Thursday December 17 2009

My new year's resolution last year was to read 10 books in the year. It was one of my more successful resolutions. Here's a list of what I was reading:

The Shack by William P. Young. My mom bought this for me for Christmas and I kinda felt obliged to read it. As far as religious fiction goes, it's not bad, but I would normally take Frank E. Peretti or C.S. Lewis. Speaking of which...
Out of the Silent Planet by C.S. Lewis. When he wasn't writing about Narnia, C.S. Lewis actually produced some pretty decent golden age sci-fi (think along the lines of Jules Verne or H.G. Wells). It's about a university professor who gets abducted by some unsavory colleagues who plan on sacrificing him on Mars to appease the inhabitants.
2666 by Roberto Bolano. Probably the best book I read this year. A giant dense narrative of crime, corruption, fate, war and death. On the surface, it's a mystery story about strange and seemingly random murders of young women in Mexico.
The Road by Cormac McCarthy. Yeah, it's a movie now. The book is so dark, depressing, and heavy that it's tough to read more than a few pages at a time without feeling exhausted. After the civilization comes to a collapse, a father an son travel down a road to seek out a better life.
The Great Divorce by C.S. Lewis. Of the Lewis novels I read this year, this one is far more well known. The speaker finds himself in hell with one last shot at redemption: a bus stop where a bus arrives to take souls to heaven where they can stay forever if they choose. The damned, however, find heaven to be a difficult place to live. I like Lewis's depiction of hell. It's not the fiery underground place that is setup in typical media. Rather, it's a giant sprawling city where it is impossible to find any satisfaction.
The Forever War by Joe Haldeman. Easily the best science fiction novel I've ever read. After earth declares war on a distant planet, soldiers are dispatched on ships capable of near light speed travel. Einstein's theory of relativity means that they don't age as quickly as the people left behind on earth. Upon returning from the war, the men and women discover that that they've lost a lot more than they anticipated. Haldeman actually had a hard time getting this published in the wake of Vietnam (it was first in print in 1974), but quickly became one of the few authors to win both a Hugo and a Nebula award for the same work (he did it again in '91 and '98).
Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card. I can't say I didn't like this, but I found it to be a little more juvenile than what I was expecting. Still, most people consider it to be one of the more influential works of science fiction. Like Haldeman, Card won the Nebula and the Hugo for it in 1985/1986.
Blink by Malcolm Gladwell. Gladwell has established himself as the current leader in pop-psych books and his stuff is generally pretty good. This one is about how our first impressions (those instant snap judgments we make) can be startlingly accurate.
Bringing Down the House by Ben Bezrich. This is the novel that the movie 21 was based on. It's a story about card counting MIT students who win big at Vegas before the casinos begin to catch on. It's presented as non-fiction, but after its release, it's been found to have a lot of embellishments. Still, it's pretty fun reading.
Spycraft by Robert Wallace. A non-fiction book about the CIA's engineers and how their inventions served the United States in the Cold War and beyond. I got this one signed.
The Wasp Factory by Iain Banks. Easily the weirdest one on the list. I was tempted to just leave this one off because it's, well, pretty messed up. A troubled youth recounts his serial murders which were aided by his occult future telling device, the "wasp factory".
The Code Book by Simon Singh. A non-fiction crash course in the history of cryptography. Despite all the heavy math involved in the subject, Singh makes a very readable book by focusing instead on the consequences of crypto throughout history as well as the biographies of famous (and eccentric) cryptographers. One of my favorite books I read this year.
Super Freakonomics by Dubner and Levitt. The follow-up book to the popular and controversial Freakonomics. It's more of the same, which I liked the first time and the second round is also pretty good. The two authors look at data sets and apply statistical analysis to find hidden meaning behind things we think we already understand.

I'm also currently reading Godel, Escher, Bach by Douglas Hofstader. It's an 700+ page book that attempts to explain the significance of consciousness. Major themes include Godel's incompleteness theorem, math, DNA, artificial intelligence, music, art and a hefty amount of fables told in the style of Lewis Carol. It won a Pulitzer for general non-fiction in 1980.

I'm also about half way through the Bible. I wonder how many people actually sit down and read it. I've currently read 33 books in both the Old and New Testament. So far, I can probably already declare my favorite books. In the OT, it's 2 Samuel. The book of 1 Samuel ends with the death of King Saul, who in the later years of life fell out of God's favor. With Saul dead, King David can assume the the throne that was promised to him. David's political career as King of Israel is filled with crisis and victories. There's war, deception, love, punishment and redemption. His own son mounts a rebellion against him and there's a scandal involving the murder of a woman's husband whom David lusted after. It's a crazy ride that's not pretty at times, but it eventually leads to the peaceful golden age of Israel under David's son, King Solomon. For the New Testament, my favorite book is Romans. Paul's letter to the church at Rome is the most intense and theologically deep. There's a lot of stuff in there that most people wouldn't expect, like Paul's exhortations that we all look past divisions in spiritual rituals. It's difficult reading, even for the Bible, but together with the 4 gospels, it forms the backbone of core Christian beliefs.

Also next year, I'm planning on knocking out Pychon's new novel Inherent Vice, the late David Foster Wallace's novel Infinite Jest, and Bolano's earlier breakout novel The Savage Detectives.

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