January 3, 2011

A list of the 74 books I read in 2010. I meant to read 75 but when I had finished up what I had believed was the 75th I discovered that I had counted one of my books twice. No big deal, I didn't expect to read as many books as I did, but still a little disappointing.

All the books are rated from 1-10. 1 being awful, 5 being not good but not too terrible either, 7 being good and any number higher than 7 means I loved it.

Pretty soon, I'll write a post about my favorite books from last year.

1. Junot Diaz. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. The 2008 Pulitzer Prize winner for fiction. 9

2. Malcom Gladwell. What the Dog Saw. Non-fiction. 9

3. Christopher Seitz. Figured Out. Non-fiction - theology. 3

4. Suzanne Collins. The Hunger Games. Fiction - Sci-Fi/Fantasy. 7

5. Suzanne Collins. Catching Fire. Fiction - Sci-Fi/Fantasy 6.5

6. David Sedaris. Me Talk Pretty One Day. Memoir - Hilarity. 8.5

7. Bernhard Schlink. The Reader. Fiction.8.5

8. Mark Haddon. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time. Fiction. 7.5

9. Wendell Berry. Standing by Words. Non-fiction - Essays. 8

10. Cormac McCarthy. No Country for Old Men. Fiction. 9

11. - 17. C.S. Lewis. The Chronicles of Narnia. Fiction - Children. 7

18. C.S. Lewis. The Great Divorce. Fiction. 7.5

19. C.S. Lewis. Out of the Silent Planet. Fiction - Sci- Fi. 7

20. C.S. Lewis. Perelandra. Fiction - Sci-Fi. 8

21. C.S. Lewis. Till We Have Faces. Fiction.10

22. Ronald Takaki. A Different Mirror. Non-fiction-History. 8.5

23. Patricia Raybon. My First White Friend. Memoir. 7

24. A.J. Jacobs. The Know-It-All. Memoir. 8

25. Mary Doria Russell. The Sparrow. Fiction - Sci-Fi, Theological.7

26. W.S. Merwin. The Shadow of Sirius. The 2009 Pulitzer Prize winner for poetry. 9

27. Geraldine Brooks. March. The 2006 Pulitzer Prize winner for fiction. 6

28. H.G. Wells. War of the Worlds. Fiction - Classic. 7.5

29. J.K. Rowling. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. Fiction. 10

30. Jhumpa Lahiri. Interpreter of Maladies. The 2000 Pulitzer Prize winner for fiction. 8.5

31. Philip Schultz. Failure. One of the 2008 Pulitzer Prize winner for poetry. 10

32. Rae Armantrout. Versed. The 2010 Pulitzer Prize winner for poetry. 6

33. Richard Russo. Empire Falls. The 2002 Pulitzer prize winner for fiction. 9

34. Jon Krakauer. Into the Wild. Non-fiction - biography. 7.5

35. Stephen Lawhead. Hood. Fiction - Fantasy. 6.5

36. Norman Ollestad. Crazy for the Storm. Memoir - Survival. 7

37. Lawrence Ferlinghetti. A Coney Island of the Mind. Poetry. 9

38. William Young. The Shack. Fiction - Theology. 2

39. Francis Fukuyama. Our Posthuman Future. Non-fiction - Bioethics. 8

40. Robert Hass. Time and Materials. One of the 2008 Pulitzer Prize winner for poetry. 7

41. Erich Maria Remarque. All Quiet on the Western Front. Fiction - Classic. 9.5

42. David Benioff. City of Thieves. Fiction. 8.5

43. C.K. Williams. Repair. The 2000 Pulitzer Prize winner for poetry. 9

44. T.S. Eliot. The Waste Land and Other Poems. Poetry. 6

45. Thomas Lewis, Fari Amini, Richard Lannon. A General Theory of Love. Psychology - Relationships. 9

46. Lisa Genova. Still Alice. Fiction. 10

47. Howard Dully. My Lobotomy. Memoir - Survival. 7

48. Harry Schaumburg. False Intimacy. Theology. 2

49. Claudia Emerson. Late Wife. The 2006 Pulitzer Prize winner for poetry. 7.5

50. Robert Jordan. The Wheel of Time: The Eye of the World. Fiction - Fantasy. 10.

51. Robert Jordan. The Wheel of Time: The Great Hunt. Fiction - Fantasy. 10

52. Robert Jordan. The Wheel of Time: The Dragon Reborn. Fiction - Fantasy.10

53. Robert Jordan. The Wheel of Time: The Shadow Rising. Fiction - Fantasy. 10

54. David Sedaris. When You are Engulfed in Flames. Non-Fiction - Biography. 7

55. Debbie Hindle and Marta Smith.Personality Development: A Psychoanalytic Perspective. Non-Fiction - Psychology. 8

56. Alice Sebold. The Lovely Bones. Fiction. 8

57. Cormac McCarthy. The Road. Fiction. 9

58. Italo Calvino. Invisible Cities. Fiction. 9.5

59. Markus Zusak. The Book Thief. Fiction. 7.5

60. Christopher Paolini. Eragon. Fiction - Fantasy. 8

61. Brandon Sanderson. The Stormlight Archive: The Way of Kings. Fiction - Fantasy.10

62. Robert Jordan. The Wheel of Time: Towers of Midnight. Fiction - Fantasy. 10

63. Mary Doria Russell. The Children of God. Fiction - Sci-fi. 7

64. J.K. Rowling. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. Fiction - Fantasy. 8

65. Cormac McCarthy. All the Pretty Horses. Fiction 8

66. Kurt Vonnegut. A Man Without a Country. 6

67. Henri Nouwen. Return of the Prodigal Son. Theology. 5

68. Stephen Dunn. Different Hours. 2001 Pulitzer Prize winner for Poetry. 6.5

69. Elizabeth Strout. Olive Kitteridge. 2009 Pulitzer Prize winner for Fiction. 10

70. David Wallin. Attachment in Psychotherapy. Non-fiction - Psychology. 9

71. John Twelve Hawks. The Traveler. Fiction - Sci-fi. 6.5

72. Stephen Crane. The Red Badge of Courage. Fiction - Classic. 8

73. Lawrence Ferlinghetti. Starting from San Francisco. Poetry. 8.5

74. Ted Kooser. Delights and Shadows. 2005 Pulitzer Prize winner for Poetry. 9

October 31, 2010

The next 10:

52. Robert Jordan. The Wheel of Time: The Dragon Reborn. Fiction - Fantasy. I've already talked about The Wheel of Time a million times so I won't do it again. 10

53. Robert Jordan. The Wheel of Time: The Shadow Rising. Fiction - Fantasy. 10

54. David Sedaris. When You are Engulfed in Flames. Non-Fiction - Biography. Not as good as the Me Talk Pretty One Day, but still good. 7

55. Debbie Hindle and Marta Smith. Personality Development: A Psychoanalytic Perspective. Non-Fiction - Psychology. One of the texts for Psychopathology at Mars Hill. Enjoyed it, though. 8

56. Alice Sebold. The Lovely Bones. Fiction. 8

57. Cormac McCarthy. The Road. Fiction. 9

58. Italo Calvino. Invisible Cities. Fiction. Premise: Marco Polo tells Kublai Khan stories of the cities he has visited in his travels. The cities are as unique as they are imaginative. Calvino is a wonderful storyteller. I'm surprised more people don't know about this book. 9.5

59. Markus Zusak. The Book Thief. Fiction. Set in the second world war and told from the perspective of Death (you know, the Grim Reaper?). It's pretty good, but I saw it on a list of books that were the best of the last decade. I don't know if it deserves that much praise, but still good nonetheless. 7.5

60. Christopher Paolini. Eragon. Fiction - Fantasy. I read this in undergrad but I thought, hey, why not read it again? The movie blows by the way. 8

61. Brandon Sanderson. The Stormlight Archive: The Way of Kings. Fiction - Fantasy. This is the guy who is compiling the last three Wheel of Time books (since Robert Jordan is dead). This book just released this month and is the first in a series of ten. And it is good. Sanderson spent a whole decade building this world and the characters in it. Think about that. A decade working on a book. He created a world where hurricane-type storms regularly roll over the earth. As a result, grass retreats into the soil, cities are built against mountain ranges, and men worship a God called Stormfather.Fascinating work, especially where he explores leadership and the courage that makes men sacrifice for others. 10

October 9, 2010

The hard drive on my computer failed. Yeah...stupid HP. I swear, next time, if I have the dollars, I'm buying a Mac. But hey, I have it all under warranty (thanks to my mom, who insisted I have a 3 year warranty when I thought it totally unnecessary. Turns out PC's like to break. Who knew?) so my computer will have a brand new hard drive in a couple weeks.

I've read a few books since my last post but I don't know where I'm at. 60 or more. Looks like I'm gonna hit 75 books by the end of this year pretty easy.

One of the books I read recently was The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold. It's a beautiful book if you can make it past the first chapter (if you've read it, you know what I mean). There is a dream-like, otherworldly quality to it that weaves in and out of the tragedy and beauty of lives shattered and remade by the death of Susie Salmon.

Another is The Road by Cormac McCarthy, the 2007 Pulitzer winner for fiction. I can confidently call myself a devoted fan, having read two of his books. Although I think No Country for Old Men was better.

I read an article about these trapped miners in Chile. 33 guys trapped under the earth for over 2 months. They just now reached them with a drill and are working on getting them out without any safety issues. They think they can have them out in a few more days if all goes well. I can't even imagine what that would be like. I'm a tad claustrophobic and being in a cave is like being in a tiny box. So by this time I would be foaming at the mouth. But hey, super glad they are getting these guys out. It's an emotional story for them and their families.

In a few more weeks, the 13th Wheel of Time hits the shelves. On November 2nd, bright and early in the morning, I will be waiting for the doors of the downtown Barnes and Noble to open. Then I will rush in, snatch the book off the shelf, buy it and probably alarm the sleepy-eyed employee who sells it to me. I imagine myself looking like an energetic squirrel holding a nut, hoping up and down on all four paws. Drooling a little. Then scampering off to my tree.

My only complaint about the Wheel of Time series are the illustrations on the cover. Please, oh please could you make it less embarrassing to be seen reading it in public?

Reading week is coming up. Where I will spend all my free time working on the four research papers due in November. Fuck.

I saw the God of Carnage last night. It's a play that won an award for awesomeness. It's hilarious. If you are in Seattle, I recommend seeing it.

That's all for now.

September 15, 2010

Warning: this is a super long post. My bad.

Last night I completed my 50th book this year. Fuck. Yeah.

I have a rating system. Whenever I read a book, I put a number beside it: 1-10. 1 means it is the worst piece of shit I've ever read. 5 means it sucks but I'm not mad about it. 7 means it's good. And 10 is a gold star.

Here is a list of all the books I've read this year, in the order I read them, with a short amount of information for each, including my rating.

1. Junot Diaz. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. The 2008 Pulitzer Prize winner for fiction. Fantastic exploration of one young man's search for love and sex and his surprise at what he finds at the end. 9

2. Malcom Gladwell. What the Dog Saw. Non-fiction. If this guys writes it, you should read it. 9

3. Christopher Seitz. Figured Out. Theology - Typology. Boooorrrrinnngggg. 3

4. Suzanne Collins. The Hunger Games. Fiction - Children. This series is worth your read but much of this sort of story has been done many, many times before. 7

5. Suzanne Collins. Catching Fire. Fiction - Children. 6.5

6. David Sedaris. Me Talk Pretty One Day. Memoir - Hilarity. I laughed a lot. There is a short chapter on this turd Sedaris tried to flush down the toilet that KILLS me. 8.5

7. Bernhard Schlink. The Reader. Fiction. My God this book will depress you. It's good but my God...8.5

8. Mark Haddon. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time. Fiction. 7.5

9. Wendell Berry. Standing by Words. Non-fiction - Essays. My first book from Berry did not disappoint. Several essays about poetry too. In case you don't know he's a God in some circles. 8

10. Cormac McCarthy. No Country for Old Men. Fiction - Haunting. Holy shit this man knows how to create tension in a novel. If you liked the movie, you will love the book and appreciate the Coen brothers on a whole new level. 9

11. - 17. C.S. Lewis. The Chronicles of Narnia. Fiction - Children. If you don't recognize this series, you are dumb. 7

18. C.S. Lewis. The Great Divorce. Fiction - Theological. 7.5

19. C.S. Lewis. Out of the Silent Planet. Fiction - Sci- Fi. Part of his lesser known Space Trilogy. 7

20. C.S. Lewis. Perelandra. Fiction - Sci-Fi. One of my favorite Lewis novels of all time. 8

21. C.S. Lewis. Till We Have Faces. Fiction. BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR. Few books have ever brought me to the brink of tears. This one did. So achingly beautiful.10

22. Ronald Takaki. A Different Mirror. History. An unpleasant read to say the least. But that's why its so good. All about our nation's history of oppression towards the "other." 8.5

23. Patricia Raybon. My First White Friend. Memoir. 7

24. A.J. Jacobs. The Know-It-All. Memoir - Hilarity. Jacobs tries to read the whole Encyclopedia Brittanica. A herculean task and plenty of laughs along the way. 8

25. Mary Doria Russell. The Sparrow. Fiction - Sci-Fi, Theological. This book poses the question, Where is God in the midst of relentless tragedy? 7

26. W.S. Merwin. The Shadow of Sirius. The 2009 Pulitzer Prize winner for poetry. Fantastic. 9

27. Geraldine Brooks. March. The 2006 Pulitzer Prize winner for fiction. Did NOT deserve this award. Book gets good at the end, almost redeems itself and squeaks out a 6.

28. H.G. Wells. War of the Worlds. Fiction - Classic. 7.5

29. J.K. Rowling. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. Fiction - Fucking awesome. I've already read this before but what the hell. Don't judge...10

30. Jhumpa Lahiri. Interpreter of Maladies. The 2000 Pulitzer Prize winner for fiction. Heartbreaking stories but well composed. 8.5

31. Philip Schultz. Failure. The 2008 Pulitzer Prize winner for poetry. 2008 had 2 Pulitzer winners for poetry. A rare occurrence. And the other one wasn't half as good as this. Failure brought me to tears. The author shares his journey through loneliness, insane asylums, suicide and his love of dogs. Best book of poetry this year. 10

32. Rae Armantrout. Versed. The 2010 Pulitzer Prize winner for poetry. Strange shit, guys. Sort of worth a read...sort of... but not worth a Pulitzer. 6

33. Richard Russo. Empire Falls. The 2002 Pulitzer prize winner for fiction. Totally surprised me how much I loved this book. The best part is the characters. Russo has a keen eye for the heartbeat of each one of them. 9

34. Jon Krakauer. Into the Wild. Biography - Survival. 7.5

35. Stephen Lawhead. Hood. Fiction - Fantasy. I used to read this guy when I was young and loved some of his earlier stuff. Not so much this one. 6.5

36. Norman Ollestad. Crazy for the Storm. Memoir - Survival. 7

37. Lawrence Ferlinghetti. A Coney Island of the Mind. Poetry. 9

38. William Young. The Shack. Fiction - Theology. Ughhh...just ughhh. I hated this book. I have no idea why it is so popular. 2

39. Francis Fukuyama. Our Posthuman Future. Non-fiction - Bioethics. 8

40. Robert Hass. Time and Materials. The 2008 Pulitzer Prize winner for poetry. Not as good as the other winner from this year but still some bright spots. 7

41. Erich Maria Remarque. All Quiet on the Western Front. Fiction - Classic. How have I never read this before? Well deserved status as a classic on the psychological impact of war on the soldiers who fight it. 9.5

42. David Benioff. City of Thieves. Fiction. 8.5

43. C.K. Williams. Repair. The 2000 Pulitzer Prize winner for poetry. 9

44. T.S. Eliot. The Waste Land and Other Poems. Poetry. I tried to like him, I really did. But aside from a few poems, in my opinion, he tries to hard. 6

45. Thomas Lewis, Fari Amini, Richard Lannon. A General Theory of Love. Psychology - Relationships. Reveals the structure of the human mind, how love affects everything and why therapy works. 9

46. Lisa Genova. Still Alice. Fiction. You should read this book not for the plot or the characters but for the way Genova pulls you into the mind of someone who suffers from Alzheimer's. Watch out though, its sad. 10

47. Howard Dully. My Lobotomy. Memoir - Survival. 7

48. Harry Schaumburg. False Intimacy. Theology - Crap. Just don't read it. 2

49. Claudia Emerson. Late Wife. The 2006 Pulitzer Prize winner for poetry. 7.5

50. Robert Jordan. The Wheel of Time: The Eye of the World. Fiction - Fantasy. Ahem. May I have your attention: These are the best books in the world. If you have not read them, you have not lived. I read the whole series last year and now I'm reading through them again. That's right, they're that fucking amazing. If were up to me I would give them all Pulitzers and then never give out another Pulitzer ever again. 10. 10. 10. 10.

51. Robert Jordan. The Wheel of Time: The Great Hunt. Fiction - Fantasy. I miscounted. I've read 51. 10, of course.

That's all for now. I plan to hit 65 by the end of the year. Maybe 70. We'll see.

August 21, 2010

Ever finished a book, flipped to the last page, closed it, set it on the desk in front of you and felt like you were waking from a dream? Still Alice is that sort of book. I finished it at Cugini's Cafe this morning, the hour I spent reading oblivious to my surroundings, pulled so far into the book I felt the raw tension of a life steadily pulled apart by Alzheimer's. I felt almost a part of the story, as lost in Alice's mind as she was, gripping the pages I turned, tense without knowing why. I left after the last paragraph, full of Alice's pain and loss, holding back tears. I was so struck with this powerful story I struggled to focus on driving home.

Still Alice is a remarkable look into how Alzheimer's ravages the mind and the relationships it effects. Out of the 45 books I've read this year, it reaches what so few of the others have: perfection.

August 11, 2010

"When the time comes to you at which you will be forced at last to utter the speech which has lain at the center of your soul for years, which you have, all that time, idiot-like, been saying over and over, you'll not talk about joy of words. I saw well why the gods do not speak to us openly, nor let us answer. Till that word can be dug out of us, why should they hear the babble that we think we mean? How can they meet us face to face till we have faces?"

- C.S. Lewis, Till We Have Faces

I intend to read all of these by August 30th.

August 9, 2010

I'm slogging my way through William Young's The Shack and Francis Fukuyama's Our Posthuman Future. There is no end in sight.

Young started out interesting, gripping even, and then he hit a wall: religion. As soon as the book shifted into a dialogue between him and the Trinity it got downright boring, and even embarrassingly simple-minded. In The Shack, God is a black woman called Papa, Jesus is a middle-eastern man in his thirties and the Holy Spirit is Sarayu (an Asian woman, I think). They are all smiley, talky, laughy with each other...makes me want to throw up. Not because it paints an inaccurate picture of God, but because it's just bad writing. Which is such a switch from the first half. This book has sold millions of copies... I expected something different.

It's super disappointing. I want to throw it, but its required reading for Theology in the fall...and I'm not a quitter. Well, sometimes I am, but not this time.

As for Fukuyama, the book is good but it hits a snag when he starts talking philosophy, which he isn't good at. He tries to create philosophical grounds for an ethics based on human nature. I agree there is a human nature, but it's a tough subject to argue and Fukuyama is not a philosopher. So I wish he would stick to the real purpose of the book: telling us why science is gonna suck us all into a black hole.

July 25, 2010

Richard Russo's Empire Falls is the well-deserved recipient of the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for fiction. I, at first, wasn't looking forward to reading a 500 page novel about a small town in Maine. You can usually find me in the Fiction, Science section of the library, flipping through books with planets and spaceships on the cover. Or, if it is more of the Lord of the Rings type, orcs and elves and swords. A story about a small town in Maine doesn't fire up the imagination.

But Russo won me over and I was surprised to find myself gripping the paperback with both hands, leaning into the pages and watching Miles Roby's life slowly unfold.

What I discovered that is best about Russo is his ability to pencil in the details of his characters. He creates a fuzzy outline and steadily, fills it with color. What a character appears to be in the beginning is not always what they are in the end. And along the way, some of them even shock you.

There is Miles Roby, 42 year old manager of the Empire Grill, a struggling restaurant in a dying town. The question the book poses is, Why is Miles Roby still here, living in Empire Falls? He has the intelligence to realize his dream of becoming a professor (he never finished college, having rushed home to take care of his dying mother) but doesn't. He stays, marries a woman he doesn't love who eventually cheats on him, and lives a dissatisfying life. He has a tendency to be far too nice and people take advantage of him. Russo gives the impression that Miles is a weak, impotent man but towards the end, Miles surprises me and reveals himself to be a stronger man than I supposed.

Francine Whiting, owns half the town and for the last 20 years, has strung Miles along on the promise that she will turn over ownership of the Empire Grill to him. Why she tortures him with half hopes is a mystery Russo explores through Miles' memories of the past.

Janine Roby is the fiance of Walt Comeau (Owner of the local fitness center, who obnoxiously calls himself the Silver Fox) and soon to be ex-wife of Miles Roby. A somewhat self-absorbed woman, she struggles with her infidelity but rationalizes it away and ignores the growing reality that Walt is not all he appears to be.

Walt Comeau is, in fact, not as wealthy as he makes himself appear and is 60 years old, not 50 as he leads Janine to believe. His obnoxious personality is half entertaining and half maddening, which is something that creeps into several of Russo's characters. He has a habit of showing up to the Empire Grill and taunting Miles into arm wrestling him.

Max Roby is Miles' father and the ultimate narcissist. He is another half entertaining, half maddening personality. He pursues whatever he wants with such reckless abandonment for himself and others it's astounding. He consistently abandoned his wife to handle the bills and raise their sons, leaving for months at a time to paint houses on the coast. And now as a 70 year old man, his habits are the same. His primary passions being beer and money to buy beer. I can do no justice to the fascinating character Russo creates in Max Roby, except by saying this man is almost worth the read himself.

Finally, there is Christina (called Tick), Miles' daughter. Tick is one of Miles' few remaining passions in life. A high schooler, she has the regular struggles of a teenager dealing with sex, high school drama and love until John Voss shows up. What happens with him changes Empire Falls for good.

There are a dozen other characters I could mention but I just wanted to hit a few so I could cover the plot in its most basic form.

Russo manages to craft a way of speaking for each character that fits their personality so well. When they speak, you believe it is them speaking and when they act you believe that is exactly what that sort of person would do. It's a trick a lot of writers try but so few nail as well as Russo. And it's what makes a boring town like Empire Falls one the best reads of 2010 thus far.

July 8, 2010

Summertime means lots of reading. I've read 27 books this year so far. I'll finish 28 and 29 by tonight and 30 probably by Sunday. My summer goal is to read 20 books in the next 2 months, including articles and books for classes in the fall semester. That might sound super nerdy...It is.

I don't know what my total at the end of the year will be but it will certainly far surpass last years total of 39. Part of that goal is to read the Pulitzer winners for Fiction and Poetry in the last 10 years. I've read 1 of the winners for poetry and 3 of the winners for fiction and I'll finish another tonight.

The 2006 winner for fiction was Geraldine Brooks' March, an almost boring read for the first 200 pages but which leaps in intensity in the last 80. I'm not convinced it deserved a Pulitzer, but it turned out to be a thoughtful read, if not the most entertaining.

Mr. March, the main character, joins the Union side of the civil war as a chaplain, leaving his wife and four girls at home. Initially a highly idealistic man, the war shatters his optimism and his body, leaving him wracked with disease and broken hope. Where the book becomes interesting is when those ideals collide with the reality of war and the evil it produces. March watches friends die and feels the weight of his cowardice. You can almost feel his soul crack under the weight as the champion of equality and conscience we see in the first part of the book is lost forever.

March is almost frustrating at first but then flares into life when March's world falls apart. It's a worthwhile read for the emotion of the last third, if for nothing else. And hey, if it won a Pulitzer, I think most people would disagree with me that it wasn't all I hoped it would be. So maybe you should check it out.

The other Pulitzer I'm presently in the middle of is Jhumpa Lahiri's Interpreter of Maladies. And it's gooooodddd. More on that some other day.

April 20, 2010

My roommate, Johnny, and I have a contest going: see who can read the most books this year. We are both taking a C.S. Lewis class this summer semester and have to read 13 of his books (yeah, for one class). So I'll hit 25 books by the end of June, easy. I'm at 14 right now and I think he's at 13.

There are a few rules: the book has to be over a 100 pages and a certain number of the books we read have to be something other than fiction. Like theology, history, poetry, etc. The purpose isn't just to read a ton of books but to learn something along the way.

If you're looking for a book to read, the two most interesting ones thus far are Malcolm Gladwell's What the Dog Saw and David Sedaris' Me Talk Pretty One Day. You can't go wrong with either of these.

I'll post a list of completed books once I've reached 20. That will probably happen mid-May.

March 18, 2010

The Los Angeles Times review on the front cover of the book calls this "A formally beautiful, disturbing and finally morally devastating novel. From the first page, [The Reader] ensnares both heart and mind." All except for it being "beautiful" the reviewer is right.

I read most of the book this morning. It definitely ensnares the heart and mind. But it's captivating because the heart and mind are so deeply troubled.

Nowhere in Schlink's book is there a hero or hope. The tragedy of lost innocence permeates the entire novel and remains unrealized by the victim, Michael Berg. His life has become irrevocably damaged as a result. A marriage to another woman fails and Michael becomes alienated from his daughter. He becomes emotionless and unfeeling, unable to maintain relationships with women, unable to love or care for others.

By the end of the novel, I have no hope for Michael because he never faces what was done to him or the affect it has on his life. He accepts it like he seems to accept everything. Blankly.

"The tectonic layers of our lives rest so tightly one on top of the other that we always come up against earlier events in later ones, not as matter that has been fully formed and pushed aside, but absolutely present and alive. I understand this. Nevertheless, I sometimes find it hard to bear. Maybe I did write our story to be free of it, even if I never can be."

I recommend this book, with hesitation, because it will depress you. But the understanding Schlink brings to the human heart and what pain can do to our lives is incredible. A captivating read, but a sobering one too.

March 13, 2010

David Sedaris is a funny man. Similar to Anne Lamott and Donald Miller: self-deprecating humor, witty remarks, insatiable curiosity and an underlying tenderness beneath it all.

I'm reading his Me Talk Pretty One Day. One chapter in particular had me rolling. Big Boy. It's 3 pages and it's about poop. If that sort of thing interests you, then this book is for you.

He's also gay. You might think its odd I mention that. And yeah, it probably is. But that's one of the reasons I picked up the book (besides the fact that everyone raves about David Sedaris). I wanted to know what he thought about life growing up gay. How it was different from mine. I wanted to know what he thought about God, his parents, and the world.

What I've found out so far comes down to these few things:

- his father was never proud of him
- his family is really weird
- he fell ass backwards into writing and has made a career of it
- his life feels less funny than sad

On that last point....it's a feeling I get throughout the book when Sedaris writes about his father or his relationships or his jobs. His self-deprecation is different from Miller and Lamott. They don't seem to believe those things about themselves, or, if they do, laugh them off. Sedaris, though, I think he believes things about himself that make me sad for him. Not that the book is a total downer just that its a little sad.

So far though, I've loved it. Sedaris has a new fan. His books will be lining my shelves.

March 9, 2010

My reading goal for this year is pretty light: 25. I can't see myself finishing any more than that with grad school and 30 hours of work.

What I've completed so far:

The Brief, Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao : Junot Diaz
What the Dog Saw : Malcolm Gladwell
Figured Out : Christopher Seitz
The Hunger Games : Suzanne Collins

What I'm working on:

Catching Fire : Suzanne Collins
Standing by Words : Wendell Berry
Rome and Jerusalem : Martin Goodman
Plan B : Anne Lamott
Bird By Bird: Anne Lamott
Spiritual Theology : Simon Chan
Auschwitz : Laurence Rees

I have a bad habit of starting a book, reading 60 to a 100 pages, dropping it and picking up another. I went through my library and counted every book I haven't finished.

A total of 30.

I think I have commitment issues.

February 23, 2010

Thoughts:

I finished Malcolm Gladwell's What the Dog Saw. I'll post my thoughts on it later.

Currently, I'm knee deep into this book: Figured Out by Christopher Seitz. It's a book review for one of my MDiv classes. My professor made a SERIOUS error in judgment when she assigned this book to first years. It's way academic and I'm way over my head. Eight page paper on it due Tuesday.

You should pick up Switchfoot's Hello Hurricane.

What's up with curling? Someone explain the appeal.

I like Sarah Palin less and less. And I didn't really like her all that much before. She just won't stop talking...

Links:

Artwork made from staples. Found it through BOOOOOOM.

Ragamuffin Soul posted links to some of his favorite blogs. Messy Canvas is one of them. Here are two links to her posts. In the first, she makes His and Hers coffee cozies. In the second (which is also featured on Ragamuffin Soul), she makes stuffed animals for her little girls based on her daughters drawing. I can't explain why, but I found this last post beautifully creative and wonderful.

February 6, 2010

What a depressing book. Diaz is a talented writer, I'll give him that. But boy does the book end badly for Oscar.

About half of the book isn't even about Oscar. It's about his family history. The narrator is Yunior, a friend Oscar meets in college. He traces the path of Oscar's demise and the history that leads up to it, all the way back to his grandparents.

It's all about fuku. Fuku is a curse laid down upon Oscar's grandfather for denying the then Dominican dictator Rafael Trujillo access to his wife and daughter. He was thrown in prison for more than a decade then killed as Trujillo was being overthrown. His wife was pushed in front of a truck and one of his daughters drowned, along with other tragedies. Yunior says Oscar's grandfather brought fuku upon his family by defying Trujillo, who some believed had god like powers to impose his terrifying will on the people of the Dominican Republic. The result was a broken family, riddled with tragedy.

Diaz creates a likable character in Oscar but Yunior (who I believe is a thinly shaded representation of Diaz) tells the story with a sense of doom. Yunior is always alluding to this great future tragedy.

Oscar's fuku is he's overweight, socially incompetent, and a sci-fi nerd. (And by sci-fi nerd I don't mean my type of sci-fi nerd who occasionally enjoys an orc and an elf battling it out in the forest. I mean that's ALL he reads. I mean he even TALKS like the characters from those books.)

Oscar's one purpose in life from puberty to the grave is to get laid. Which his fuku complicates. The whole story of Oscar is one failure after another to get the woman he's fallen in love with. He seems doomed to die a virgin.

If that's all this novel was about then I would have tossed it when I first started reading. But its more than Oscar trying to get laid. He's alone and suffering. All he wants is someone to share life with, but he's frustrated at every attempt. Oscar feels like he is collapsing in on himself, like some internal gravity is sucking into him into his own personal black hole. Life, for Oscar, gradually spirals further and further into his own dark abyss.

I won't tell you how it ends, except that he does die and its really sad. But I will tell you that Diaz creates a terrifying world. He creates characters whose one hunger is to devour the person next to them. In Diaz's world, Oscar is the solitary virgin and everyone else is sex-crazed and starving. It isn't just Oscar who is collapsing in on himself.

So I recommend the book. Sort of. It won a Pulitzer so its a safe bet you'll like it. As long as you're ok with a depressing read, go for it.

January 10, 2010

I heard Conan O Brien is getting the shaft. I haven't watched his show since he switched to an earlier time.

A friend and I explored Bainbridge Island today. We took a ferry from Seattle mainland. We ate breakfast at Pegasus Coffee and I had eggs with spinach and it was good. We walked along Winslow Way, a strip of shops and cute stores. Later in the afternoon, lunch at Fay Bainbridge State Park followed by ice cream at Mora's.

I saw my first hockey game Friday night. Seattle Thunderbirds, last in the league. There was a fight so it made up for the loss.

No luck on buying a car yet.

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz. Pulitzer Prize winner from 2008. Good writing. Follows a recent trend in fiction in eliminating quotation marks around speech. It flows better, I think.

Would it be terribly pretentious to read all of the last decades Pulitzer Prize winners in fiction?

I've read the winner from 2001 (The Adventures of Kavalier and Clay) but the winner from 2005 is Marilynne Robinson's Gilead. I read her novel Home this year and hated it. Slow, tedious and uneventful.

I once heard a well-known Christian writer say every Christian should read a book on logic. I bought one. Being Logical: A Guide to Good Thinking. In my undergrad I took a logic course and found that advanced logic can actually be quite difficult. It gets mathematical.

In Tully's Coffee in downtown Ballard I found origami dragons and gorillas. Really intricate, tiny folds. The best I can do is a crane and I need the book for it. I've tried a T-Rex but his jaw always ends up looking like a fork.

STILL haven't seen Avatar! It's now the 2nd highest grossing movie ever. Right behind Titanic and both are directed by James Cameron.

Jack and Coke is a relaxing drink.

January 2, 2010

A list of the 39 books I read this year, starting with my top five. The rest are in no particular order.

1. Surprised by Hope : N.T. Wright. A genuine gift from God at a time when I really needed to know God cared. One of the first books I read this year and none of the rest even came close.

2. The Wheel of Time, books 1-12 : Robert Jordan. Loved, loved, loved this series.

3. Daily Life in Ancient Rome : Florence Dupont. FASCINATING account of the Romans before Augustus.

4. A Million Miles in a Thousand Years : Donald Miller. Perhaps better than Blue Like Jazz. And that should say it all.

5. I and Thou : Martin Buber. Required reading for Interpersonal Foundations at Mars Hill. But still great.

The Brothers Karamazov : Fyodor Dostoyevsky.

The Count of Monte Cristo : Alexandre Dumas.

Home : Marilynne Robinson. Nothing happens in this book. Super boring.

The Hitler of History : John Lukacs.

Augustus: The Life of Rome's First Emperor : Anthony Everitt.

Resident Aliens : Stanley Hauerwas

To Be Told : Dan Allender. Mars Hill required reading. But very good.

Jewish Spirituality : Rabbi Kushner. I read this in disgust. It was just....dumb. I threw it away after I was done. WORST book of the year.

How to Win Friends and Influence People : Dale Carnegie.

Advanced Backpacking : Karen Berger.

GloboChrist: The Great Commission Takes a Postmodern Turn : Carl Raschke. Liked the first half of the book, hated the last half.

Through Painted Deserts : Donald Miller.

The Stand : Stephen King.

Philosophy: The Classics : Nigel Warburton.

Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, Phaedo : Socrates.

A Confession : Leo Tolstoy.

The Earth is Enough : Harry Middleton.

The Subtle Knife : Phillip Pullman. The best in the His Dark Materials series. But that isn't saying much.

The Amber Spyglass : Phillip Pullman. Pullman is not a good writer. I don't know why he is so popular.

Meditation with Meister Eckhart : Matthew Fox.

Martin Buber's I and Thou : Kenneth Paul Kramer.

Dawn : Elie Wiesel.

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay : Michael Chabon.

January 1, 2010

A friend told me that what you do on the first day of the year is what you will be doing the rest of the year. So far, I went to bed at 2 am (slightly inebriated), woke at 11 am, watched the last part of the Outback bowl, ate tomato soup and received an expensive water bill. Please let the rest of my year be more exciting than that.

In other news, my insurance company is giving me almost $12,000 for my wrecked car. I've been looking at Mazda 3's and Scion tC's. I hope to find a car for not much more than ten and be able to throw a thousand into an emergency fund.

I finished 39 books this year. I'll post a complete list later.

School starts monday.................................................................................

December 28, 2009

A movie coming out in 2010 from Christopher Nolan (director of The Dark Knight).

It's almost 2010 and I have a few more books to go to reach my goal. After Thursday I have new reading goals under a couple categories:

Historical: Rome and Jerusalem. Martin Goodman

Theological: Postcolonial Imagination and Feminist Theology. Pui-lan Kwok

Study of Evil: The Lucifer Principle. Howard Bloom

Personal Growth: Being Logical: A Guide to Good Thinking. Dennis Q. McInerny

Fiction: The Nice and the Good. Iris Murdoch

Poetry: As always I will be reading poetry from Dylan Thomas and Walt Whitman

For Christmas, one of my roommates bought me What the Dog Saw by Malcom Gladwell. I don't have a category for that but I'll be reading it too.

Besides whatever Mars Hill makes me read, I'll be working on these for the next month or two.

After I picked up Dan from the airport we (plus Jon) went to Pike Place market. One of the restaurants on Post Alley has amazing chowder. Soooo good. That plus Special Reserve coffee from Starbucks made my day.