I read a lot.
I read very quickly.
My Kindle has allowed me to blow through unmitigated amounts of cash with this gloriously simple one-click "BUY!" trick that makes it....disturbingly easy to amasse a huge collection of books without leaving the comfort of my couch.
It's StarTrek is what it is.
SO - not all of these books were published this year - these are just some that I've read that I'd let ya borrow - if they were printed on real paper. Which most of them weren't. But yes, last Christmas season I could read a book a day without blinking. I went broke $9.99 at a time.
This was my first foray into the Palahniuk. The guy has great style. Subtle ways of packing big philosophical punch. The gist: messed up guy faux-chokes (or, really chokes, but on purpose) in restaurants to enlist life-saving maneuvers from strangers who's lives are impacted by the act of saving a life and they (interestingly), all remember "the day they saved someone's life" and send him money in greeting cards. His primary income, pretty much. There's also a side story with his ailing mother and some crazy "doctor" in the retirement home where she lives who convinces the main character he may have been cloned from the foreskin of Christ? Not kidding. But the writing was great, the characters were completely (believeably) offbeat, the message underlying the plot (about the moral quandary of lies, for instance) was well-developed and surprisingly thoughtful....all in all, good read.
Ah, Klosterman. So witty. This is the writer who suggested that all of us women between the ages of 18 and 60 had a Lloyd Dobbler crush that we mistook for a John Cusack crush. It was the book that prompted me to write my tretise on the wimpiness of Lloyd Dobbler. It's essentially a random collection of Klosterman's recollections from the early 90's - he writes about the fact that "The Real World" producers weren't really offering us a glimpse at a cross section of the youth of America - nope. Instead, "they were unintentionnal creating it. By now, everyone I know is one of seven defined strangers, inevitably hoping to represent a predefined demographic and always failing horribly...during the first RW summer, I saw kids on MTV who reminded me of people I knew in real life. By 1997, the opposite was starting to happen; I kept meaning new people who were like old Real Word characters..." Okay, so maybe that wasn't one of the "stitch-in-your-side" moments of brilliant hilarity, but it was that sort of unique perspective on what was going on around him that made for some unique reading. Highly recommend.
Also on the "highly recommend" list is Francis Chan's "Crazy Love." This one was a life-changer. This is one book that I would give to absolutely every friend and family member and casual aquaintance and person I'm not crazy about, not so much in a "this will change your life" sort of way as much as in a "please hold me accountable to living the way this book reasons we should live" sort of way... It's an incredible eye-opener that will take anyone's faith to a new, more practical, more liveable, more authentic, more loving place. In a nutshell: there's an amazing, holy, blameless God who loves us more than we can begin to imagine. Shouldn't our lives be a living example of that love? Should't we cower in awe of the love we don't deserve and do everything we can for each breath we take to be an extension of living that love out in the lives of other people? Seems pretty simple, right? Why try to adhere to rules, dogma, why try to be RELIGIOUS when you can be loving. Get rid of your "thou shalt..." check list and live faithfully, biblically, prayerfully, LOVINGLY. Live on less. Give more. Get out of your comfort zone and make your life worth something in light of the fact that we've been saved by grace. Don't waste a precious life by living weakly, without conviction. BEAUTIFUL book.
I heard Mukherjee interviewed on "Morning Edition" and was completely transfixed by the idea of a "Biography of Cancer." That's essentially what this is - it's a hands-on, in-layman's-terms, human-interest-styled take on the history of our understanding of and attempts to cure Cancer. Yes, with a capital C. It looks back at some ancient, historic examples of kings and queen's attempts to lance off cancerous growths, at our ever-evolving grasp of what triggers and what cures unregulated cell growth, traces through the social stigmas of those stricken by the disease and the surprising amount of condemnation many doctors (or, early, radical students of the disease, really) encountered when trying dramatically to cure the disease.
If you're passionate about human rights and social justice and global freedom from slavery and oppression, do yourself a favor and read this book. It's a very honest, achingly accurate, movingly insightful look into the horrors of human trafficking and the sex trade, much of which is happening in our backyard. If we could free millions of trafficked sex workers from slavery and offer them entrepeneurial training and education and a means to support themselves independently, wouldn't it seem like a no-brainer to get involved in any way possible? Read this book.
I saw the Kate Winslet movie adaptation of this book a few years ago and loved it. Decided I was curious to see how closely the screenplay followed its source material. EERILY so, apparently. Almost verbatim. But it was a delightful read, the characters were even more colorful and believable and interesting on the page than in the film -- and -- while I can't say this about ANY of Tom Perrotta's other novels ("The Abstinence Teacher," anyone? Good grief that book was horrendous....), I felt like he nailed the "normal people" dialogue pretty decently. Of course, I couldn't help envisioning Kate Winslet and Jennifer Connelly and Jason Patrick in the roles (which didn't entirely match up with the characters' written descriptions), but all-in-all, it's rare to find a book-to-movie adaptation where both the book and the movie hold up to each other so well. Definitely recommend.
This one impressed me because I had to actually use my brain's full capacity to grasp almost any sentence in the book. This man loves words. I love words. Therefore I love this man who loves words in all of their essayed glory. He reviews a dictionary (and this was my favorite part of the book - discussing various schools of diction and their warring opinions. Like grammar porn to this word junkie). He brandishes a big ironic stick when -- very dryly -- evaluating precisely what it is about Kafka that's funny. To the point that it's not funny. Which becomes funny in its own right. The title of that chapter: Some Remarks on Kafka's Funniness From Which Probably Not Enough Has Been Removed. Love it. This really is just a collection of essays by a man who has the most superb grasp of the English language I've bumped across this side of Greenwich Mean Time. He tries to dissect why we, as a nation, continue to read autobiographical sports memoirs (when most of them are insipid and brain-numbingly unoriginal), providing snippets from a Tracy Austin tome that's pretty much, yes, the most insipid, brain-numbingly unoriginal "writing" ever. This book, however: certainly not insipid, and certainly not brain-numbing.
Heh. From highbrow to fluff-lit with mass market appeal. Okay, okay, maybe fluff is too harsh. I'll say this about Jodi Picoult: as much as I resist ever picking one of her books up because I feel rather like I instantly become a middle-aged woman with a grown-out perm wearing practical New Balance tennis shoes while dining by myself at an Olive Garden with a glass of white zinfandel in hand, I never seem to be able to put her books down once I start. Her writing is absolutely mediocre (that is, all of her female characters of a certain age are completely alike. All of her male characters of a certain age are indistinquishable from one another, and all of her teenaged characters of a certain age were all cut from the same cloth), BUT she creates compelling plots. And she does her research on those hot-button social issues that she likes to tackle. I call her books "social issue family dramas" because they inevitably involve a touchy subject like rape, religion, suicide, abortion, drug use (you get the idea) and are usually situated inside the walls of a New England family home. So, yes, I read about half a dozen of her books this year, and The Pact was my favorite. It worked backwards to try to unravel the mystery about a teenage suicide pact. In the process, the families of the involved teens unravel. It wasn't necessarily serious fiction, but it was a good beach-read. Frankly, it's what I'm hoping to crank out in rapid succession one day soon, so hey, I can admire her career, either way.
I love, love, love George Pelecanos. Just like I love, love, love Greg Iles and Jeffrey Lent. Pelecanos did some writing for "The Wire" (which would explain why, after years of reading everything he'd written, I felt distinctly like I was watching a Pelecanos novel come to live with the first episode of "The Wire" I ever watched). He writes gritty, DC crime noir - he nails dialogue. He tackles action and suspense very deftly. This was a quick read -- it was also a diversion in tone, akin to a coming-of-age drama or a family saga. Still plenty of suspense, still a certain amount of urban grit, but a slightly more suburban setting. The snapshot: kid ends up in prison, kid gets out of prison and hits the straight and narrow, stumbles upon a criminal plot, is compelled to "do the right thing," ends up embroiled in subversion anyway when his buddies are less inclined to "do the right thing." Also included: nice doses of redemption and a little romance and some well-written father/son struggles.
So, technically, this was intended for "MEN." Fine. That alone interested me. Figured it couldn't hurt to get a little insight into the way a MAN's soul operates. This was actually a pretty engaging book, MUCH more so than "Captivating: Discovering the secret of a woman's heart" that was written by Eldredge's wife Stasi and intended for women. This had to do with the fundamentals of a man's need to be wild, strong, a fighter, a champion - and the ways that we often stifle that fundamental urge as parents, as wives, as partners and family members and friends and colleagues. It was eye-opening, really - and definitely equipped me with some future parenting ideas that never would have occured to me before. It came at a practical time in my life, too, as this last year has been about a lot of learning and discovery...anyway - it's a quick read, it's an interesting perspective on the male psyche written from a spiritual perspective that I really enjoyed. I connected less with the fundamentals of Captivating because I felt suspiciously that it was intented for women who are mothers of daughters.....anyway - Wild at Heart - insightful, written in a very digestable, conversational style, the pages flip by quickly - all-in-all a refreshingly memorable read.
Ta-da!
Still pondering what countdown #5 will be. I've done celebrity fashion, I've done wine, I've done books, I've done gossip sites....feels like perhaps I should tackle music or movies.....stay tuned.
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