The Top 3 Books We Read Last Year

For the launch of our new site, we asked our primary contributors and a few other folks that we love to list the three best books that they read this year.

Jordan Green, Editor

1. Soldier of a Great War by Mark Helprin - A pristine novel that tells the story of a professor of aesthetics who is pulled violently into defending Italy during World War I. Helprin writes beauty, comedy and tragedy as well as anyone.

2. A Prayer for Owen Meaney by John Irving - Irving’s novel of a diminutive hero who believes he is an instrument of God is so vivid and engrossing that I did not want this book to end.

3. The Executioner’s Song by Norman Mailer - An astounding work of journalism and story-telling. The events surrounding the 1977 execution of Gary Gilmore are layed out with remarkable detail and accessibility.

Penny Carothers, Social Justice Editor

1. The Shackled Continent: Power, Corruption and African Lives by Robert Guest - Not only is this an entertaining read, but it changed the way I look at the world. ‘Nuff said? If not, let’s just say that the typical book about why some are poor and others aren’t is a snooze — economic tables, complicated formulas, math — speak to the nth degree. Not so with Robert Guest. Guest’s story takes us to Africa — in all its misery and glory — while making a very strong and persuasive argument about the role Africans must play in their own development.

Sam Albertson, Regular Contributor

1. Courage to Teach by Parker Palmer - This is a must-read for anyone serious about teaching from the heart or being a submissive learner.

2. The Man Who Was Thursday by G.K. Chesterton - As is typical for one of my all-time favorite authors, this read is enthralling and clever.

3. The Return of the Prodigal Son by Henri Nouwen - An intimate exegesis of Rembrandt’s depiction of one of Christ’s most illustrious parables.

Jason Pollock, Contributing Editor to The Ankeny Briefcase

1. The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho - You can hear God whisper between the lines, regardless of how you define God. This book reminded me that some writers are gifted with a softness and a simplicity that allows eternal notions to be captured.

2. The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein - You know what it’s like to go a very long time without eating pancakes and then one day, unexpectedly, you order them and are flooded with joy? This book is a lot like that.

3. A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson - An approachable book on the science behind, well, everything. Science has revealed a breathtaking amount of knowledge. Scientists, on the other hand, have almost blown the whole dang thing.

Bob Ham, Regular Contributor

1. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon - This elegy to innocence lost is also a pseudo-detective story narrated by an autistic boy whose world is torn asunder by his parents’separation and the death of a beloved neighborhood dog. A tale as inspiring as it is heart-breaking, this book is, to be fair, an easy read, but that just means you will be ready to start reading it again as soon as you finish the last page.

2. One Man’s Meat by E.B. White - A collection of essays that White wrote for The Atlantic Monthly from his farm in Maine echoes his fiction work in its breadth of descriptive power couched in the most economic prose. A naive and world weary look at one’s autumn years.

3. Light In August by William Faulkner - An epic journey filled with flashbacks, ambling sentences and some of the most incredible characters you are ever likely to encounter. The story weaves its way through the lives of a pregnant girl in search of the father, the young man who falls for her, a rage filled man of mixed race , and a defrocked minister still living in the shadow of the Civil War. A difficult but ultimately gratifying read.

David James Poissant, Contributor

1. Music Through the Floor by Eric Puchner - In the nine stories of this debut collection, writer Eric Puchner explores the mystery and melancholy of life in modern America. Especially memorable is the haunting “Child’s Play” in which a few boys become men over the course of one unsettling Halloween afternoon. If you want to know what’s going on in the world of the contemporary short story, read this book.

2. Last Night by James Salter - A masterpiece from a superb practitioner of American fiction, Last Night is James Salter’s latest collection of beautiful and disturbing stories. In the title story, a man struggles with an obligation to help his terminally ill wife die well and the guilt he feels for the affair he’s carried on over the course of her sickness. In each story, Salter exposes life’s moral complexities in his trademark lean and unforgettable prose.

3. The Dog of the Marriage by Amy Hempel - From the single-sentence “Memoir” to the thirty-five page “Offertory,” Amy Hempel explores the versatility of the short story form in these razor-sharp nine pieces. In “Reference # 388475848-5,” a woman addresses the Parking Violations Bureau of New York City to protest a ticket. Over the course of the letter, the writer reveals a harrowing episode from the week before that brings the matter of the ticket into startling perspective. There is no way to do Hempel’s work justice in a review, but to read it is to place yourself in the hands of a master.

Bradly Fruhauff, Contributing Editor for The Ankeny Briefcase

1. The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky - This translation by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, already fifteen years old, imbues this novel, already over one hundred years old, with all the wildness and fullness of a Karamazovian‚ rapture that certainly could not be lost on a reader with any mite of real human feeling left in his or her soul (to put it in Karamazovian terms).

2. Sex, Economy, Freedom & Community by Wendell Berry - Berry’s book is countercultural precisely because it believes in culture, that is, culture as what makes a community and culture as what a community makes. This is a book of vision, a book that believes there are things worth preserving in this life and that human beings, acting in community, can in fact preserve them with admirable success. Berry’s words are laden with a common sense that makes one believe it is truly possible, because it is so simple and plain.

3. The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark - With charming wit and a tight control of the narrative reins, Spark develops her tale of loyalty and morality in a small Edinburgh girls’ school. Her best-known work, this novel is at once highly entertaining and ethically challenging, asking the reader to take seriously that which the author mocks, and to love that which the narrative rejects.