Best Reads of 2009

Slate.com has come out with their Best Reads of 2009, as recommended by the site's writers.

Slate.com's Best Reads of 2009

Slate's range of suggestions, from the highbrow (Blake Bailey's Cheever: A Life) to the unconventional (Bank Notes, a compilation of notes employed in bank heists), provides something for everyone.

Personally, I was glad to see Alice Munro's short story collection Too Much Happiness make the list. Munro is commonly called a writer's writer.

After I saw her work on this list, I pulled out my copy of Writers & Company (1993), a wonderful collection of interviews conducted by Eleanor Wachtel, to reread her interview with Munro. In the interview, Munro speaks of happiness, how it is "muddled up" in life with sadness, depression, elation. She speaks of how she would never set out to write a story that was depressing, but how so many stories she loves have been described by others as depressing.

Much of the interview I didn't remember reading. It had been ten years since I read it, afterall. Remarkably, I do remember how intrigued I was by one line of the interview. Munro is speaking of the nature of happiness and remarks, "As I said, the constant happiness is curiosity." I've been studying brain chemistry lately and the brain's role in happiness (for anyone interested, I recommend The Science of Happiness by Stefan Klein, PhD) and find it telling how accurate, when it comes to the chemistry of our brain, Munro's statement is.

I think one of my New Year's resolutions this year should be to exercise my curiosity more. I may begin with Munro's newest collection. Maybe later, I'll check out Bank Notes. You never know, with as hard as it is to make a living as a writer, it might do me good to brush up on my note-writing skills if I need to knock over a bank or two.