The Best Books of 2011

Most book reviewers, whether in newspapers or on websites, tend to pick their top ten out of books that were published during the previous twelve months. This makes sense for professionals, but not for a private reviewer such as myself. I read whatever book strikes my fancy, from whatever decade. From my own count, I read 54 books in 2011. Of these, 23 were fiction, which is the same percentage of fiction (42%) that I read last year. That follows the national trend of people preferring nonfiction to novels.

The following are the ten most enjoyable, fascinating, or thought-provoking books I read in 2011. Enjoy!

1.) The Borrowed Years by Richard M. Ketchum
2.) Hitch-22 by Christopher Hitchens
3.) Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut
4.) The Spies of Warsaw by Alan Furst
5.) A Kidnapping in Milan by Steve Hendricks
6.) The Men Who Would Be King by Nicole LaPorte
7.) A Walk in the Woods by Bill Bryson
8.) Refuge by Terry Tempest Williams
9.) The Golden Spruce by John Vaillant
10.) Dogsbody by Diana Wynne Jones

But there are many honorable mentions, including Eaters of the Dead (Michael Crichton), Farm Boys (Will Fellows), Life Itself (Roger Ebert), and The Unlikely Disciple (Kevin Roose). UFOs by Leslie Kean kept me thinking for weeks, and Zeitoun by Dave Eggers inspired a lot of outrage from me. Persepolis would rank up there in the top 10 if I chose to count graphic novels.

This year I look forward to reading just as many books, and am anticipating greatly The Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, The Day of the Locust, The Hunger Games, and Undaunted Courage.

Wuthering Wyler

The other day someone came into the bookstore and asked where we would have Wuthering Heights. I told her we'd shelve it under plain old Fiction. She thanked me and then checked her smartphone.

"That was Wyler, right? The author?" she asked. "Bronte," I said. She looked at me skeptically then went away to the stacks.

It hit me later that she was probably referring to William Wyler, who directed a 1939 version of the classic novel. Her fancy smartphone must've told her Wyler was the author, though I can't imagine how she Googled herself to that mistake or which app deceived her.

No, I've never read it.

Above: a wuthering height.

Spring multitasking

It was an exceptionally nice day today, with highs near the 50's. I'd say it counted as the first day of spring. To celebrate, I took two walks, and on my second one noticed a peculiar sight.

There was a young man walking down the sidewalk in the opposite direction. He wore sunglasses and a backward baseball cap, and was engaging in several complicated tasks at once. There was an iPod plugged into his ears and with his left hand he was trying to light a cigarette dangling from his mouth. But that wasn't the most interesting part--in his right hand he was holding Tom Clancy's latest 900-page behemoth. Talk about your sensory overload!

I don't think I've ever seen anyone taking a jaunty stroll while reading a hardback novel, much less something as thick as "Dead or Alive." But I can't knock the guy for wanting to be out on a day like today. There must've been so many things he had to do, and it would've been a waste of nice weather to do them inside.

Coincidental metal

This happened two Fridays ago:

One man came into the store asking if we had any books on metal detecting. I told him where he might find one. About 45 minutes later, I was working at the register and the customer returned to purchase books, telling me he couldn't find any books on the subject. Now, while he filled out a card to be put on our mailing list, another customer walked into the store and asked if we had any books on metal detecting.

The first customer (who was writing just a few feet away) laughed and said he'd just asked about that. The two men started talking and trading stories about metal detecting. I'm pretty sure they left together, no doubt becoming fast friends and planning to meet up to start a hunt for buried treasure.

Oh, the coincidences of a bookstore!

The Best Books of 2010

Happy New Year!

According to Shelfari, which I use to keep track of my reading, I read 45 books last year (holy crap!). In recognition of this fact, I am going to move away from the zoo for just a moment and list my favorite books of 2010. These are not necessarily books that came out in 2010, but books I read in the calendar year:

1.) The Yiddish Policemen's Union by Michael Chabon. (Incidentally, the book that convinced me to write my own novel)
2.) Seven Years in Tibet by Heinrich Harrer.
3.) Monster of God by David Quammen.
4.) The Tenth Parallel by Eliza Griswold.
5.) The Monster of Florence by Douglas Preston and Mario Spezi.
6.) The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz.
7.) Lady Sings the Blues by Billie Holiday.
8.) Apples Are From Kazakhstan by Christopher Robbins.
9.) Polio: An American Story by David M. Oshinsky.
10.) The Spy Who Died of Boredom by George Mikes.

And now, for a little reading analysis: of those books, only three are fiction (Chabon, Diaz, and Mikes). This is roughly in line with my own reading habits, which involves mainly nonfiction (especially history). According to Shelfari, I read 19 fiction books and 26 nonfiction books.

I think this also aligns with the American public as a whole, which tends to favor nonfiction. I'm not sure what the reason for this is, but I think it has to do with people preferring subjects they already know something about, and not having to get invested in a book with unfamiliar characters, plot, and symbolic imagery.

Final zoo anecdotes of 2010

I won't ever work at the zoo again. In 2010, that is.

Today produced the following interactions with zoo patrons:

--A customer told me she saw a visitor bring a seeing-eye dog into the feline house. Bad idea. In her words, "the cheetahs were hopping and the lion king was looking at lunch." Wish I could have seen it.

--Mother to her daughter: "I saw on TV this morning that spiders have fuzzy legs. That's how they stick to the ceiling."
(Child mutters something)
Mother: "Did you know that when I was your age they hadn't even invented spiders?"

--When I was sweeping near a table, a young girl asked her father what I was doing. The father turned to me and said "I don't know, what do you call that? Sweeping?" Holding my broom and taken aback by the question, all I could respond with was "Um, sweeping, yes."

--A very excited boy yelled to me, "Thanks for the food!" Then he ran over to me and proudly showed off the pressed penny our machine had made for him, pointing to a smudge he claimed was Abraham Lincoln.

And I didn't learn this today, but: did you know that the hoofed mammals are not allowed outside in the winter? It's because if an ungulate slips, he or she is much more likely to break a leg.

Happy 2011!

Social experiments at the zoo

Today I had it in my mind to play Santa Claus.

Recently, I've been going through some of my old toys to see which ones I could throw out/give away and which ones retained some sentimental value. I have a vast collection of toy cars, and after sorting through them I found a few dozen I could part with. Since the Salvation Army and most other outlets apparently don't want used toys (and who would want decades-old Matchbox cars, anyway?) I decided to find creative ways to give them away.

I took one bright green Lamborghini (pictured below) to the zoo in a gesture that was half altruism and half curiosity. If I left a toy car in the dining area two days before Christmas, in a place guaranteed to host lots of little kids, would it still be there at the end of the day? I placed it near the trash bin (where everyone inevitably goes) before 9am. Then I waited.

At 1:30, as I returned to clean up the dining area, the car was still on top of the trash bin. It had definitely been moved since 9am, but no one had taken it. Part of me was upset. Was this a judgment on the type of toys I grew up on? Were today's four-year-olds more interested in things with microchips?

My mom later said it was likely some kid did pick up the car, but was told by his/her parents that it may have been left there by another kid -- in other words, Put it back! This is probably what happened. Let it be known: people who visit the zoo two days before Christmas are not inclined to take something that's not theirs, even a toy with no apparent owner. I'll have to get rid of my old toys through a good old-fashioned rummage sale.

I brought the car home. It survived getting snatched up at the zoo; I might as well give it a reprieve and keep it around.

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays, everyone!

Mackinac redux

Forget what I said about most zoo visitors knowing how to pronounce "Mackinac." I've noticed over the past few days that 90% of the people are, in fact, pronouncing it "Mackinac" with a k sound instead of how it should be pronounced, as if it had a w at the end.

Either I was giving visitors too much credit in September, or a different kind of crowd is visiting. Perhaps fewer Wisconsinites or Michiganders (?) are visiting and more people from farther away are getting ice cream. But that doesn't make sense, since you'd think more out-of-staters would visit during the summer than during the fall/winter. Was I simply giving everyone too much credit?

As you can tell, I still have a job scooping ice cream. No indication as to how long my part of the zoo will stay open, since I'm scheduled to be back there next weekend. Ice cream cones in winter--mmmm!

Canadians invade the zoo

A lot of Canadian currency has been showing up at the zoo. Just about every time I open a new roll of change to start the day, I will find at least one Canadian coin in it. Sometimes customers even give them to me, and in the past I've said "I'm sorry, ma'am, this is Canadian." Usually they are good-hearted about it.

I used to filter these coins from my drawer, figuring that the zoo people who count the money wouldn't accept them, but the Queen has been showing up so often that I don't really bother anymore. If Canadian pennies or dimes look like American ones, and no one ever notices the differences when they hand someone change, doesn't that make the coins just as good as American money? Both currencies are currently about equal anyway.

I rarely noticed this in past years. Are the people who roll coins getting lazy, or is more Canadian currency being spent in America?

Sherbert or Sherbet?

A few days ago I brought up the Mackinaw vs. Mackinack question. I reached the conclusion that most customers were really pronouncing the word the correct way and I was the one that was wrong. Congratulations, America.

But when it comes to sherbet all bets are off. Most people who order sherbet-flavored ice cream pronounce it "sherbert," as I did when I was a kid. This mispronunciation knows no age limits; people young or old will order "sherbert." I don't really have any problems with it, as the corruption is so common as to be accepted, but I really want to know where this mangled word came from. Is it because it gives the word a kind of symmetry? Is it because of the name "Herbert?" Did this form become commonplace after the Supreme Court decision Sherbert v. Verner?

(Actually, the Supreme Court case does give me a clue: if Sherbert is a surname, probably German, did the corruption stem from people confusing the flavor with someone they knew with that name?)

Google hasn't turned up a study on this. Maybe this is because this is something you can only track through speech and not the written word because no one ever writes the word as "sherbert." After all, spell check puts that red line through it. But someone must have pinpointed its first appearance in language.

Mackinac or Mackinaw?

There is a flavor at the zoo called "Mackinac Island Fudge." In recent days I've done an informal study of how many people call it Mackinack (pronouncing the hard c at the end) versus how it's supposed to be pronounced, Mackinaw. I was surprised that most people pronounced it Mackinaw as opposed to the incorrect way, which I'd been calling it. I suppose I thought the w-ended pronunciation was a regionalism. But I was wrong, because the Indians who named the place pronounced it Mackinaw. This has forced me to give some credit to the supposedly geographic-illiterate U.S., where even Wisconsin residents can pronounce a foreign-looking word correctly.

(But can they tell me what the capital of Ecuador is?)

Just a few more observations:

--I've seen more strollers in the past few weeks then I think I've seen in the preceding 22 years of my life. And I keep calling them "prams."
--A young girl came in today named Kennedy. I thought this was a strange name and wondered where it came from, and what kind of a parent would name their child such. Apparently, according to behindthename.com, Kennedy is the 110th most popular girl's name in America, right above Amanda (!).
--A different young girl, about 10 years old, came in and said the following: "Chocolate? I've never had chocolate ice cream before!" How, I asked myself, is this possible?
--Yet another young girl came in and said of her companion's choice of getting her ice cream in a dish: "You're eating ice cream with a spoon? That's funny." What is it with kids these days?

Ice Cream Happenstancery

As the zoo transitions into its Fall Hours, I have been shuttled to several different stands (no doubt to test their reactions to my awesomeness). The past few days I have been shoveling ice cream in the dairy part of the zoo. Here are some things I've noticed and experienced from my time there, and please note that some of these apply to the other stands at the zoo as well:

--At least twice a day I will hear a mother/father say to a child some variation on the phrase "you need a nap!" (the most common variation being "you're taking a nap as soon as we get home!")

--On the other hand, at the opposite end of the energy spectrum, you wouldn't believe how often kids are upset at the prospect at having to eat ice cream. "No, Mom, I don't want any!"

--This happens most often with Blue Moon: a kid will pick a flavor and her mother will give an "icky" face and explain that, honey, you won't/don't like that flavor. The mother will then usually end up picking vanilla or chocolate for the child. Now, I know it's none of my business, but I feel that on most of these occasions the mother is letting her own bias get in the way of what the child wants--she thinks Blue Moon tastes bad, so she won't feed it to her child. Not that Blue Moon isn't bad, mind you--it's a terrible, terrible flavor.

--I don't care if "ice creams" is a proper plural form, I still find it weird.

--The other day a very nice man walked up to the counter and said the zoo was one of the best he'd ever visited, and he'd "visited quite a few." He said it was very clean and the staff was very friendly. I suppose that counted as his tip.

Lastly: Please make sure you have change before you hand your money to the person at the register. Don't suddenly remember you have some after we've entered the cash into the drawer. Most likely we will try doing the calculations in our heads and you will end up shortchanged.

Encounters at the zoo

Anecdotes from the zoo, over the past several days:

Kid: "Hey zoo man! An animal is loose!"
Me: "They're the peacocks, they're supposed to be loose."
Kid: "Ewwwww!"

Zoo employee: "I've been in the kangaroo pen, they're so afraid of people."

Same zoo employee: "I've actually fed the polar bear. Did you know you can see it through the fence out back." (My stand is situated right next to the polar bear den).

Woman: "Hey, you're a zoo employee. Can you hop that fence and get me that peacock feather?"
Me (eyeing the rhinos nearby): "Ummmmm, sorry. I'm not allowed to go past the fence."

Young girl, with brother, to her dad who'd bought both popcorn, a slushie, and lemonade: "We're expensive."
Dad: "Yeah, you're expensive."

Man, to a friend: "Yeah, Gene Hackman's a funny guy. He did all those Mel Brooks films. I was watching their take on Star Wars a few days ago, that was hilarious."
Friend: "Ha ha, that was funny! That guy's helmet was like three feet long."
(Referring to "Spaceballs," and mistaking Hackman for Gene Wilder)

Kid: "Metro Goldwyn Mayer, that's it." (I swear a kid said this to me out of the blue. Maybe I misheard)

And, of course, the question you will only be asked if you work at a museum or where I do: "Where are the dinosaurs?"