Book Report

Last time I posted about books, I was having a boring book year. But I've been making some progress. As I've mentioned before, I started Harry Potter after that list of books, and in addition to that wonderful series that I couldn't recommend more, I've finished fourteen others...

• Confessions of a Shopaholic -- a re-read of one of the all time great chick lit books. It's a Bridget Jones-flavored story of a British girl who writes for a finance journal, but out of the office she can't seem to keep her credit card put away. Of course a hunky guy mixes into the story, and although this set up sounds pretty contrived, the turns of the plot are genuinely unique and fun.
• A Walk in the Woods: Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail -- A memoir about something I have absolutely no person interest in doing, and all the more worth recommending that it still drew me in. In fact it's one of my favorites of the year. It never occurred to me that hiking the Appalachian trail is such a rich experience of our country, or how difficult it must be. This book is written with wit and charm by a regular guy.
• A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius -- Another memoir, this time a man who must raise his younger brother living in recent San Francisco. Interesting story, and very high on the quirk factor, but overall didn't do too much for me.
• Freakonomics -- A fantastic non-fiction book about data analysis. Really. The concept is that financial markets are the most boring application of economic tools, but there are some much more interesting uses for them. How to find out if there is cheating in sumo wrestling. Whether your realtor is getting you the best deal on your house. How the money works in an inner city crack gang. Try it, you'll like it.
• The World According to Garp -- The story from beginning to end of an unusual man named T.S. Garp. Definitely some work to get started, but grew on me through the very last page.
• In the Land of Second Chances -- A book club pick that I wouldn't necessarily recommend. It's fiction, but is an easily apparently framework for the author to argue that the existence of God can be surmised by logical conclusion. I didn't really buy it.
• The Devil Wears Prada -- In my view, the set up of the book is the entire book. The main character works as a personal assistant to a horrible but powerful boss in the fashion industry. I found myself reading the entire book just to see how it resolved, which was ok.
• The Other Side -- A very obscure book recommended to me by a strange friend! The story of a man who is invited by a childhood friend to move to a remote part of the world, and join a very odd country of people. The country seems deranged, and eventually implodes. Maybe this book was magical realism, but more likely the result of an author with colorful passtimes.
• The Jane Austen Book Club -- Decent, but it probably would have made more sense to just read Jane Austen. Her books were the topics I liked best, the women in the book club were hard to like for me.
• The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole -- very charming (fiction) diary of a young English teenager, and the random and funny observations of his life.
• Animal Farm -- What can I say about this? Masterpiece. Strange after the books I've read on Communist China to think that this book preceded all the events that happened there.
• Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil -- If you can make it through the first half of the book, which feels like a series of short stories about residents of Savannah, the heart of the book is a very interesting criminal case.
  
• The Penelopiad -- A short story by Margaret Atwood, re-telling the legend of Odysseus through the eyes of his wife, who stayed behind during the Trojan War.
• Saturday -- A good novel about a day in the life of a British neurosurgeon, with some discussion of the war in Iraq thrown in. Very interesting, although to make it to 300 pages, a day gets drawn in very minute detail, so be warned.

Right now I'm reading The Historian, some kind of vampire book which I like very much and am looking forward to the remaining 540 pages! Happy reading to you.