All the Books: 2005

In a procrastinatory mood, I've decided to list and quick reviews of all the (non-school) books I've consumed since the start of the new year.

Moneyball Michael Lewis: Impressively readable for a book about statistics. (no offense Dr. DeVos) Michael Lewis does seem to have a knack for making the tedious interesting, though this was not nearly as fun a read as Liar�s Poker.

Golden Compass - Phillip Pullman: The books really are amazing, layers of meaning as well as engaging plots and characters. Ability to create new worlds that are more substantial and vivid and three dimensional that the Potter / Hogwarts universe, and rival the best of CS Lewis and Tolkein.

How To Practice - HH The Dalai Lama: Great, of course, though the DL and Thich Nhat Hanh seem, rather like academics, to just write the same book over and over again. Granted, everything they say is brilliant and true, and I can always use more reminding about these ideas, but...

The Partly Cloudy Patriot - Sarah Vowell: Like most of Sarah Vowell's stuff, this one was amusing and instantly forgettable. I hardly remember anything about it even a few months after reading it. Overall it reads like a compendium of her more mediocre and long winded This American Life pieces.

Chain of Command - Seymour Hersh: Terrifying, disturbing fascinating. The best kind of nonfiction, when it reads better than a great novel and you cant put it down.

Kafka on the Shore - Haruki Murakami: This was a funny experience as I read half of it in Nicaragua in February, then very few chapters between then and summer. The Murakami-esque two-stories in one thing, which is great if both stories are equal, but one grabbed me much more than the other, making reading sometimes a chore. Watched a lot of Japanese "Horror" movies recently too, Miike Kitano and some animation, and find that psyche just impenetrable. So bizarre, and wished I knew more about Japanese culture, Japanese literature to which it seemed to allude frequently. They just seem to have different rules about symbolism and meaning over there, do these movies make sense to them in a way they don't to me. They are beautiful and interesting, but speak to me as artifacts more than documents.

An Anthropologist On Mars – Oliver Sacks
I firmly believe Oliver Sacks has about the best job imaginable, writing great nonfiction essays, books and pieces for magazines like the New Yorker. Some of this essays were far better than others, which were insufferably dull, but generally this was a good, quick read.

A Brief History of Nearly Everything Bill Bryson: A bit dry, especially for Bryson, and not quite enough new information to maintain my attention consistently.

An Anthropologist on Mars- About half the tales fascinating, half dull. Worth checking out I suppose, and this guy seems to have my dream job.

Cryptonomicon Neil Stephenson: I've been looking forward to reading this book for a LONG time. I cant help but say I found vast passages of it almost intolerably tedious in spite of the fact that lots of it were impossible to put donw and fascinating. I dunno, could�ve had the fat trimmed pretty significantly without too much loss.

I am Charlotte Simmons - Tom Wolfe: Ah Wolfey, you�ve not exactly done it again. Each novel a bit more inferior and unnecessary than the previous, and hard to beat the biting satirical ground staked out by Rules of Attraction, but an impossible to read hilarious booster seat of a book nonetheless.

Freakonomics - Stephen Leavitt: Alternating interesting chapters with very dry ones. I really like the intersection of psychology and economics, the study of how people make decisions, which is what this book zeroes in on. It's given me a new perspective and insight into how people decide to do things (�incentive theory� if you will). Of course, I also love anything about drug dealers, which makes for a great chapter, and though the piece on children's names is amusing, it drags a bit too long.

The Sheltering Sky - Paul Bowles: Loved it. Not that reading it on buses in the Moroccan Sahara didn't help with that. Impressively captured the North Africa I was in while I read it, and made me long to remember a little more about that postcolonial theory course I took as an undergrad.

The Curious Incident of the Dog � Was frankly a bit surprised by how much I enjoyed this. It somehow managed to avoid the twin perils that books about the handicapped or mentally challenged can easy fall into. It managed to skirt tedious and mechanical exposition and explanations of autism, while avoiding the traps of irritating sentimentality as well. Maybe its just that its British that it can avoid the sentiment somehow, or I unintentionally cut it a break for that, because lord knows I do (or did) for old Nick Hornby as well.

A Long Way Down - Nick Hornby: See the slow motion decline of Tom Wolfe. Still, I enjoyed it as a beach book though haven't thought about it once since finishing it.

The Subtle Knife - Phillip Pullman: Great follow up to the The Golden Compass

Batman Year One � Ah, my second graphic novel ever. Umm, yeah, liked it a lot. A much quicker read than Watchmen.

Harry Potter 6 - JK Rowling: A Darker, bloodier, angstier fun, beachy, page turner. Still don�t think these books are amazing though, and the dating / puberty thing just seemed kind of cutesy, irritating and unnecessary to the plot which was decent. Though as everyone reminds me whenever I do complain, these are kids books after all. Still, my inner elitist snob would refer anyone on to the Phillip Pullman series. Plus, if she�s trying to make a political point here and there, I just think she could have accomplished this in ways that were both more pointed and subtle.

A Confederacy of Dunces New Orleans R.I.P. I finally got around to reading this fucker, and damn, can't say it wasn't as good as everyone has told me these past few years. Though now suppose I'll never see New Orleans again.

America the Book - Jon Stewart et. al. Shit I love these guys.

Saturdays - Ian McEwan: Not sure why this book got so much attention, I suppose because it was one of the first post 9/11 books to have 9/11 themes. The scene with Tony Blar was good, otherwise didnt really feel like it went anywhere or made me think about anything in particularly new ways.

My Friend Leonard James Frey: Similarly page turning and similiarly flawed as a Million Little Pieces. In some aways better, and captures the agony of early recovery nicely, and is significantly less angry, though seems to have replaced that with angst. Worth the flight to/from Baltimore in cost me in time. As the critics like to point out, it does barely qualify itself as writing, perhaps more like slam poetry, epic form.

Indecision � Bejamin Kunkel: Really quite impressive for a first novel, though felt like it had all the flaws predictability and clunkiness of a first novel. Amusing as hell nonetheless, and often uncomfortably close to home in the tale of a chronically indecisive semi-employed twenty-something liberal arts graduate hipster half-heartedly looking for meaning in his life. The September 11th scene / ecstacy hangover was priceless even in its heavy handedness.

Blink - Malcolm Gladwell: This book was so much better than The Tipping Point, I just don't get why that one got all the press. No matter, almost every chapter / vignette is interesting, relevant, vaguely terrifying. So good I slwoed down toward the end, not wanting it to be over. Perception, decision making, thinking processes, all of the aspects of pscyhology that drew me into the field written in an accessible and fun style.

Collapsel - Jared Diamond: If these trends continue... AYYYYYY!!!! Nothing terribly new here beyond the quantification of some common sense: if we use up natural resources, civilization will collape, (duh) but informative and interesting case studies I suppose that made it worthwhile.

Lunar Park - Bret Easton Ellis: Without a doubt his weakest book yet. THe first few chapters are the stuff that old Ellis books are made of, laughably nauseating details of loathsome characters overindulging and underanalyzing everything in their lives. Just when it becomes too unbearably rich to digest any more, the narrative turns in an absurdist direction complete with demon furbies, and lamely attempts to send up suburban culture in the usual Ellis manner.

The Universe in a Single Atom - HH The Dalai Lama: I was definitely not too sure what I was getting into in the first few chapters on astrophysics and forced myself through. As the later chapters moved toward biology and evolution my interest perked up a bit. The Pscyhology and Medicine sections really sustained my interest and got me thinking, especially some of the ethical questions HH raised about the pace of science and the pace of ethics.