Last 50 books read

Most links are to a New York Times book review.

1. 
   Amy and Isabelle (1998: Elizabeth Strout) [In her stunning first novel, Amy and Isabelle, Elizabeth Strout evokes a teenager’s alienation from her distant mother–and a parent’s rage at the discovery of her daughter’s sexual secrets.] 8&9-2012
2. 
   Atonement: A Novel (2002: Ian McEwan) [second reading] [A love story, a war story, and a story about the destructive powers of the imagination, a novel that takes all of the author's perennial themes—dealing with the hazards of innocence, the hold of time past over time present and the intrusion of evil into ordinary lives—and orchestrates them into a symphonic work that is every bit as affecting as it is gripping. It is, in short, a tour de force.] 8-2012
3. 
   Abide with Me (2006: Elizabeth Strout) [In her luminous second novel, Elizabeth Strout welcomes readers back to the archetypal, lovely landscape of northern New England, where the events of her first novel, Amy and Isabelle, unfolded. In the late 1950s, in the small town of West Annett, Maine, a minister struggles to regain his calling, his family, and his happiness in the wake of profound loss.] 8-2012
4. 
   Olive Kitteridge (2008: Elizabeth Strout) [In a voice more powerful and compassionate than ever before, New York Times bestselling author Elizabeth Strout binds together thirteen rich, luminous narratives into a book with the heft of a novel, through the presence of one larger-than-life, unforgettable character.] 7&8-2012
5. 
   The War Against Cliché: Essays and Reviews 1971-2000 (2001: Martin Amis) 7,8,9-2012
6. 
   From Eternity to Here: The Quest for the Ultimate Theory of Time (2010: Sean Carroll) [Theoretical physicist discusses the nature and mysteries of time, the universe, and physical reality. Explains that time has a direction and the "arrow of time" exists because the universe evolves in a certain way. Speculates about what happened before the Big Bang and examines the continuing increase of entropy.] 06&07-2012
7. 
   Satori: A Novel Based on Trevanian's Shibumi (2011: Don Winslow) [After years of imprisonment for killing his surrogate Japanese father, Nicholai Hel is developed as a spy by the CIA. He poses as a French arms merchant to assassinate the Soviet commissioner to Red China. Prequel to Shibumi.] 06-2012
8. 
   Physics for Future Presidents: The Science behind the Headlines (2008: Richard A. Muller) [Physics professor explains basic physics to help government leaders and their constituents make better decisions about issues they face. Presents the science behind terrorism, energy, nuclear weapons and power, space and satellites, and global warming. Debates the future of alternative eco-friendly resources and new technologies] 05&06-2012
9. 
   Free Will (2011: Sam Harris) [A belief in free will touches nearly everything that human beings value. It is difficult to think about law, politics, religion, public policy, intimate relationships, morality—as well as feelings of remorse or personal achievement—without first imagining that every person is the true source of his or her thoughts and actions. And yet the facts tell us that free will is an illusion. In this enlightening book, Sam Harris argues that this truth about the human mind does not undermine morality or diminish the importance of social and political freedom, but it can and should change the way we think about some of the most important questions in life.(–The Free Press)] 05-2012
10. 
    Terrorist (2006: John Updike) [Fatherless eighteen-year-old Ahmad—half Irish, half Egyptian—has been under the influence of imam Shaikh Rashid since he was eleven. Ahmad's Jewish guidance counselor in his inner-city New Jersey high school offers help, but Ahmad agrees to commit violence for his religious beliefs] 05-2012
11. 
    Shibumi (1979: Trevanian—Rodney William Whitaker) [Nicholai Hel, a retired exterminator of international terrorists and still the world's greatest assassin, returns to action to repay a debt to a stranger who saved his life years before. Hel uses his nearly super-human mental and physical prowess to destroy terrorists from the PLO to the CIA] 05-2012
12. 
    Words and Rules: The Ingredients of Language (1999: Steven Pinker) [On the subject of regular and irregular verbs. In Pinker's words, the book "tries to illuminate the nature of language and mind by choosing a single phenomenon and examining it from every angle imaginable." His analysis reflects his view that language and many other aspects of human nature are innate evolutionary-psychological adaptations. Most of the book examines studies of the form and frequency of grammatical errors in English (and to a lesser extent in German) as well as the speech of brain-damaged persons with selective aphasia] 3&4-2012
13. 
    The Help: A Novel (2009: Kathryn Stockett) ['Jackson, Mississippi, 1962. Black maids raise white children, but aren't trusted not to steal the silver' is the first line that you read on the [UK?] blurb of The Help and this rings not only in the book but in history too. Poignant story told from the viewpoints of three women: Aibileen, raising her seventeenth white child; Minny, forever losing jobs due to her sassy tongue; and Miss Skeeter, an aspiring writer who was raised by a black maid] 3&4-2012
14. 
    The Sense of an Ending (2012: Julian Barnes) [A very short novel in which Tony keeps circling back to memories of Veronica, particularly to a mildly anxious weekend he endured at her parents’ house. This was back in the ’60s, before the ’60s really became the ’60s, when all but a few pockets of England were stuck in a slightly less austere addendum to the late ’50s] 2-2012
     
     
     
     
     
     

15. 

    William James (1842-1910) was
    the elder brother of Henry James

    The Varieties of Religious Experience: Being the Gifford Lectures on Natural Religion Given at Edinburgh in 1901, 1902 (William James) [Often called the father of American psychology, the author was a Harvard psychology professor, a philosopher pragmatist. He argues [unsuccessfully in my opinion] that any article of religious faith is "true" if it provides emotional satisfaction, and that all religious experiences are of equal value] 2-2012
16. 
    The Litigators (2011: John Grisham) [A two-partner Chicago law firm attempting to strike it rich in a class action lawsuit over a cholesterol reduction drug by a major pharmaceutical drug company. The protagonist is a Harvard Law School grad big law firm burnout who stumbles upon the boutique and joins it only to find himself litigating against his old law firm in this case. Many very funny passages] 2-2012
17. 
    Arguably (2011: Christopher Hitchens) [The first new book of essays by Christopher Hitchens since 2004, offers an indispensable key to understanding the passionate and skeptical spirit of one of our most dazzling writers, widely admired for the clarity of his style, a result of his disciplined and candid thinking. Topics range from ruminations on why Charles Dickens was among the best of writers and the worst of men to the haunting science fiction of J.G. Ballard; from the enduring legacies of Thomas Jefferson and George Orwell to the persistent agonies of anti- Semitism and jihad. Hitchens even looks at the recent financial crisis and argues for the enduring relevance of Karl Marx. The book forms a bridge between the two parallel enterprises of culture and politics. It reveals how politics justifies itself by culture, and how the latter prompts the former. In this fashion, ARGUABLY burnishes Christopher Hitchens’ s credentials as—to quote Christopher Buckley—our “greatest living essayist in the English language”] 11-2011 & 1-2012

18. 

    Richard Dawkins

    The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution (2010: Richard Dawkins) [second reading] [Author of The God Delusion questions the theory of intelligent design and explains the scientific evidence for the theory of evolution. Discusses selective breeding, genetics, fossils, new species, land mass changes, and more] 12-2011 & 1-2012
19. Why Orwell Matters (2002: Christopher Hitchens) [A biographical essay on George Orwell's thoughts on and actions in relation to the British Empire, the British left, the British right, the United States, English conventions, feminism and women, and his own controversial work for the British Foreign Office; a critique of Orwell's novels and legacy] 11&12-2011 & 1&2-2012
20. Thomas Paine's Rights of Man: A Biography (2006: Christopher Hitchens) [Covers the history of The Rights of Man and analyzes its significance] 10&11-2011
21. 
    A Wedding in December: A Novel (2005: Anita Shreve) [Written with the fluent narrative artistry that distinguishes all of Anita Shreve's bestselling novels, this novel acutely probes the mysteries of the human heart and the endless allure of paths not taken; Shreve is the author of Eden Close, Strange Fits of Passion, Where or When, Resistance, The Weight of Water, The Pilot's Wife, Fortune's Rocks, The Last Time They Met, Sea Glass, All He Ever Wanted, Light on Snow, Body Surfing, Testimony, A Change in Altitude, and Rescue] 10&11-2011
22. Light on Snow: A Novel (2004: Anita Shreve) [When a father and his daughter find an abandoned infant in the snow, the event forever alters the 11-year-old's understanding of the world] 10-2011
       
       
       

23. 

    Christopher Hitchens

    Hitch-22: A Memoir (2010: Christopher Hitchens) [Over the course of his 60 years, Christopher Hitchens has been a citizen of both the United States and the United Kingdom. He has been both a socialist opposed to the war in Vietnam and a supporter of the U.S. war against Islamic extremism in Iraq. He has been both a foreign correspondent in some of the world's most dangerous places and a legendary bon vivant with an unquenchable thirst for alcohol and literature. He is a fervent atheist, raised as a Christian, by a mother whose Jewish heritage was not revealed to him until her suicide. In other words, Christopher Hitchens contains multitudes. He sees all sides of an argument. And he believes the personal is political. This is the story of his life, lived large] 8,9,&10-2011

24. 

    Bernd Heinrich

    Winter World: The Ingenuity of Animal Survival (2003: Bernd Heinrich) [From flying squirrels to grizzly bears, torpid turtles to insects with antifreeze, the animal kingdom relies on some staggering evolutionary innovations to survive winter. Unlike their human counterparts, who must alter their environment to accommodate our physical limitations, animals are adaptable to an amazing range of conditions—i.e., radical changes in a creature's physiology take place to match the demands of the environment. Winter provides an especially remarkable situation, because of how drastically it affects the most elemental component of all life: water] 8&9-2011
25. Dick Francis's Gamble (2011: Felix Francis) [Nicholas “Foxy” Foxton, a former jockey who suffered a career-ending injury, and his coworker Herb Novak are starting the day in high spirits. It’s Herb’s first trip to Liverpool’s Grand National racetrack, and he’s thrilled to be there] 8-2011
26. The Confession (2010: John Grisham) [A grab-a-reader-by-the-shoulders suspense story, a superb work of social criticism in the literary troublemaker tradition of Upton Sinclair'sThe Jungle. The novel's target—the death penalty and its casualties—derives from the author's other life as activist and board member for the Innocence Project, an organization that fights to exonerate prisoners it deems wrongfully convicted] 8-2011
27. The Grand Design (2010: Stephen Hawking & Leonard Mlodinow) [This book gets into the deepest questions of modern cosmology without a single equation. The reader will be able to get through it without bogging down in a lot of technical detail and might have his or her appetite whetted for books with a deeper technical content. And who knows? Maybe in the end the whole multiverse idea will actually turn out to be right] 7-2011



Jonathan Franzen

28. Freedom (2010: Jonathan Franzen) [St. Paul, Minnesota. Liberal environmentalists Walter and Patty Berglund pioneer the gentrification of their neighborhood. But their seemingly perfect life disintegrates when their son moves in with Republican neighbors and Walter assists the coal industry. Walter's musician friend Richard and Patty's estranged family further complicate matters] 6&7-2011
29. Room: A Novel (2010: Emma Donoghue) [To five-year-old Jack, Room is the entire world. It is where he was born and grew up; it's where he lives with his Ma as they learn and read and eat and sleep and play. At night, his Ma shuts him safely in the wardrobe, where he is meant to be asleep when Old Nick visits.Room is home to Jack, but to Ma, it is the prison where Old Nick has held her captive for seven years] 7-2011
30. God's Problem: How the Bible Fails to Answer Our Most Important Question—Why We Suffer (2008: Bart D. Ehrman) [Former minister and author of Misquoting Jesus examines the Old and New Testaments for answers to the problem of suffering in the world. Ehrman finds the Bible offers different viewpoints—suffering as punishment, as a redemptive process, and as a test of faith—and analyzes the answers] 5,6&7-2011

31. 

    Antonio R. Damasio

    Self Comes to Mind: Constructing the Conscious Brain (2010: Antonio R. Damasio) [Goes against the long-standing idea that consciousness is somehow separate from the body, presenting compelling new scientific evidence that consciousness—what we think of as a mind with a self—is to begin with a biological process created by a living organism. Besides the three traditional perspectives used to study the mind (the introspective, the behavioral, and the neurological), Damasio introduces an evolutionary perspective that entails a radical change in the way the history of conscious minds is viewed and told] 5&6-2011
32. Rescue (2010: Anita Shreve) [Webster is raising his teenage daughter as a single parent; his wife and the daughter's mother left years ago when she couldn't conquer her alcoholism. Explores the story of how Webster and his wife met, when he was an EMT and she the victim of a drunk driver—herself] 6-2011
33. American Bloomsbury: Louisa May Alcott, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Margaret Fuller, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Henry David Thoreau: Their Lives, Their Loves, Their Work (2006: Susan Cheever) [Novelist explores the relationships among five writers of the transcendentalist movement who clustered around the home of wealthy Ralph Waldo Emerson in Concord, Massachusetts, during 1840-1868. Highlights their intertwined families and the love affairs that contributed to the creation of their literary masterpieces] 5&6-2011
34. Stalin's Ghost: An Arkady Renko Novel (2007 Martin Cruz Smith) [Moscow detective Arkady Renko investigates mysterious nightly sightings of Stalin at metro stops. He also uncovers crimes committed by two colleagues, former members of the Black Berets who operated in Chechnya, one of whom is running for office and knows Renko's lover Eva] 5-2011



Sam Harris

35. The Moral Landscape: How Science Can Determine Human Values (2010: Sam Harris) [Promotes a science of morality and argues that many thinkers have long confused the relationship between morality, facts, and science. Aims to carve a third path between secularists who say morality is subjective (e.g., moral relativists), and religionists who say that morality is given by God and scripture. Harris contends that the only moral framework worth talking about is one where "morally good" things pertain to increases in the "well-being of conscious creatures"] 4&5-2011
36. Jesus, Interrupted: Revealing the Hidden Contradictions in the Bible (and Why We Don't Know about Them) (2009: Bart D. Ehrman) [In this companion to Misquoting Jesus, biblical historian Ehrman reveals the divergent views of scholars concerning the true nature of Jesus and the concept of salvation. Discusses the historical Jesus, the writers of the Bible, and the origins of Christianity] 4&5-2011

37. 

    Jonathan Safran Foer

    Eating Animals (2009: Jonathan Safron Foer) [Author of the novel Everything Is Illuminated investigates the meat production industry and his own family's food choices. Examines factory farming and aquaculture and exposes their connections to global warming and environmental degradation. Explores the philosophical and ethical issues of carnivorism while advocating a vegetarian diet] 3&4-2011
38. Worth Winning (1985: Dan Lewandowski) [A rollicking story about one man’s search for his ideal mate. Set in Washington DC. The hero, Taylor Worth, is a well-to-do, good-looking 30-something computer programmer. He is actively courted and pursued by women, but can’t seem to find that ideal girl] 2&3-2011
39. Animals in Translation: Using the Mysteries of Autism to Decode Animal Behavior (2005: Temple Grandin) [Grandin, author of Thinking in Pictures, theorizes that autistic individuals experience the world as animals do—through direct sensory perception rather than abstract thinking. Grandin, herself autistic, and Johnson combine insights about autistic people with animal facts and anecdotes to reinterpret the capabilities and strengths of both groups] 2&3-2011

40. 

    Stieg Larsson

    The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets' Nest (2009: Stieg Larsson) [Sweden. Computer hacker Lisbeth Salander, from The Girl Who Played with Fire, is hospitalized with a bullet in her head, accused of murder. Journalist Mikael Blomkvist investigates Swedish officials protecting Alexander Zalachenko, Lisbeth's attacker—and father] 3-2011
41. The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie (2009: Alan Bradley) [England, 1950. Eleven-year-old aspiring chemist Flavia de Luce overhears her father in a heated argument with a stranger, who turns up dead in the garden of the Luces' decaying estate. When Flavia's father is charged with murder, she seeks clues in their village and his past to exonerate him] 2-2011

42. 

    Richard Dawkins

    The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution (2010: Richard Dawkins) [Author of The God Delusion questions the theory of intelligent design and explains the scientific evidence for the theory of evolution. Discusses selective breeding, genetics, fossils, new species, land mass changes, and more] 1-2011
43. City of Tranquil Light (2010: Bo Caldwell) [Caldwell (The Distant Land of My Father) draws from the biographies of missionaries in northern China during the turbulent first half of the 20th century in this second novel. It traces the story of two young, hopeful Midwesterners—shy, bright Oklahoma farmer Will Kiehn and brave Cleveland deaconess Katherine Friesen—as they journey to the brink of China's civil war in the isolated town of Kuang P'ing Ch'eng: the "City of Tranquil Light"] 12-2010&1-2011
44. The Discomfort Zone: A Personal History (2006: Jonathan Franzen) [Author of National Book Award winner The Corrections reminisces about his conventional Midwestern childhood and New York adulthood. Discusses his participation in a Christian youth fellowship in the 1970s, bird-watching, and learning German. Provides revelations about his fiction's real-life basis] 12-2010&1-2011



Ayaan Hirsi Ali

45. Nomad: From Islam to America, A Personal Journey through the Clash of Civilizations (2010: Ayaan Hirsi Ali) [Somalian author discusses events that occurred after those related in Infidel, including her move to America from Holland and relationship with the dysfunctional family she left behind. Analyzes Muslim attitudes toward money, women, and violence and offers suggestions to the West on avoiding radical recruitment of immigrants] 11&12-2010
46. Nothing to Lose: A Jack Reacher Novel (2008: Lee Child) [Hitchhiking through Colorado, ex-military cop Jack Reacher comes upon the unfriendly town of Despair. After being told to leave, Reacher, with the help of a female cop from neighboring Hope, sneaks back in repeatedly to investigate a mysterious factory and missing young men] 12-2010

47. 

    John le Carre

    Our Kind of Traitor (2010: John le Carré) [After teacher Perry Makepiece and his lawyer girlfriend Gail Perkins meet Russian money launderer Dmitri "Dima" Krasnov at an Antigua tennis resort, Dima asks for help defecting. British agents Hector Meredith and Luke Weaver get the case, and all players reunite in Paris] 12-2010
48. The Caged Virgin: An Emancipation Proclamation for Women and Islam (2006: Ayaan Hirsi Ali) [Somali-born Muslim author who fled to Holland advocates women's rights in Islamic cultures and condemns such practices as forced marriages, genital mutilation, and honor killings. Describes her 2002 election to the Dutch Parliament and her controversial film Submission that led to the 2004 murder of filmmaker theo van Gogh] 11-2010

49. 

    Philip Roth

    Nemesis (2010: Philip Roth) [Set mostly in 1944 Newark, it tells the story of Bucky Cantor, at 23 a freshly minted phys ed teacher and summertime playground director. Life’s dealt him some blows: his mother died in childbirth; his father, a thief, exited the picture long ago. Worse, to his anguish and disgrace, Bucky’s poor vision keeps him from going to fight the Germans alongside his best buddies—alongside, for that matter, “all the able-bodied men his age”] 11-2010
50. The Lion (2010: Nelson DeMille) [2003. Asad "the Lion" Khalil, from The Lion's Game, returns to America seeking revenge for the 1986 air raid that killed his family in Libya. His targets: antiterrorist agent John Corey and Corey's wife, FBI investigator Kate Mayfield] 10&11-2010