This year I’m not going for quantity as much as quality, though I am going to try my damndest to keep my book count above 40. As usual I’m counting audiobooks and re-reads, though I’m trying to do much less of the latter. If you don’t think an audiobook counts as reading, you can suck my ass. As ever, green numbers represent re-reads and purple represents audiobooks.
Yes, I said suck my ass on the internet. Now, let’s get down to reading.
This year I’m also linking each one of these books to its page at Amazon, and also to my review of it; excerpts will be below, but if you want more in-depth thoughts you can click on that. If you’d like to read along, feel free to email me at nathan at this doman, and I’ll let you know what I’m thinking of reading next. Also, I’m always looking for suggestions, but I gotta tell you now, if you liked The Da Vinci Code or Blue Like Jazz, I’m probably going to hate what you recommend. Now let’s get down to work. We’ve got a lot to cover.
1. The Yiddish Policemen’s Union by Michael Chabon.
From my review, which you can read here:
"The book tries very hard to mix two things that do not necessarily go well together: a Yiddish sensibility and a story of upheaval and redemption, and a noir-ish detective tale. The strands do not blend well, and as a result the book is a bit like roast beef-flavored toothpaste. Still, for the last 160 pages or so the suspense and intrigue were notched up, and I found myself very interested. I’m just a little sad it took me 3 weeks – and it NEVER takes me 3 weeks to read 250 pages – before we got there."
2. The Abs Diet (audiobook) by David Zinczenko
From my review, which you can read here:
"The science makes a lot of sense here, I suppose, but here’s what bugged me, what bugs me about all this kind of stuff: we all grew up knowing what was healthy, what was good for us, etc. I can’t stand it when "experts" try to tell us that the things we’ve known all along are wrong, are lies, are actually THE THINGS THAT ARE KILLING US. This book engages in less of that than most diet and health books, which is good, but it did just enough that when I was listening to it – usually at the gym, oddly enough – that I’d occasionally have to grit my teeth and try not to scream."
3. Since You Asked by Cary Tennis
From my review, which you can read here:
"Cary never forgets that there are real-life consequences to our actions, that sometimes doing what seems right can lead to disastrous effects. A recovering alcoholic, he knows the rough edges of life all too well and brings a kind of compassion and grace to the table that few advice columnists are able to muster. The book is completely addictive, and because it is a collection of columns, reads easily and quickly. I was in the bathtub way past my bedtime reading it last night, and was able to get through a whole bunch more this morning like a flash."
4. The Heart of Christianity: Rediscovering A Life of Faith by Marcus J. Borg
From my review, which you can read here:
This book is for people whose story and struggle are like mine. Unlike other books which describe a different perspective on Christianity, however, it is compassionate, kind, and not dismissive of traditional or evangelical Christianity, and it does not covertly embrace a necessarily secular-humanist agenda. It encourages an active faith, one that engages God and the Bible, one that requires prayer and community and social action, one that fundamentally changes the believer. Where Borg occasionally lapses into liberal-political rhetoric he can be forgiven; his faith, after all, has implications for his political beliefs and he makes no apologies for this, nor does he imply that anyone else should, whether or not they reach the same conclusions that he does.
5. The Audacity of Hope by Barack Obama
From my review, which you can read here:
in this day and age, any politician hoping to rise beyond a certain level pretty much has to release this type of book. George W. Bush even has one. The P.R. and money are just too good to resist making this type of move. As political memoirs go, The Audacity of Hope is excellent, filled with wonderful anecdotes both from Obama’s life and from the lives of people he’s met on the campaign trail. Also, as an audiobook, well – he deserved the Grammy, for sure, if for no other reason than for his spot-on impersonation of George W. Bush.
Still, if you want to know more about the man, about the mind behind the phenomenon, I’d go for Dreams From My Father. It’s less guarded, less political, more personal and interesting, less philosophical, and yet, more insightful.
6. John Hedgecoe’s Photography Basics by John Hedgecoe
From my review, which you can read here:
Digital photography hasn’t quite been the revolution people think it is – at the end of the day one still needs to know what constitutes a good photo and what doesn’t, and Hedgecoe’s book does a good job both of describing the rules for taking good pictures and for including enough good photographs so that one can see what a good photograph looks like.
What he doesn’t explain, and what I think bears repeating here, is that if you want to be good at photography – and this rule applies to pretty much anything you want to be good at – you have to take a whole lot of photographs. You have to take photographs almost every day, and you have to take tons of them, because if you’re lucky, maybe five percent of your pictures will be good.
7. The World Is Flat 3.0 by Thomas L. Friedman
From my review, which you can read here:
I find it offensive because it implies that because now someone in India or China or Bangladesh can do call-center work, that must mean the playing field is level for everyone, everywhere. It’s an overly simplistic argument that essentially lets exploitive companies off easy while simultaneously repeating the great palace lie that the internet is somehow going to be the great savior of human culture.
8. The New Seed Starters’ Handbook by Nancy Bubel
From my review, which you can read here:
As with many gardening books, she offers a lot of advice that should perhaps come with a disclaimer, something like, "Plants want to grow. That’s why they exist – to grow, to flower, to produce fruit, and, finally, to produce seeds." Instead, by supplying a lot of really elaborate ways of caring for plants, from very specific, circuitous ways of layering the soil in one’s garden to how to build drip-irrigation systems, she seems to imply that anything you put in the ground will rot and die if you don’t follow her advice. Still, overall I’d absolutely have to recommend the guide.
9. The Preservationist by David Maine
This book, a novel detailing the struggles of the biblical figure Noah and his family as they struggle to build the Ark and survive God’s wrath upon the earth, is yet another in a string of historical-biblical novels that have come into fashion in the past decade. Like those books, this one builds heavily on anthropological and archaeological evidence, and, like those books, this one was singularly unimpressive.
I’m not a fan of Chuck Palahniuk. There. I said it. Not a fan. I liked this less than Fight Club. Why they’ve made a movie out of this, I’m not sure.
11. The Party Faithful by Amy Sullivan
From my review, which you can read here:
The book is a fascinating look at why religion does matter to all voters, and why it should. Sullivan herself is an evangelical Democrat whose work is inspired by a deep, personal faith both in Christ and in Democratic party principles. This sets it apart from other books on the subject, many of which are written from a detached religious perspective. For Sullivan (and for me) this stuff is personal and vital; it’s the question, largely, of what it means to be a Christian in America.
12. Things I Learned About My Dad (In Therapy) edited by Heather Armstrong
From my review, which you can read here:
What we get here is a bunch of people talking without affectation, without pretense about fatherhood – about their own fathers, about their experiences as fathers and how one informs the other. The essays are occasionally hilarious and always heartfelt, and each one of them made me want to call my dad up and tell him I love him.
13. Who Let The Dogs In? by Molly Ivins
Molly Ivins has been one of my saving graces during the Bush presidency, and yet I’ve been reluctant to read any more of her work since she died, because that one hit me especially hard. Her wit and intelligence is matched only by her no-bullshit Texas earthiness. She’s missed, greatly.
14. Jesus and the Disinherited by Howard Thurman
Two to three sentences isn’t enough to explain what this book has meant to me, except to say that this is one of those books that gave me my life back. I’m glad I re-read it in the wake of the dust-up about black liberation theology during this spring’s Democratic primary.
I’d been avoiding reading Dick Francis since my graduate writing professors tried time after time to shove him down my throat. Now that I’ve read this book, I’m wondering what the hell all the fuss is about. It’s a good mystery – probably even a great one – but by no means a page-turner.
16. When You Are Engulfed in Flames by David Sedaris
Sedaris strikes again. I’m one of those awful white people who believe David (and Amy) Sedaris can do no wrong, and I absolutely loved this book. I plan on reading the hard copy, though for my first consumption of these words I chose the audio version. A word of warning: Never, Ever, Ever listen to David Sedaris while doing strength training. You’re going to drop something on your toe. Take it from me.
17. Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris
After finishing When You Are Engulfed in Flames on audiobook, I decided I hadn’t had my fill of Sedaris-ness, and so I bought this one, which I’ve read a million times, from Audible. Possibly even funnier as a book-on-tape (iPod).
18. The Time-Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
Meh. I get the sense I was supposed to like this, supposed to be sucked in by it, but I just wasn’t. Maybe the mistake was listening to it on audiobook, but honestly, it didn’t even come close to being interesting enough that I might ever want to follow up with it in print.
19. Severance Package by Duane Swierczynski
A wonderful, if not horribly graphic, crime and espionage novel written by the author of the Cable comic for Marvel. Look, it’s not great literature, and it gets pretty close to torture porn in a few places, but I could not put it down. Its ending alone – one of the best of any novel I’ve ever read – is worth reading the whole book for.
20. The Complete Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi
I’m not sure that there is any kind of high praise that hasn’t already been heaped upon Satrapi’s work, so I’ll just tell you that you really, really need to read this book, because it’s so much more than a book. This, unlike most of what’s out there now, is going down in – and as – history.
Ugh – this is the novel every twentysomething straight male thinks he has in him after he’s read Kerouac a hundred times – highly-paid twentysomething ad exec takes off on a road trip across America with nothing but a camera and some friends. DeLillo is supposed to be one of America’s great novelists, but this, his first book, made me want to slug him.
22. Stop Me If You’ve Heard This: A History and Philosophy of Jokes by Jim Holt
An absolutely fascinating read; hilarious, genius, and, like any good joke, nice and short. I read it in a single evening and enjoyed it immensely. I’m thinking of sending copies to all my philosophy-geek friends, but I think anyone would love it.
23. Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
Okay, so I’d never read this, and now that I have I can say – um, wow. Absolutely amazing book on so many levels; a philosophical story steeped not only in ancient mythology and Biblical narrative, but also completely terrifying and totally different from how our culture has bastardized it. Frankenstein’s monster is not the mute, idiotic zombie of Karloff’s portrayal but something at once more nuanced and more terrifying. Good God, you have to read this if you haven’t.
24. Astonishing X-Men Volume 4: Unstoppable by Joss Whedon and John Cassaday
Joss Whedon is the master storyteller. I started reading his Astonishing X-Men series when it first came out, but I’ve always had trouble keeping up with comic books, opting instead to devour entire storylines in collected form like this one. This, a story centering largely around Whedon’s favorite X-Man, Kitty Pryde (who also served to inspire much of the character of Buffy), sits among some of Whedon’s best narratives. His ability to inspire, crack up, and crush – sometimes all with one line of dialogue – is unparalleled. I devoured this in under an hour.
25. The Way of the World by Ron Suskind
As ever, Ron Suskind defines the "new journalism" genre, weaving a fascinating and compelling tapestry of stories from all over the world that tells the story of the implications of America’s "War on Terror." From the story of an Afghani exchange student to a look inside the final days of Benazir Bhutto and all the people in between, Suskind shows in heart-wrenching detail what American policies over the last 7 years have wrought, and how America can, slowly, reclaim some semblance of moral authority in the world. Like all his other work, a hard-to-put-down must-read.
26. No Future For You by Brian K. Vaughan, Joss Whedon, Georges Jeanty, et al.
As with the volume of Astonishing X-Men listed above, I loved consuming Joss Whedon’s beautifully-written comic book story all in one go. Whedon created some of his most memorable and heartbreaking characters in the Buffy franchise, and this book deals with perhaps the most tragic of these characters, Faith, the "other" vampire slayer, and the events of her life post-Sunnydale. I always found her a much more compelling and interesting story than Buffy herself, and when this book ended I was sad to see her go, even if her exit seems to be a brief one. It made me miss Eliza Dushku’s hip and pained portrayal of her so much that I just may watch Season 3 all the way through once more.
27. Angel: After The Fall Volume 1 by Joss Whedon, Brian Lynch, and Franco Urru
After reading Joss’ continuation of the Buffy storyline and his last arc for Astonishing X-Men, I was eagerly anticipating seeing a continuation of one of my favorite all-time television shows, Angel. I found myself roundly disappointed, however, by not only Urru’s substandard artwork but to an even greater degree by Brian Lynch’s storyline. At times the writing is so confusing it’s hard to figure out what the hell is even going on, and the character arcs go way off the tracks. Overall, I think the story of Angel, Wesley, Gunn, Illyria and Spike deserved a lot more than this team gave it.
28. Beasts of No Nation by Uzodinma Iweala
This story, of child soldiers in Nigeria, is moving and beautiful. My only problems with it were that it was written in dialect, which was completely unnecessary and more often than not a distraction, the author stretching muscles pretty much for the sake of stretching them, which bothers me, and the fact that this author was born in 1982 and published this book in 2005. That means that at the age I was living in my mother’s bedroom, taking hits from a bottle of rum at 1:30 in the afternoon and "looking for a job," this asshole, who is 2 years younger than me, was publishing a work of literary semi-genius. My inner Mean Girl hates this book for being good.
29. This Land is Their Land by Barbara Ehrenreich
Barbara Ehrenreich’s Nickel and Dimed was a seminal book in the formation of my beliefs about politics and social justice and the dichotomy between what America promises, what it claims to stand for, and what it truly offers. That said, when I realized a few pages into this book that it was a Molly Ivins-esque series of short, pithy, humorous observations on the state of American life and politics today, I was a bit skeptical; after all, I’m not totally over Molly Ivins’ death; I’m not sure I ever will be. Still, Ehrenreich steps nicely into the void that Molly left, and though not a perfect replacement, she, like Molly, manages through good-natured humor, witty observation, and razor-sharp political insight, to convince me that I’m not crazy, and that the America I dream of and long for is not a dream that is lost forever, but rather a challenge inviting me, and the people like me, to step up and fight to claim it from the hands of the right-wing oligarchy. VIVA OBAMA!
30. Tea At Five by Matthew Lombardo
A quick listen, this play – written by Matthew Lombardo after several personal interviews with the [now] late, great Katherine Hepburn, is performed aloud by the impeccable Kate Mulgrew, who nails Katherine’s voice and manner – her whole ethos, really – with such precision that you very, very quickly forget you’re not listening to Hepburn herself. It was riveting and wrenching, the first-person story of one of the screen’s greatest gems.
31. Benjamin Franklin by Walter Isaacson
A wonderfully written, fascinating look at the life of one of our nation’s most enduringly intriguing figures, yet it loses something in the translation from written word to audiobook. I’d recommend reading it, which I intend to do at some point, rather than listening to it as an audiobook. This is the kind of writing that needs your full attention, and unless you plan on putting on some headphones, putting your feet up and doing nothing but listening – and maybe even taking notes – for several hours, I’d say just read it.
32. On Guerilla Gardening by Richard Reynolds
Reynolds’ book, an outgrowth of his popular website, is a joy to read not only because of the fact that it’s set up just like a high-school textbook, with sections and Garamond font and a cover you just want to wrap in a brown paper bag, but also because it’s beautiful from a design standpoint and chock full of useful information and hilarious anecdotes. While it does occasionally veer into the realm of the irrelevant – Reynolds at one point goes off on an oddly specific tangent about which car he thinks is best for driving to guerilla gardening sites – it does a wonderful job of painting not only a useful how-to for would-be guerillas, but also a compelling and hard-to-ignore portrait of the vision behind such action. He calls on the great guerillas including Che and Mao to illustrate his points, and uses the stories of people who have done it around the world to show that not only is guerilla gardening possible, it’s wonderful. I’m already turning over a bunch of projects for next spring, but I’ll address those later.
33. Those Left Behind (Serenity) by Joss Whedon, Brett Matthews, & Will Conrad
After the disappointment that was Angel: After The Fall, I was a little leary of jumping back into the "comic-book-continuation-of-beloved-and-prematurely-cancelled-television-show" milieu. Still, it’s Whedon, and he’s rarely let me down. This book, which covers the time immediately after the end of the television show Firefly but before the story in its sequel, Serenity, is like an episode of the show that could’ve been: a quick, one-off story that gets to the heart of who the characters are and what they stand for, and it nicely explains some of the characters’ movements before the start of the film, especially Shepherd Book, whose transition from the ship to Haven we never got to see. And of course, peppered with Chinese swear words and Whedon’s trademark peppy dialogue and future-speak, this one’s a winner.
34. Cringe: Teenage Diaries, Journals, Notes, Letters, Poems and Abandoned Rock Operas by Sarah Brown
A disclaimer: I love Sarah Brown’s website, and when I first read, there, about this book, and saw her call for submissions, I was mightily tempted to submit to it. Then, I got busy, and then, after I was done being busy, I totally chickened out. I’ll remedy this soon; in the meantime, I have to say, Cringe has been a delight to read, over and over and over. Sarah took what was a fantastic idea for a reading series – instead of would-be writers reading their awful poetry, let’s have totally cool adults read frightening excerpts from their teenage journals – and turned it into an even better book that, in the hands of a lesser editor, would not have been anywhere near as fun to read. The chapter on Melodrama, for instance, is subtitled, "I Am Having Some Feelings." You must read this book, then go back and read your own teenage journals, and laugh, mightily, at yourself, and then blog about how it all makes you feel.
35. The Real Jesus by Luke Timothy Johnson
I first read this book for a college course I took 9 years ago, and to this day Luke Timothy Johnson is the only scholar I’ve ever read who made a compelling case against the current sorry state of "historical Jesus" research without throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Yes, he says, genuine faith is compatible with and enhanced by scholarship, but no, you don’t need to perform deconstructionist theology in order to extract a liberal, life-giving, active theology and faith from Biblical sources. Incidentally, the professor for whom I originally read this book was Johnson’s research assistant while he was writing it.
36. Change We Can Believe In by Barack Obama
Despite the fact that Barack Obama has been running for President for 20 months, there’s still a narrative in the media that people don’t know enough about him. I’d say that if you’re wanting to know more about the man himself, Dreams From My Father is a wonderful place to start, and The Audacity of Hope is a more than fulfilling sequel, as well as a good outline of his general political philosophy. This book, though, is what I’d call the final piece of whatever puzzle people think hasn’t been adequately put together for them: an outline of what Barack Obama plans to do as President. If you read this book and, at the very least, can’t say you don’t have a good idea of what Barack Obama has planned for his administration, you’re an idiot and maybe shouldn’t vote.
37. America Eats! On The Road With the WPA by Pat Willard
A book to savor, for sure; Willard goes back through the writings of the WPA, the Works Progress Administration, which, among other things, hired writers to travel the country cataloguing the state of American culture in the 1930′s. A great deal of these writings, like a great deal of our culture, centered around food, and Willard checks back in with some of America’s great culinary meetups; my favorite part was the chapter on the Rush Springs, Oklahoma, Watermelon Festival, which has been going strong for a century.
38. Jimmy Corrigan, The Smartest Boy on Earth by Chris Ware
This is a serious contender for "best book I’ve read this year." A graphic novel of stunning beauty; every page is a visual delight, even as it tells a story that contains so much sadness; I was in tears almost from the beginning. It’s a beautiful, quiet sadness, the kind I feel I can relate to best but can not explain. All I can say is this book is sort of like the world – so beautiful that it almost blinds you, and so sad that it almost kills you.
39. The Wordy Shipmates by Sarah Vowell
This audiobook combined two things I dearly love – Sarah Vowell, my fellow Okie and #1 favorite radio voice, and pilgrims, specifically, John Winthrop and the hard-assed breed of Calvinism he brought to American shores. Vowell opens up the story of the first English settlers, not only blowing to bits the myth of the First Thanksgiving, but also giving some wonderful insights into how these ruggedly pious newcomers shaped the mindset of the country they helped found. Flashing forward to reappearances of Winthrop’s "City on a Hill" sermon, she shows that we are all descendants of this troop.
40. The Old Man and The Sea by Ernest Hemingway
I finally caved in and read this, a book my dad tried to force on me for years when I was a youth. As with all the Hemingway I’ve read – mostly his short stories, which I LURVE, I adored this book and its gruff, sad tale.
41. Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson
Another that my dad always tried to get me to read and that I, in my youthful stubbornness, refused. A story for boys, this book far outshines any Johnny Depp-infused "pirate" movie, and introduces some of the best elements not only of the pirate genre, but of adventure and suspense stories in general. Would that I could convince my younger self to enjoy this book, because I’d have read it fifty times before putting it down.
42. The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
I have a friend who used to not be able to watch the film Reality Bites, because she’d start acting like the characters in the movie. I’m the same way with Ernest Hemingway – his characters are generally not the kind of people I’d like to be, but when I read his books I find myself wanting to speak and act like they do. I adore Papa – this book took me back to my own youthful days in Europe, casting about, finding adventure and drama where I could.
43. Liberty: A Lake Wobegon Novel by Garrison Keillor
Last year I read Garrison Keillor’s most recent Lake Wobegon novel, Pontoon, and I adored it. This one was, if possible, better, a story of Clint Bunsen’s trials and self-doubts as he navigates the touchy world of small-town event planning. I listen to "The News From Lake Wobegon" religiously, and so I feel I know these characters and locales already; that made coming to this book that much sweeter, though I don’t think a Lake Wobegon newbie would have any trouble following along.
44. Consider the Lobster: And Other Essays by David Foster Wallace
The thing I loved the most about this book was actually the reason I bought it: DFW’s magnificent essay "Up, Simba," a shorter version of which was published in Rolling Stone, wherein the author is embedded with John McCain’s 2000 Republican primary campaign. The rest of the book is equally fantastic, and though I think I will never get used to reading so many footnotes, they’re always fantastic, especially in the opening essay, DFW’s exploration of an adult-film-industry convention.
45. The Best American Essays 2007 edited by David Foster Wallace
I love the "Best American" series; I started reading them in the 10th grade and with the exception of 2007, I think I’ve read at least one in the series every year since. I loved David Foster Wallace’s introduction to this book and chose it largely because he edited it, but for me the highlight was Marilynne Robinson’s essay "Onward, Christian Liberals," which I read about 10 times before moving on to the rest of the book.