Best of 2009 Blog Challenge: Best Book

I’ve read a fair amount of books this year but here are a few of my favorites:

Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri (who is stunning by the way). Lahiri also wrote The Namesake, which my dad gave me for Christmas a handful of years ago. It was made into a movie a few years ago and was good, but of course the book was better. Unaccustomed Earth is Lahiri’s newest book and is similar to her Pulitzer Prize winning Interpreter of Maladies in that it is a collection of short stories. I started reading Interpreter of Maladies two months ago, but I stopped reading it. I stopped reading it NOT because I didn’t like it (I LOVE IT), but because this is the last of her books that I’ve read and I’m sad to finish it with there not being anything else by her to read! She’s currently my favorite author of fiction. She’s SO good. Read all her stuff. Period.

Turning the Mind Into an Ally by Sakyong Mipham, son of Chogyam Trungpa (who not only founded Shambhala Buddhism but also Naropa University where I attended, and Alaya Preschool where I worked). When this book came out, I was a little over anything of anyone having to do with Trungpa. It’s not that I have anything against Trungpa, just that some of his cronies have put a bad taste in my mouth for Crazy Wisdom. But that’s a whole other story. Anyway, this book was suggested to me by my therapist (who I saw for a few months this year and was amazing). She knew that I was a Buddhist and suggested it would help me reacquaint myself with my practice and give me practical tools to work with my anxiety. It delivered. It was wonderful and thorough. Being a religious studies major and a Buddhist I have read many books like this, but this one is superb.

The Power of Less: The Fine Art of Limiting Yourself to the Essential…in Business and in Life by Leo Babauta. I found out about this book after stumbling upon Leo’s blog Zen Habits earlier in the year. Not only is his blog great, but this book has very simple, straightforward steps for how to sort out what is essential in your life and then how to eliminate the rest. I especially love his practical tools for how to form habits. I can refer to the book over and over for different areas of my life.

Books I have lent out recently: A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose (which is MUCH better than The Power of Now) and Honeymoon with My Brother (the sequel How the World Makes Love is also great).

Book lent to me recently: Committed: A Skeptic Makes Peace with Marriage (different than Eat, Pray, Love, but neat all the same)

Book I’m reading now: The Bastard of Istanbul

Revealing Side Note: I have a serious issue of reading more books than one at a time. Often it’s one nonfiction and one fiction, which isn’t too bad, but the problem is when I’m reading two books and I really get into one and then replace it and get into that one, and then forget all about the original second book. This leads me to restart books more than once, great books at that.

Speaking of reading books. I am SO PROUD of my husband Jim, who in October of 2008 (while I was in Austin seeing our god daughter without him) he decided he was going to read all the books that have won the Pulitzer Prize. (1948 is when they changed the name of the prize to Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, it was previously called something else.) Since 1948 there have been sixty-three books given the award. He had already read four of the books before starting, but at this moment he’s read seventeen out of the sixty-three books and is currently reading one now (placing him about a quarter of the way there)! I must also point out that there have been some books that he’s loved so much that he’s read other books by the same author.  His best book of this year is Spartina byJohn Casey. He claims that if we wants to continue this process after reading all the books since 1948, then he’ll look into the ones that were awarded before then. I, personally, am thoroughly impressed!