Our Top 10 Picks From All Publishers

We knew you wouldn't be able to really feel like it was a new year until you had our complete top 10 lists. We've given you our top reads from Random House and University of Texas Press (the suckers that employ us) but we now offer our favorites from our competitors.

Gianna's List:

1. Why Be Happy When You can Be Normal by Jeanette Winterson 

I bought this the day it was released, went home, blew off work for the rest of the day and read this in one sitting. It is, by a wide margin, my favorite book of the year, and my favorite book by Winterson. If you knew how much I loved Art Objects, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, and especially Written on the Body, the fact that this book now goes to the top of my Winterson list, well it’s a big deal. In short, this is a memoir about how books can save you.

From Why Be Happy When You can Be Normal:

“Books, for me, are a home. Books don’t make a home – they are one, in the sense that just as you do with a door, you open a book, and you go inside. Inside there is a different kind of time and a different kind of space.”

“That is what literature offers—a language powerful enough to say how it is. It isn't a hiding place. It is a finding place.”

“A tough life needs a tough language—and that is what poetry is. That is what literature offers—a language powerful enough to say how it is.”

There are probably, no there are definitely, too many memoirs out there. Too many "my childhood was terrible, my mother was crazy, my father was an alcoholic, and I fell in love with my dog" memoirs out there. [...or cat.] What they miss most of the time is introspection, brutal honestly, and breathtaking prose. What Mary Karr, Rick Bragg, Joan Didion, William Styron, Gail Caldwell, Tobias Wolff, and very few others can do is put together a sentence that haunts you and begs to be savored.

2. This is How you Lose Her by Junot Diaz

This was the book I was most excited to read in 2012, and it did not disappoint. You know how people are absolutely nuts about Michael Chabon or Jonathan Franzen? That’s how I feel about Junot Diaz. If you like Jhumpa Lahiri, Jennifer Egan, David Mitchell, Karen Russell or Colum McCann, give Junot Diaz a try.

3. How Should a Person Be? by Sheila Heti

I would hold off and buy this in paperback because you are going to want to underline a bunch of stuff. It’s a smart smart smart book and I really hope it makes some year end lists. If you’re a woman under thirty, it’s a must by the way.

4. Canada by Richard Ford

Canada is as good as The Sportswriter and Independence Day. It is, in my opinion his best novel in years (probably since Independence Day). You can read any Richard Ford book and know that you’ve read on of the best novels that you will read that year, but with Canada he is, as the literary snobs say, ‘writing at the height of his powers.’

5. Are You My Mother by Alison Bechdel

Oh, how I resisted Alison Bechdel. It took five years of people annoying me about Fun Home before I read it. Lesson learned, and I read Are You My Mother immediately. While Fun Home dealt with Bechdel’s father, this tackles her just as complicated relationship with her mother.  While I wish Mother wasn’t so psychoanalysis heavy (got to be a bit much for me), it still makes my year-end list because it’s so smart and original.

6. Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk by Ben Fountain

I picked this book up at the Texas Book Festival not really knowing too much about it. My intention was to find a lighthearted book to tear through while between more serious reads. Turns out while Fountain’s book is humorous, it’s also pretty heartbreaking. I can’t think of anything better than when a book completely surprises you.

7. Yellow Birds by Kevin Powers

I don’t know if this book was over-hyped or not. Probably. For me though, I felt this was an extraordinary first novel, actually it was a really great novel, first novel or not. I think when a book gets so much praise, there is bound to be backlash and that’s too bad. I have absolutely no qualms placing this book on the list with Richard Ford, John Irving, and Junot Diaz. Forget the haters!

8. In One Person by John Irving

I am a little in love with John Irving. I have read seven of his books, (probably the most books by a single author that I have read outside of Joyce Carol Oates), and I have to tell you, this is his best book since Widow for One Year and it holds up to his best work.

9. People Who Eat Darkness by Richard Lloyd Parry

I think this is the only true crime book I read this year, and that may be because of how utterly depressing this book is. This is the story of a Japanese serial murderer who got away with killing women for three decades. The incompetence of the Japanese police is dumbfounding (or maybe they just didn’t give a damn). This book makes my list because the writing is really fantastic, the topic is mesmerizing, and Parry has managed to give voice to these women while Japanese police ignored them.

10. My Extraordinary Ordinary Life by Sissy Spacek

Spoiler alert: I love Sissy Spacek. If she had revealed in this memoir that she had been killing and burying defenseless squirrels in her basement, it would still make my list. Also, squirrels aren’t exactly defenseless; they can be quite vicious. This review has gotten off to a very rocky start. Let me start over.  

Spacek’s memoir makes my list because while it contains zero Hollywood gossip, you’re knee deep in really great film stories (from Terrence Malick to Loretta Lynn). Oh, wait…she does talk about how Bill Paxton killed her bird, so there is a bit of gossip for ya. 

Liz's picks

Unlike Gianna, I found The Yellow Birds cringe-worthy. In general, though, our book tastes overlap a bit.  And while 2012 wasn't the year of the big, big novel like some years, I think it's been a great year for emerging writers and great writers around for awhile receiving well-deserved recognition. Take a look at the National Book Award finalists.  There aren't any dogs on that list....except for Yellow Birds, which isn't bad, just grossly overrated.  In the interest of fairness, I'm not naming ten books here because there are many books--The Middlesteins, HHhH, Arcadia, Where'd You Go Bernadette, Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore, to name a few--that I haven't yet read.  I do much of my non-Random House reading the year after the book is published, so this year I was catching up on The Art of Fielding and The Marriage Plot, for example.  So here are some of my favorite books that did release in 2012, but by no means would I claim this as a definitive best of list.

Are You My Mother?

1. Are You My Mother by Alison Bechdel

Let 2012 be the year that I read two graphic novels! Yeah, that never happens, but what other year have we had both a Chris Ware and an Alison Bechdel?  I loved this graphic memoir of Bechdel's troubled relationship with her mother.  I heard some mixed opinions about the amount of psychoanalytic theory included in this book; I thought it added to the story.  This book is smart without being annoying, and I do love some navel-gazing, even in graphic form.



2. Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk by Ben Fountain

Dude.  I loved this book.  I was reminded of the tour that the five marines who raised the flag at Iwo Jima took around the country to bolster morale.  In Fountain's book, a group of soldiers--kids, really--are touring the country to boost war support in 2004.  The book takes place over the course of a Thanksgiving Dallas Cowboys football game where the soldiers are to participate in a halftime show.  It's comically awful--Texas socialites with photo ops and George W. Bush cheerleading, frigid temperatures, a terrible football game, a waning movie producer hoping to exploit the soldiers, and the demons each of the soldiers carry with them from the battle that won them attention.  In the midst is Billy, a likeable guy just trying to please people, and whose family is a (quite believable) trainwreck.  What I particularly loved about this book were the interactions among the soldiers.  The constant ribbing, banter, and need to impress one another keeps Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk from being just another war book.

Dear Mr. Diaz,
Liz is single. Feel free to call.
Love, Liz

3. This Is How You Lose Her by Junot Diaz

I'm with Gianna.  I love Junot Diaz.  I love his use of language and the vernacular his characters speak.  These interconnected short stories follow Junior, one of the characters from Diaz's Pulitzer Prize-winning The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao.  The machismo of the Dominican man who is equal parts romantic, intellectual, and cheating bastard make Junior a character worth following.

4. Let's Pretend This Never Happened by Jenny Lawson

I'll admit it.  I don't read funny books.  Usually I like my books just short of permanently traumatizing.  Jenny Lawson, though, has found a way to take the horrific and traumatizing and make it, well, hilarious.  Known as "The Bloggess" and famous for her crazy blog, Lawson takes her generalized anxiety and lack of social tact and makes the best of it.  Yes, she uses the word "vagina" more than any other author I've encountered (and that includes Gianna's text messages), but it works for her.  She's outrageous, and her family is that certain breed of loving but damaged Texas crazy.  Her dad's a taxidermist with a flock of attack turkeys that followed Jenny to school everyday.  Jenny had the quintessential Texas ag class insemination story.  And she's free enough from society's judgments that she'll buy a four foot tall metal rooster, name it Beyonce, and then use the chicken to prank her friends.  I think that Jenny Lawson and I could be bffs.


5. The Absolutist by John Boyne

From the author of The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, The Absolutist is the book I talked about the most with my book pals this year.  Two soldiers become friends at bootcamp before shipping to the trenches in World War I.  One soldier lives, one does not.  The story follows Tristan as he travels to deliver letters to his dead friend Will's sister.  Over the course of the weekend he spends in Will's home town, Tristan and Will's war story unravels--one of friendship, love, and resistance.  Need a book group pick?  This is the one.

6. The Round House by Louise Erdrich
Louise Erdrich finally won a National Book Award with this novel, her fourteenth.  Maybe people like Gianna will begin reading her books now.  Joe is thirteen and lives with his judge father and tribe administrator mother on a reservation in North Dakota.  On a Sunday, his mother comes home from a work errand and she has been brutally assaulted and lucky to be alive.  The attack sets Joe into action trying to track down his mother's attacker and find justice for his family.  Erdrich has managed to write a mystery that is also a literary coming of age novel and exploration of Native American history and law in contemporary society.  It's a smart book that is compulsively readable.

Best of 2012: Day 5

Chris Ware's Building Stories. Better than Jane Seymour's jewelry.

I'm willing to go out on a limb and say that anything we've featured on our Best of 2012 lists would make a better gift than any item from Jane Seymour's Open Hearts collection of jewelry.  How can I be so bold?  These books are original works that offer a variety of perspectives on the world and tell stories that need to be told...and they don't stink up a joint like the world's worst celebrity trite crap.  On a related note, guess what I'm getting Gianna for Christmas?  Anyway, here's the wrap-up to our week of favorite books.

Gianna:

Behind the Beautiful Forevers by Katherine Boo

Katherine Boo,
National Book Award winner.

 This is my favorite book of the year, in any category. The writing alone is simply gorgeous. Like Mountains Beyond Mountains or Cutting for Stone, ultimately this book is inspiring. Boo, not satisfied with the cliché exotic descriptions of a quickly changing India, wanted a more realistic portrayal--a gut check of sorts--of how this nation was changing the lives of the poor.

Boo spent over three years following residents of Annawadi, a Mumbai slum of 3,000 people just outside of the Mumbai International Airport. While India’s fortunes are certainly changing for some, Boo focuses on the lives that go unchanged for the most part. The hustle of the slum is unimaginable; nuns at an orphanage selling expired donated foods to poor women, who then in turn resell it at roadside stands. Abdul, who you will come to love, is a trash picker who supports his entire family, and he dreams of a better life. You won’t forget him.

Mumbai slum.

Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn

I know you’re tired of hearing about it. I know. It took my own girlfriend a year to finally decide to take me up on this recommendation, so I get it…but come on, don’t you want to be better than my girlfriend?

This is the novel that you will read, and then immediately want to talk to someone about, and then you call that someone and they haven’t read it and you realize…you can’t talk about the book without giving it away. And then you get pissed off at your friend for not having read the book. See, books divide friends and family.  They are evil!

A wife goes missing, the husband lies to the police (don’t ever lie to the police), his lie is revealed, and he is now the suspect. Just when you think you know who did this woman in…well, just read the book.  

Starring in the movie of Gone Girl

Liz:

Building Stories by Chris Ware

Is it possible that the most accomplished work of fiction this year is a graphic novel?  Yes.  Usually I don't go for that "a picture is worth a thousand words" saying.  I'm a word person.  I actually frequently dream in type, where instead of speaking, conversations are typed like manuscripts.  I'd rather have a thousand words that express nuance and beauty and turmoil.  In the case of Chris Ware, he is capable of detailing the slightest twinge of emotion in every illustration panel.  This book is a masterpiece.

Chris Ware

Consider Building Stories like a short story collection of interconnected narratives.  These are stories that together form a larger tale about the residents of a three story Chicago apartment building.  The women of this building live lives of quiet desperation with occasional moments of beauty and humor.  And the bee that lives outside offers a different perspective on the world they all inhabit.  Ten years in the making, Building Stories is the most innovative, creative, beautiful book of the year.

Gods Without Men by Hari Kunzru

The upside of a book coming out in the spring is that it isn't as packed with holiday titles and mega hits, so a book has a better chance of getting noticed.  The downside is that sometimes the spring releases are forgotten when the critics compile their annual lists.  Gods Without Men was a March title; human embryos have gone to term and squirted into the world since this title went on sale.  Nonetheless, it's a 2012 release and one of my favorite books of the year.

It's no secret that I'm a David Mitchell fan, and when I read Gods Without Men, I remembered how much I loved Cloud Atlas when I first read it.  Hari Kunzru's novel weaves together multiple stories across decades, geographically centered around a rock formation called The Pinnacles, in the middle of the Mojave Desert.  It's a sacred site for Native Americans, a gathering place for hippies and new age spiritualists, and a tourist attraction inside a national park.  

Hari Kunzru

Gods Without Men starts with a family hoping for a miracle in the desert.  On vacation, Jaz and Lisa are hoping to save their marriage.  Their relationship has been strained by the public outbursts of their autistic son Raj, and one morning they hike to The Pinnacles with Raj.  And then Raj disappears.  What starts with the disappearance of a child in the wilderness snakes back to the religious group that worshiped at the site during the 60's, and to the people who live in the area in the present day.  It weaves in drug dealers with Coyote the Trickster legends.  I love this book.

Best of 2012: Day 4

Right about now, I'm trying to figure out what Gianna is giving me for Christmas.  I am sure she's debating between Zorro related first aid accessories and a trip to Banff National Park.  It's a tough choice.  Anyway, here are a few more of our favorite books of the year.

Gianna:

Full Body Burden: Growing up in the Nuclear Shadow of Rocky Flats by Kristen Iversen

Kristen Iversen

The term "full body burden" refers to the amount of radioactivity which can be safely tolerated by a human body through its lifetime.  These are the things you learn when you live downwind from a top secret nuclear weapons plant, as Iversen did. This is a fascinating account of Rocky Flats, the plutonium factory just outside of Denver.

I love talking about this book; it's an absolute page turner and completely riveting. It's what I like to call a ‘holy shit’ book. "Wait, there were barrels of plutonium sitting outside the plant for years and years…and they were leaking? Holy shit! Wait, there is literally tons of plutonium missing? Holy shit!" See?  [Look! Gianna bought Liz a first edition of Mrs. Dalloway, signed by Virginia Woolf in her signature purple ink? HOLY SHIT!]

This book has everything: government cover ups, nuclear accidents, plant fires, poisoned water, birth defects, and cancer. Don’t worry though, all ends well; Rocky Flats is now a wildlife refuge. You can camp there. Have fun.

The Plain in Flames by Juan Rulfo

Juan Rulfo

While not a new book by any stretch of the imagination, it is a new translation with two original stories restored in this version.

I’ve written about this book a bit, but I think it's worth repeating that I had never read Rulfo before, but this short collection is one of the best I have read in years. This book immediately went on my all time favorite list.  

Liz:

Wild by Cheryl Strayed

Sometimes good things happen to good people.  The Random House world was buzzing about Cheryl Strayed's memoir of hiking the Pacific Crest Trail--the anti-Eat Pray Love--months before it was released, and booksellers seconded our enthusiasm.  What we didn't know at that time was that Cheryl had been writing the "Dear Sugar" advice column for The Rumpus anonymously, and that what started as a standard advice column would become wise, compassionate ruminations on love.  We didn't know that Sugar would be revealed as Cheryl, that Vintage would publish the "Dear Sugar" essays as Tiny, Beautiful Things, and we didn't know that Oprah would restart her book club and select Wild as her first pick.  We certainly didn't know, either, that Cheryl would be relentless in her desire to meet readers and sign books.  I think she toured for about a year, all told, and she's hitting the road again when Wild comes out in paperback in 2013.

Cheryl Strayed

What we didn't know is Cheryl, but many of us had the opportunity to meet her in person, and many, many more readers had the opportunity to meet her through her writing.  As detailed in Wild, Cheryl hit rock bottom after her mother's sudden death (a rapid decline from cancer), the break-up of her family support, dead-end jobs, dead-end relationships, and self-medicating.  On a bit of a whim, she decides to hike the Pacific Crest Trail from Arizona to Oregon, alone.  Through mishaps and pains and the drudgery of placing one foot in front of the other, she begins to pull herself back from the edge.  Along the way, she sees beautiful landscapes and meets other hikers and comes to terms with her demons.  And the Cheryl in Wild is, from what I can tell, the real Cheryl--tough, wise, compassionate, and an author for whom we all cheer.  She's good people.

In Between Days by Andrew Porter

I love this novel.  I love this novel so much that I've written about it, like, three times before on our little blog.  Here's what I said one of those times:

Set in Houston (how often can you say that about literary fiction?), Porter's novel is the story of a family imploding.  Long married parents have split, the older son--a recent college graduate who wants to be a poet--is working food service and attending reckless parties at night, and the younger daughter, Chloe, has been asked to leave her college under mysterious circumstances.  The story gets rolling with Chloe coming home and refusing to discuss why she's no longer welcome at school.  Here is a classically told, great novel along the lines of a Raymond Carver or John Cheever, and I'm willing to state it here: one day Andrew Porter will win a Pulitzer or National Book Award.

Andrew Porter

Andrew Porter is a literary writer on the ascent, and my fervent hope is that he'll continue writing so that I can continue raving about his work.  I also sort of hope that he wins major awards so that reputable sources of information discover that we harassed him with our Generally Horrible Questions.  I want a writer to give an interview with Barbara Walters and state that his/her biggest regret wasn't the sex tape, it was the foolish decision to choose between Liz and Gianna (and the correct answer is still "Liz").

Best of 2012: Day 3

Hey there, we're more than halfway there!  Remember, we aren't ranking these titles, just picking our favorites all willy-nilly.

Gianna:

Let the People In: The Life and Times of Ann Richards by Jan Reid

Author Jan Reid

Well this little book is just selling and selling. To be honest, I completely underestimated this title when we were talking about our marketing plan. I thought that it would sell in Texas, but outside our state no one would really know or remember her. Wrong!

I’ve written about this book at least two other times on the blog so all I will say is that this is a full biography of the coolest ass person to ever work in politics.

For fans of politics, history, and Texas.

Dear Life: Stories by Alice Munro

If you consider yourself a book lover, or even the slightest of serious readers, yet you haven’t read Alice Munro, you’re kidding yourself. Munro is probably definitely the best living short story writer on the planet.  She is the master of pulling you along an intentionally plain story, giving you little indication that in just a few pages she will take your breath away.  Dear Life is special in that the final four pieces come under a sub-section entitled “Finale,” and Munro has noted that these four stories may be the closest she has ever come to writing about her own life. Munro is in her early 80’s and perhaps this is a sign of retirement. I hope not.

For fans of Ian McEwan, Louise Erdrich,  Richard Russo, and even Barbara Kingsolver. 

Alice Munro, literary genius

Liz:

The Orphan Master's Son by Adam Johnson

Dear Leader Kim Jong Il:
nut job

Way back in January I declared The Orphan Master's Son the best book of the year, and so I'd be (more of) a liar if I didn't include it in our best of the year list.  Even after the death of Kim Jong Il, North Korea remains the most interesting and disturbing and delusional nation in the world.  Did you know they found a unicorn lair there recently?  It's a country that The Onion couldn't make up.  So it's pretty much a guarantee that a novel set in the mysterious realm would be a wild ride.

Here's the story of a man, Jun Do, who begins life as the son of an orphan master (hence, you know, the title), and then variously is a soldier, a kidnapper, a prisoner, a general, and the husband of a movie star.  North Korea is a country where the emperor has no clothes and the masses rave about his wardrobe, where the Dear Leader Kim Jong Il's perceptions are the mass delusion that serves as law.  It's crazy, it's strange, it's the joke that could lead to another global war.  I love this novel.  It was my first "Holy Crap!" book of the year (and I mean that in a good way).

The End of Your Life Book Club by Will Schwalbe

When Will Schwalbe's mother was diagnosed with cancer, Will found himself accompanying his mother to endless doctors' visits, chemo treatments, and hospital stays.  They knew what they were facing--her prognosis was originally six months, though she lived two years.  Taking the time they had left together, Will and Mary Anne Schwalbe spent that time reading books together.  They were lifelong readers, and this was the natural way for them to face life's moments.

Will Schwalbe

I wrote about this book a couple of months ago, and it is a book that is special for me.  I am a sucker for books about books and reading anyway, so there's that.  I also love memoirs, even if they don't involve crazy people and/or prisons (my usual weaknesses).  Mary Anne and Will, though, are human in the best sense; they are people who believe in making the world a better place and believe in kindness, compassion, knowledge, and love.  These are the type of people you want to be around in the hope that their humanity rubs off.  I think this book should be required reading for every book group, every cancer patient, every child facing the loss of a parent.  It's a book full of dignity and, of course, other books.

Best of 2012: Day 2

Gigi:

I am going to reach all the way back to the beginning of 2012 for today’s top 10 selections.

Stay Awake by Dan Chaon

Get this book for anyone who has read Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn. Get this book for anyone who has read Justin Cronin’s The Passage or The Twelve. Get this book for anyone for anyone who loves Flannery O’Connor, Amy Hempel, Karen Russell, Stewart O’Nan, or Daniel Woodrell. Get this book for yourself.  

Our pal Dan Chaon

My two favorite selections from Stay Awake:

"Bees," in which a father’s life begins to spiral out of control with the onset of his child’s night terrors, and now his own inability to continue to repress the memories of his secret first wife and child that he abandoned so long ago. This story is riveting.

My favorite selection is the title story, "Stay Awake." A young couple gives birth to a baby who has a parasitic twin.  I have long been fascinated by this incredibly rare medical condition (I believe there have been less than a dozen cases) and I have not been able to get the images of this story out of my head. At once heartbreaking and creepy, you won’t be able to shake this story for days.

Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking by Susan Cain

Introvert champion
Susan Cain

 I refer to this book as a classic although it’s not quite a year old. It's groundbreaking, it's smart, and there really is nothing else out there like this. Cain argues that we are undervaluing introverts, and often try to change introvert behavior, as it's seen as a negative. This book is filled with inspiring stories of introverts, examples of major contributions to society by introverts, and probably my favorite part of the book, advice on parenting and empowering an introverted child.

Quiet is a great gift for readers of Oliver Sacks, Nate Silver, Eric Weiner (Geography of Bliss), and Malcolm Gladwell. 

Lizzy Poo:

The News from Spain by Joan Wickersham

How do I describe this book?  I like reading short stories, but I often find myself grappling with ways to present collections.  I think it's the same reason that short story collections typically don't sell as well as novels; how do you relate seven separate narratives on a staff selection card or a 30 second spiel in a presentation?  How do you say "These stories struck a chord, all of them," but then struggle to pinpoint exactly why?  

Let me start with the back story.  I have a rep pal who's great about sharing his reads, and he latched onto The News from Spain early.  I read it, I agreed that it's a marvel, and we talked about it.  And then throughout the year we've continued to mention it.  Isn't that the sign of a great book--one that stays in your head for the right reasons?  I feel connected to these stories, and protective of them.  If you hated this book, I would be hurt (but you won't hate it).

Joan Wickersham

The News from Spain is a collection of seven stories, all dealing with a theme of love.  They are also all titled "The News from Spain," binding them together further (though they aren't set in Spain...but it could be that the character's lover received news from Spain, etc).  These are stories that make you think about the nature of love, and how flawed and utterly human an emotion that is.  

My favorite story in the collection (it's called "The News from Spain," so that doesn't really help) comes in the middle of the collection and involves a gay dancer who works as a caregiver for woman who no longer has the use of legs.  Her husband is a serial cheater, and to cope with her heartache, she and her caregiver imagine the autobiography her cat would write.  Here is love betrayed and a different sort of love binding two people together. 

Booksellers love this book too, and it may be the best kept book secret of the year.  I highly recommend visiting the Boswell Book Company blog, where owner Daniel Goldin wrote this great, obsessive piece and also snagged a terrific interview with the author.  How The News from Spain isn't on every best of the year list is a huge mystery to me.

The Long Walk by Brian Castner

I'm tempted to state that the market for Iraq/Afghanistan War books is saturated--they are EVERYWHERE--but then I read one like The Long Walk and know that there's always space for a great book, regardless of the topic.  Kevin Powers's first novel The Yellow Birds received lots of attention this year, but it fell short of the hype for me, in part, I think, because I had already read The Long Walk.  

Brian Castner was the guy who volunteered to walk up to the explosive devices.  If you saw The Hurt Locker, that was Castner's job.  He dismantled bombs, and he knew what it was to face his own mortality every day even as he thrived on the adrenaline rushes.  And then he came home.  This is the memoir of a man who knew danger first hand, but only felt imperiled after his return and the Crazy that lived in his head.  Alternating chapters describe Castner's war experiences and the post-war attempts to rejoin civilian society, where a trip to take his kid to school could result in a crippling panic attack.

I think what truly distinguishes The Long Walk, though, is the quality of the writing.  Castner writes a memoir reminiscent of The Liar's Club or This Boy's Life, with echoes of Michael Herr's war classic Dispatches.