Books 33 & 34
Book #33 was "No Surrender: My Thirty Year War" by Hiroo Onoda. I think this might end up being my favorite non-fiction read of the year. It's the memoir of a Japanese soldier trained in guerrilla tactics and left on a Philippine island during World War II who eluded capture for 30 years and refused to believe the war was really over. It's an interesting study of the psychology of how that could happen, and it includes photographs, diagrams and descriptions of how he, along with a few other companions in the early years, survived in the jungle (though he was alone by the end). This blog entry summarizes the story pretty neatly, but the book is definitely worth a read.
Book #34 was "Brideshead Revisited" by Evelyn Waugh. I'd recently seen the TV movie with Jeremy Irons and liked it and thought I'd read the book. It's told through the viewpoint of an agnostic/atheistic young Englishman who falls in love with a house (Brideshead "castle") and the Catholic family who lives in it. I found it quite interesting that while it's fairly obvious that the author is religious and believes in the redemptive power of faith (see the Wiki entry on Waugh), he also writes quite frankly about homosexuality, adultery, divorce and addicition. He doesn't go into prurient detail, but he doesn't beat around the bush and use tons of euphemisms as other writes of the 1940s I've read do. I was also enchanted by his descriptive vocabulary and kept a running list of new words to look up and savor as I was reading the book. I've read that Waugh was more appreciated for his comedic novels, so I may try one of those.
1. Kiss of the Spiderwoman [fiction]- Manuel Puig
2. The Garlic Ballads [fiction]- Mo Yan
3. The Botany of Desire: A Plant's Eye View of the World [non-fiction]- Michael Pollan
4. Devil in the Details: Scenes from an Obsessive Girlhood [non-fiction/memoir]- Jennifer Traig
5. Bleeding Kansas [fiction]- Sara Paretsky
6. The Living Great Lakes: Searching for the Heart of the Inland Seas [non-fiction]- Jerry Dennis
7. The Last of Mr. Noris [fiction]- Christopher Isherwood
8. Goodbye to Berlin [fiction]- Christopher Isherwood
9. The Golden City [fiction]- John Twelve Hawks
10. The Scarlet Pimpernel [fiction]- Baroness Emmuska Orczy (unabridged book on CD)
11 Strange Things Happen: A Life with The Police, Polo, and Pygmies [non-fiction/memoir]- Stewart Copeland
12. Snow Flower and the Secret Fan [fiction]- Lisa See
13. The Shameful Life of Salvador Dali [non-fiction]- Ian Gibson
14. Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life [non-fiction]- Barbara Kingsolver (unabridged book on CD)
15. The Bullfighter Checks Her Makeup [non-fiction]- Susan Orlean
16. Bee Season [fiction]- Myla Goldberg
17. Kiss Me Like You Love Me [fiction]- Wednesday Lee Friday
18. The Buffalo Soldier [fiction] Chris Bohjalian
19. 1912: Wilson, Roosevelt, Taft and Debs - The Election that Changed the Country [non-fiction]- James Chace
20. Thirteen [fiction]- Richard K. Morgan (unabridged book on CD)
21. The Waters of Babylon: A Novel About Lawrence After Arabia [fiction]- David Stevens
22. 50 Great Myths of Popular Psychology: Shattering Widespread Misconceptions about Human Behavior [non-fiction]- Scott O. Lilienfeld, Steven Jay Lynn, John Roscio and Barry L. Beyerstein
23. The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love [fiction]- Oscar Hijuelos
24. Metatropolis [fiction/novellas]- Jay Lake, Tobias Buckell, Elizabeth Bear, John Scalzi and Karl Schroeder (unabridged book on CD)
25. Under the Eye of the Clock [non-fiction/memoir]- Christopher Nolan
26. Iron and Silk [non-fiction/memoir]- Mark Salzman
27. Ventus [fiction]- Karl Schroeder
28. The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin [non-fiction/memoir]- Benjamin Franklin
29. Slowing Down to the Speed of Life [non-fiction]- Richard Carlson and Joseph Bailey.
30. Ancient Puzzles: Classic Brainteasers and Other Timeless Mathematical Games of the Past 10 Centuries [non-fiction]- Dominic Olivastro
31. Anathem [fiction]- Neal Stephenson (unabridged book on CD)
32. Almanac of the Dead [fiction]- Leslie Marmon Silko