Faves of ‘08, from humor to history

We asked authors with local connections, educators, librarians and industry folks to write us about their favorite books of the year. Here’s what they wrote about their picks:

“The Good Rat: A True Story” by Jimmy Breslin (Ecco)

As a writer of fiction, I have a serious jones for nonfiction tales well told. Such as “The Good Rat,” the legendary Jimmy Breslin’s account of the life and times of mobster —- and then mob snitch —- Burton Kaplan, most famous as the main witness against two New York City detectives indicted as Mafia hitmen. Following a bloody trail from the crooked Cosa Nostra streets of Queens and Brooklyn to the august halls of the federal courthouse in Manhattan, Breslin punctuates a wild, sometimes comic narrative with a main character who people like me would, well, kill for.

—- David Fulmer, author of the upcoming “Lost River”

“Nothing to Lose” by Lee Child (Delacorte)

I’ve always been a Jack Reacher fan, but “Nothing to Lose” is without a doubt the best in the series. Small-town Colorado comes alive thanks to Child’s deft storytelling. There’s lots of action and some political commentary that will either have you cheering or cursing, depending on where you stand. No matter what, you’ve got to admire an author who is still willing to take risks. And for readers who are looking for a little sex with their action, there’s also a good-looking lady cop who catches Reacher’s eye.

—- Karin Slaughter, author of “Fractured”

“The Girl Who Stopped Swimming” by Joshilyn Jackson (Grand Central)

This is literature with a machine-gun plot. Joshilyn Jackson energizes the Southern gothic novel with dark humor and characters who are at once terse and tender. Following “Gods in Alabama” and “Between, Georgia,” Jackson’s twisted, surprising murder mystery is both her most sophisticated and entertaining work to date.

—- Karen Abbott, author of “Sin in the Second City: Madams, Ministers, Playboys and the Battle for America’s Soul”

“The Given Day” by Dennis Lehane (HarperCollins)

Dennis Lehane understands the quarrel life has with death. There’s a guillotine blade hanging by a frayed rope over every single one of his characters. I love the tension. Besides, Lehane covers my favorite topics, from cops, Babe Ruth, the Spanish Flu Epidemic to drowning by molasses. If we still believed it ever again possible to write the great American novel, this would be one for contention.

—- Michael Largo, author of “Genius and Heroin: The Illustrated Catalogue of Creativity, Obsession and Reckless Abandon Through the Ages”

“Unaccustomed Earth” by Jhumpa Lahiri (Random House) and “A Mercy” by Toni Morrison (Random House)

I’m torn here between two books that are worlds apart, literally. Set in the late 17th century, “A Mercy” explores the lives of four precariously connected women, all enslaved in some way, as they struggle to survive in a brutal New World. Lahiri’s short stories, on the other hand, are set in a new world of a different sort: a contemporary America where immigrants from India and their American-raised children navigate the painful gulf between them. Despite their vastly different territories, both books are quiet, stunning masterpieces.

—- Valerie Boyd, University of Georgia professor and author of “Wrapped in Rainbows: The Life of Zora Neale Hurston”

“Outliers” by Malcolm Gladwell

No other book I read this year combines such a distinctive prose style with truly thought-provoking content. Gladwell somehow writes with a high degree of dazzle but at the same time remains as clear and direct as even Strunk or White could hope for. I really love his thesis, too, that affirms how much success depends on hard work but points out the even greater role played by luck and circumstance. Whether his analysis is completely convincing or not, it sure offers a healthier worldview than the more traditional notion that individuals are either hard-working or lazy, smart or stupid, talented or not, and that their success or failure is entirely within their control.

—- Frank Reiss, owner, A Cappella Books

“Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations” by Clay Shirky (Penguin)

Clay Shirky’s brilliant take on the organizing aspects of the Web is one of those books that jump-starts your own creativity. He makes the complex understandable and lively a la Malcolm Gladwell and frames the successes and failures of the Internet era in a new way. Suddenly, Facebook, Twitter and whatever-everyone-signs-up-for-tomorrow make sense, and you can’t help but think about new ways to use the rapidly growing list of tools at our disposal. Suddenly, you want to be part of it all. Facebook may turn out to be the Compuserve of 2008, but Shirky’s ideas will be talked about for decades.

—- Daren Wang, executive director, Decatur Book Festival

“From Harvey River —- A Memoir of My Mother and Her Island” by Lorna Goodison (Amistad)

I have never read a book that so colorfully and accurately captures the culture, language and psyche of the Jamaican people. It is a memoir of four generations of the Harvey family and is peppered with Jamaican witticisms, including “chicken merry, hawk de near” (excessive happiness is the forerunner of danger). I read this hilarious and special book twice in quick succession, and both times it held me riveted until the end.

—- Monica Foderingham, librarian, Central Library, Atlanta-Fulton Public Library System

“Defying Dixie: The Radical Roots of Civil Rights, 1919-1950” by Glenda Elizabeth Gilmore (Norton)

For the handful of adolescent whites growing up in 1950s Georgia who thought they were integrationists and therefore probably Communists, Glenda Gilmore’s “Defying Dixie” explains how that came to be. Tracing the origins of the civil rights movement to radical thought in the ’20s and ’30s, Gilmore establishes the link between communism, especially of the Popular Front, anti-Fascist variety, and Methodist women; thus explaining how a good little Methodist boy from South Georgia could wind up in the traces of civil rights and think he was a little pink. Well, the book is about much more, but that too.

—- E. Culpepper “Cully” Clark, dean of the Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication, University of Georgia

“Atmospheric Disturbances” by Rivka Galchen (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

Rivka Galchen struck a vein of literary gold with her 2008 debut. Readers might have been quick to allude to Pynchon, but for my money this talented author’s work harkens back further, to the likes of Borges and his 1944 collection of short stories, “Ficciones.” That a writer as young as Galchen can evoke the style, ambience and mystery of Borges is frightening to consider, yet her literary mystery does exactly that and then some.

—- Marc Fitten, editor, Chattahoochee Review

“Disquiet, Please! More Humor Writing From the New Yorker,” edited by David Remnick and Henry Finder (Random House)

In better times, my biggest fear was that a burglar would break into my house and make me eat the contents of my refrigerator. Now, of course, it’s that that same burglar —- cruel beyond belief —- will force me to look at my retirement account. In today’s world of news that can’t get worse but promptly does, we all need to be amused. That leads me to this collection, a treasury of great pieces, from Frank Gannon’s “Donald Rumsfeld Orders Breakfast at Denny’s” to Woody Allen’s enduring “The Whore of Mensa.” It includes pieces by contemporary writers, as well as classic humor writers such as Dorothy Parker and James Thurber. It’s a collection made for these anxious times since it rewards grazing, an activity that can be done with one hand while dialing one’s broker with the other. It’s kind of a portrait of American life and humor over the decades, proving that absurdity that isn’t market related is good for the soul.

—- Lynna Williams, professor of creative writing/English, Emory University