Best of the 00s

(Reposted, a bit late, from Facebook, b/c clearly I have my priorities straight.)
This list was impossible to put together. In the end, I just went back through my blog, which only covers the second half of the decade. So it's my favorite books that were published 2000-09 that I read in 2005-09, with one exception, which was my favorite book of the decade and thus had to be included. It ended up being a slightly surprising list, because some of these I didn't particularly seem to like that much when I first read and posted about them. Who knows how favorites are made?

10. Special Topics in Calamity Physics, Marisha Pessl
9. Consider the Lobster, David Foster Wallace (which prob benefited from an Infinite Jest bounce)
8. The Year of Magical Thinking, Joan Didion
7. The Abstinence Teacher, Tom Perrotta
6. Never Let Me Go, Kazuo Ishiguro
5. The Time Traveler's Wife, Audrey Niffenegger
4. Water for Elephants, Sara Gruen
3. The History of Love, Nicole Krauss
2. The Post-Birthday World, Lionel Shriver (2)
1. My Name is Red, Orhan Pamuk (no review, but here are a couple other posts...)

"World enough, and time"

The Time Traveler's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
San Francisco: MacAdam/Cage, 2003

I need to take a break from these books that put me through some kind of emotional washing machine. (Or dryer?) I'm tired, y'all. I'm not saying it's not worth it, but it's getting to be a little much.

There really isn't any way to discuss the things I'd want to discuss in this post without engaging in all sorts of spoilers. And even though the book has been around for years, and the movie was released this summer, and how many people read this anyway?, I like trying to avoid spoilers.

Clare's and Henry's is a love story unlike any I think I've ever seen. He eight years older than she, but she meets him when she is six, and he doesn't meet her until he's 28. It's kind of remarkable, the way it all works out. Because she's in love with him by the time she meets him in real time, but if she weren't in love with his older self, and if she didn't know that's how things would be, would she have loved him? Maybe we're not supposed to dwell on this, and it doesn't really matter because their love is really quite something. But it's evidence of how little control they have - in so many ways - over their destiny. You have to act as though you have free will, but the result is predetermined anyway, and you know this, because Henry's been there, or a future Henry has come back and told you, or given you enough hints. It's dizzying. And puts that metaphysical question in stark relief.

I found myself wondering about Niffenegger's writing process, and how she managed to keep everything straight, since the novel runs in roughly chronological time (but of course Clare's chronology doesn't quite match Henry's, to say the least) and things that happen before also happen after. The decisions about whether to share a moment as it appears in Clare's life or in Henry's... again: dizzying. Before I began reading, a coworker who had just seen the movie asked to borrow the book to check something. She then returned it saying that she was just going to need to read the whole thing over. And I understand - there are moments I'd like to return to, to re-experience or to check for hints - and I don't know really how I would find them. Some are easy, but others would be require essentially rereading large swaths. (This is a real problem with Infinite Jest as well. Even more of a problem there in fact.)

So I regret nothing. But I'm going to try to take a break from books that leave me bruised and battered. Suggestions?