It’s time to close another year’s reading journal and organize the titles into my annual ABC Read Leads.  This year’s list wanted to create an alphabet all its own, but I have tugged and twisted and shoved until it has finally submitted.  Here it is, the 2001 Parade of Books: 

A is for Appetite.  The Man Who Ate the 747, by Ben Sherwood, takes the prize in the category of “Crazy Things We Do For Love.”

B is for Big Apple.  See NYC from two of its finest writers: Helene Hanff in Apple of My Eye, and E. B. White in This is New York.

C is for Colliding Dreams in House of Sand and Fog,  Andre Dubus II’s novel about the tragedy wrought from cultural misunderstanding in the pursuit of the American Dream.

D is for Dining Outdoors and other of life’s simple pleasures in Philippe Delerm’s We Could Almost Eat Outdoors.

E is for Electricity.  Turn-of-the-century Buffalo, NY, is the setting for this mystery about the headmistress of a girls’ school caught up in dangerous controversies concerning the Niagara Frontier Power Project in Lauren Belfer’s City of Light.

F is for Flood—the 1889 Memorial Day Johnstown Flood, memorialized in Kathleen Cambor’s novel In Sunlight in a Beautiful Garden.
F is also for Fowl Flop.  Artemis Fowl, by Eoin Colfer, may not soar to Harry Potter heights, but will probably keep a cult following.

G is for Grandma Dowdel, the gun-toting, but good-hearted Grandma in Richard Peck’s Depression Era novels,  A Long Way from Chicago and A Year Down Yonder.

H is for Harlem Happenings in Gail Carson Levine’s story of an orphaned boy trying to get out of school, Dave at Night.

I is for India.  Arundhati Roy’s haunting novel The God of Small Things, about brother and sister twins growing up in a divided family and a politically unstable country, is pure poetry.

J is for a Jesuit-led Expedition to the newly-discovered planet Rakhat in 2016, and its devastating effects on Father Emilio Sanchez in Mary Doria Russell’s The Sparrow.

K is for the Key to a young girl’s diary, in Alice Hoffman’s The Blue Diary, the story of a devastation of trust and the undoing of a “perfect marriage.”

L is for Little No Horse, the Ojibwe reservation whose longtime Catholic priest is really a woman in Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse, by Louise Erdrich.
L is also for Love, “the most terrible demon of all” in Gabriel Garcia Marquez’ Love and Other Demons.

M is for Maidservant Murderess in Margaret Atwood’s Alias Grace, the portrait of a young Irish immigrant convicted of the murder of her Canadian employer and his mistress.
M is also for Mutt.  With the help of a stray dog, a young girl gathers a group of eccentric friends in Kate diCamillo’s Because of Winn-Dixie. 

N is for Non-Conformists.  Jerry Spinelli’s Stargirl sings to the tune of her own ukulele in his novel of the same name. 

O is for Oz, home of Elphaba, the Wicked Witch of the West, who tells her side of the Dorothy story in Gregory Maguire’s Wicked.

P is for Potato Famine in Nuala O’Faolain’s novel of a contemporary Irish travel writer researching a 200-year old adultery case while taking a hard look at her own life, My Dream of You. 

Q is for Quiltmaking, one of the passions of a young Civil War bride in Sandra Dallas’ Alice’s Tulips.

R is for Remembering.  A World War I veteran recalls a time “irrecoverably lost,” a 
special summer he spent restoring a Medieval mural in an English country church, in J. L. Carr’s exquisite A Month in the Country.

S is for Spelling and Spirituality in Myla Goldberg’s account of a floundering family, The Bee Season. 

T is for Turpentine, in Josephine Humphreys’ Nowhere Else on Earth, the story of a young, part Native American woman living in the Carolina backwoods during the Civil War.

U is for Unveiling the mystery of the existence of God in Laurence Cosse’s humorous and thought-provoking novel A Corner of the Veil.
U is also for Understanding Fiction, a collection of poems by Henry Taylor exploring “the slow-dawning awareness of our evanescence.”

V is for Valparaiso to San Francisco, the path of Eliza Sommers, a young Chilean woman, as she pursues her lover seeking his fortune in the California gold fields, in Isabel Allende’s Daughter of Fortune.
V is also for a Very Young Widow and her struggle to support herself in present-day India, in Gloria Whelan’s Homeless Bird.

W is for Winter, a season of the year and a season in a lifetime—when love is still possible, in Rosamund Pilcher’s Winter Solstice (elegantly read by Lynn Redgrave in the audiobook).

X is “the letter for which we’ve no rhyme” in The Sailor’s Alphabet, a “forecastle chantey” beautifully illustrated with Michael McCurdy’s woodcuts. 

Y is for Youth Cut Short in Marguerite Duras’ The Lover. 

Z is for Zillions of Zooplankton in Deborah Lee Rose’s Into the A, B, Sea, featuring Steve Jenkins’ paper collage illustrations.