Brooks has been sick all year and just showed up to work after a bout with upper respiratory infection, a popular Delta ailment. (It may be all the farming chemicals in the air.) She was bummed that she missed out on the staff's year-end favorites and belatedly offered her top picks of '08. The last great novel she'd read was Wally Lamb's The Hour I First Believed, but ultimately chose Mr. White's Confession, a post-Depression psychological thriller by Robert Clark that Picador reissued this year. (For the Ron Rash record, she also enjoyed Serena but preferred his first novel, One Foot in Eden.) Her top literary moment was when Donna Tartt, author of her favorite novel, The Secret History, dropped in Turnrow before Christmas for some holiday shopping. (Brooks, and perhaps many of our readers, never guessed that the best-selling author was born in Greenwood.)
But more than our picks, we know our readers really want to know Billie's favorite novel of 2008. Billie Ainsworth, as you'll recall from our profile last year, is our most fervent and discerning customer whose particular tastes keep us on our toes. When last we wrote about her reading choices, we were lamenting that we'd made little progress convincing her to read our long literary sagas with loads of description and character development. But by year's end, we're proud to announce that we've made some headway.
Billie (pictured at left with author Rick Bragg) was decidedly less than excited to name her three favorite books of the year. Nothing blew her away, like two of her all-time favorites, Breathing Lessons by Anne Tyler and The Shell Seekers by Rosamunde Pilcher. Nevertheless, we noticed a literary slant to her selections:
#3, The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows - Despite early reluctance (she doesn't do period fiction and wasn't hooked by the first page), an aggressive recommendation by Kelly convinced her to take the book home. She gave it a rave "pretty good."
#2, Tomato Girl by Jayne Pupek - Billie found this one on our own, searching, as she often does, for overlooked stories of family dysfunction. This debut novel is told from the perspective of an 11-year-old girl, who witnesses her mother's slide into insanity and her father's obsession with a teen-aged vegetable grower. There's enough dysfunction here to serve several other novels, she assured us.
#1, The Story of Edgar Sawtelle by David Wroblewski - Despite its size and literary heft, Billie eagerly awaited this novel's release. Effusive praise by Stephen King and the subject of dogs initially sparked her interest, and a wonderful reading by Wroblewski at Turnrow in July sealed the deal. It could have been slimmer, she conceded, but ultimately it provided her the year's best reading. (Though she normally doesn't care if a book is signed or not, Billie is proud of her valuable signed first editions, of which we still have a few copies for sale.)
