Sage's Favorite 2008 Books

Fiction

In the Woods by Tana French
Three children leave their Dublin neighborhood to play in the surrounding woods. Hours later, they go missing. When the police arrive, they find only one of the children, gripping a tree trunk in terror, wearing blood-filled sneakers, and unable to recall a single detail of the previous hours. Twenty years later, detective Bob Ryan - the found boy, who has kept his secret - and his partner investigate the murder of a twelve-year-old girl in the same woods. Now, Ryan has the chance to uncover not only the mystery of the current case, but also that of his past. This book is really hard to put down.

No Country For Old Men by Cormac McCarthy
I loved the movie based on this novel so I thought I'd check it out. A hunter stumbles upon a dead body, 2 million dollars, and a stash of heroin. He takes the cash, but brutal thief Anton Chigurh comes looking for it, with a local sheriff on his trail. I also highly recommend McCarthy's The Road.

Snow Angels by Stewart O'Nan
This novel intertwines parallel stories about teenager Arthur Parkinson and his former babysitter, Annie Marchand. Once the object of Arthur's boyhood infatuation, small-town waitress Annie heads down a fateful path after enduring a stormy relationship with her estranged spouse. You can't go wrong with the novels of O'Nan, I've like all of them. The movie based on this novel is good also.

Mystic River by Dennis Lehane
This is the first Lehane novel I've read. Yet another book I've read after enjoying the film based on it. The story follows the friendship of three childhood friends from a blue-collar Boston neighborhood. Twenty-five years later they have grown apart but a horrific murder forces them back together. I look forward to reading more Lehane novels, this one was a page turner.

I'll Steal You Away by Niccolo Ammaniti
This novel centers on Pietro Moroni, a skinny, introspective boy in a small village, who is taunted at school and ignored at home. When his favorite teacher - a spinster with problems of her own - lets him down, his anger combusts. I also recommend Ammaniti's other novel, I'm Not Scared.

Non Fiction

When You Are Engulfed in Flames by David Sedaris
This is the sixth book of essays by Sedaris. Nobody can make me laugh like this guy. Subjects in this one include an encounter with a dingo, a pet spider, the buying of a human skeleton, and the author's attempt to quit smoking in Tokyo.

Escape by Carolyn Jessop
Seventeen years after being forced into a polygamous marriage, Jessop escaped from the cult-like Fundamentalist Church of the Latter Day Saints with her eight children. She recounts the horrible events that led her to break free. A remarkable story.

Land of a Thousand Hills by Rosamond Carr
Carr, who died in 2006, was an extraordinary woman. In 1949, she accompanied her new husband to the Belgian Congo. When her marriage ended, she stayed on in neighboring Rwanda and found solace managing a flower plantation in the foothills of the Virunga volcanoes. She became friends with Dian Fossey who was studying the mountain gorillas nearby. Following the 1994 genocide, Carr turned her plantation into a shelter for orphaned children.

We Bought a Zoo by Benjamin Mee
The story of how the author and his extended family move into a dilapidated zoo in the English countryside, complete with 200 exotic animals. It was his dream to refurbish the zoo and run it as a family business. There was much work to be done, and none of it easy - animals broke loose, money ran low, and staff and family tensions ran high. This guy has my dream job.

Dark at the Roots by Sarah Thyre
A memoir of growing up in the 1970s with a large family. Thyre's family starts out living in Kansas City and ends up in the sticks of Louisiana. Included are hilarious (and heartbreaking) memories of stealing money from her skinflint father's bank account for camp and vacation, and watching her mom run over a turtle with the lawn mower.

And the worst book I read in 2008...

The Last Templar by Raymond Khoury
A Da Vinci Code knockoff that starts off really promising and goes downhill from there. It begins with horsemen dressed as knights who go on a murderous rampage in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. An FBI agent and a beautiful (of course) archeologist set out to solve the mystery together. Pure cheese.