87) Cell by Stephen King. Stephen King has not lost it - or, at least, if he had temporarily, he found it for Cell. It's a sort-of light version of The Stand, in that it tells of what may be a global disaster, but does so on a much smaller scale. As you might guess by the title, or looking at the cover of the book, the subject matter is cell ( Read more... )

85) Storming Las Vegas by John Huddy. Subtitled "How a Cuban-born, Soviet-trained commando took down the strip to the tune of five world class hotels, three armored cars, and millions of dollars". And that's what happened. Jose Vigoa, born in Cuba, trained by the Soviets, came to America during the boat lift, liked some of what he saw, didn't ( Read more... )

83) Leisureville: Adventures in America's Retirement Utopias by Andrew Blechman. Do you think you know what life is like in an retirement age-restricted community? After the author's neighbors moved down to one, the curiousity as to why and what it's like got to him, so he spent 30 days down there finding out. What he found is a community ( Read more... )

81) Comedy at the Edge: How Stand-Up in the 1970's Changed America by Richard Zoglin. An interesting history of modern stand-up, from Lenny Bruce (cited for his influence on others) through Jerry Seinfeld. Featured comedians include: George Carlin, Richard Pryor, Steve Martin, Robin Williams, Robert Klein, Albert Brooks and Andy Kaufman - among ( Read more... )

78) When You Are Engulfed in Flames by David Sedaris. Yet another collection of stories and essays. If you like Sedaris, you'll like this collection. If you don't like him, you may still like him. One odd thing about his essays is that they remind me (stay with me here) of Simpsons episodes (some of them anyway). He'll start out talking about ( Read more... )

77) Sixty Days and Counting by Kim Stanley Robinson. The culmination of his "Science in Washington" series, this one is more like "West Wing meets the NSF and takes on global warming" than any of the others. President Phil Chase makes Jed Bartlett look as liberal as Ronald Reagan ( Read more... )

76) Fifty Degrees Below by Kim Stanley Robinson. The second of his modern political books dealing with climactic change. This time around there's an election, a record-setting cold winter (as you might guess by the title) and an effort made to do things. My complaints about the first book don't apply here - stuff happens. He also cut the number ( Read more... )

71) Lord of the Clans by Christie Golden. A Warcraft novel, it tells the tale of the Orcish Warchief Thrall's childhood - and why he has the name Thrall to begin with. It's actually a rather depressing story, that brings up the issue of nature versus nurture and delves into topics of racial prejudice, with a side order of respect for nature ( Read more... )

Yes, 10. But they were all collected under one cover, and only slightly longer than a Stephen King or Clive Barker novel.

61-70) Nine Princes in Amber, The Guns of Avalon, Sign of the Unicorn, The Hand of Oberon, The Courts of Chaos, Trumps of Doom, Blood of Amber, Sign of Chaos, Knight of Shadows, Prince of Chaos. All by Roger Zelazny, all ( Read more... )

59) The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett (re-read). A classic detective story. Perhaps *the* classic detective story. It's an interesting read because Hammett's style differs in many ways than modern fiction does; he's much more focused on character description, with what everyone looks like and what they're doing. In many ways the book reads ( Read more... )