Rec. #1: The Good Thief

What: Have you been wanting a new Dickens novel, but one that's set in the U.S.? With orphans making good, con artists who are intermittently trustworthy, dead murderers who don't stay dead, and a deaf landlady who speaks in all caps? Well, here it is. Hannah Tinti's debut novel can be deep, dank, and dark, but it's also surprisingly fun.

Comparable to: The orphans-on-the-streets bits in Oliver Twist, but with a strong underpinning of the absurd, macabre humor that seeps in from the edges of Bleak House.

You might not like it if: You hate orphans. Or Dickens. Or both.

How to get it: It's fairly recent, so it should be readily available at your library and most bookstores.

Best of 2009 in a few easy categories: Movies and TV

Movies in Theaters

Best capers:

Duplicity and The Brothers Bloom. Each delightful in its own way.

Best use of Melanie Lynskey as a pivotal travel destination:

Away We Go. (Honorable mention in this category: Up in the Air. As in Away We Go, the main characters take a trip to see Lynskey’s character and it changes everything.)

Movies on DVD

Best documentary:

Every Little Step. Absorbing and entertaining even if you have no interest in Broadway or auditions or musicals or dancers or singers or ambition.

Best movie that is more uplifting than its title, despite the fact that one of the main characters dies:

Wilbur Wants to Kill Himself. Spoiler: Wilbur is not the one who dies.

Best movie with aliens:

Torchwood: Children of Earth. These Brits manage to make even apocalyptic alien thrillers seem realistic.

Best cinematic use of Lee Pace (miss you, Pushing Daisies!):

The Fall. Bonus points for also including the amazing Justine Waddell.

Best Dickens adaptation:

Little Dorrit. Oh, and the book is really good, too. But don’t even bother with the new Masterpiece Classic adaptations of The Old Curiosity Shop or Oliver Twist.

Best Freudian screwball comedy in Spanish:

Unconscious (Inconscientes). Hang around for the tango at the end.

Best Japanese Amelie:

Kamikaze Girls. A lot like Amelie. Except it’s a manga adaptation. And includes a biker chick fight. And has scenes with these guys:

TV Shows

Best shows that no one else watched and now they’re canceled, thank you very much:

Better Off Ted (not officially canceled yet, but it will be) and The Unusuals. At least put these on your Netflix queues, please?

Best (only?) reason to think that Starz might actually be a real TV channel:

Party Down. The main cast includes Adam Scott, Ken Marino, and Jane Lynch. And pretty much everyone from Veronica Mars has made guest appearances.

Most relevant show from the early ‘90s:

Northern Exposure. Really, it holds up so, so well. I meant to watch the entire series in 2009, but thanks to the vagaries of Netflix, I still have to finish half of the final season. Look for a full analysis in January 2010!

The Best of 2009 in a few easy categories: Books

First, a caveat or two. I read more than 100 books in the past year. Most of these were not from 2009. Here are some of the best things I read for the first time this year.

Author of the year:

Kate Atkinson. From Human Croquet (scary and beautiful, as the best fairytales are) to Not the End of the World: Stories (very good, but why are all collections of short stories vaguely creepy?), I devoured four of Atkinson’s books this year. My favorite was When Will There Be Good News?, which follows characters after the events in One Good Turn.

The best workplace novels that are basically the same book:

Then We Came to the End (Joshua Ferris) and Personal Days (Ed Park). This would bother me more if I liked them less.

Best biography by virtue of the fact that it is impossible to screw up the riveting story of this person’s life:

Ngaio Marsh: A Life (Margaret Lewis). Lewis missed a lot about Marsh, a Golden Age mystery author, as a writer: the anti-capital punishment stance, her ability to include gay characters who aren't the villains, Troy's important career, etc, but still, Marsh's life is fascinating.

Best young adult author in transition to adult literature:

Jaclyn Moriarty. Her young adult novels (such as The Year of Secret Assignments and The Murder of Bindy Mackenzie) are probably better than most teenagers deserve. Her first adult novel, I Have a Bed Made of Buttermilk Pancakes, is definitely better than we adults deserve. Magical and wonderful and fantastic and genius and clever and fun.

Best retrospective of important psychological experiments:

Opening Skinner’s Box (Lauren Slater). Really fascinating, and very well written.

Most insightful view of childhood:

The Fountain Overflows (Rebecca West). In this story of an eccentric family of musicians, West is particularly adept at describing precocious children.

Best P.G. Wodehouse stories I happened to pick up:

Sam the Sudden (predictably fun, especially the banter between the leads characters) and Uncle Dynamite (you can always trust the Earl of Ickenham).

Best mystery novels:

The Headhunters (Peter Lovesey) and Death of an Englishman (Magdalen Nabb). Ever wanted to kill your boss and/or travel to Italy? These are the books for you.

Best book on kindness:

The Box Garden (Carol Shields). It’s also about assholes who are so concerned with “finding themselves” they screw over everyone else. But it’s mainly about kindness.

Best “new” mystery author discovery:

Edmund Crispin. How had I not read The Moving Toyshop, Love Lies Bleeding, or Buried for Pleasure before?