One thing I realized in preparing this post is that I read both of this year’s “best” books on my nook. I hadn’t realized that at the time of my “year of the nook” post earlier this week. But it reminds me of another drawback to many ereaders. Because I don’t have the color nook, all the photos in the ebook version of the best nonfiction work were in black and white — not handy when the picture captions refer to differences in color.

BEST NOVEL

I’m sure many people will disagree but I was fairly unimpressed with the fiction this year. The books seemingly getting the most attention — e.g., Freedom and The Passage (as to which see below) — I found okay at best. As a result, Emma Donoghue’s Room tops my list for 2010. As most commentators have observed, the voice of the novel — a 5-year-old boy — is fairly compelling given the somewhat horrific premise. I felt, though, that the book struggled toward the end so, while it is probably the best published this year, it isn’t one I would necessarily proselytize about.

Whether indicative of my predilections or the state of fiction in American in 2010, my two honorable mentions for best fiction published in 2010 are both science fictional. On the surface, Charles Yu’s How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe is the story of a time machine repairman in a flawed, alternate universe. It really is a story about the search for self, one where Yu has an uncanny ability to use humor to strike at the heart of how we become what we are, whether we like it or not. Similarly, Gary Shteyngart’s satirical dystopian love story (yes, those words all go together in this case) Super Sad True Love Story looks at who we are in a too-much-information age.

NONFICTION

Comparatively speaking, 2010 was stronger for published nonfiction although, again, nothing struck me as drop dead great. Ultimately, I would have to say Rebecca Skloot’s The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks was the best of the year. Skloot’s book could serve as a primer on how to write science journalism. Just as cell research, the subject of the book, takes us to basic levels of the human animal, Skloot takes us to the at times compelling human level of the story behind the science. Some may complain about how Skloot becomes part of the story but had she not done so we may never have known it.

The “honorable mention” also features science journalism and a couple memoirs. Mary Roach looks at science in her inimitable way with Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void. Perhaps because I grew up during the space race, I found this to be the most intriguing and enjoyable of her works to date — although I wouldn’t discourage anyone from reading any of her prior books.

It’s the humor — both subtle and not-so-subtle — that are the hallmarks of the two memoirs on the list. Mark Vonnegut’s Just Like Someone Without Mental Illness Only More So was a very strong contender for my favorite book of the year. The follow-up to his memorable The Eden Express: A Memoir of Insanity, Vonnegut looks at the years of his “recovery from” schizophrenia and bipolar disorder — and his fourth psychiatric breakdown “when the voices came back” more than 14 years after his last breakdown. Despite the serious topic, some of the flavor of his father Kurt’s writing style makes the book that much more enjoyable. Less subtle is Justin Halpern’s Sh*t My Dad Says, one of the few books I’ve read in the last number of years that actually had me laughing out loud. I did find it a bit frightening, though, that I think I tend to sound like Halpern’s father.

BOOKS I WISH I’D READ THE YEAR THEY WERE RELEASED

This category exists because it is not uncommon for me to come across books I love a a couple years after they are first published. What makes this grouping unique in 2010 is that all of the books works in translation and were first published in the U.S. in 2009.

Probably my favorite and what some may consider a bizarre choice is Jonathan Littell’s The Kindly Ones. In fact, one might be surprised that a 975-page novel about World War II and the Final Solution from the standpoint of an SS officer who was neck deep in the slaughter could be considered a “favorite” read — or at least question the ethos of the person who considers it such. Yet the book, originally in French (but written by an American) and translated by Charlotte Mandell, is a compelling read. I don’t find it surprising it won France’s two most prestigious literary awards — or that it’s done poorly in the United States. It is an overlooked literary accomplishment.

Close behind is another French novel, Philippe Claudel’s Brodeck. Like the The Kindly Ones, it takes a different perspective on the concept of guilt. Claudel examines the concept of collective guilt of an occupied community about acts taken regarding both longtime residents and outsiders. Translated by John Cullen, Brodeck also deserves far more attention than it has received in the United States and would serve as a outstanding introduction to anyone who wants to know why modern translated literature is important. Either it or The Kindly Ones may have earned “Best Novel” status had they not been published last year.

Moving from World War II inspired fiction, two other foreign works I loved this year and highly recommend are Santiago Roncagliolo’s Red April and Gerbrand Bakker’s The Twin. The books, though, are quite inapposite. The Twin, a Dutch work translated by David Colmer, is a reminiscence on or exploration of life, obligations and aging. Both topically and in terms of pacing it is akin to Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead and highly deserving of its place on the longlist for the 2010 Best Translated Book Awards. In contrast, Red April, translated by Edith Grossman, is a political thriller based on the Peruvian government’s repressive battle against the Shining Path movement. It is one of those books that grabs you early on and is difficult to put down.

WORST RATIO OF QUALITY TO HYPE

In terms of hype, Jonathan Franzen’s Freedom might take the cake. After all, not many novels are declared the “novel of the century” some 10 years into the century. Still, it had some relative quality and value. There is no such balancing of scales with The Passage by Justin Cronin. This was THE MOST ANTICIPATED book of the year. In actuality, it was basically “a calculated attempt to make money, not literature” or, in other words, a “hackneyed, overwritten pile of poop” resulting from “naked opportunism.” I am surprised how many “best of” lists I saw it on at year end.

BIGGEST DISAPPOINTMENT

I know that in the world of American Lit Mark Twain is “he who must not be impugned.” Yet it’s quite very easy to point to Volume 1 of his autobiography as falling far short of my expectations. After a while my brain and eyes were glazing over so often that I, like Garrison Keillor, started “turning the pages two and three at a time.” Unlike Keillor, though, I gave up entirely about a third of the way through. It wasn’t the only book I abandoned this year but it was the most surprising of them.

Mark Vonnegut, Just Like Someone Without Mental Illness Only More So

Normally, a person wouldn’t think a memoir about being forced into frozen labor camps during World War II is the type of work that examines luck. Yet Stefan Waydenfeld’s The Ice Road: An Epic Journey from the Stalinist Labor Camps to Freedom shows the full range of good and bad fortune and how capricious it can be.

Waydenfeld was a teenager in Otwock, Poland, a city not far from Warsaw, as the European continent moved toward the outbreak of World War II. The son of a medical doctor and a medical bacteriologist, Waydenfeld enjoyed the benefits and opportunities afforded by a comparatively comfortable life, one he even terms “idyllic.” That would end rather abruptly when Germany invaded Poland on September 1, 1939, and become even worse when the Soviet Union invaded the country from the east 16 days later. Waydenfeld’s father, who had served as a medical officer in the Polish Army, was mobilized before the German invasion. Five days after the German invasion, Waydenfeld, then 14, set off on foot with friends toward a mustering point to the east to join the Army. He and his friends wouldn’t join the Army on their trip — and he would not see his home for another eight years.

Through a fortunate turn of events, Waydenfeld’s father located him when he took shelter with another family. And, by chance, his mother joined them just as they were going to attempt to return to Otwock to find her. Yet the Waydenfelds faced a dilemma: try to return to the portion of Poland occupied by Germany or stay in what was now the Soviet occupied section. They ending up staying in the Soviet-controlled area. Ultimately, although not technically prisoners, hundreds of Poles were deported in crammed cattle cars to Siberian labor camps in 1940. The Waydenfelds ended up in Kvasha, a camp in far western Siberia with a subarctic climate. “Here you shall live,” they were told.

Kvasha was not a prison camp. There was housing and food available. Yet survival depended on working in the great forests of the area cutting and removing timber. The phrase frequently heard from the Soviet officials at the camp was, “He who does not work, does not eat.” Although in his teens, Waydenfeld performed a wide variety of difficult tasks in the camp. The worst, which gives the book its title, was when he and his father were part of a crew charged with maintaining “the ice road.” The road consisted of iced ruts on which sleds would transport felled trees in the midst of the winter. Maintenance required traveling up and down the road gathering water from the adjoining river and resurfacing the ice in the ruts. Often working at night, the task not only involved working outdoors in sub-zero temperatures but often being coated with ice as a result of the water they were required to spread on the road. The physical burdens and distress of the work almost beggars the imagination.

After Germany invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941, the Soviets released the Poles, although they were limited to places within the Soviet Union and were responsible for their own transportation. Although this meant the Weydenfelds would leave Kvasha, it also embarked them on a journey of thousands of miles through Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan by rail, on foot and by truck. They scavenged local markets for food and took up housing where available, aided by the senior Weydenfeld’s ablity to occasionally find employment thanks to his medical degree. The family and numerous others eventually found passage to Tehran and outside Soviet and German influence.

Waydenfeld recounts events with an excellent eye for detail, both in terms of events and the family’s surroundings. Some readers might even wonder about the extent of the detail given that he did not keep a diary and only started making notes of his experiences some 15 years after. Regardless, The Ice Road tells a compelling story about the treatment of the Poles during World War II, an aspect of the conflict that is often overlooked. Additionally, the book includes a look at the Polish deportations and the formation of a Polish Army corps, which Waydenfeld joined once outside Soviet control.

Despite the hardships it recounts, The Ice Road is a story of good fortune in that the Waydenfeld family survived. Yet a couple items in his recounting show just how fortuitous they may have been. For example, in May 1940 the Waydenfelds stood in line for a German repatriation train that would have returned them to Otwock and the part of Poland occupied by the Germans. The family ahead of them in line filled the quota of returnees and they were told to go back to where they were staying and wait for the next repatriation train. There was never another and they were deported to Siberia.

Or they could look back just a bit more. In May 1939, the Waydenfelds took a cruise to the Mediterranean. They picked it over one slated to go to New York City in August 1939. That ship was in New York City when the war broke out — and the passengers spent the war in the United States.

In the introduction to that book, Vonnegut, the son of author Kurt Vonnegut, described himself as “a hippie, a son of a counterculture hero, a B.A. in religion [with a] a genetic biochemical predisposition to schizophrenia.” He and friends established a commune in a remote area of British Columbia but the mysticism he sensed he was experiencing led in 1971 to his hospitalization in a psychiatric hospital in Vancouver for what was diagnosed as paranoid schizophrenia. Eden Express details that journey, two subsequent hospitalizations and his efforts toward recovery.

Although Vonnegut has since come to believe what he really suffered from was a combination of what is now know as bipolar disorder and schizophrenia, his recovery has been equally remarkable. Not only did he return to “normal” life, he attended Harvard Medical School and has been a practicing pediatrician in the Boston area sine the early 1980s. With his follow-up memoir, Just Like Someone Without Mental Illness Only More So, he takes readers on that journey — and his fourth psychiatric breakdown “when the voices came back” more than 14 years after his last breakdown.

As a fan of Eden Express, I must admit I approached Just Like Someone Without Mental Illness Only More So with a bit of trepidation. I didn’t want anything to take away my favorable impression of the first book (although rereading it before the new book arguably may have increased that risk). Yet the new book drew me in as much as the first and I found it just as compelling. Not only does Vonnegut he again provide insight into the lives of those who confront mental illnesses, the book gives us a real glimpse of the type of person and doctor he is, his bout with alcoholism, and a look at how the practice of medicine has changed in the last 25 years. (“Every bright idea that was supposed to improve medical care has made care worse, usually by increasing costs and restricting access.”)

Eden Express was marked by its frank yet conversational tone. A similar approach helps make Just Like Someone Without Mental Illness Only More So as good as the predecessor. The two books, though, are different. The new one break the story into smaller segments as opposed to lengthier chapters. It also has more echoes of his father’s style and wit. For example, if he’s been doing so well, why does he continue to see a psychiatrist? His response is a simple, Vonnegutesque one: “Over the years I’ve come to care about Ned and, and I think I go mostly to make sure he’s okay.” This approach enhances the readability of a story that gives an idea of the life of a “regular” person dealing with existing or quiescent mental illness and how easy it can be to slip into a manic-depressive or schizophrenic state.

Still, Vonnegut never suggests he possesses some unique quality or strength that gave him advantages in recovering.

None of us are entirely well, and none of us are irrevocably sick. At my best I have islands of being sick entirely. At my worst I had islands of being well. Except for a reluctance to give up on myself there isn’t anything I can claim credit for that helped me recover from my breaks. Even that doesn’t count. You either have or don’t have a reluctance to give up on yourself. It helps a lot if others don’t give up on you.

Yet even that doesn’t ensure there will never be recurrences. In fact, Vonnegut’s fourth breakdown found him taken by police from his home in a straitjacket when he tried, unsuccessfully, to run through a third-floor window to prove to God that he was worthy of saving and “not just a selfish little shit.” Vonnegut says that when the voices he heard in the early 1970s came back, “it was like we picked up in the middle of a conversation that had been interrupted just a few minutes earlier.” The manic part of his bipolar disorder manic depression makes it that much more difficult. Vonnegut describes the slide into mental illness as a “grammatical shift. Thoughts come into the mind as firmly established truth. … The fantastic presents itself as fact.”

Once again, though, the hospitalization, together with medication and support, allowed Vonnegut to return to a normal life, including the practice of medicine. He forthrightly examines not only the role of medication but the treatment he underwent in the 1970s and explores the extent to which family heredity can play a role in a person’s psychiatric state.

Fortunately, Vonnegut did not just return to the practice of medicine but also to memoir. Taken together, Eden Express and Just Like Someone Without Mental Illness Only More So are an excellent survey of a life affected by mental illness. Yet with its style, tone and frank manner of addressing serious issues and events, Just Like Someone Without Mental Illness Only More So earns a place on anyone’s bookshelf on its own merits. It is the most insightful and enjoyable memoir I’ve read in a long time.

Mark Vonnegut, Just Like Someone Without Mental Illness Only More So

Even though this coming weekend marks the 95th anniversary of the beginning of this particular persecution of Armenians, whether to call what happened genocide or something else continues to be debated today. Given that Balakian relates the history from the perspective of someone persecuted by the Turks during that war, his book likely remains controversial today, more than 80 years after the first volume of it was first published.

Balakian was one of some 250 Armenian intellectuals and leaders arrested by government order in Constantinople on April 24, 1915, the event commonly viewed as the beginning of the campaign against Armenians in Turkey. Calling what ensued “cleansing” is perhaps the least blunt description used in his memoir. Perhaps that is because Balakian attributes its use to a police captain who escorted him during part of his trip into exile. According to Balakian, “the Turks always used this term, especially the government officials, when referring to the massacre of Armenians.”

Massacre is a term used far more often as Armenian Golgotha struggles to describe both Balakian’s personal experiences and what was happening overall. He frequently says the Ottoman Empire’s actions were a deliberate plan to “annihilate” or “to completely exterminate the Armenian race.” First published in 1922, Armenian Golgotha was, sadly, a preview of what the world would become all too familiar with later in the 20th Century, whether the Holocaust in World War II or the “ethnic cleansing” that occurred in Europe, Asia and Africa later in the century. Yet Balakian never uses the term genocide. There’s good reason — it was not coined until 1943.

Balakian’s tale of survival combines both abject misery on the road of exile and an escape and years-long evasion that could form the basis of several adventure stories. But rather than being simply history or memoir, Armenian Golgotha clearly was intended to bear witness to the genocide, its victims, its villains and its heroes. Thus, Balakian frequently lists or comments on people whose memory he seeks to preserve. That tendency, combined with an at times prolix and effusive style, sets the book off from most modern works of history or memoirs. In addition, there are lengthy quotations from conversations that occurred several years before the book was first published. Still, this doesn’t undercut the book’s aim.

Armenian Golgotha is actually a combination of two separate volumes written by Balakian after the war. The first, called “The Life of an Exile” in the book, was the work published in Armenian in 1922 and covers Balakian’s life from the beginning of the war through his journey from Constantinople toward Der Zor, an outpost in today’s Syria abutting a vast desert where thousands of Armenians died. The second volume, “The Life of a Fugitive,” details his escape and two years of disguises, false identities and struggles in an often harrowing effort to return to Constantinople. It was not published until 1959, some 25 years after his death, when it was discovered among his sister’s papers when she died. With the assistance of a variety of people, American poet and author Peter Balakian began translating the work into English in 1999, a process that culminated in the book’s publication in the U.S. in 2009. The book was released in trade paper last month.

Balakian’s story relates the stories of massacre upon massacre on the forced marches to exile, the road to the Armenian Golgotha as he terms it. In addition to outright murder, thousands would die along the way or in overcrowded, filthy camps whose conditions Balakian says the Turks created in the hope of starting epidemics. The numbers Armenian Golgotha propounds are horrendous. Of the more than 1.5 million Armenians deported during the summer and fall of 1915, Balakian says some 800,000 were massacred on the way to Der Zor while another 400,000 died of hunger and starvation. Of those who did reach the deserts of Der Zor, some 250,000 died of starvation from August 1915 to August 1916. In the late summer of 1916, most of the remainder were massacred, leaving roughly 5,000 survivors out of the deportees, a number Balakian says disease and hunger reduced to only 400-500 by the summer of 1918.

“In reality,” Balakian writes, “deport was synonymous with murder.” In fact, “the life an Armenian was worth less than that of a chick or chicken.”

The effects of these events on individuals is seen even in Balakian. Although he credits his survival to his faith, there are times it appears even that comes into question. At one point, rather than pointing to prayer, he observes that “believing that wishing for something could make it happen, I used to repeat over and over to those around me, ‘I have decided not to die.’” And the seemingly endless horror and atrocities leads him to conclude later that “we’d been abandoned by both God and mankind; our only salvation was the grave, but we couldn’t even count on that.”

Balakian’s perspective is unique in other respects. Fluent in Armenian, Turkish and German, he was able to speak directly with individuals who experienced or observed the events from a wide variety of standpoints. In addition, when Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the heir to Austria-Hungary throne, was assassinated in 1914 and war was subsequently declared, Balakian was studying in Berlin and provides firsthand accounts of events there. And on November 13, 1918, he saw 44 warships of the Entente fleet steam past Constantinople into the Bosphorus.

In addition to the extreme and excruciating events during the war, Balakian also recognizes an outcome that, while not physically painful or fatal, was at least as damaging and deadly for Armenians as a whole. He repeatedly comments that the deaths of the Armenian “martyrs” and one of the hopes that kept survivors going was that in pursuit of an independent Armenian nation once the war was over. Yet that dream was little more than false hope based on a belief the Entente powers were fighting for “rights and justice” and on misleading promises. “After the Armistice, all such promises would soon be forgotten, as each victorious power aimed first to secure the lion’s share of territory for itself,” Balakian writes. “An oil field would prove much more valuable than the fate of a small and weak Christian people.” Thus, although an independent Armenian republic was proclaimed, in late 1920 it was invaded and subsumed by Turkey and the Soviet Union, giving pause to whether the suffering of the Armenians was meaningless.

Those who deny or dispute whether the Ottoman Empire embarked on a genocidal campaign against the Armenians will, of course, find Armenian Golgotha biased and one-sided. Others will find it an excruciating firsthand account of ethnic torment. But the somewhat surprising fact that the Armenian genocide continues to cause debate nearly a century later doesn’t detract from the fact Balakian accomplished his main goal — to commemorate the events of 1914-1918 and the people caught up in them.

Grigoris Balakian, Armenian Golgotha