Finding Nouf
City of Veils
by Zoe Ferraris
City of Veils
by Zoe Ferraris
I couldn’t stop after beginning these books. The plots themselves are straightforward crime thrillers, but the setting of Jeddah, Saudi Arabia was new and fascinating. The author moved to Jeddah from California with her husband and lived there with his extended family in the 1990s. The insight it gives into the lives of men and women makes these books well worth reading. Completely recommend.
Dance, Dance, Dance by Haruki Murakami
Murakami is one of my new favorite authors since arriving in Bulgaria. Dance, Dance, Dance picks up 4 years after A Wild Sheep Chase and mixes dreams and reality with equal grace into a … The criticisms of capitalism got a bit tiresome since I’d just finished River of Smoke which also carries the theme of the corrupting power of unbridled capitalism. I love the way he describes things. Instead of falling asleep quickly he writes "As if a giant, gray gorilla had sneaked into the room and whacked me over the head with a sledgehammer." When describing the sluggish anxiety of trying to function without sleep he writes: "The train raced on. The whistle screamed. I felt like a dried lump of toothpaste."
"People die all the time. Life is a lot more fragile than we think. So you should treat others in a way that leaves no regrets. Fairly, and if possible, sincerely."
"Unfortunately, the clock is ticking, the hours are going by. The past increases, the future recedes. Possibilities decreasing, regrets mounting."
"If you put an end to all the waste, mass panic would ensue and the global economy would go haywire. Waste is the fuel of contradiction, and contradiction activates the economy, and an active economy creates more waste."
"No, I'm not used to things; I just recognize them for what they are." "my existence seemed like a squirrel with its head against a walnut, dozing until spring."
Murakami is great. If you like David Mitchell books, I'd recommend his. It's not a 'gripping' story, but the kind that keeps you interested and keeps you thinking beyond the next page.
"Here was the stuff of breath taking."
Bossypants
by Tina Fey
I rarely read memoirs, but Tina Fey's was hilarious. I started it after reading a couple of pretty serious books and wanted something lighter. I laughed out loud several times. Laughing out loud when reading is a big deal. Completely recommend it.
The Adults
by Alison Espach
This book was okay. It’s a coming of age story of a girl in a wealthy family in Connecticut. She’s a sharp and perceptive writer, but I just didn’t really connect with the book. The drama seemed hollow and it should have ended a few chapters earlier. Perhaps if I was in a different place in my life I'd like it more because there's nothing really wrong with the book itself.
River of Smoke
River of Smoke
by Amitav Ghosh
Loved this book. Just as good as the first book in the trilogy, River of Smoke brings the reader into the lives of traders, artists, botanists, and sailors in Canton, China during the lead up to the Opium Wars. The characters have well developed identities and histories that seem to intersect and fall back without their awareness. Get past the first chapter and the book is hard to put down.
State of Wonder
by Ann Patchett
by Ann Patchett
Loved it until the last 15%. It felt like she just sort of got tired of writing and picked the first ending that came to mind. It wasn’t that I wanted the book to end differently as much as it just didn’t really fit the and diminished its overall quality. Even so, I'd still recommend it. Set in a South American jungle, the plot brings up interesting questions ethics, medicine, and possibility. I also liked her description of a character in the quote below:
"Thanks to a group of Baptists from Alabama he could read and write in Portuguese and had memorized Bible verses which he could recite at will, skills that had made him one of the least contented members of his tribe."
Black Swan Green
by David Mitchell
Coming of age story. It's okay. Mitchell is still a favorite author of mine, but not because of this book.
Coming of age story. It's okay. Mitchell is still a favorite author of mine, but not because of this book.
Ghostwritten
by David Mitchell
Third favorite David Mitchell book. Collection of stories with interweaving characters.
Third favorite David Mitchell book. Collection of stories with interweaving characters.
“Nothing often poses in men as wisdom.”
“Service-sector communism. It’s quite a legacy. She’s stuck here, remember. We can get out whenever we want.”
“It’s strange and it makes me sad...that a plce carries on without you after you’ve left.”
“Disbelieving the reality under your feet gives you a license to print your own.”
The Thorn Birds
by Colleen Mccullough
After reading A Town Like Alice, I was looking for another book set in Australia and decided to read The Thorn Birds. I thought it was going to be too soap opera-ish (since it inspired a tv miniseries), but really liked it. It's an epic family story that covers a full generation. I also had no idea how wild Australia was during the first half of the 20th century.
“You’re all the same, great big hairy moths bashing yourselves to pieces after a silly flame behind a glass so clear your eyes don’t see it. And if you do manage to blunder your way inside the glass to fly into the flame, you fall down burned and dead. While all the time out there in the col night there’s food, and love, and baby moths to get. But do you see it, do you want it?”
“Then don’t you remember? The Greeks say it’s a sin against the gods to love something beyond all reason. And do you remember that they say when someone is loved so, the Gods become jealous, and strike the object down in the vvery fullness of its flower? There’s a lesson in it, Meggie. It’s profane to love too much.”
Number9Dreams
by David Mitchell
Not as great as Cloud Atlas, but still great book. Love David Mitchell's writing.
Not as great as Cloud Atlas, but still great book. Love David Mitchell's writing.
“I think the most powerful poison is the malicious word. Its effects may last a lifetime and there is no serum. Forgiveness may soothe the inflammation later, sure, but there is no actual serum.”
The Paris Wife
by Paula Mclain
This book was fantastic and I completely recommend it. Never expected to like it, but I absolutely loved it.
This book was fantastic and I completely recommend it. Never expected to like it, but I absolutely loved it.
THE GOD OF SMALL THINGS
by Arundhati Roy
I've read quite a few books set in India over the past year. I like this one, but it's not my favorite. It felt too contrived at times and also made me crave Indian food like crazy.
by Arundhati Roy
I've read quite a few books set in India over the past year. I like this one, but it's not my favorite. It felt too contrived at times and also made me crave Indian food like crazy.
A Town Like Alice
by Nevil Shute
Loved this book. Recommend it completely. Set after WWII in England, Malaysia, and Australia, it tells a great story, made me wish I could have gone to Australia 50 years ago. Or, at least on a vacation soon. Preferably when it's cold in the northern hemisphere.
Water for Elephants
by Sara Gruen
Good book. Don't love it as much as most people seem to, but still a worthwhile read. Hate his family, happy with, but don't believe the ending.
Good book. Don't love it as much as most people seem to, but still a worthwhile read. Hate his family, happy with, but don't believe the ending.
The Tiger's Wife
by Tea Obrecht
I don’t really care for the title, I think something more fitting could have been chosen. But it was a good book, the only work of fiction I've read with the Yugoslav Wars in the 1990s are significant to the main characters.
“When your fight has purpose—to free you from something, to interfere on the behalf of an innocent—it has a hope of finality. When the fight is about unravelling—when it is about your name, the places to which your blood is anchored, the attachment of your name to some landmark or event—there is nothing but hate, and the long, slow progression of people who feed on it and are fed it, meticulously, by the ones who come before them. Then the fight is endless, and comes in waves and waves, but always retains its capacity to surprise those who hope against it.”
“When confounded by the extremes of life—whether good or bad—people would turn first to superstition to find meaning, to stich together unconnected events in order to understand what was happening.”
“What can I tell you about that? What is there to say? I married your grandmother in a church, but I would still have married her if her family had asked me to be married by a hodza. What does it hurt me to say happy Eid to her, once a year—when she is perfectly happy to light a candle for my dead in the church? I was raised Orthodox; on principle, I would have had your mother christened Catholic to spare her a full dunking in that filthy water they keep in the baptismal tureens. In practice, I didn’t have her christened at all. My name, your name, her name. In the end, all you want is someone to long for you when it comes time to put you in the ground.”
EMERALD CITY
LOOK AT ME
THE INVISIBLE CIRCUS
THE KEEP
LOOK AT ME
THE INVISIBLE CIRCUS
THE KEEP
by Jennifer Egan
The first is a collection of stories. They're good and very much about our time. Look at Me and The Invisible Circus were okay. I read them after Emerald City, Goon Squad, and the Keep--all of which were much better. The Keep was my favorite. At this point, I get enough reality every day and want books that take me to another time or place or that teach me something or stretch my imagination. I like Egan's books a lot, but not for those reasons.
“We’ve lost the ability to make things up. We’ve farmed out that job to the entertainment industry, and we sit around and drool on ourselves while they do it for us.
“But like so many things, success took longer than they thought to arrive, and by the time it came, it merely seemed their due.”
by Christopher McDougall
I loved this book.
“Recreation has its reasons.”
A BEND IN THE RIVER
by V.S. Naipaul
Set in an unnamed location in Africa, this book could have been describing the post-colonial chaos in a number of places on the continent as people struggled to become nations in the 60s and 70s. The narrator is a young up-rooted man of Indian descent who observes the turmoil, social breakdown, and violence as someone who is neither credited much as a victim or an oppressor.
“You live your life. A stranger appears. He is an encumbrance. You don’t need him. But the encumbrance can be become a habit.”
“I was homesick, had been homesick for months. But home was hardly a place I could return to. Home was something in my head. It was something I had lost.”
“The Europeans wanted gold and slaves, like everybody else; but at the same time they wanted statues put up to themselves as people who had done good things for the slaves.”
KAFKA ON THE SHORE
by Haruki Murakami
“As I sit there under the shining night sky, again a violent fear takes hold of me. My heart’s poinding a mile a minute, and I can barely breath. All these millions of stars looking down on me, and I’ve never given them more than a passing though before. Not just the stars—how many other things haven’t I noticed in the world, things I know nothing about? I suddenly feel helpless, completely powerless. And I know I’ll never outrun that awful feeling.”
“In truth, all sensation is already memory.”
GUERNSEY LITERARY AND POTATO PEEL SOCIETY
by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows
Very charming book, had been on my kindle for a while and wish I hadn’t taken so long to read it.
HALF OF A YELLOW SUN
by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Good book. Set in the 1960s, this book follows the experiences of two Igbo sisters during Biafra’s brief existence in what is present day Nigeria.
THE UNNAMED
by Joshua Ferris
It was okay, not my most favorite book and sort of just sad and slow at times.
LORD OF THE FLIES
by William Golding and E. Epstein
Much more brutal than I had expected, but also better.
A VISIT FROM THE GOOD SQUAD
by Jennifer Egan
Good book, easy to become involved with each of the characters and I liked the way it was structured-jumping around to different characters at different moments in their lives.
Though it doesn’t have a ton to do with the story, I liked this quote: “Structural Dissatisfaction: Returning to circumstances that once pleased you, having experienced a more thrilling or opulent way of life, and finding that you can no longer tolerate them.”
HIGH FIDELITY
by Nick Hornby
Ehhh…another book about a guy who can’t seem to get his life together, make good decisions, or act like an adult.
THE HANGMAN'S DAUGHTER
by Oliver Potsch
Okay book. Interesting topic, but not spectacular story.
INFIDEL
by Ayaan Hirsi Ali
Female circumcision can mean anything from the partial removal of the clitoris to its complete removal, removal of the labia, and sewing shut of the remaining skin leaving a small hole for urine. She argues that practices like this, done without anesthesia, don’t stop when people immigrate, especially when deep cultural ties are upheld by remaining within a tightly knit immigrant community.
WHO Statistics and information on Female Genital Mutilation
UN Report on Honor Violence
Pew Report
AHA Website
THE CORRECTIONS
by Jonathan Franzen
“Oh, misanthropy and sourness. Gary wanted to enjoy being a man of wealth and leisure, but the country was making it none too easy. All around him, millions of newly minted American millionaires were engaged in the identical pursuit of feeling extraordinary…meanwhile the sad truth was that not everyone could be extraordinary, not everyone could be extremely cool; because whom would this leave be ordinary?”
ROOM
by Emma Donoghue
Interesting book. Very different from anything I’ve read lately. Narrated by a five year old who has spent his entire life in a single room where his mother is held captive. It reminded me of the story a few years ago of the girl found after having been kept in a man’s backyard for more than a decade and giving birth to his child.
SEA OF POPPIES
by Amitav Ghosh
Set in colonial India prior to the Opium Wars with China, Ghosh’s characters are many and varied. They come from different castes, nationalities, motivations, etc., but their individual narratives converge as their fortunes rise and fall. The era in which the action is set interesting and the plot is entertaining. I look forward to the follow up.
Ghosh uses a lot nonsensical seeming words belonging to the extinct slang used by sailors in the early 1800s. It didn’t distract from the book, but it made smooth reading difficult at times. I’m sure had I realized that he included a reference/glossary section at the end before finishing the book, it would have been much less irksome. Even so, it might be a better book read in hard copy than on a Kindle.
MIDNIGHT'S CHILDREN
by Salman Rushdie
Great book. Giant scope with tons of memorable characters and settings. Also, enjoyed the indirect history lesson on what is now such a contentious part of the world.
The narrator/main character begins his story with that of his grandfather in Kashmir in the 1910s. His tale centers on the magical parallels of the first 30 years of post-colonial India and his life-both of which began exactly at midnight in 1947. His story stretches throughout India, including West and East Pakistan (which becomes Bangladesh), from slums to former colonial mansions, and has a bit of Islam, Hindu, and superstition as well.
“Memory’s truth, because memory has its own special kind. It selects, eliminates, alters, exaggerates, minimizes, glorifies, and vilifies also; but in the end it creates its own reality, its heterogeneous but usually coherent version of events; and no sane human being ever trusts someone else’s version more than his own.”
THE BELLINI CARD
by Jason Goodwin
THE SNAKE STONE
by Jason Goodwin
THE JANISSARY TREE
by Jason Goodwin
These three books were perfect for reading right before going to Istanbul, but would still be fun to read at any time. Super entertaining and addictive, they remind me of a Dan Brown-type books—with historical intrigue, ancient symbols, and artful crimes in need of solving. Set in 19th century Istanbul, the author, a historian by education, does a great job of bringing the awesomeness of my new favorite city to the pages of an escapist mystery. The descriptions of the Basilica Cisterns and the Medusa heads in the second novel were especially good.
THE SOLITUDE OF PRIME NUMBERS
by Paolo Giordano
I was hesitant to start this book because I didn’t think I’d like it, but it was pretty good. I liked the writing and the two main characters, despite being troubled and flawed, were still relatable, dealing with the lifelong consequences of quick decisions they made as children.
HOW TO READ THE AIR
by Dinaw Mengestu
Slow, messy story of the son of Ethiopian immigrants as he tries to deal with his own life and search for identity through the retelling of his mom/dad issues. I kept waiting for it to get good, and then it was over.
THE REMAINS OF THE DAY
by Kazuo Ishiguro
While reading this book, I didn’t find it to be compelling or particularly entertaining. It felt sort of like spending a melancholy rainy day in an old house with tall windows casting blue grey light on hard floors. It’s beautiful, but in an indistinct sad way.
At parts it was quite boring and the narrator, a butler reflecting on his past, present, and future in post WW2 England, was irritatingly blind to his own life. The themes—committing oneself to service without judgment, importance of personal dignity, missed opportunities—were interesting, but dealt with by the butler for much of the book in an a way alien to me. His inability to grieve for his father, to relate to others, or to have opinions of his own, despite the story being his private reflections was weird and unbelievable. The ending, however, was perfect and, in my mind, makes the book worth reading.
The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet
by David Mitchell
David Mitchell is quickly becoming one of my favorite authors. The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet is an excellent book.
The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
by Junot Dfaz
Great book. Loved the way it spanned decades, creating Oscar’s story from his personal struggles and the lives and histories of his family and friends. And that Oscar is such a frustrating and lovable character. Also liked learning about the recent awful history of the Dominican Republic. Again struck by how quickly the world changes: a small country with lovely beaches where I went for a spring break in college, was ruled by a murderous, terrible dictator in the relatively recent past. I think more time should be spent on world history in grade school.
The Finkler Question
by Howard Jacobson
I hate giving up on a book. I tried to like it. I tried to finish it. I couldn’t do either.
Lolita
by Vladimir Nabokov
I kindle-ed Lolita because I felt like it was one of those books whose cultural significance is assumed to be understood and I was out of the loop. I understand the references now, but was surprised by the subject nonetheless. Nabokov has amazing command of language. His word choice and structure make even a dark story beautiful to read.
The Spy Who Came in from the Cold
by John le Carre
A well-known book and for good reason. I enjoyed it, but more for the world it described than for ‘spy thriller-ness.’ It’s strange that the Cold War era of spies, East Berlin, the Iron Curtain, etc. existed so recently and yet, to me, feels unimaginable. At least most days…
Then We Came to the End: A Novel
by Joshua Ferris
This book reminded me of my previous job at an advertising agency. The fictional firm in the story and the real company I worked for don’t share many similarities, but the jargon felt familiar and it was easy to illustrate the offices, coffee areas, lobby, attire, etc. in my mind from stored away images of my old employer. I’m not sure how much this ‘familiarity’ affected my opinions. It was a good story and had mostly interesting characters, but I felt like I was searching for something more from it. But, that also could have been Ferris’ point. It sort of reminded me of a more tragic version of the TV show “The Office,” but without Steve Carell.
“Using a wide variety of media, we could demonstrate for our fellow Americans their anxieties, desires, insufficiencies, and frustrations—and how to assuage them all. We informed you in six seconds that needed something you didn’t know you lacked. We made you want anything that anyone willing to pay us wanted you to want. We were hired guns of the human soul. We pulled the strings on the people across the land and by god they got to their feet and they danced for us.”
“All over America, in fact, people were up and out of their beds today in a continuing effort to polish turds.”
The Museum of Innocence
by Orhan Pamuk
“Could I be in love with her? The profound happiness I felt made me anxious. I was confused, my soul teetering between the danger of taking this joy too seriously and the crassness of taking it too lightly."
Although it didn’t surpass Snow as my favorite book, Pamuk is still on of my favorite authors. This is a weird-ish story of a man’s obsession with a woman…it’s actually written as if it were a accompanying guide to a museum he built from collectibles and junk he pilfered over the years of his love, like teacups and matches she touched. His pathological obsession is all consuming and suffocating and the story doesn’t really go anywhere. But, Pamuk’s writing, imagery, and digressions on life, happiness, and love keep it interesting and make it an enjoyable book to read. I love the details and the beauty of his writing.
“In fact no one recognizes the happiest moment of their lives as they are living it.”
Fear and loathing in Las Vegas: a savage journey to the heart of the American dream
by Hunter S. Thompson
Maybe I failed to read this book from the correct perspective, but I didn’t really see the author’s point in writing. The style initially interested me, but I was disappointed. It soon became clear the book would never progress past a rambling chronicle of a couple of junkies taking drugs and stealing in Vegas. It felt like re-reading the same page over and over until the end.
Not that the book was terrible, it wasn’t, but it also wasn’t what it is hyped up to be. I’d really hoped to like it, but I can’t help but feel that some of its lasting fame is just due to its ‘edgy’ image and the ‘scandalous’ amount of time it spends describing drugs use. Even in this, I didn’t feel like it offered anything of cultural or literary substance. Maybe if it had been funny, or if it had actually pushed limits or overthrown taboos, I would have liked it more. This story just followed a self-absorbed protagonist who takes advantage of and endangers those around him all the while contributing nothing to the world.
The Bastard of Istanbul
by Elif Shafak
Although it seemed sort of like the story was created because the author wanted to discuss the opposing sides of the Armenian Genocide, it is still a very good book, even if just for it lessons on history, victimhood, and dealing with the past.
THE CLOUD ATLAS: A NOVEL
by David Mitchell
"What wouldn't I give now for a never-changing map of the ever-constant ineffable? To possess, as it were, an atlas of clouds?"
This book is amazing. Definitely a new favorite. Read it straight through during a long day when I was home sick. Such a contrast to the past few books-couldn't put it down nor stop thinking about it after. Might have to re-read Nietzsche. Love the language, the themes, the structure. I tried to write my thoughts about it, but rambled too much. So, tons of reviews online, here's a link to one.
"I always say, Ted, to get the crowd to cry Hosanna, you must first ride into town on an ass. Backwards, ideally, whilst telling the masses the tall stories they want to hear."
"We toasted Bacchus and the Muses, and drank a wine rich as unicorn's blood."
"only as you gasp your dying breath shall you understand, your life amounted to no more than one drop in a limitless ocean!--Yet what is any ocean but a multitude of drops?”
THE GOOD SON
by Michael Gruber
Really good. Plot is a bit fantastic, but the characters are wonderfully researched and have compelling individual stories. One of the narrators is a U.S. soldier of Pakistani origin fighting in the 'War on Terror.' The thoughts expressed through him should be cause for all of us to pause. When I was surrounded by it everyday, it was easier to remember and relate to, but even then, the fact that America has been fighting two wars for the better part of a decade is far removed from the public psyche.
"There's no war here; all that horseshit about everything being changed by 9/11 lasted around two months and then back to sports and game shows. I don't know, maybe that's all right; maybe obsessing about money and sex and celebrities and celebrity sex and the teams is a sign that the terror has filed to bite, which is great, but if it's no big deal why the hell are we breaking the army into pieces over it? Once again, not in my job description."
THE LACUNA
by Barbara Kingsolver
I've never thought much about Leo Trotsky, Frieda Kahlo, or Diego Rivera. This book made me want to know each of them personally.
"Sometimes history cleaves and for one helpless moment stands still, like the pause when the ax splits a log and the two halves rest on end, waiting to fall."
"How can we presume to uplift the life of the working man if we don't respect his work?"
"An imperfectly remembered life is a useless treachery. Everyday, more fragments of the past roll around heavily in the chambers of an empty brain, shedding bits of color, a sentence or a fragrance, something that changes and then disappears. It drops like a stone to the bottom of the cave."
SUPER SAD TRUE LOVE STORY
by Gary Shteyngart
THE RUSSIAN DEBUTANTE'S HANDBOOK
by Gary Shteyngart
Gary Shteyngart is amazing. I had read The Russian Debutante's Handbook before and liked it, but after reading Super Sad True Love Story and loving it, I read it again. It seemed, and was, an appropriate book to read in my current setting. Even so, I'd recommend MSSTLS a hundred times more. It is a funnier, sadder, and satirizes a much more serious societal ailment.
From SSTLS: "I'm learning to worship my new apparat's screen, the colorful pulsating mosaic of it, the fact that it knows every last stinking detail about the world, whereas my books only know the minds of their authors."
From TRDH: "One thing that Vladimir had learned from his years of wandering and self-invention was that it was important to have a theme. A coherent story you could riff off when the opportunity presented itself. A chance to more firmly establish yourself in other people's minds."
THE LONELY POLYGAMIST
by Brady Udall
PARROT AND OLIVIER IN AMERICA
by Peter Carey
BEATRICE AND VIRGIL
by Yann Martel
I don't have a whole lot to say about these three. The Lonely Polygamist was good, I like books that give insight into the minds of people I'm unlikely to encounter in my life (a family of polygamists living in rural Utah during the 1970s is in this category). Parrot and Olivier in America was a fun/easy read and made me want to learn about Alexis de Toqueville and revolutionary France. Beatrice and Virgil was just sort of weird, I liked Life of Pi better.
THE IMPERFECTIONISTS
by Tom Rachman
LOVED, Loved, loved The Imperfectionists.
JULIET, NAKED: A NOVEL
by Nick Hornby
This book was okay, but nothing special. The characters were a bit dull for me...I fail to find a 40 something British man who cheats on his 15 year long live-in girlfriend and is obsessed with a semi-was-famous-80s rocker a very interesting character. It'd be a good book for a plane-wouldn't matter if you lost your page.
THE BLUE NOTEBOOK
by James A. Levine, M.D
It amazes me how authors are able to present narrators with such conviction when they are so different from themselves. The Blue Notebook, was written from the perspective of a 9 year old Indian girl sold to work as a street prostitute living in a cage in Mumbai by a Mayo Clinic doctor. He had visited the slums for research and was shocked by what he saw-there are a half million child prostitutes in India. Levine also wrote this about the Sparrow Program to save them.
MY NAME IS RED
by Orhan Pamuk
My Name is Red tells a story of Ottoman calligraphers. Each chapter speaks from a different character, not just humans, but also inanimate objects like trees and colors are given a voice.
“Before my birth there was infinite time, and after my death, inexhaustible time. I never thought of it before: I’d been living luminously between two eternities of darkness.”
“I don’t want to be a tree, I want to be its meaning.”
A WHOLE NEW MIND: WHY RIGHT-BRAINERS WILL RULE THE FUTURE
by Daniel Pink
I was skeptical of the premise at first, but the argument is well done...Asia, abundance, and automation spell the end of the knowledge/analytic based economy of the last century. The future lies in high concept. The book includes exercises to test and practice these skills. It was an enjoyable book to read and has given me greater appreciation for things we value, like design, meaning, etc.
"The United States spends more on trash bags than ninety other countries spend on everything."
A WEEK IN DECEMBER
by Sebastian Faulks
I liked A Week in December mostly for its characters: a potential jihadi, London banker, Polish football player, Underground train driver, book critic, etc. Story follows their lives and thoughts for a week in December 2007.
GOD IS NOT GREAT
by Christopher Hitchens
GOD IS BACK: HOW THE GLOBAL RISE OF FAITH IS CHANGING THE WORLD
by John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge
Religion as a social construction is of great interest to me. These two books are my favorite on the topic. Though Hitchens is a little over the top with the 'angry atheist' persona, the historical examples he provides offer compelling evidence for religions negative role in human history.
In contrast, the authors of God is Back: How the Global Rise of Faith is Changing the World (editors at my favorite newsmagazine), present a completely different perspective based on much more scientific examination of religion in the world. They seek to answer the question of why modernity did bring the triumph of secularism, as intellectuals were once certain it would? Driven by 'competition and choice' they claim that modernity is reinforcing religiosity around the world. They compare the global export model of American mega churches to that of a multinational, supporting their arguments with tons of facts, statistics, examples, and anecdotes.
I especially liked the parts on the competition of religions in new markets like China. China, they argue, will soon have the largest population of Christians as well as Muslims of any nation. They explain the divergence of religiosity between America and Europe in several ways, one of the more interesting one was that the religious institutions in America offer the social services and communal support networks that are provided by government bureaucracies in Europe thus removing either from seeking the other. Anyways, these books are full of fascinating things to discuss.
THE ASK: A NOVEL
by Sam Lipsyte
I found The Ask: A Novel to be somewhat tiresome. It was another story about a middle-aged man wallowing in a life of mediocrity before eventually breaking. Enough already, get over the self-involved angst.
FREEDOM: A NOVEL
by Jonathan Franzen
Freedom: A Novel was a bit long and didn't have that interesting of characters, but wasn't terrible. This review of it in the Atlantic is interesting. It goes a farther than I would (I like the Daily Show and don't think everything should read like a Tolstoy); but, brings up some worthwhile criticisms of contemporary fiction.
Long Time Personal Favorite:
SNOW
by Orhan Pamuk
Snow had a huge impact on me when I first read it a few years ago. It is still one of my favorites and I couldn't bear to list books I'm reading without including at least a one that has played a role in the life choices that brought me here.
THE MORAL EQUIVALENT OF WAR
by William James
A friend sent James' article to me when I was considering the Peace Corps. I am still grateful.
“We should get toughness without callousness, authority with as little criminal cruelty as possible, and painful work done cheerily because the duty is temporary and threatens not, as now, to degrade. The whole remainder of one’s life…would preserve, in the midst of a pacific civilization, the manly virtues.”
