Pajamas and Coffee

As I read my way through the ten New York Times’ Best Books of 2009 in these, the first ten weeks of 2010*, I wonder how and why these books make it to that list. What is common among them, if anything? Are they the books the people loved in 2009, or the books the brainiac white rich men in the media loved? Example: The Help, which I can’t wait to read and is the Pajamas and Coffee Book Club’s first official selection and is set to be discussed here next month- (there’s still time to read it) is currently number 1 on the New York Times bestseller list but didn’t make the cut (though it was named Best Book of the Year by USA Today). Interesting stuff.

I remain happy, though, that 6 of the 10 best were written by women, and so far have fallen deeply in love with at least a few of the books. At the end of the ten weeks, for what it’s worth, I’m going to ‘rank’ the ten- as in, if I had $50 to spend on books, ‘which of these ten should I buy’ kinda thing.

Lorrie Moore’s A Gate at The Stairs is based on her heroine’s song lyric:

Did you take off for Heaven
and leave me behind?
Darlin’, I’d join you
if you didn’t mind.
I’d climb up that staircase
past lions and bears,
but it’s locked
at the foot of the stairs.

The official description of the story is:

Set just after the events of September 2001, it is a story about Tassie Keltjin, a twenty-year-old making her way in a new world and coming of age. Tassie is a “smile-less” girl from the plains of the mid-west. She has come to a university town, her brain on fire with Chaucer, Sylvia Plath, and Simone de Beauvoir. In between semesters, she takes a part-time job as a nanny for a family that seems mysterious and glamorous to her. Though her liking for children tends to dwindle into boredom, Tassie begins to care for, and protect, their newly adopted little girl as her own. As the year unfolds, she is drawn even deeper into the world of the child and her hovering parents, and her own life back home becomes alien to her. As life reveals itself dramatically and shockingly, Tassie finds herself forever changed — less the person she once was, and more and more the stranger she feels herself to be.

_________________________

I enjoyed the book. It’s of course very well written- Moore has a whimsical, charming voice and her story is interesting if not gripping. This is the kind of book that should be read lazily- on the beach or on vacation, or on snowy nights by the fire. I’m not thrilled at the ‘rushing to read a book in a week’ binge to which I have inexplicably challenged myself. I prefer to sip books, not gulp them. But I do recommend it. Having read a bit about Lorrie Moore and having now read one of her novels, I would definitely like to now go and read a book of her short stories- I am falling more and more in love with books of short stories.

Perfect for sipping.

This upcoming week’s book is:

and I would like to say in advance that it is the BOOK I HAVE BEEN THE LEAST LOOKING FORWARD TO READING. Bean counter book? Hang me.

(see the whole NYT Best Books of 2009 list here.)

Thanks for reading!

*fuck no, I’m not doing it again next year.