Things I've Read So Far This Year
Is it a bad sign that this took way too much thinking to compile? Roughly in chronological order:
- Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell
- When You Are Engulfed in Flames, David Sedaris
- Alan Turing: The Enigma, Andrew Hodges
- Predictably Irrational, Dan Ariely
- Maps and Legends, Michael Chabon
- How To Be Alone, Jonathan Franzen
- Numbers in the Dark, Italo Calvino
- The Corrections, Jonathan Franzen
- Scott Pilgrim (vols 1-5), Bryan Lee O’Malley
- Fables (vols 1-11), Bill Willingham
- Cryptonomicon, Neal Stephenson
- The God Delusion, Richard Dawkins
- The Demon-Haunted World, Carl Sagan
- Straight Man, Richard Russo
- The Road, Cormac McCarthy
- Guns, Germs and Steel, Jared Diamond
- The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, Junot Diaz
(I also started/gave up on The Yiddish Policemen’s Union at least twice. As much as I enjoyed The Mysteries of Pittsburg and loved The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, I really haven’t been able to get into it.)
- The Corrections was probably my favorite out of the bunch, followed by Cryptonomicon and The God Delusion.
- Cryptonomicon was definitely bumped up by having read that Alan Turing biography first.
- Guns, Germs and Steel was also surprisingly good, I especially liked all the linguistic detective work. (I had no idea that Taiwan is most likely the birthplace of the Austronesian language family.) Also I guess I have a better understanding of what my mom teaches. Kinda.
- The Road was well written and hard to put down, but really wasn’t the best book to be reading while lounging around the pool (although Las Vegas is as good a place as any for post-apocalyptic fiction).
- The only book I really didn’t enjoy was Outliers, which started off okay but quickly veered off into the inane and illogical.
- Fables and Scott Pilgrim were disappointing only in that I NEED MORE, RIGHT NOW.
- Maps and Legends has one of the most gorgeous covers (plural, as there are three) I’ve seen on a book.
- I think I’ll ramble about Oscar Wao in a separate post.
