blank minutes standing in front of an office building strumming our lower lips before Brilliant Wife said, "Since the name of the theater is E Street Cinema, maybe we should poke our heads around the corner and glance down E Street." Voila! (Voila! is my new, kinder way of saying "Yes, once again I am right and you are wrong.")

Theaters specializing in artsy and foreign films have lots to recommend them besides the beer, wine, and latte at the concession stand. They seem to show about twice as many previews as you see in a "normal" theater and I sure do like my previews. We had a hard time deciding which movie to see today but finally settled on Doubt with Meryl Streep and Philip Seymour Hoffman playing a nun and priest at a Brooklyn parish in the early 1960s. WOW. And that's all I'll say about that until you've had a chance to see it yourself.

Christmas with the Tourists

We spent Christmas afternoon seeing the new Brad Pitt movie, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, and then walked from Gallery Place to the White House to check out the National Christmas Tree and all the state and territory trees. Lots of other families decided to spend Christmas night strolling around the Ellipse with us and I managed to annoy most of the English-speaking ones by viewing Wyoming through Nevada in reverse alphabetical order.

And, yes, he's a flake. I think he's gazing at the Washington Monument, pretending it's the Star of Bethlehem.

Santa Found G Street

And I found the Peko-chan Christmas plate from Reiko. I am trying not to worry about what the 2008 plate looks like.

Santa brought Matt tickets to a Metallica concert and Katie offered to be his date. This was a bullet I was very happy to dodge.

Merry Christmas!

Robin gets all the credit for finding this Christmas Peko-chan. Maybe Kazumi helped.

Domo Arigatou to Wendy and Kathleen Jr.

This might be the ugliest building in Washington, D.C., but don't let appearances fool you. Inside this building is a gold mine, the mother lode of Smithsonian gift shops. And it's a good thing, too, because if I struck out here I was going to have to venture down to the dreaded National Museum of Natural History and contend with the contents of the eight ominous big yellow school buses parked out front.

I did not merely wrap up (snicker) my holiday shopping in the newly-renovated (not very well, I must say) National Museum of American History, I got a head start on next year's shopping! Just in case that wasn't enough to make my day, I made a new friend! And I wasn't even wearing my Mary Poppins hat! Rudy is a gift shop cashier by day and a guitarist the rest of his waking hours. In the midst of all the holiday hustle and bustle, confronted by a long line of last-minute lunchtime shoppers, Rudy beckoned a colleague to deal with the rabble so he could shoot the breeze with me. We covered guitars, Japan, my children, and his childhood friendships in about 20 minutes then he sent me on my way with his e-mail address and a little stocking stuffer for Matt.

It is finally beginning to feel a lot like Christmas. Most of the gifts are wrapped, Mike left work early and is currently standing in line at the Post Office/FedEx/UPS (depending on where he found a place to park), I've tossed some clean underwear in a bag for Michigan, and tonight we're having dinner with Kevin and Yuko and their daughters, Akira and Niki. You might remember Kevin worked at the hospital in Japan and was Matt's boss when Matt videotaped the high school football team freshman year. Now they live in Beaufort, SC, where Kevin is the Executive Officer (XO) of the Navy hospital. He's in town for meetings and the girls tagged along to see "The Nutcracker" and holiday decorations. I can hardly wait to hear Yuko's and Niki's impressions of their first 18 months in the USA.

Oh, PJ is going to be building a little solar car. Either that or the first one of his friends to host a birthday party in 2009 will be building a little solar car.

Supercalifragilisticexpialadocious or Simply Atrocious?

The weather was delightfully balmy yesterday in our nation's capital. When the mercury reached 67 degrees, I headed to the National Mall with a holiday pin on my lapel and a feather-embellished black velvet toque pulled low on my forehead. Farmers call this making hay while the sun shines; I call it Mary Poppins goes Christmas shopping without her umbrella. The hat, admittedly a horror to my offspring, allows me to further the objectives of The Smile Project while simultaneously burying my nose in a book on the short Metro ride to the Smithsonian stop.

Have I mentioned that Mike and I gained two new stepgrandsons while we were in Japan? The details are still a bit fuzzy since we were recovering from jetlag when Michael sprung the news of his marriage to Heather and their subsequent move to Austin, Texas, with PJ (12) and Gavin (6). There's never a dull moment in the Krentz family. We won't have the pleasure of meeting Heather, PJ, and Gavin until we visit Texas after the first of the year, meaning that I'm quite spun up over selecting Christmas presents for the boys. I don't want to play the game of competing with the other stepgrandparents (the ones who were actually present at the wedding and might have a clue about the boys' interests) but I also dread the possibility of having my name linked to long-term memories of the Worst Christmas Present Ever. Having spent many Christmas mornings in the company of 12-year old boys, I keep reminding myself that well before noon PJ will have forgotten the contents of the package from the mysterious "Grandpa and Kathy." Unless, of course, we give him a lump of coal or pajamas which, I assure you, we would never, ever do.

I lugged two heavy bags of loot home from various Smithsonian gift shops yesterday but, alas, nothing for PJ. Your suggestions would be most welcome. In the next 24 hours if at all possible.

Uplifting is Today's Topic, Says Yoda

This little vignette might look vaguely familiar to my siblings. My helper didn't realize he was supposed to count the spokes and space the stockings evenly. That's probably because he grew up in Arizona and only encountered staircases the two or three times he visited his grandparents in Upstate New York.

My mother knit four of these five stockings. She knit Christmas stockings to celebrate the births of her 16 grandchildren. How did Mike earn one? Your guess is as good as mine. She was not a mother who believed in filling Christmas stockings for grown children yet she knit a stocking for a 45-year old man. Maybe she just wanted to make sure I would spend a few minutes every December pondering the mysteries of Marcia. If so, it worked.

Many families catch a performance of "The Nutcracker" after they hang their stockings by the chimney with care. Us? We slipped across the Potomac yesterday to see "Next to Normal," a musical about -- are you ready for this? -- mental illness. "What an uplifting holiday topic," murmured my date between acts. Some of the music was too dissonant for me but I appreciated the acting and resonated with the playwright's take on mental illness. You can interpret "resonated" however you like.

As long as we're on the subject of mental illness, I believe I have an obligation to inform the public that I might very well have discovered a new cure for depression. It goes like this: 1) Post "OFFER: Western Digital External Hard Drive" on your local freecycle website, 2) blink once, and 3) bask in the glow of friendship that will immediately wash over you. I made 15 new bosom buddies in 45 seconds last night and another dozen by the time I crawled out of bed this morning. Just imagine the response I'll get when I advertise the computer printer.

Christmas Crafting Could Be Contagious

Matt's reindeer ornament featuring his five-year old handprint sent me into another 12-hour reverie. Thanks to a score of extremely clever teachers scattered up and down the Eastern Seaboard and Gulf Coast our Christmas tree is festooned with lightbulb snowmen, popsicle stick stars shedding glitter like a bad case of dandruff, and pictures framed in peanut butter jar lids. Credit for the styrofoam orb purloined from the Jackson Country Club tree in 1973, my oldest ornament, goes to a light-fingered friend who was my classmate from first grade through college. Our tree, needless to say, reeks of nostalgia. You won't see it on the cover of Better Homes and Gardens anytime soon and that's fine by me.

Crafts have come a long way in the past decade judging from a recent post on Memoirs of a Gaijin (link at right) where Diane reveals a reindeer banner she made using Sydney's and Miranda's footprints for the reindeer faces and their little handprints for antlers. Her creativity left me so humbled and inspired that I bought two quilting magazines and have vowed to absolutely, positively make a tree skirt in 2009. You can all start the side bets now.

An Anpanman for All Seasons

Reiko made this felt Anpanman ornament and presented it to me during our final "class" in early July. This was the first ornament I hung on our Christmas tree and then I took a 12-hour break to reflect on all my happy memories of Reiko. At this rate I should finish decorating the tree by Mother's Day.

Mailing packages has turned out to be the most complicated aspect of our Adventure in Urban Living. The post office that serves 150,000 citizens and illegal immigrants in SE D.C. does not seem to have a parking lot so I am alternately cajoling and nagging Mike and Matt into accompanying me on umpteen Metro trips to get these packages in the mail. We are going to economize on postage this year by personally delivering most of the Michigan packages during a whirlwind roadtrip next weekend. One of our many rewards for driving 12 hours through probably inclement weather will be catching Sandy's performance in the Holiday Cabaret, "It's Beginning to Sound a Lot Like Christmas."

Matt is so keen on seeing his Aunt Sandy perform that he's agreed to begin his Christmas break a day early. Now that's a dedicated nephew!

Docents Do It for Deep Discounts

A surprising number of Smithsonian docents are foreign-born. Some volunteer because they want to practice their English, others simply love American history (and seem to know a lot more of it than most of us natives). The Tuesday school tour docent, a Chinese lady, has been visiting family and friends in Beijing since before Thanksgiving so Jeff asked me to cover her tour today.

Third-graders, at least Episcopal ones, sure ask tough questions. This group was keenly interested in hatchets so I'd like to thank my brothers for forcing me to watch seven gadzillion Westerns between 1957 and 1970. These tykes also wondered how many routes existed between New York and Boston 300 years ago. "Not too many," the docent responded lamely while trying to look astute. Perhaps I'm not cut out for this after all.

But then I wandered into the museum gift shop to do a little Christmas shopping on my way back to Union Station (this will surely elicit groans from everyone on my Christmas list). The cashier informed me that my Smithsonian ID entitles me to a 20 percent discount in every Smithsonian gift shop. And there's no sales tax. Hmmmmm. This is an even better deal than the Navy Exchange. Remind me to wear my ID the next time you visit. Until then, I'll be reading up on New England trails circa 1725 so I can feel I actually deserve this perk.

This is one of the many wreaths decorating the main lobby in Union Station. I'm still trying to locate the one that goes on our front door.

I Want to Thank the Academy, My Mother . . .

Katie received an award at the Kimley-Horn holiday party Friday night, proving (to her mother at least) that engineers are a discerning crowd. Meanwhile, the parental units were hobnobbing with about a dozen O'Connell High School teachers and parents at a really neat historic house on Capitol Hill. We have no idea how we merited the invite, but neither did any of the other guests and I was not about to miss an opportunity to model my new snowman sweater. The school president turned out to be less perceptive than the Kimley-Horn engineers. He mistook me for an actress. "Well, you've missed your calling," he declared. "Your voice, your facial expressions, and your vitality all suggest the stage."

Oh, wait. Maybe he was perceptive. Because two glasses of wine later I think I volunteered to spend one afternoon a week typing in the president's office. I intend to be the most dramatic typist ever to grace O'Connell's halls.

WWII Memorial Fountain or Richard Gere's Hair Plugs: You Decide

This was going to be about a quaint little bookstore, Trover Shop, I wandered into on my walk home from the hair salon Wednesday afternoon, about how I want to do my small part to help keep independent bookstores afloat in this troubled economy. But on my way to the computer this morning I stumbled into the kitchen, poured coffee into my Hiroshima mug, and unrolled The Washington Post. Because it's December and Santa might be watching, I virtuously postponed blogging, set aside the Post's Holiday Movie Guide, and tackled the front section of the paper.

From the top:

• Lawmakers Still Not Sold on Auto Rescue (uh-oh)


• Retailers Post Worst November Sales in More than 30 Years (don't blame me)


• Strapped Schools May Boost Class Sizes (from 20 to 22.5 students; I'm trying hard to care but there were 50-53 kids in my class from first grade through eighth and look how well I turned out; Dear Lord, I'm starting to sound like those old people in Northern Florida who wouldn't allow fluoride in the water)


• Methodist Church Gets Busted for Selling Christmas Trees Before December 5 (bah humbug to you too)


• Sadr Movement Struggles in Iraq (not sure whether I should feel sadr or hapr about this)

Holy Shiite, that Holiday Movie Guide was increasingly tempting but I splashed more coffee in my cup and turned to Dana Milbanks' "Washington Sketch" column on page three. Milbanks told of the 'ritual humiliation' the automakers were subjected to yesterday by the senate banking committee, which I have decided to cease capitalizing until they earn my respect. (Had I known it was possible for someone with an abrasive personality to get elected to a national office in this country, I would have run for office years ago.) Richard Shelby (R-AL) struck me as particularly petty and mean-spirited, demanding a detailed accounting of how the automakers made the 520-mile trip from Detroit to D.C. -- am I the only one fretting about job security for corporate pilots? -- and Corker (R-TN) sounded like an overweight, insecure fifth grader bullying the brainy nerd kid during recess the way he taunted Chrysler's Nardelli. For just a second there I wondered whether Southern republicans swear some sort of Nasty Oath when they run for office but then the lower-case democrats from Montana and New Jersey played arrogant and testy for their constituents and the media (never necessarily in that order) as well.

According to Milbanks, the automakers "tripped over themselves to be agreeable, answering the senators with cheerful calls of 'Yes, sir' and 'Fine, sir'" and he opines that it "must have been difficult for the . . . CEOs to hold their tongues in this manner -- and to sit obediently as lawmakers who had enough trouble running the country dispensed advice on running their businesses." Chairman Dodd, for instance, suggested GM get back into the business of making buses. When do you suppose was the last time Chris Dodd rode a bus, if ever? In fact, now I'm curious about how all our congressmen get to work every day. Do they take the Metro, or a bus, or walk, or drive? Who pays for their transportation?

Let me see if I have this straight. Congress has approved a $700 billion rescue program for Wall Street banks and insurance companies. The car companies, which support 10 percent of U.S. jobs, are asking to have slightly less than six percent of that $700 billion earmarked to keep the auto industry afloat. Why exactly is congress making the automakers grovel so much more than the bankers and insurers? Please tell me this is not related to corporate campaign contributions.

Oh! I just thought of a way to tie together that quaint little bookstore and my rant on caustic, abrasive congresspersons. While the senate banking committee was busy lashing the car guys, nancy pelosi was signing copies of her book at Trover Shop. Being a (comparatively) kind and gentle person, I'm just going to assume she walked the two blocks from the Capitol.