Sunday, January 6, 2019

2018 Reading List

  1. I Am Legend by Richard Matheson
  2. Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage by Alfred Lansing
  3. The Good Girl by Mary Kubica
  4. Destiny Disrupted: A History of the World through Islamic Eyes by Tamim Ansary
  5. Island of the Lost: Shipwrecked at the Edge of the World by Joan Druett
  6. Atonement by Ian McEwan
  7. Altered Carbon by Richard K Morgan
  8. The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon
  9. American War by Omar El Akkad
  10. Moonglow by Michael Chabon
  11. Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky
  12. I Contain Multitudes by Ed Yong
  13. The Punch Escrow by Tal M Klein
  14. When We Were Orphans by Kazuo Ishiguro
  15. Silence by Shusaku Endo
  16. The Rise and Fall of DODO by Nicole Galland and Neal Stephenson
  17. The Innovators Dilemma by Clayton M Christensen
  18. Infinite by Jeremy Robinson
  19. Revenger by Alastair Reynolds
  20. Paradox Bound by Peter Clines
  21. Paul of Dune by Kevin J Anderson and Brian Herbert
  22. The Winds of Dune by Kevin J Anderson and Brian Herbert
  23. Light in August by William Faulkner
  24. Red Rising by Pierce Brown
  25. Golden Son by Pierce Brown
  26. The Singularity Trap by Dennis E Taylor
  27. Lily and the Octopus by Stephen Rowley
  28. The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu
  29. The New Human Rights Movement by Peter Joseph
  30. The Norman Conquest: The Battle of Hastings and the Fall of Anglo-Saxon England by Marc Morris
  31. Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
  32. The Jungle by Upton Sinclair
(13511[32])



Tuesday, December 26, 2017

2017 Reading List

January
  1. Suttree by Cormac McCarthy
  2. God is Disappointed in You by Mark Russell
  3. The History of the Medieval World by Susan Wise Bauer
  4. The Light of Fireflies by Simon Bruni
  5. The Fold by Peter Clines
February
  1. The Flood Girls by Richard Fifield
  2. The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen
  3. Matterhorn by Karl Marlantes
  4. The Days of Abandonment by Elana Ferrante
March
  1. Tuesday Nights in 1980 by Molly Prentiss
  2. White Noise by Don DeLillo
  3. A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara
  4. The Sellout by Paul Beatty
April
  1. Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke
  2. All the Birds in the Sky by Charlie Jane Anders
  3. Cry, the Beloved Country by Alan Paton
  4. Norse Mythology by Neil Gaimin
  5. The Gemini Effect by Chuck Grossart
  6. Bricking It by Nick Spalding
  7. Imperium by Robert Harris
  8. The Nix by Nathan Hill
  9. We Are Legion (We Are Bob) by Dennis E Taylor
May
  1. The Passage by Justin Cronin
  2. Barkskins by Annie Proulx
  3. Bunker Hill: A City, A Siege, A Revolution by Nathaniel Philbrick
  4. A Doubter's Almanac by Ethan Canin
  5. Before the Fall by Noah Hawley 
  6. Radiance of Tomorrow by Ishmael Beah 
June
  1. Blindness by Jose Saramago
  2. The Professor and the Madman by Simon Winchester
  3. A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving
  4. You by Caroline Kepnes
July
  1. A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles
  2. "4 3 2 1" by Paul Auster
August
  1. Today Will Be Different by Maria Semple
  2. For We Are Many by Dennis E Taylor
  3. All These Worlds by Dennis E Taylor
  4. Christodora by Tim Murphy
  5. We're All Damaged by Matthew Norman
  6. The Tao of Pooh by Benjamin Hoff
  7. Where All Light Tends to Go by David Joy
September
  1. Seveneves by Neal Stephenson
  2. Words on the Move by John McWhorter
  3. The Moon and the Other by John Kessel
  4. Imagine Me Gone by Adam Haslett
October
  1. A Brief History of Seven Killings by Marlon James
  2. Afterlife by Marcus Sakey
  3. Days Without End by Sebastian Barry
  4. The World Walker by Ian W Sainsbury
November
  1. The Unmaking Engine by Ian W Sainsbury
  2. The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga
  3. Elantris by Brandon Sanderson
December
  1. Artemis by Andy Weir
  2. The Swerve: How the World Became Modern by Stephen Greenblatt
  3. House of Names by Colm Toibin
  4. Barsk: The Elephant's Graveyard by Lawrence M Schoen
(24177[56])

Friday, December 30, 2016

2016 Reading List

No one seems to give two shits about what I think of the books I read so I've stopped writing about them.  For all the search bots out there here's what I read this year:


January
  1. The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver
  2. Little Bee by Chris Cleave
  3. City of Thieves by David Benioff
  4. Kingmaker by Christian Cantrell
  5. Under the Volcano by Malcolm Lowry
  6. A Town Like Alice by Nevil Shute
  7. The Cloud Roads by Martha Wells
  8. Flowertown by S G Redling
February
  1. I Am Livia by Phyllis T Smith
  2. Ruins by Orson Scott Card
  3. Wonder Boys by Michael Chabon
  4. Bone River by Megan Chance
  5. Stoner by John Williams
  6. The Didymus Contingency by Jeremy Robinson
  7. The Lost Wife by Alyson Richman
  8. The Sure Signs of Crazy by Karen Harrington
March
  1. The Art of Hearing Heartbeats by Jan-Philipp Sendker
  2. The Emperor of All Maladies by Siddhartha Mukherjee
  3. Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
  4. Hyperion by Dan Simmons
April
  1. The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August by Claire North
  2. The Love Song of Johnny Valentine by Teddy Wayne
  3. The Snow Queen by Hans Christian Anderson
  4. All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr
  5. The Ludwig Conspiracy by Oliver Potzsch
May
  1. Casino Royale by Ian Fleming
  2. The Dovekeepers by  Alice Hoffman
  3. The Bone Clocks by David Mitchell
  4. The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins 
June
  1.  Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert M Pirsig
  2. The Fallow Season of Hugo Hunter by Craig Lancaster
  3. Zero K by Don DeLillo
  4. I am Having So Much Fun Here Without You by Courtney Maum
  5. A Better World by Marcus Sakey
  6. Best Boy by Eli Gottlieb
  7. The Narrow Road to the Deep North by Richard Flanagan
  8. Pines by Blake Crouch
  9. Norwegian by Night by Derek B Miller
July
  1. Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
  2. Wayward by Blake Crouch
  3. The Last Town by Blake Crouch
  4. Written in Fire by Marcus Sakey
  5. The Wonder of All Things by Jason Mott
  6. The Guns of August by Barbara W Tuchman
  7. History of the Rain by Niall Williams
  8. Astoria: Astor and Jefferson's Lost Pacific Empire by Peter Stark
August
  1. Tell the Wolves I'm Home by Carol Rifka Brunt
  2. Fat Chance by Nick Spalding
  3. A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman
  4. The Revenant by  Michael Punke
  5. Big Little Lies by Liane Moriarty
  6. Leaving Berlin by Joseph Kanon
  7. Underground Airlines by Ben H Winters
September
  1. The Last Painting of Sara de Vos by Dominic Smith
  2. The Son by Philipp Meyer
  3. Traitor's Gate by Charlie Newton
  4. The Men Who Stare at Goats by Jon Ronson
  5. The Girl With All the Gifts by M R Carey
  6. Orhan's Inheritance by Aline Ohanesian
October
  1. NOS4A2 by Joe Hill
  2. The Life We Bury by Allen Eskens
November
  1. Bob Honey Who Just Do Stuff by Pappy Pariah
  2. The Turn of the Screw by Henry James
  3. Time Salvager by Wesley Chu
  4. The Absolutely True Diary of a Part Time Indian by Sherman Alexie
  5. Unfamiliar Fishes by Sarah Vowell
  6. Damned by Chuck Palahniuk
December
  1. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon
  2. The Buddha Walks into a Bar by Lodro Rinzler
  3. Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng
(26105[70])
 

Thursday, December 31, 2015

December 2015 Reading List

Finished up the year with a big push to get loose ends tied up and as many books completed as possible.  Here's what I read in December:
  1. The Book of Life by Deborah Harkness
  2. The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes
  3. Elizabeth Street by Laurie Fabiano
  4. Me Before You by Jojo Moyes
  5. Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides
  6. The Buried Giant by Kazuo Ishiguro
  7. American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis
  8. Sand by Hugh Howey

What a relief to finally finish the All Souls Trilogy with The Book of Life.  While I enjoyed the first two novels I found it all a bit tiring by this third installment. The endless movement from location to location to escape some imagined peril; the moments of intense romance between the vampire and witch; the fierce but trite loyalties and familial infighting -- argh! I just wanted to find out what The Book of Life really contained and hope for a blood rage cure.  I met my goal but the cost...

What a difference the next book was.  The Sense of an Ending is brief, but poignant and haunting at the same time.  The middle-aged narrator reflects back on his life after learning that the death of a teenage friend was not what he thought it was.  Barnes slowly lets the story reveal itself like a detective story -- leading us on a roller coaster of emotional revelations. I felt like I was the narrator and I was totally absorbed in the revelations.  Brilliant.

Elizabeth Street, to me, didn't know what it wanted to be.  It was a tragic story about Italian migrants and why they had to come to America.  It was a story of the beginnings of the mafia.  It was about the importance of family.  But what I felt it needed to do was just be one of those things because the result was disjointed and the writing styles jarred against each other.  Perhaps Fabiano experienced much of this story through her own family history and just needed to get it down.  The result to me was just ok.

I see a lot of books by Jojo Moyes.  For a road trip earlier in the year, my wife and I started to listen to the audio version of this book.  We got less than half way through and forgot about finishing it.  I guess that means it didn't really grab either of us.  I decided to finish it this month.  I thought I knew where it was headed but I wanted the confirmation.  And  I was pretty much on the money.  Chicklit.  Pure and simple.

I had no idea what Middlesex was about -- a friend recommended it to me and didn't say anything more. It's about a lot of things: moving to another country; the importance of family; why it's important not to marry your siblings and other important lessons like that.  If nothing else, I learned that the definition of gender is not a mutually exclusive absolute.  Instead it's more of a sliding scale with every point in between those two poles being available for some form of sexual expression.  But mostly it's just good storytelling and Eugenides is a master at it.

Another master of storytelling is Ishiguro.  I've previously read Remains of the Day and Never Let Me Go -- both stories that are memorable and very British.  With the Buried Giant, Ishiguro tackles another topic that is as British as they come -- the legend of King Arthur.  More specifically, the events a couple of generations after King Arthur has gone.  Arthur has forged a nation in an uneasy alliance between Britons and Saxons but has left behind the means to keep the peace.  But this is perhaps a spoiler because this information is a long time coming.  At the beginning of the story one doesn't even know what period of time they're even in, as the relationship between the central characters of Axl and Beatrice could be taking place in any village in Britain at almost any time.  Such is the skill of Ishiguro to develop meaningful characters without the context of period.  Brilliant.

I saw the American Psycho movie years ago when it was made.  I picked up the book on a whim to dig in a bit more on what made Patrick Bateman tick.  One is assaulted with the very definition of "yuppie" in the mid to late 80s.  Designer clothing, diet, facial regime, exercising, music, dining out -- it's all there.  If you lived through the 80s this book is an unpleasant reminder of what they were all about.  You could be anonymous out in the open.  Instead of mergers and acquisitions, Bateman states that he's into "murders and executions" and everyone laughs.  I did find the descriptions of the violent acts too horrific to dwell on -- deeply disturbing.  But I am glad to have read this book as it is easier to be in the mind of Bateman through his narrative than through the screen.

And the last book of the year appropriately mirrors the first.  I started off with Hugh Howey and the 2nd book in the Silo series.  This last book is also by Howey but a standalone story called Sand.  Having got near to the end I felt sure this must be the first in a series (and perhaps Howey will yet do this) but he did manage to tie things up neatly in the last few pages. Sand is more satisfying than Half Way Home that I read recently.  It's a post apocalyptic world again where much of Colorado is covered in sand.  Humans have adapted the concept of diving in water to diving in sand.  Howey's use of this paradigm is simple and brilliant as it sets the scene for the entire story.  Sand is not as gripping as Wool (though they were both written and released as a series) but it proves that Howey is great at imagining a near future for us and immersing us into it.

(24486[61])

Saturday, December 12, 2015

November 2015 Reading List

A slow month.  Must be the Holidays.
  1. The Dinner by Herman Koch
  2. Half Way Home by Hugh Howey
  3. Wilderness by Lance Weller
  4. Brilliance by Marcus Sakey
The Dinner is a great book.  As the reader starts in on it there are amusing stabs that Paul, the narrator,  makes towards his brother who is in line for Prime Minister at the next election, at a dinner in a suave restaurant.  You might ask yourself how Koch will be able to keep this up for an entire novel.  By the "main course" Koch has peeled away various layers of narrative dead ends to reveal the true dilemma.  The two brothers' sons have committed a heinous crime and the moral dilemma is what the brothers and their wives are going to do about it.  I must say that I found it hard to go along with the outcome.  I agree somewhat with the reasoning but something in me abhors the result.  And perhaps that is Koch's power -- perhaps this was intended.  After all, what better outcome could there be in thinking about a moral issue that affects most of us than to be thinking about it much later than if there was a nice neat result?

Half Way Home is, I think, not Mr Howey's best work.  A quick tale describing the situation that a bunch of premature, tank-grown adolescents find themselves in on a strange pre-colonized world.  There is some imaginative descriptions of this hostile planet but the outcome is somewhat predictable.  Perhaps this is YA fiction and my expectations are too high.

Wilderness is my favorite book for this month.  Weller is a marvel in his writing. Vivid and evocative prose makes every sentence a joy to consume.  A Civil War veteran's life is examined both during that War and thirty years later when he is nearly done with it.  Weller goes back and forth those two time periods telling two stories of the quiet strength and unspeakable pain this veteran has endured.  We might visualize what it is like to experience hand to hand combat through realistic battle scenes like those seen in Saving Private Ryan or Patriot or scores of other movies.  But Weller, to me, brings another dimension to the inevitability, hopelessness and pointlessness of it all.  I have more books on my shelf to read concerning the American Civil War and if they're anything like this I'm in for a harrowing time.  In the meantime I look forward to Weller's second novel, American Marchlands.

It's only as I set to writing this summary that I learned that Brilliance if the first of a trilogy. Huh.  I thought the ending was nicely tied up.  Sure there are questions in my mind about what happened to the community of brilliants in Wyoming but I had that Hollywood feeling that it was all going to work out.  Apparently not.  Will I read the other two books? Maybe -- I haven't completely decided.  So what's it about? Since the 1980s some kids are being born with exceptional talents that the rest of us might consider savant-ish.  As they grow up there arises the inevitable tensions between the "haves" and the fearful.  One government agent, a brilliant himself, goes undercover to get his man.  But what he learns along the way brings everything he believes into question.  Yada yada.  The trip is entertaining but... I'm still deciding.

(21316[53])

Saturday, November 7, 2015

October 2015 Reading List

A bumper crop of excellent books this month:
  1. The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt
  2. Revised Fundamentals of Caregiving by Jonathan Evison
  3. The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
  4. The Golem and the Jinni by Helene Wecker
  5. The Mad Scientist's Daughter by Cassandra Rose Clarke
  6. War Brides by Helen Bryan
There is no doubt that The Goldfinch is a well constructed and well written book.  Tartt's use of metaphor is at times beautiful.  However, I, like many other readers found the pace of the story a little ponderous.  Perhaps less would be more.  The character development is awesome -- all of them being flawed in some way, especially the protagonist whose entire life is turned upside down within the opening pages of the book.  Overall I didn't mind the length of the story because the rest is so good.

Revised Fundamentals is one of those stories that examines how someone's down-and-out life is transformed by another person's whose is even worse.  Evison manages this transition well however.  The "real story" behind the protagonist's history is gradually, almost painfully teased out.  At times I found myself asking: "C'mon what did you do?!".  He isn't conveniently "fixed' by the end of the story but he is definitely headed in the right direction.  Nice job Mr Evison.

I haven't seen the Book Thief movie yet.  I've been waiting to get the book read first.  Though the style and difficulty of the book makes this a children's story the length and the nature of the content is challenging that notion.  The horror of what happened to the Jewish people during WWII is not as graphic in this story as it could be and that is a good thing.  What makes this story stand out however is the hope and defiance brought about by the unselfish act of making a difference in one man's life.

The Golem and the Jinni would have to be my favorite book this month and possibly for the year (we'll have to see).  I think everyone has heard about genies and magic lamps but how many have heard of a golem? Certainly not me.  And yet Wecker takes these two mythical beings and brings them together in New York City around about 100 years ago.  Both beings are broken is some way and demoralized with their situations but together they make a difference to each other.  Their redemption is bound up with the same evil source across a thousand years of history.  Ah yes, this one was a good one.

Mad Scientist's Daughter is a straightforward tale of a forbidden romance between a human woman and an android.  I guess "straightforward" is a bit harsh and I mention this only because, yet again, I made a poor choice in selecting a story for its premise rather than its genre.  Romance in a scifi setting is what this should be labeled as.  Well at least it wasn't YA fiction.  One aspect of the story I did like was Clarke's handling of the consequences of global warming.  This background to the narrative doesn't get emphasized but is more of an unobtrusive backdrop.  Summers get hotter each year.  Freak winter storms occur randomly.  Even the Midwest is a dust bowl.  But these events play (appropriately) second fiddle to the main romantic conundrum.

War Brides.  Again what was I thinking when I bought this?  More chicklit?  But I was pleasantly surprised.  Bryan captures that English attitude of getting on with it when times are hard just perfectly when she brings together the lives of a group of women from different places and backgrounds.  The one thing they all have in common is getting married during WWII.  Parts of the story seem contrived such as the German sympathizers and the reporter summarizing 50 years of history at the end of the story but all in all Bryan does a good job.  Even if it really wasn't my thing.

(19889[49])

Wednesday, October 7, 2015

September 2015 Reading List

For the first time this month I'm mentioning books I started to read and for one reason or another could not finish*  Here's my list for September:
  1. Emperor Mollusk Versus the Sinister Brain by A Lee Martinez*
  2. Steelheart by Brandon Sanderson
  3. Wild by Cheryl Strayed
  4. Call Me Zelda by Erika Robuck
  5. Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue by John McWhorter
  6. The Awakening by Kate Chopin
  7. Breakfast with Buddha by Roland Merullo
  8. Die Empty by Todd Henry*
 First up in my list is a book I only got about 5 or 6 chapters in.  I thought it was going to be funny sci-fi like Hitchhikers, for example, or maybe Vonnegut.  But to me it was just silly.  The plot was silly, the made-up words were silly and the characters just so vapid.  I read a few other reviews to see if I was off base.  Most say this isn't Martinez's best work but I think you really have to be a fan of his style and imagination to enjoy a work like this -- I wasn't.

I'd already bought Steelheart before I realized it was technically YA scifi fiction and the first in a series of at least two books.  However, while it is possible to determine that the narrative is in a straightforward tone the subjects dealt with in Steelheart are of that coming-of-age type -- on the cusp of adulthood.  The book also turns the superhero genre on its head where almost all the superhero types are evil and only want to use their super powers to dominate the rest of humanity.  There are enough loose ends in the story that make the reader want to continue.  I don't think I will but the tension is there nonetheless.

My wife and I recently watched the movie Wild.  We enjoyed it but felt that there was a lot more that wasn't there.  So we decided to listen to the audiobook version of the novel.  So much better.  Aside from the expected rearrangement of events for dramatic effect there was so much more richness of experience that came through Strayed's thoughts as she made her way over the PCT.  Not unexpected really given how much time such an adventure would give one to think about everything in one's life.  What was most striking however to come from the book that was missing from the movie was the resolution Strayed achieved of her past to the future.

Ever since the movie Midnight in Paris I've been intrigued about the events where Hemingway and Fitzgerald and others 'misspent' so much time with each other.  I thought this book might fill in some of the blanks.  That was a little misguided since there are so many other books that would probably do a better job.  But I'm glad I read this book.  Robuck carefully weaves her fictional story around actual historical events.  Well the story made me read more about Zelda's actual life anyway and I realized how tricky it must've been to create a story like this without altering the historical record.  It wasn't explosively riveting prose but it was a good yarn.

I really have to say that I loved McWhorter's book.  I had no idea just how much was behind the evolution of the English language.  McWhorter goes back through historical events like a grammatical detective unearthing clues that very much supports his hypotheses regarding the peculiarities of English.  Not really having ever learned a 'foreign' language to a proficient degree I only have an English frame of reference.  But when looking at the grammatical similarities between all the other proto-germanic languages it is very odd how English is different.  A quick and entertaining read.

I didn't know what to expect from The Awakening.  Depending on who you follow it wouldn't be unreasonable to expect some form of early feminist literature.  Perhaps so given the protagonist's refusal to accept the societal norm for women in that era.  But my interpretation was more along the lines of the consequences of despair or depression with her situation.  Perhaps it is a combination of both.  Certainly the writing was deeply personal and heartfelt.

 I enjoyed Breakfast immensely.  Mostly because of my own leanings towards Buddhism as a philosophy for living one's life meaningfully.  But I could not tell if this book was autobiographical or fictional -- so that was a good thing.  I didn't look into it any more until after I had finished when I learned that it was in fact, fictional.  And there were two sequels.  I don't think I'll be reading those as I have enough from this story. For me however this book did rekindle something in me to be more mindful and to meditate more often.  So bravo Mr Merullo.

As with the first, so with the last -- another book I did not finish.  I am usually wary of self-proclaimed self-help books or courses.  I thought this one might be different.  Yes I admit the title got to me.  But I can't stand someone breaking down common sense into a set of rules or attributes or maxims or whatever.  I put it down.  It won't be picked up again.  I'll find my own way of getting the most out of my life.

(16710[43])