Off The Map

Off The Map by Mark Jenkins. He bicycled across Siberia in 1989 as the Soviet Union was crumbling. It’s mostly a breathless  adventure story, a la On The Road, except in Siberia, on bicycles. With that kind of material, why bother?

Ragtime

Ragtime by E.L. Doctorow. Strangely written, with a clipped style that took about 25 pages to get used to. I love its time period–1900-1914–but it felt derivative and antiseptic; the characters rarely have names, the narrator is a mysterious omniscience, and the novel relies too heavily on historical characters.

Things Fall Apart

Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe. The second book in a week with a title from Yeats’ “The Second Coming”. Conceived as a response to Heart of Darkness, it failed that task, but instead launched post-colonial literature, as critics and artists began to imagine what it would mean to really think “outside” empire.

Slouching Towards Bethlehem

Slouching Towards Bethlehem by Joan Didion. Her style fascinates me. Some of the essays feel dated, but most–especially the one about the Santa Ana winds–are still definitely alive.

Dreams From My Father

Dreams From My Father by Barack Obama. Really fun to read after the election, even though a lot of the vignettes were repeated over and over again during the campaign.

Hiatus

Hiatus by Me.  Sorry about that. I made a decision not to write about the books I read for school, and 30 books a semester really cramps pleasure reading. But, on to Winter Break and Winter Study, so time to return!

Lenin’s Tomb

Lenin’s Tomb by David Remnick.  Remnick portrays the “return of history” in the Soviet Union between 1987-1991 in a way that shows its bewildering acceleration, its revolutionary uncertainty, and its human drama.

See No Evil

See No Evil by Bob Baer. A CIA memoir, and the basis for Syriana. It’s a little hard to know how seriously to take this book historically: there’s a lot of rich detail on how the agency operates (and failed leading up to 9/11), but they censor everything former operatives write.

How Soccer Explains the World

How Soccer Explains the World by Franklin Foer. Jonathan Safran Foer’s brother can write. I’m often a little wary of sweeping explanations like this, but he doesn’t get too serious, and his personal passion for the subject comes across strongly, especially in the chapters on pre-war Jewish soccer clubs and on FC Barcelona.

The Plot Against America

The Plot Against America by Phillip Roth.  Counterfactual history only works if it’s plausible, and rethinking history this way works: given our later anti-communism, the pact with Stalin against Hitler makes less sense when viewed in retrospect. Fascinating.

God’s Harvard

God’s Harvard by Hanna Rosin. A Jewish Washington Post reporter dives into Patrick Henry College, a training ground for really smart homeschooled evangelical kids. She witnesses the school’s predictable difficulties–all Utopias have them–while humanizing a movement that often gets caricatured elsewhere.

Straight Man

Straight Man by Richard Russo. Russo’s talent is to slowly thicken a very normal plot in a way that draws you in–just when you’ve convinced yourself of the narrator’s commitment to nihilism, he gets a call from his daughter and suddenly cares.

One Year Later

Well, it’s been a year and a day since I started keeping track of and reviewing the books I read for pleasure. I’ve read 39 books, plus half a collection of essays. I decided in September not to include the books read for class.

Practically no one (I get an average of three visits a day) reads this (thanks if you do!), but I like to think it keeps me honest and thoughtful about what I’m reading.

Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight

Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight by Alexandra Fuller. A memoir of growing up white in decolonizing Africa across the ’70s and ’80s. Powerful for its complications–she lives in white Rhodesia for most of her childhood, and the racism and the colonial baggage and the absurdities of it all are just part of her life. Throw in a racist manic-depressive alcoholic mother and you’ve got a very rich story.

The Book Thief

The Book Thief by Markus Zusak. A vaguely postmodern, thriller-esque novel about WWII-era Germany. Post-modernism is often grating and pretentious, but here, it worked; the novel was narrated by Death, which is appropriate for the setting. A quick but recommendable read.

The Screwtape Letters

The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis. Read on the recommendation of Lucy after watching The Chronicles of Narnia.  I really liked Letters, mostly for its deeply intelligent take on what sin and temptation can be, and what living a healthy and “Christian” life can be.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J. K. Rowling. Read for only the second time since it came out last summer. Still brilliant.

Jarhead

Jarhead by Anthony Swofford. A brutal look at a Marine’s life during the Gulf War. Swofford held himself apart from his fellow Marines–reading The Stranger and The Iliad, seeking out off-base coffee shops for some peace and thought–but at the same time writes powerfully as a part of them. The way that ambiguous distance comes through between the lines gives depth to the book.

The Gathering

The Gathering by Anne Enright. I felt like I was wandering down a long hallway in the narrator’s brain, and every once in a while she’d open a new door, giving an often confusing insight into her grieving psyche.

A Hope in the Unseen

A Hope in the Unseen by Ron Susskind. An incredible story about a kid who goes from Ballou High School, in Southeast DC, to Brown. Perhaps obviously, the challenges are much harder than just academics, and Susskind portrays them sensitively. As a friend aptly put it, “it makes you want to go tear shit up,” because we take for granted much of what is so difficult for Cedric.

Better

Better by Atul Gawande. First read of the summer! Gawande tackles how to improve medicine, and his most interesting idea is diligence, which I usually think of as an adjective, “diligent,” not as an end-in-itself noun. The small, mundane tasks that make a difference–hand-washing, insistence on perfect compliance in cystic fibrosis patients–are as important to make routine than “working hard” in surgery or in number of patient visits. Lessons for all of us.

A Concise History of the Third Reich

A Concise History of the Third Reich by Wolfgang Benz. Light bedtime reading. Apparently this book was a bestseller in Germany, and it’s easy to see why. After visiting Berlin, I wanted an accessible, readable, and chronological take on how and why Nazism happened, and this book satisfied that perfectly.

The Master and Margarita

The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov. A vicious and zany magically-real book about Stalin’s Moscow. I wanted a little more about Stalinist Russia, but I guess the satire is the point.

Parable of the Sower

The Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Butler. Science fiction, and the Williams Reads book from January 2008. A depressing book, filled with liberal pieties about religion, diversity, and the consequences of climate change. It made me nervous to walk around cities after reading its descriptions of desperate and ruthless people addicted to imaginative new drugs (one makes watching fire–arson–more pleasurable than sex).

No Country For Old Men

No Country For Old Men by Cormac McCarthy.  Terrifying.

The Night Watch

The Night Watch by Sarah Waters. Lately I’ve been interested in the way World War II threw societal norms entirely upside down, and this book offers a vivid and period-accurate account of women ambulance drivers, homosexuality, and the chaos of the blitz.

Monkeys with Websites

Not exactly books, but vaguely literary: Monkeys with Typewriters, the small magazine I edit, has a new website!
Check it out: Monkeys with Typewriters

House of Sand and Fog

House of Sand and Fog by Andre Dubus III.  It’s been far too long since I read anything for pleasure–I’ve been reading a book per week for two of my classes and just haven’t found the time, unfortunately.  I liked House of Sand and Fog; his research made his characters believable. I would have liked to see the California backdrop of the story– which was about real estate, immigration, and dead ends, after all–emphasized or brought forward.

Water for Elephants

Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen. Breezy and easy historical fiction. Kind of fun, but the characters didn’t sit well in her historical universe; they felt flat against the richness of the backdrop of Depression-era circus life.

White Teeth

White Teeth by Zadie Smith. Clearly, she writes what she knows, and she knows multicultural London. It dragged at times, but was a sophisticated debut and had a lovely voice.