Moon Tiger by Penelope Lively

In this book, Claudia, an old woman and the writer of a number of popular histories, sets out to write a history of the world, which quickly changes into the history of her world. As she peels the layers of her life back, Claudia gradually exposes her family relationships--which are all shaped by the hole left after the death of her lover during World War II in Egypt. Winner of the 1987 Booker Prize.

Walt Disney: The Triumph of the American Imagination by Neal Gabler

This biography provides a comprehensive account of Walt Disney's life from his boyhood in Marceline, Missouri and Kansas City to his death in Los Angeles. I thought it was especially good on his work. At least according to this book, Walt was often the guiding force behind novel ideas, but it really wasn't his skill as an animator that launched the Disney empire--it was his ability to see the cultural potential for animations. I particularly liked the accounts of Disney's collaborations with Leopold Stowkowski and Salvador Dali. The book also portrays Disney as restless: once he achieved something, his interest often turned to doing something new instead of simply repeating his success (which is not, of course, to say that his companies didn't often try to capitalize on and reproduce these successes!). I have read that the Disney family (and particuarly Diane Disney Miller) disagree with the author's characterization of Disney (especially in his relationship with his wife), but I thought the book made sense and gave a persuasive reading of Walt's life and its meaning in the midst of the American Century.

Leaving Everything Most Loved by Jacqueline Winspear

This book features a weak, and ultimately forgettable, mystery that allows Maisie to dither about her future. I had assumed that she had decided against marrying James Compton based on the previous book, but she's still considering it, and frankly I hardly understand why she cares either way. The time period is still fascinating, but I don't think Ms. Winspear uses it as well as she used to. I wonder if this series has been over extended.

Boxer, Beetle by Ned Beauman

This book is not quite in the same league as The Teleportation Accident, but it was still a great story. It features Kevin, a collector of Nazi paraphernalia who makes most of his friends on the Internet because he suffers from trimethylaminuria. When Kevin finds a letter from Hitler to a British entomologist, he finds himself rushing to solve a seventy-five year old mystery with very real implications. The complicated plot was handled very deftly, and I thought the story, filled to the brim with flawed, unhappy characters, worked very well.

City of Dark Magic by Magnus Flyte

I liked this book more by its end than I thought I might at its beginning. It tells the story of Sarah Weston, a grad student in musicology, who receives a mysterious invitation to work at a Prague museum over the summer, cataloguing scores and papers relating to Beethoven, her musical hero. But even before she arrives at the castle, she realizes that all is not well. Most of the story was really clever and inventive. But there were a number of moments when I found myself rolling my eyes--many of the characters seemed to lack clear motivation, especially at first. I'm intrigued to see where the story goes next.

Der Vorleser by Bernhard Schlink

I read this book in German. It starts as a conventional bildungsroman--a teenager falls in love with an older woman, but the affair ends and the boy moves on. Later, the young man, now a law student, comes across his former lover again--as one of the defendants in a trial which is trying to determine the guilt of former concentration camp guards. The novel explores the question of secrets--what secrets are most important, what actions should we be ashamed of--and the question of fitting in--what skills are necessary to live in our world, what might those who lack these skills be forced to do to make up for that lack. There's no moral high ground here, and no absolution in the end. But if we cannot forgive, we can still understand, and mourn the losses and broken lives all around.

The Teleportation Accident by Ned Beaumont

This novel is exactly the sort of novel I love to read: it's witty, self-referential, aware of its own status as a novel, and a lot of fun. Egon Loeser is the painfully self-absorbed anti-hero whose world is crumbling around him (he's an artist in Berlin in the 1920s)--but he doesn't see the political dangers because of his personal problems (an inability to get his show produced or to win over the charming Adele Hitler [no relation to Adolf]). He serendipitously leaves Berlin for Los Angeles (via Paris) chasing Adele, but he doesn't have any better luck in either place either with Adele or with his show. Yet, as the novel progresses, we learn more and more about Loeser's obsession with Adriano Lavinci, an Italian set designer who died in what is known as the Teleportation Accident (one of Lavinci's sets destroyed a theater in Paris). The novel teases readers: was Lavinci a theatrical genius, or a scientist centuries ahead of his time, or a magician? I definitely want to re-read this book; it may have been my favorite entry on the 2012 Booker Long List.

The Players Come Again by Amanda Cross

I really enjoyed this mystery, which starts with Kate Fansler being asked to write the biography of the wife of a famous modernist, whose masterpiece Ariadne features a female narrator. Kate is persuaded to write the biography by a childhood account written by a woman peripherally connect to the writer's family--but as Kate begins her investigations, she discovers this woman (and her two close friends, also connected to the writer) are alternately encouraging and stonewalling her investigations. This story didn't work like a conventional mystery, but I really enjoyed the literary detective aspect of it. It's definitely one of Cross's finest stories.

The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro

This book subtly investigates the questions of what we give up when we subsume our personality and our moral judgment into unquestioning loyalty. Stevens, the butler of Darlington Hall, has lived the life of a perfect butler. Even as his father lay dying upstairs, he only worried about serving Lord Darlington and his guests as perfectly as possible. He decided to give his loyalty to Lord Darlington and then never questioned Darlington's decisions or actions--even the more hideous ones, such as firing two housemaids because they were Jewish. But when Lord Darlington dies in disgrace, and a new American buys the house, Stevens goes on a journey. Ostensibly, he's trying to find a new housekeeper, but more importantly, he attempts to reconcile his actions and his memories with his moral self. This book was absolutely lovely. It unfolds over the course of the journey, but is littered with flashbacks as Stevens's memories continue to haunt him. I really loved this book. Winner of the 1989 Booker Prize.

The Secret Keeper by Kate Morton

I didn't think the secrets in this novel were commensurate with the plot's concealment of them: the book spends a lot of time with an actress trying to uncover her mother's secret past from World War II--while she could have just asked her mother (who was ill, but able to talk, and as it turns out, finally willing to do so!). I thought the story and the mystery were intriguing--and I loved the historical aspects of the story--but the present-day frame just didn't excite or convince me.

The Garden of Evening Mists by Tan Twan Eng

This book is a beautiful meditation on art, memory, and forgiveness after great inhumanity. Judge Teoh, the narrator, returns to Yugiri, the Garden of Evening Mists, where she served an apprenticeship many years ago. As she sets down the paths her life has traveled, and attempts to bring the garden--the only Japanese garden in Malaysia--back to order, some of the mysteries of the past are unraveled and she is forced to reassess the choices she's made. I really enjoyed reading this book--it's beautiful and mysterious, and it really makes me appreciate how little of the history of Southeast Asia I know.

The Wind-up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami

This book is a modern tour-de-force. Toru Okada, who has recently quit his unsatisfying office job, finds himself drawn into a series of mysteries when the family cat disappears. But this disappearance leads to more mysteries: Toru's wife leaves him, and he finds himself drawn into a story that started during World War II. To solve the mysteries, Toru must learn to take the occult seriously and face dangers in a dream world. I really enjoyed this book, which weaves its alternate realities together in a convincing and beautiful way. Most of all, I think, this book is about family and how much of who we are is determined by our circumstances and how much by our will.

The Origins of Totalitarianism by Hannah Arendt

In this book Hannah Arendt looks at the rise of totalitarianism in the 20th Century as embodied by the two most prominent instances of it: Nazi Germany and the USSR under Stalin. Arendt traces this rise first through anti-Semitism, which began in the 19th Century, and then through imperialism to totalitarianism itself. This book is dense, comprehensive, and well argued. In addition to a lot of historical evidence, Arendt demonstrates why totalitarianism is so dangerous, and how the Nazis and Stalinist Russia used prison camps, secret police, propaganda, and conspiracy theories to dehumanize their populations.

Foucault's Pendulum by Umberto Eco

This book centers around three editors for a vanity press in Milan. When the press decides to start publishing a series on the occult, the editors, up to their ears in conspiracy theories, decide to create their own version of the Plan, by which the Templars secretly went into hiding in the fourteenth century, and which they were supposed to use to return to power in 1944. But as the conspirators cook up the Plan, they realize that others are taking their game very seriously. Part of this book is a fun conspiracy story--it puts together an almost-plausible narrative that links the Templars with other mysterious groups through the ages (and has a ton of literary and cultural in-jokes, to book). What separates this book from something like The Da Vinci Code, though, is that the other part of the book is so moving. Belpo and Causabon, in particular, are well-developed characters, and the reader comes to understand that their manic devotion to finding the truth behind these conspiracy theories (which in the book are lined up like a house of cards) is about a lack of meaning in their day-to-day lives (which they only realize too late) rather than from any value inherent in the theories. I really enjoyed this story.

Return of the Dancing Master by Henning Mankell

This book is about people turning out to have mysterious pasts and to be almost unknown despite being a colleague or a family member. It's also about the long hand of history reaching out beyond expectation to address wrongs. I thought the mystery was pretty well handled--although the murderer is identified pretty quickly, there are a lot of layers of motivation and facts to untangle.

Schindler's List by Thomas Keneally

Even though this book relies on witness testimony and matches historical accounts I've read about the Holocaust, it bills itself as a novel. It has lots of facts, and carefully recreates some conversations, while indicating where it moves into the realm of speculation. But this book is far more powerful than a dry history. By picking the story of industrialist Oskar Schindler--a man who drank excessively and cheated on his wife, but who was also moved to risk his life and fortune to help the Jews of Cracow--and ultimately to save 1,300 of them in his factory. This story was really well told, and despite the unrelenting cruelty and terrible conditions that it depicts, also offers hope that people can rise above their surroundings to look out for each other. Booker Prize winner 1982.

Ragnarök: The End of the Gods by A.S. Byatt

In this book A.S. Byatt retells Norse mythology (especially as it pertains to Ragnarök, the Twilight (or Judgment) of the Gods) through the eyes of a child sent from her city home to the English countryside during World War II. This perspective both normalizes and makes strange aspects of the story that would have otherwise passed uncommented on stand out--although through the child's perspective everything is accepted in a way that an adult might not. I thought that this story made a powerful case for the relevance of myth in the modern age (and a slightly-less convincing (or maybe just more-disturbing) one for the Ragnarök stories in particular--warnings about beings who despite their power cannot stop themselves from destroying their world).

Mason's Retreat by Christopher Tilghman

This book--an elegaic, pastoral journey into a family's past as well as the history of Maryland's Eastern Shore--slowly and inexorably moves to a tragic climax, as it depicts the Mason family. The Masons, American expatriates in England for almost a decade, have finally hit rock bottom, financially, and indulge in one last luxurious trip across the Atlantic on the Normandie to take over the family estate on Maryland's Eastern Shore. But while Edward, the patriarch, finds it hard to fit in, his wife and sons readily take to the Retreat. When the threat of World War II and the upswing in Edward's British manufacturing business threaten to tear the family from the estate, tensions that have been simmering beneath the family's surface come to a dangerous boil. I really enjoyed this book.

Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption by Laura Hillenbrand

This book started a little slow for me (it was hard for me have sympathy for the young hellion who kept stealing from his neighbors), but it developed into a really great story. It was very carefully researched--so there's a lot of information beyond the biography of Louis Zamperini (Olympian, track star, WWII bombardier, POW, and inspirational speaker) that really provides a context for his experiences. A lot of the story was difficult to get through--apparently the prisoners of war held in Japan during WWII were often abused and starved--but it really is a great story about the ability of one remarkable man to survive in the face of overwhelming odds.

Half Blood Blues by Esi Edugyan

This book masterfully tells the story of a jazz band just before and during the Second World War. The trumpet player, Hieronymous Falk, is a prodigy--worthy to play with Louis Armstrong, but even in Paris he's having visa problems (his German nationality isn't helping matters any) as the band tries to head for the United States. Jealousies about musical talent and a woman, and the pressures of living in occupied Paris all come to a boil as the band cuts a wonderful record turning Nazi propaganda on its head. I loved the way this book played out--moving between (something close to) the present day and the past, with a narrator just self-interested enough not to be entirely trusted. It's a fresh and engaging World War II story.