Rising Hegemon
- The Dark Heart of Italy, by Tobias Jones
- The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society, by Mary Ann Shaffer
- The Puttermesser Papers, by Cynthia Ozick
- The Glass Castle, by Jeanette Walls
- The Ask, by Sam Lipsyte
- The Privileges, by Jonathan Dee
- Frankly, My Dear: Gone With the Wind Revisited, by Molly Haskell
- Last Night in Twisted River, by John Irving
- The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, by Stieg Larsson
- Wolf Hall, by Hilary Mantel
- Christ Stopped at Eboli: The Story of a Year, by Carlo Levi
- One Day, by David Nicolls
- Miss Conduct's Mind Over Manners, by Robin Abrahams
- The Adventures of Augie March, by Saul Bellow
- Famous Last Words, by Timothy Findley
- Freedom, by Jonathan Franzen
- Only Yesterday: An Informal History of the 1920s, by Frederick Lewis Allen
- Battle Cry of Freedom, by James M. McPherson
- Barney's Version, by Mordecai Richler
- Housekeeping, by Marilynne Robinson
- Let the Great World Spin, by Colum McCann
- In the middle of Our Mutual Friend, by Charles Dickens, right now. Think I'll make it by December 31st.
Thursday, December 16, 2010
Reading is Fundamental: 2010 Edition
A selection of books I read this year below. Tell me what you read and and would recommend for 2011 in comments.
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5 comments:
I've read lots of national security state-related non-ficition (as I do every year), but the one I've got to rave about is Alfred McCoy's Policing America's Empire, which I'm in the middle of right now. It's enormously helpful in explaining the domestic changes that occurred in the country after the Spanish-American War and the U.S. occupation of the Philippines. Absolutely fascinating research.
Trevor Paglen's Blank Spots on the Map was very good, and a novel approach to geography. Greg Grandin's Fordlandia is very, very good. Shane Harris' The Watchers was disappointing, while Mark Halperin's Game Change was predictably cheesy--there's a book that should be shot and put out of its misery. Max Blumenthal's Republican Gomorrah was pretty good, even if the 2010 election sort of contradicted his basic premise. Human Smoke by Nicholson Baker is a quirky history in one of oddest and effective historical formats in years. Philip Shenon's The Commission is just too much inside baseball and not nearly enough about the 9/11 report itself. Charlie Pierce's Idiot America was pretty good, and more thoughtful than I expected. Finally found an old, used copy of Angus Mackenzie's Secrets, which is his exploration of how the CIA and the FBI tried to destroy the underground newspapers of the `60s and `70s and then hid the proof. Tim Weiner's Legacy of Ashes more or less confirms what many have been suggesting for decades about the CIA--it's not doing its primary job very well and it's hopelessly politicized. James Douglass' JFK and the Unspeakable is worth the read, but with a caution that it occasionally strays into territory that doesn't bolster his principal argument, and strains credulity.
Ai least get to the grade crossing correction section? Jones Beach development? Wish Belle Moskowitz and Al Smith were alive today.
this effed up RH on safari.
kevin philips american theocracy, should be required reading-in 2006. don't bother w/ part 2 tho.
up to f in my 1891 EB set. gotta get back to the orations.
pansypoo
George Orwell, of course. I particularly like "Shooting an Elephant," and "Politics and the English Language," but almost anything is good (except 1984 and Animal Farm).
Our Mutual Friend? My favorite Dickens! And how could you read Dragon Tattoo without going on to the next, and the next? I just fell in love with Lisbeth Salander, though the creepy s/m/misogynist stuff going in the first novel was hard to take...Battle Cry, huh- were you involved over at T.N.Coates' place, the group reading?
Just started William Gibson's latest, Zero History, beginning well, just finished Hiassen's latest, Star Island, despite a bad review by Lance Mannion, concurrently reading R.Hugh's Barcelona, and an old John McPhee, Pieces of the Frame. Another best of this past year, btw, was Bill Bryson's Short History Of Nearly Everything.
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