Books | Nine Ages

Welcome to Dan's Books. This is an abridged list of all the books I've read in my life. Abridged, because I am not counting partial reads, technical books, non-books (encyclopedias, magazines, the like) and children's books (sorry, "Choose your own adventure"!)

Books that await my approval

Books that used to, previously, await my approval, but have, since I made this list, been duly read, act by which they are hereby re-positioned in this list of books that used to, previously, await my approval.......

Books that I am currently reading, or that I have been reading for a length of time anywhere between one month to several years, and in some cases, decades; by date of start; and much abridged, as my memory sucks:

	FIFTY-NINE.- Fielding: BRIDGET JONES'S DIARY:: * * ½ The book was very funny. Although it was not particularly interesting as it did not contain anything I could really describe as new, it was most certainly better than the movie. I saw the movie after reading the book. I was kind of disappointed. It started off well, but the characters were greatly underdeveloped imho. The second half of the movie had nothing to do with the book. I felt the book dealt with the ending much better. I read this book in two days (18-19 June, 2003) during a vacation in Ecuador. My sister brought the book along and I started reading it and couldn't put it down afterwards. Entertaining, but purely so.
	SIXTY.- Palahniuk: LULLABY:: * * * A good book, but not nearly as good as Fight Club. This one is more concerned with the fantastic, the mystical side of human existence. It is more obviously philosophical and less subtle, and hence less entertaining on the whole. Still a very good read, obviously--Chuck Palahniuk is great at that. A note about this novel. It seemed to draw on an idea I had heard of already, and although I cannot of course prove that this is an idea borrowed/stolen from another author, you can't prove me wrong either. One of Jeff Noon's Pixel Juice stories talks mainly about the idea of a particular phrase and movement people may perform in order to commit suicide. That Noon novel came out right before Lullaby--about two or three years before. Seems like a big coincidence in my opinion but hey... if he hadn't done it I would of!
	SIXTY-ONE.- Murakami: THE ELEPHANT VANISHES:: * * * * ½ This excellent collection of short stories by Haruki Murakami definitely brought me to higher indifference curves. I read it mostly while on the beach, and these stories are quirky and amazingly well written. Which, I guess, demonstrates not only Murakami's amazingness but also his translator's, Noboru Watanabe.
	SIXTY-TWO.- Safran Foer: EVERYTHING IS ILLUMINATED:: * * * * ½ Excellent novel by this now-distinguished author! This is like a novel I wished I had written. It is funny and quick-witted and has an interesting plot and interesting, complex, three-dimensional characters and sex and everything that good novels by definition have. I only took half a point off cause it was ultimately kind of frustrating, just like good writing is supposed to be I guess, but still... plus, I was a little irritated that Foer used the technique of ending the novel in the middle of a sentence. Cause for some reason I know that's been done before, and therefore it shouldn't be done again. Somehow I feel that he had wanted to do that from the very beginning and though it was a kind of a weird way to end the story he did it anyway cause he'd always wanted to do it so he said screw it whatever and went ahead and did it. Yeah.
	SIXTY-THREE.- McWilliams: AINT NOBODYS BUSINESS IF YOU DO:: * * * * * This book should be required reading in high school and college, I don't know what it is doing sitting in the library book-shelf. This book completely reaffirmed my belief in society and the future. For godsakes just read it and thank me later. You don't even have to buy it to read it, it's online. Here you go: http://www.mcwilliams.com/books/aint/101.htm You're welcome.
	SIXTY-FOUR.- Orwell: NINETEEN EIGHTY-FOUR:: * * * * * This is definitely my favourite book of all time. Fancy that I hadn't read it in eight whole years! The first time I read this book I was 13. I was in the eighth grade and George Orwell was just an author, 1984 was merely the year my sister had been born, and the world was simple. Now I realise Nineteen Eighty-Four was a major influence in my way of thinking about the world and it helped me become a much more critical thinker. But at the time, I did not realise this; I thought it was an excellent story and immediately recognised Orwell's genius, but I missed the main point, I think, of the story--this is not fiction. After reading this awesome zenith of Orwell's achievement, I was just not satisfied. I had to know more. I went to the library and checked out several books about Orwell, modern critical interpretations of Nineteen Eighty-Four, and stuff of the sort. OK, I still haven't read it but that's just cause I have too much homework. But that's beside the point! Ah... when will you ever learn. The point is... this book is just so ridiculous. Fiction is the best when it is an actual description of a reality distorted only in meaningless ways. And this book is it.
	SIXTY-FIVE.- Manson: THE LONG HARD ROAD OUT OF HELL:: * * * ½ Marilyn Manson has an interesting story to tell; a very unusual one, that's for sure; I guess it's much easier to understand this cultural phenomenon after reading this book. It's definitely a very weird read. But you know, one of those books that you pick up and you just want to keep reading to see what happens. The style is a bit strange at times too because it tries to follow some sort of organized format that ends up constraining the story in some weird way I can't describe. Oh well. It was good.
	SIXTY-SIX.- Burroughs: NAKED LUNCH:: * * * * ½ I finished this book, not without chagrin, on a bright green Florida morning during Spring Break. Here is what I wrote before finishing: OK OK, I am not actually done with this book yet. Whatever. I watched the movie during winter break and I was liek, I gotta read this shit. So I checked it out of the library and started. The style is amazing, and very inspiring to read, but makes it hard to read the book steadily; after a while you are just so completely confused as to what is going on you just have to put it down for a while to let it sink in. OK great. I'm gonna keep reading this bastard. I can tell you already that it is definitely worth its stars. So now that I've finished, I'm intrigued. I can say with confidence that the book made no sense at all. Usually that would piss me off horribly. But this book is so amazing, so refreshingly different, I was actually glad! I felt that not understanding it actually added to the experience. Is that weird? Yeah I thought so. I mean it was an amazing read. Burroughs is just a genius at words. He also gave me the inspiration for what would become my band's name: "The Liquid Jig." Originally derived from the book's mention of a ritual known as the "Liquefactionist Jig" it got amended to "Liquid" after we agreed that the other name is too long and hard to remember, which is true I guess. OK that was completely useless random inffo, but this is my website so I write whatever the fuck I want. Not like anyone reads this shit anyway. Ha. Anyway,,, great book. On to On the Road. By the way, the full text of Naked Lunch can be found here.
	SIXTY-SEVEN.- Brown: THE DA VINCI CODE:: * * ½ I didn't bring this book to vacation, my sister did. As so often happens with us, I read the book and she didn't. So the book was OK, right. It definitely has its moments. And who doesn't love a little conspiracy theory. Dan Brown's style, though, leaves a lot to be desired. I felt as if I was reading a badly written screenplay rather than a real novel. Which is OK if the plot is actually good, and believable, but sadly while it is good enough to keep me entertained, it is barely believable. And I don't mean it in the traditional sense of most Da-Vinci-Code-critics. I mean stuff like, you have to believe that three very intelligent grownups cannot figure out that an unreadable scribble is actually normal english written backwards. Come on, no one is that dumb... right? I mean, when I saw it I figured it out immediately, I would assume the people in the novel are a little smarter than that... but I may be wrong. Anyway, I'm glad I read this novel because it's caused so much controversy, and I'm kind of into this stuff. Nevermind the bad writing; many of the things Dan Brown exposes are probably correct. Not all, of course, not even most, but many. So go ahead and read it, the writing is dumb and the story is blah, but the stuff in there, it's pretty interesting.
	SIXTY-EIGHT.- Murakami: NORWEGIAN WOOD:: * * * * * Awesomeness itself. Murakami is a ridiculously talented writer. This is the third book of his that I read and every time I am amazed. This is the kind of stuff I wish I could write. A simple style, but beautiful, easy, and immensely interesting. A simple story, but well-told, with depth, and real characters. Less is more, right. Oh yeah. This book is rated NC-17. I had no idea when I bought it. This must be pretty normal in Japan, I thought. I remember being so sad when I was about to finish. But it was like that. I couldn't put the damn thing down. I finished it in a week, and that only because I was interrupted constantly by sleep and feeding. Those last few hours of reading were ridiculous. Anyways, five stars, and I can't wait for the next one.
	SIXTY-NINE.- Anon.: GO ASK ALICE:: * * * * I read this diary at the bookstore in less than three hours. It was less than 200 pages long, and I skimmed over most of the first 50 pages, which were probably interesting but did not deal directly with the subject at hand, the author's spiralling fall into addiction to acid. A true story, this account was incredible. This Middle America girl is barely 15 when she gets her first taste, and she goes through so much that it is almost unbelievable. She runs away from home twice; she goes to a juvenile asylum; she meets the craziest people; and then she dies. I was fascinated and engrossed. This was an extremely good read and it left me mesmerized. It is also a very fast read. Which is good.
	SEVENTY.- Nabokov: LOLITA:: * * * * * Another entry from the bookstore! Last Sunday I sat down to read with some friends. I had with me On the Road, A Confederacy of Dunces, and Lolita. Lolita was the last book I came to, but it was by far the one that captivated me the most. As soon as I read the first paragraph, I was hooked. How can you read something like, "Look at this tangle of thorns" and not want to read more?!? So I read. And read. In three hours I read 61 pages. One fifth of the book. At this rate I will be done in one month! Update: I finished the book eventually. Yes: not in a month, but in a couple. Still, not bad. Lolita is amazing, in prose and otherwise. This is probably the best-written prose I've ever had the pleasure of reading. The entire book reads like a lyrical free-verse poem. And the story, well, it is kind of sad, but intriguing. Of course, I have to believe that if you write about anything this well, you can make even the most mundane intriguing. The full text of Lolita can be reached here.
	SEVENTY-ONE.- Thompson: FEAR AND LOATHING IN LAS VEGAS:: * * * * ½ I first watched Fear and Loathing at a friend's house while twisted with alcohol, and my life has never been the same. I saw the book on sale in Tower, and purchased it impulsively. I finished it in three days (June 20-23, 2005). I loved it because it is so visual--although I may be biased, having seen the movie--and because it is so twisted. All the while you're wondering, well, did this actually happen? What kind of fucked up world is this? It's too bad you have to be sober to read. As Margaret Mead would, if you read this while twisted, you'd have one hell of a trip. Hehe.
	SEVENTY-TWO.- Coelho: O DEMÔNIO E A SRTA. PRYM:: * * * * Entertaining, and theleologically inspiring, I found Demônio discarded among a bunch of other books in a dank forgotten room in a Penn dormitory. Now it's here with me. I finished it in three days (June 24-27, 2005), right after Fear and Loathing. Although not as good, this one has an equally interesting story, and lots of interesting messages. That is, if you are interested in a book with messages. I also liked that it was relatively short (211 pp) and pretty easy to read--considering it's in Portuguese and all =p. At times it felt a little extended, and at others compressed; that would be my one complaint. Otherwise very enjoyable.
	SEVENTY-THREE.- Miller: A CANTICLE FOR LEIBOWITZ:: * * * * ½ Immediately following Demônio I started on Canticle. Actually, it was a reuptake. I started Canticle a long time ago, but never managed to finish it, because I'm just retarded like that. In any case, I'd like to thank Pilar, who gave the utterly fascinating book report presentation thingy, in tenth grade english class; and Mr. Dewar, the sarcastic and utterly hilarious teacher who assigned her the book. Mr. Dewar also assigned me The Name of the Rose, that semester. Coincidence? Was The Dewar driving at something? I guess I'll never know. Anyway, the book is fascinating. Some science fiction always is always quite welcome in my reading repertoire. I could make this into a movie trilogy, in fact, I wonder if it's been tried already... it should be done. Dammit! Fiat Voluntas MIA!!! This book took me an abnormally long time to finish. Several years to actually get hold of the book; then a couple years to start reading it; then a couple months to read the first 60 pages (the first few chapters are always the most difficult); and then like... what? 18 days to read the rest? (Today is the 15th of July.) To my defense, I have to say that the font is really, really small. It's hard on the eyes! Come on. Gimme a break. I started a new job these days, too, and I still finished it in less than a month! That's not bad! (For me.)
	SEVENTY-FOUR.- Ghosh: THE CALCUTTA CHROMOSOME:: * * ½ Although Dr. Amitav Ghosh does have an interesting style and manner of storytelling, what with all the jumping in space and time from one chapter to the next, and while it does make for interesting reading, I must admit that the ending of The Calcutta Chromosome was somehow disappointing. As my Summer 2001 COML classmates would tell me during our short class discussions on the assigned reading, the story seemed to be building towards a very intersting climax that maybe the author got bored and forgot to write. So at the end you are all like wtf what happend to the rest of this book?!? I finally know what they mean. Also, although the context of the story and the idea of the plot, you know, secret societies, personality change, conspiracies, "anti-science" and all that, are all very interesting and promising plot points, they all seemed sort of wasted on the conclusions, and the story in itself is too all over the place to make all that much sense. It jumps too brashly from 19th century India to near-future New York to Hungary to a few days of 1995 in Kolkata. It's fun to read, but it's confusing, and you expect some sort of awesome reward at the end to make up for your suffering, only to have your hopes, like, mega dashed. But, oh well! It is still well-told, and kind of fun, and it gives you interesting ideas about all that crap I talked about. So it still gets two and a half stars. Yay!
	SEVENTY-FIVE.- Hosseini: THE KITE RUNNER:: * * * * ½ Good story, this one. Felt a bit rushed at times and some of the plot twists are a bit forced. But the message hits you real close, it fucks you up good, it's such a fucked up story. In a good way, I mean. Well, good and bad. The fact that a story can swing so dramatically from sweetness into savagery in so few pages is what makes your guts turn over and forces you to keep reading. The style is simple and powerful. Couldn't read it again though, not in a long time.
	SEVENTY-SIX.- Palahniuk: NON-FICTION:: * * * * Oh Chuck, how do you do it? Well, there you go; truth is stranger than fiction; there are some things I have yet to see, and that is good to know. But just to be really clear: most of the stories are good. Some are great. Some are terrible. The great ones are: Testy Festy, My Life as a Dog, Frontiers, The People Can, The Lady, Not Chasing Amy. They concern, respectively, sex maniacs, dressing up as a dog for a day, submarine sailors' lives, divination, and proper writing protocol. The blah ones are about wrestlers, people who build castles, monster truck racers, and a rocket builder. Just blah, too technical, too long, too pointless. But the good ones are really good, and worth the blunders. I think I'll try to get my hands on a copy of any book written by Amy Hempel, if I ever can. She's the subject of Not Chasing Amy in case you forgot... This book was read in two days in August, 2005, in Bali.
	SEVENTY-SEVEN.- Murakami: AFTER THE QUAKE:: * * * In Hong Kong I bought two Murakami books: The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle and After the Quake. I bought Chronicle because it was huge; I purchased Quake because it was new. Of course, it was also short, as in, all it contains is short stories, so I read it first. Murakami is usually awesome, and I've been reading him for awhile; this effort however I must unfortunately classify as merely semi-awesome. A couple of the stories are really good; most of them are fun to read; but the problem is the ending. None of them have real endings. I don't mind if he only does that with a couple, but I would like a real ending at least once in a while, you know??? I mean, we all deserve a little of that which we seek, especially if I paid for it... so, hopefully, Chronicle does have a real ending, and hopefully I get to it before this year is over. This book was read in a four-day span in August, 2005, in Bali and Dili.
	SEVENTY-EIGHT.- Wei: SHANGHAI BABY:: * * * ½ My dad bought Shanghai Baby in HK. But I immediately found it to be of public use and impounded it. Let me preface by saying that the story is good, and well-told. Not the best I've ever read, but good enough to keep me interested til the very end. Simple, fresh, interesting; although at times a bit slow, a pleasure to read nevertheless, in part because of its total lack of inhibition and the defiant NC-17 rating. OTOH, the translation into English by Bruce Humes... well folks... at least have an English-speaking editor read his translations before publishing them, no? I mean, it's not a terrible translation, but pretty close. I did start picking out particular examples of weirdness that I intended to put on here but after awhile they became too numerous and I gave up. The worst part is that, at times, I can almost feel that amazing Chinese metaphors lay just below the surface of the clumsy English translation. If anything, Wei Hui's strength is her ability to come up with metaphors and similes that rival Burroughs and Nabokov. But sometimes there are also some really strange-sounding, no-sense-making wannabe-similes that leave one wondering what the fuck was she really thinking before Bruce mangled the shit out of it? Maybe I really should learn Chinese... This book was read from late August to September 10, 2005, in Dili.
	SEVENTY-NINE.- Verne: UN CAPITÁN DE QUINCE AÑOS:: * * ½ I have been reading this venerable book for fifteen years now. It was given to me by my dad when I was in the fourth grade. Unfortunately, at the time I was going through a transitional phase where books piled on my dresser and were never finished before I started the next. So it was with Capitán; and I carried it with me for fifteen years, always intending to read it but never getting around to it. Well, I finally got around to it, reading it between bouts of After the Quake, Shanghai Baby, and Memoirs of a Geisha. So, although it is only about 150 pages, at most, it took me about two months to read it all. It is a charming adventure story, but I have to admit that I have read better and since Jules Verne is, well, Jules Verne, I did expect something more... and somehow, the story was told so briefly it seemed a little flat to my spoiled eyes and ears. I liked it, I just wished it was a bit more detailed, in every which way. This book was read in July, August and September, 2005, in Dili.
	EIGHTY.- Golden: MEMOIRS OF A GEISHA:: * * * * * The two weeks it took me to read this magnificent novel seemed to stretch out into eternity as I felt I lived two simultaneous lives. What a wonder it is, to be so enchanted and taken in by such a well-written, so believable account of the life of a geisha. At 500 pages, this is one of the longest novels I have ever finished reading. I honestly expected to take at least a month to finish so imagine my surprise when at barely two weeks the last pages thinned out. At 36 pages per day, these past two weeks have probably been some of the most full of reading ever. Rushing home at lunchtime to get in at least another chapter before having to go back... well that's what I call addiction. And this is the perfect book for that, because truly, it could have fooled me; I imagined to be listening to Sayuri's voice the entire time; and never was I just reading--I was seeing her confronting Hatsumomo, and bow in front of Mameha, and entertain the Chairman. Another benchmark book against which to measure all future readings. I can't wait to read it again. This book was read from September 10 to September 24, 2005, in Dili.
	EIGHTY-ONE.- Murakami: THE WIND-UP BIRD CHRONICLE:: * * * * ½ This 600-page book took me a little longer to read: three weeks. As always, Murakami never fails to impress me. The book is well-written and a great read. It's just too long. After about 500 pages, my interest started petering out; it was still a really good book, it was just not going anywhere. Something chronic about Murakami is that his stories tend to have no plot in the traditional sense of the word. I'm not saying that's a bad thing, because typically a reader likes to be surprised. And there are many surprises in Chronicle. In fact there are at least three or four parallel stories all running in unison, and the only thing tying them all together is that the central character, Okada, seems to be connected in some way to all of these independent, totally unrelated stories. Okada's life, for that matter, is the most boring of the plots--most of the book he spends unemployed, with no will to find a job, not even looking, lounging about in his house, doing nothing but waiting. He is merely the figure that ties all the other plotlines together. It's a strange book, but then, aren't all of Murakami's stories like that? Strangeness is a good thing. Of course, when it veers you all over the tracks until you have no idea where the book is going can be a good thing but also a bad thing, especially if you are really sleepy and know that the marginal minute spent reading this book is another minute subtracted off sleep time. Once that is in perspective, strangeness can be not so good. Because obviously, no two storylines are equal. And when you get to one storyline that you really like--in my case, Lt. Mamiya's storyline--and then have to go back to the other storylines, well, it kind of makes you want to go to sleep instead. Yeah? Irregardless, it's still a fantastic book, and I still read it really really fast. Hehehe. This book was read from September 25 to October 15, 2005, in Dili.
	EIGHTY-TWO.- Safran Foer: EXTREMELY LOUD AND INCREDIBLY CLOSE:: * * * ½ This unusual book is actually a lot shorter than it seems because of all the pictures. It is a little bit like cheating but I liked it. It's very weird, and in that sense, very Safran Foer ish. So, yeah, I liked the story, the main one, I mean. The problem is that in addition to the main story there are two other concurrent stories, the grandmother and grandfather stories, and those, they aren't that interesting. And on that one chapter where things are like corrected in red, I just had to skip almost the whole thing, because I just couldn't stand reading it, it was boring and on top all this red shit. So, now you know, if you ever want to prevent me from reading anything, just make it really boring and then put a bunch of red marks on it. So, this sophomore effort of Safran Foer gets a still pretty good rating of 3.5 which is not as good as for Everything is Illuminated but is still way good, yo. This book was read in two weeks in October 2005, in Dili.
	EIGHTY-THREE.- Eco: MISREADINGS:: * * ½ Well, there's not much I can say about this short-story collection, Misreadings, because I shipped it home and so don't have a lot of stuff to reference to. Suffice it to say that although some of the stories were really quite clever--one about caveman science-fiction in particular comes to mind--some were downright bizarre, others stupefyingly boring. Most were all right though, and Eco is a great writer, which saves him on numerous occasions. Still, this book has nothing on The Name of the Rose. This book was read from October to December 2005.
	EIGHTY-FOUR.- Mitchell: UNDERSTANDING POWER: THE INDISPENSABLE CHOMSKY:: * * * * * This is the kind of book that makes me go OMFG WHAT AN AMAZING BOOK. I'm not kidding. It's that good. Basically, a collection of edited Chomsky talks on a variety of political subjects. The kind of stuff you don't usually think about on your usual day-to-day. Really mind-blowing stuff about politics, mostly American politics, militarism and economics. It would be kind of pointless, of course, for me to try to elucidate on all the points this book touches in one paragraph. So I won't; I will just say: OMFG READ THIS BOOK. This book was read in four days (!) in February 2006, in Dili.
	EIGHTY-FIVE.- Asimov: FOUNDATION:: * * ½ Foundation: that cornerstone of modern science fiction, that framework upon which dozens of other books and sagas rest, that creator of worlds and entire galaxies. To be painfully honest, then: the high expectations I had of the book completely clashed with the book itself. While the story was, at times, very interesting, Asimov's clueless style tended to undermine it. The dialog is packed with adverbs; the prose is a mere narrative. Perhaps it is because the novel was in essence based on an encyclopedic set of facts and occurrences already determined in Asimov's head; Asimov's problem was to wrap some sort of fiction around his encyclopedia entries, when IMHO, it would have been far more fascinating to forget all the theatrics and read the actual encyclopedia entry itself. Asimov is a good inventor of worlds, though unfortunately not a good writer. So, authorial intrusions aside, I did manage to enjoy the novel quite a bit. Granted, it took me about a year of meandering reading to achieve so, but I found that as I neared the ending I read more and more per sitting, and when I finally finished the damned thing, I found myself wanting more. So in fact, this is the way I know that it was, indeed, a good book. This book was read, intermittently, for about a year, between 2005 and February 2006.
	EIGHTY-SIX.- Ormerod: THE DEATH OF ECONOMICS:: * * * ½ I got this book at Dili's Monkey Bar in trade for some old and mostly pointless fiction books given to me by a departing staff. It was probably the best transaction I've ever made, cause this book is the bomb. Granted, it's really old (mid-eighties I believe) but the insights within were pretty sweet. It probably helped me become a more critical thinker and better suited for the profession. The only thing I regret is that I had to abandon this and many other books when I was evacuated from Timor. Bad. This book was read between February and May 2006, in Dili.
	EIGHTY-SEVEN.- Diamond: GUNS, GERMS, AND STEEL:: * * * ½ I read this almost concurrently with Death of Economics and it was pretty sweet. I got it from my friend Jesse, who, incidentally, kept all my Mr. Show DVDs. GRRR!! But back to the book... it was pretty great, and I especially enjoyed getting a sensible answer to one of the questions that has vexed me since I was a small child==why do some people have more cargo than others? Though it necessarily simplifies, and sometimes has too much of a field day with the examples, it is still a fascinating read. I loved it. This book was read between February and May 2006, in Dili.
	EIGHTY-EIGHT.- Perkins: CONFESSIONS OF AN ECONOMIC HIT MAN:: * * * * Being evacuated in a resort-town one is way too poor to afford opens up whole dimensions of time previously thought impossible. I set out to find a good book to occupy this sudden surplus, and lo, there it was... Confessions. It was fate: I had to own this book! So I read it. It only took me a few days. I finished it, I think, on the plane ride to LA from Hong Kong. I also watched two movies on that flight. And got a full night's sleep. And three meals. Anyway, back to the book. It's very good, obviously, and the revelations, although not entirely surprising, become more understandable though the personal narrative. Overall, very good work. I'm glad that this book was written--and that I read it. This book was read in early June 2006, in Bali and Hong Kong.
	EIGHTY-NINE.- Robbins: PLEDGED: THE SECRET LIFE OF SORORITIES:: * * * I have to say this book is much better than what it sounds like. It's factual, direct, and yet very human as well. Since I have had the (mis?)fortune of knowing and dealing with girls in sororities, including rushees and pledges, I was engaged and at the same time could really put faces on the protagonists of Robbins' narratives. And the book helped pass the time during uneventful plane rides to and from Vegas (yeah, baby!), so that was an added bonus! This book was read in about a week in June 2006, in Denver, Las Vegas, and Denver again.
	NINETY.- Strauss: THE GAME: PENETRATING THE SECRET SOCIETY OF PICKUP ARTISTS:: * * * * ½ This book is great. It makes a great novel, except that it's non-fiction. It makes an interesting autobiography, except that it's also a pickup encyclopedia. It makes a great reference, except it's also a novel! A damn good combination, if you want to know! I've never read anything like it. It feels a little bit like reading Fight Club but in a guilty pleasure kind of state of mind. The book changes your frame. The thing is, I was bored at the Hong Kong airport a couple weeks ago, and I pick up this book. It was like I was drawn to it, like it was fate. I couldn't tear my eyes off it, I was almost late for the plane because of it. But I didn't buy it then... I don't know why. I regretted it every day after that. Finally, I decided I wasn't going to get over the regret until I read the whole thing, buy it or no. So I went to the big bookstore in Denver one day, and bought the bastard, all $30 of it. Shite. But it was worth it. It kept me awake in Miami airport, and the whole night last night. This book was read 20-23 June 2006, in Denver, Miami, and Quito.
	NINETY-ONE.- Mastretta: ARRÁNCAME LA VIDA:: * * * ½ All my time at the beach I planned to read four books I hauled there, and ended up enraptured by this fine Mexican piece. I don't even know why or how it caught my attention, because I'm usually not attracted to this kind of fiction. Was it fiction? I guess that's one of the things that was interesting about it, because it kept me guessing if it was really fiction or if it was really factual. I'm not sure. Anyway, I liked it, and it was refreshing to read something not just in Spanish but in Mexican as well. This book was read 7-12 July 2006, in Atacames, Ecuador.
	NINETY-TWO.- Benedetti: LA TREGUA:: * * * * I guess I got into the whole Latin American authors thing for a bit, and besides I'd always wanted to read a Benedetti novel ever since I read his short stories in middle school. And so it is, just like I thought it would be. Really good. A deceptively simple and maddeningly sad story, easy to read, easy to get, full of interesting asides and messages. Quite short at only 191 pages, and still one of the best of its genre I've come across in a while. This book was read in July 2006, in Quito, Ecuador.
	NINETY-THREE.- Kaku: PARALLEL WORLDS:: * * * * I started the book over a month ago, and although it is beautifully written and makes my head explode, it still required long periods of putting down so I could process the reading. The theories of course, are nothing short of crazy. Like Kaku says, all absurd enough to be true. The concept of parallel universes has always appealed to me, even before I knew it was an actual physical possibility, and that is a big part of the reason I find the book fascinating. Although I cannot claim to comprehend M-theory any better than before, I at least feel I possess a faint grasp of the overall picture, and if anything, it's a good head-exploder. This book was read in June and July 2006, in Denver and Quito, Ecuador.
	NINETY-FOUR.- Coelho: THE ALCHEMIST:: * * * ½ This novel was special because it is like a fairy tale wrapped in a children's story. Surprisingly perhaps, this made the task of reading through the book unexpectedly difficult, because I guess the structure bored me somewhat, although the fact I read it in English rather than Portuguese probably took its toll in terms of accrued reading pleasure. Nevertheless, the story contains a number of useful lessons, just like O Demônio e a Srta. Prym. I didn't fully comprehend the whole Language of the World, Soul of the World, Personal Legend vocabulary, but then again maybe that's the way it's supposed to be. After all, it's not really fiction; it's more like a myth, what with people turning into wind, and lead turning into gold, and immortal people popping in and out of existence. This book was read in June and July 2006, in Bali, Denver, Vegas, and Quito.
	NINETY-FIVE.- Max: I HOPE THEY SERVE BEER IN HELL:: * * ½ I first read of Tucker Max's exploits on his website, so naturally I was interested in reading the book to see what other hilarious situations he has gotten himself into. There were a couple of surprisingly good stories that I hadn't read and that I enjoyed very much. On the other hand, it looks like towards the end of the book he realised he needed some extra pages and added what basically amounts to fodder, because the last three stories are simply not up to par with the rest. While Max excels at the use of hyperbole to make a comical situation hilarious, I found that the same hyperbole does not make a humdrum situation funny in any way, and this was the case in the last three stories, which I barely slogged through. On the whole though, the book is a good read, and definitely easier on the eyes than on-screen reading. May Max keep having ridiculous stuff happen to him so that we may all continue to laugh. This book was read in August 2006, in Wilmington, DE.
	NINETY-SIX.- Chang: WILD SWANS:: * * * * * I bought this book on a lark, while evacuated in Bali, perusing the only bookstore in the mall with English titles, and my friend and fellow evacuee, Mihoko, happily suggested the book. I was impressed by the intensity of the recommendation so I purchased it, but did not read it until I came to New York, three months later. Jung Chang's amazing novel recounts the stories of three generations of Chinese women, first under the warlords, then under the brutal Japanese occupation, then the excessive Guomindang, and finally the Communists. The most gripping parts of the book are in the second half, which describe all the personally experienced suffering under the various Maoist persecutions from 1955 to 1976. Although it took me about three weeks to read the book, I read the last half of the book in under three days; it was practically impossible to put it down during this time. In many ways, I am very glad I read this book, not just because it is a gripping true story of almost unimaginable suffering, but also because my previously murky and vague image of twentieth-century China has come into sharp--almost too sharp--contrast. I say too sharp, because the night before finishing the book, I had been reading about awful tortures and denunciation meetings, and that night I had a nightmare--the first nightmare I've had in many years. That's how powerful this book is. This book was read in August-September 20 2006, in New York.
	NINETY-SEVEN.- Coelho: ELEVEN MINUTES:: * * * Coelho is a gifted writer, but after reading The Alchemist I knew his strength rests in the portuguese language. When his work is translated into english, something goes missing. The translation is excellent; it's simply that the whole thing would have sounded better in my head if it was in its original tongue. That said, I think the story is good. Coelho's stories seem to always be molded from the same fairy-tale-esque background, which implies that the result does not really feel like an accurate portrayal of something that actually happened, but rather a plot that is there simply to wrap around a set of lessons Coelho wants to teach or pass on. Which is fine if that's what they are and are taken for what they are. Sometimes, however, one wants to feel like the story is more real, more gritty, more down-to-earth. That's my only criticism. Maria is a very real person, but some of the situations she gets herself in, and/or the way those situations are described, sometimes come off as too fantastic for a tale that is supposed to be based on a true story, as Coelho states in the epilogue. This book was read in late September-early October 2006, in New York.
	NINETY-EIGHT.- Lennon: JOHN:: * * * ½ This first-person account of some of John Lennon's most important and notable years is eye-opening and surprisingly honest, and it gave me an entirely new perspective on the man that is practically deified today but perhaps more poorly understood than most people think. The entire thing is entertaining, but of special interest are the last several chapters where disaster just piles on disaster. Although these are the most riveting chapters of the book, they are also some of the least thorough, which left me feeling strangely unfulfilled. Beneath a calm exterior, they are filled with acrimony towards Yoko Ono, which is, however, quite rightly deserved. The sense of tragedy of the last few chapters are especially emotive, and are so full of sad adjectives that one feels emotionally drained after a few pages. And yet I read the latter half of the book all in one sitting today! The book is a worthwile read, and Cynthia Lennon is a sympathetic and simple writer, which makes the book a fairly light reading. The only bizarre image clashing with this is the final one, where Cynthia states that had she known what going to happen if she fell in love with John Lennon beforehand, she would not have gone through with it. It's the last sentence of the book, and is almost impossible to interpret since it is so outlandishly different from what I expected to read; in fact I had to read the last sentence at least three times to make sure that is what it said. This book was read in October-October 8, 2006, in New York.
	NINETY-NINE.- Baker: THE MEZZANINE:: * * * I liked this book because it is very random, and I have never read anything quite like it. A website recommended it, and I read its reviews on Amazon, most of which were quite positive, so my interest was piqued and I checked it out of the library a few days later. Although it has taken me over a month to finish, that is probably one of the book's strengths as well as its main weakness--it is so impossibly random that it is very easy to leave off the reading almost anywhere you want and pick it up again as if you'd never stopped reading. So... yes... quite enjoyable in that respect. But random. Extremely random. The footnotes were sometimes too much for me as well. They were interesting, but around the middle of the book they started getting really obnoxious, and I believe I skipped a couple of particularly long ones in protest. Finally, the footnotes were not correctly numbered, and for some reason that really really bothered me. If one is going to use numbers to number one's footnotes, the second footnote should be a 2, not again a 1; this defeats the whole purpose of having them as numbers to begin with. If you're gonna use a bunch of 1's to number your footnotes, might as well scrap the numbers altogether and use asterisks! Hello! This book was read in October-November 28, 2006, in New York.
	ONE HUNDRED.- Murakami: SOUTH OF THE BORDER, WEST OF THE SUN:: * * * ½ The one-hundredth book I read has come and gone, and how appropriate that it be a Murakami novel. Why? Cause Murakami is ridiculously awesome, that's why. So as Murakami novels go, this one doesn't particularly stand out. It wasn't better than Wind-Up Bird, or Norwegian Wood, with which it is most comparable: a woman, a dark past, an uncertain future, enough sex for an R rating. But it's good fun, I read it really quickly, it helped pass the time. It's fun, light reading, enough mystery for the imagination, good stuff before going to sleep. This book was read in Denver, late December 2006.
	ONE HUNDRED ONE.- Fitch: WHITE OLEANDER:: * * * * I had some time to waste at a Cherry Creek Waldenbooks, so I picked out the first book that caught my fancy and started reading like there was no tomorrow. White Oleander popped out at me like a big ol' white flower in the middle of a sea of dandelions. Or something. That's what I liked most about this book, the similes. And metaphors also. But the similes more. Fitch can make some amazing similes. Unfortunately, I gave the book to my sister so it's still back in Denver and I can't dig up any examples to show you here. Oh well. Not that you care that much. So, yeah, this book is great, and it's better than the movie. Although the movie is pretty good reproduction of the book. One weird thing about the movie is that I watched it like 23789279 years ago and I thought the actress was a young Leelee Sobieski. So when I read the book I had Leelee on my head. So you can imagine my surprise when we rented the movie and it's... NOT Leelee Sobieski. That was funny. This book was read in Denver and Vail, early January 2007.
	ONE HUNDRED TWO.- Baigent & Leigh: THE INQUISITION:: * * * My dad bought this book and shipped it to NYC. Upon seeing it, I found it of public use and commandeered it during his stay. Well, the title says it all, it's a book about the inquisition. Most of it was interesting, but not very surprising. The best part was the end. This book was written in 1999 when JPII was still Pope. The end deals with the then-head of the Inquisition, or as it is called now, the Holy Office, or Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, or something. Anyway, the head of this most sacred office is none other than Cardinal Ratzinger, our very own Pope Benedict XII. Very nice! I enjoyed this last part best, it's quite juicy. This book was read in New York, January 14-21, 2007.
	ONE HUNDRED THREE.- Murakami: SPUTNIK SWEETHEART:: * * * * Classic Murakami. One of his best of the shorter kind. This was really quite a trip, and I was drawn into the story in a way South of the Border, West of the Sun didn't quite pull off. Partly because this was so unpredictable, which wasn't the case with the other. And also because it's a familiar theme, and because it's just so beautifully written. Again, the theme is close to Norwegian Wood and South of the Border. However, several things in the book, certain images, made me think very much of Hard-Boiled Wonderland, what with all its images of paperclips and such. Here, we have keys falling in rivers, ferris wheels turning lazily in a Swiss afternoon, European waiters with stains on their shirts, imaginary music, long stairs, airplanes turning into dragonflies. Murakami is da bomb, all right. That's about all that can be said. This book was read in New York, January 27-30, 2007.
	ONE HUNDRED FOUR.- Kultgen: AVERAGE AMERICAN MALE:: * * * * Washington DC is a fucking boring place. This was brought home to me the day I moved into what would be my home for three months while I did a summer internship there, June 1st, 2007. I went to Barnes & Noble on a lark because I had absolutely nothing better to do. I was picking up random books and reading random passages, and obviously, this book, with its utter profanity and resolute vulgarity, caught my attention and I could not put it down for about an hour. The B&N staff were bothering me though, so I left it and went on to other pointless pursuits. The whole day and the next, I could not get the book out of my mind. Would the nameless narrator get back with his estranged girlfriend? Would there be a confrontation between the old and the new girlfriend? Most importantly, what other various acts of the carnal persuasion would be described in detail in the remainder of the book? I had to know. So I returned on June 3rd, and finished the book in one sitting, in about four hours. Some of the finest four hours I've ever spent in a Barnes & Noble. Chad Kultgen's narrative style is the shit. None of this bullshit prose those highfalutin authors of yore write; this is all straight to the point. A book about what goes through the mind of the average American, no censorship, no rodeos. A book about men, for men. And a fabulously entertaining, funny, and scarily true one at that. Many a time I caught myself laughing out loud in the bookstore, sure people were staring, while I thought, Fuck... that is just so true. This book is awesome, but as I said, it is for men. If you are a woman, do not read it. Even if you think you want to know the truth about what men (in the West, at least) think. Because you are just not prepared. Heed my advice, O naïve ones. If you are a guy, expect five hours of superb and hilarious entertainment. Yay! This book was read in Washington, DC, June 1 and 3, 2007.
	ONE HUNDRED FIVE.- Yunus: BANKER TO THE POOR:: * * * * Simply written and executed, Banker to the Poor presents an interesting and dazzling vision for the potential and possibilities of the future of poverty. Unlike the books I had to read in class about studies on poverty, Yunus got right into the thick of things and figured things out from the bottom up, which is laudable and makes for excellent reading. The final message is important as well because it defines the book's purpose of being, to let people know that there are ways to defeat this ill called poverty and that this is just the beginning. This book was read in Washington, DC, June 2007, mostly on buses.
	ONE HUNDRED SIX.- Varley: THE JOHN VARLEY READER:: * * * * The Reader incorporates one and a half dozen short stories by Varley, but the truth is that I put it on my Christmas wishlist only because I wanted to reread The Persistence of Vision and could not find a bootleg on the intarweb. That said, there are several other excellent stories in the book, though none quite reach the level of Vision. These are The Phantom of Kansas, reminiscent of Heinlein's All You Zombies, and In Fading Suns and Dying Moons, about a very unorthodox butterfly-loving alien invasion. But most of the stories are pretty good and I'm glad I took the time to read 'em. This book was read December 25, 2006 – July 4, 2007, in Denver, New York, and Washington DC.
	ONE HUNDRED SEVEN.- Heller: CATCH-22:: * * * * ½ This book is amazing, and amazingly difficult to finish. What makes it great is also its greatest weakness: the fact that the storyline jumps around so jovially means that it is really easy to get lost, especially at the beginning, and when that happens, it becomes very easy to put the book down and rest, and when that happens, the book sometimes doesn't get read. It took me at least three or four independent starts to actually finish the book, and I'm glad I finally finished it, because it superb storytelling and an excellent story. But it's not easy. This book was read 2005 – July 15, 2007, in Timor-Leste, New York, Washington DC, New York again, and on the road between DC and NYC.
	ONE HUNDRED EIGHT.- Freedman & Barnouin: SKINNY BITCH:: * * * ½ Fun book, I read it in one sitting today at Barnes & Noble while all the Harry Potter fans milled around in useless excitement while I ignored them and listened to Alicia Keys. Simply written so easy to read quickly, a quality I appreciate. Eye-opening in important ways, because yes, most people do not often, I think, put enough thought into what they eat. So the message is important. The style is cool, too, because it's funny and cynical and not preachy. The only thing I didn't like was the overly graphic descriptions of animal cruelty. Yes, it's part of the message, but frankly, it's a part of the message I couldn't care less for. Okay, animals are cruelly treated in the meat packing plants, I get it, I don't need example after example and guilt-tripping bullshit. It's got old. The rest of the book though is really quite good and recommended. This book was read on July 20, 2007 in around 3 hours, in Washington DC.
	ONE HUNDRED NINE.- Troost: THE SEX LIVES OF CANNIBALS:: * * * * Okay, so I was initially attracted by the title. I mean, who wouldn't want to know all about the sex lives of cannibals?? What happened was I was at Lyle's party and people were being wusses and going to sleep and it wasn't even midnight yet, so I figured I'd just read Lyle's books until I fell asleep. I was going to flip through this one quickly before moving on to Hunter S. Thompson, but the narrative was quirky and funny and I felt I could really relate to it, because, well, I have also spent a considerable amount of time in a tiny island in the middle of nowhere. So I kept reading. And kept reading. And I read 160 pages before I fell asleep. I read the rest of it the following day, a Sunday. I loved it. Its well-written, funny, meandering style combines well with the theme of a travelogue. This is something I could have read while I was in Timor and totally gotten the jitters from. My only complaint is that the book is too short. At 272 pages, there is certainly ample room for... expansion. This book was read in two days in Ford, VA, during a roadtrip to Richmond, VA, and then a further roadtrip to Washington, DC, and in DC itself.
	ONE HUNDRED TEN.- Gaddis: THE COLD WAR: A NEW HISTORY:: * * * * The book, describing the events leading up to, during, and the aftermath of the cold war is well-written and enlightening. There is more than one surprise throughout its pages and I found myself going to the end notes for source clarification more than once. There is really a lot more to be said on the topic of the cold war, but the book was concise and that helped to keep it upbeat and interesting. And it is. This book was read throughout late July and early to mid-August, 2007 in Washington DC.
	ONE HUNDRED ELEVEN.- Gibson: NEUROMANCER:: * * * ½ Gibson's prose is fun to read, I'll give you that. Reading Neuromancer is enjoyable just for the strange combination of sounds that Gibson builds into coherent sentences. Unfortunately, due to the disjointed way in which I read the book--in buses mostly to work--sometimes it distracts too much from what is going on, and I was constantly lost halfway through a paragraph, wondering if my imagination was working overtime to make up for the paucity of information. The ending, too, was a bit unreal, too easy, anticlimactic. Overall, though, a fun read. This book was read throughout June, July and August, 2007 in Washington DC.
	ONE HUNDRED TWELVE.- Cialdini: INFLUENCE:: * * * * Although I learnt a good portion of what was here described in Influence in Marketing classes at Penn, admittedly it had never been presented to me in quite this fashion--so concisely, so scientifically, and it seems, so ulterior-ly. Reading this book, one can't help but wonder about human behaviour and devise in merriment ridiculous schemes that mirror what one reads. At a brief 200 and so pages, and written excellently, this book goes by in a flash and, though not necessarily more knowledgeable, has left me much wiser. This was, I think, a great idea. This book was read December 25, 2007 - January 2, 2008, in Quito, Ecuador.
	ONE HUNDRED THIRTEEN.- Nabokov: LOLITA:: * * * * * I have wanted to reread Lolita ever since I put the book down for good back in 2005. And as the ditty goes, «it was three years, three years far from your beauty». I regard it as quite simply, the best-written book I've ever read; at least in English prose. This time I read it violently, starting at page 87, where the going gets good; underlining my favourite passages, in the decrepit, abused, third-hand book I used; and reading everything in about a week (going back to the beginning, natch; I'm not cheating). Not just that, but read it on the beach. Sweetness on technicolor beaches (36), all right. I now outline five, only five, of my favourite passages in the book, to show you what it is that I am raving about. Keep in mind the book is full of these; I've underlined at least 100. I spend my doleful days in dumps and dolors. (43) Lolita had been safely solipsized. The implied sun pulsated in the supplied poplars... (60) ... marooned morons near blued pools... (159) ... how I longed to enfold them, all your four limpid lovely limbs, a folded colt... (192) It is not the artistic aptitudes that are secondary sexual characters as some shams and shamans have said; it is the other way around: sex is but the ancilla of art. (259) This book was (re)read January 4 - January 10, 2008, in Atacames, and Quito, Ecuador.
	ONE HUNDRED FOURTEEN.- Clapton: CLAPTON: THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY:: * * * ½ Eric Clapton's life is pretty ridiculous, seeing as he was at the very vortex of the 60s, and he's lived through it all, and survived. I had fun reading his book; it's very interesting, pretty fast-paced, and easy to read. A little too easy, sometimes, as Clapton is fond of clichés and he often repeats himself when describing people, overusing adjectives like wonderful, amazing, and the like. The story is fascinating nonetheless, and I've learned a lot about Clapton's time and work. This book was read late December 2007 - January 15, 2008, in Quito, then Atacames, and again in Quito, Ecuador.
	ONE HUNDRED FIFTEEN.- Little: BITING THE WAX TADPOLE:: * * * ½ This is a fun little book, a quick, sweet read. Elizabeth Little takes the reader through some of the complexities of language extremely effortlessly, in a bouncy and genial manner. Her frequent and often hilarious references to pop culture make the book special as well. I was bored today, and decided to stop by Barnes & Noble on the way home from ice skating; obviously, the half-hour drop-by turned into a five-hour readathon. I got through this book in about 3 or 4 hours, and even though I cheated a little with my speed reading, I read at least 95 percent of the content, which is good enough to make this list. I read it haphazardly, as I usually do with new books, first making my way through the middle, then the ending, then going back and reading the chapters I'd missed. It's just more fun that way. This book was read Sunday, February 24, 2008, in New York.
	ONE HUNDRED SIXTEEN.- Banks: THE WASP FACTORY:: * * * It took me a long time to read The Wasp Factory: about seven or eight years. I bought it the last time I went to South Africa, in 2000, on a whim; I never got around to reading it in college, and it returned home unread; I brought it to New York after Christmas 2007 and, basically for lack of anything else to read, finished it within a couple months. Mind you, this is a 184-page-long novel. Therefore, I read an average of 20-odd pages of this book per year. There's nothing wrong with the book. It's a quirky story, certainly entertaining at parts, but I found the beginning extremely tedious, which is why I never finished it in college; and it's also why when I started rereading it in New York, I just avoided the beginning completely, opting to start reading somewhere in the middle. This, I found, was much better, and still the story dragged at parts. This was Banks' freshman effort, and so is forgivably sluggish at these points. The ending seemed to me a bit silly, just because I don't believe such a secret could be kept so easily for so long. But I liked the book enough to finish reading it, so it earns its stars. This book was read at various intervals between 2000 and 2008 in three or more continents.
	ONE HUNDRED SEVENTEEN.- Letcher: SHROOM: A CULTURAL HISTORY OF THE MAGIC MUSHROOM:: * * * * ½ Shroom is a excellently written and extremely engaging history of psychedelic mushrooms, their ancient and historical significance, and a great analysis of their current popularity. Produced in a scientifically rigorous framework, yet succinct and very compelling, I glode (glided?) through this book easily and was left wanting more. Highly recommended, my only real complaint being that the tangents the author at times indulges in sometimes begin to get technical, but only marginally so. In any case the tangents are very few, and usually very interesting in their own right. This book was read 19-28 May, 2008, in New York.
	ONE HUNDRED EIGHTEEN.- Sacks: MUSICOPHILIA:: * * * * Sacks describes, with much gusto, and eloquence, how music affects, influences, and heals us. The book was not just educational, but an extremely interesting read as well. I did, however, have some trouble finishing it, I suppose because although the beginning was exciting and new, by mid-book the outcomes had become predictable, and the climax--a story about total, debilitating amnesia--occurs too early. Even so, this does not detract from the excellent writing and amazing stories, and I definitely recommend this one. This book was read 19 May to 20 July 2008, in New York and Michigan.
	ONE HUNDRED NINETEEN.- Rucker: FREEWARE:: * * * * This imaginative cyberpunk novel has all the trappings of a classic in terms of the sheer inventiveness behind it. The novel flows easily and I read it in a matter of days, a rarity for me nowadays. One afternoon my dad, sister, and I were walking around the village and I spotted several books that had been thrown out, but the owner had mercifully placed on top of the trashcan so that whoever happened to want them might pick them up and save them from an ignominious end. As it were, among the five or so books I picked out, Freeware was the one that has shone through as a true masterpiece. Every concept in this book, and the phenomenally intricate history behind the events in the book, make it a pleasure and a mind job to read. Even very basic concepts in the book such as imipolex, moldies, and the Gurdle Decryption take on a fantastic, yet at the same time reality-infused meaning. This book is a standout among all the science fiction I have ever read. The only problem, and the reason it loses a star, is that however well the book flows, Rucker's actual prose is lackluster at best, redundant and intrusive at worst. He is good at describing things, but the writing sometimes gets stuck in ancillary and pointless repetition, almost as if the book were meant to be read by ten-year-olds rather than a mature audience. Needless to say this gets tiresome rather quickly. However, if one can tolerate and learn to ignore this rather annoying flaw, the book is an excellent read, a true trove of ideas and possibilities. This book was read late July to early August 2008, in New York.
	ONE HUNDRED TWENTY.- MacLeod: THE CASSINI DIVISION:: * * * ½ Although I had some trouble reading through the beginning of this novel, in the end it was quite worth it, thanks to MacLeod's ability to fuse science fiction with philosophy and politics. The philosophical clash between the outwarders and the Earth-tenders neatly complements the plot and help move it along. However, the fact that there is so much philosophy in the book does clash with the occasional lumpy action and awkward dialogue. In my humble opinion, MacLeod should have stuck with the former and cut out the latter. Another minor complaint, yet more important than the first, is that the ending is too abrupt and kind of sucks. It is almost as if MacLeod became tired and decided to end the novel while there was still action to be had, rather than giving it the philosophical wrap-up I felt it deserved but did not get. So the book ends with a self-indulgent bang instead of waiting for the intellectually rigorous whimper. Too bad. This book was read late July to mid-August 2008, in New York.
	ONE HUNDRED TWENTY-ONE.- Seife: ZERO: THE BIOGRAPHY OF A DANGEROUS IDEA:: * * * ½ Short and sweet, entertaining and yet very educational, this book explores in brief and yet in detail the story of zero, the number, the mathematician's nemesis, the astronomical phenomenon. What an interesting subject--and yet, not something most people think twice about, but so important to our current understanding of the world. Seife's prose was also very appropriate, and difficult concepts were explained brilliantly and succinctly. Zero for the win; yes, Zero for the win. This book was read late July to September 10, 2008, in New York, mostly on subways to and from work.
	ONE HUNDRED TWENTY-TWO.- Arfin: DEAR DIARY:: * * * * I love books like this--raw, desperate, yet somehow sweet and funny. Although it has been compared to Go Ask Alice--it is even referenced in this book--the comparison is superficial at best, because this book is more about revisiting and deconstructing the desperation of walking into the world of drugs, rather than the actual experiences themselves. The actual experiences are rather sparsely documented; this book is more about relationships, about the people that populated the descent, rather than Alice's seemingly helpless, absurdly involuntary crash into junk. I don't really know why I like books like this so much. This is my kind of sugar to the meals that are Murakami or Thompson or Miller or Banks. I picked it up last weekend, Sunday I think, having nothing else better to do, and swept through some tasty bits before starting back at the beginning and deciding, yes, I want to read this whole 230-odd page book. So I went back today, sat down for three and a half hours or so, and finished the damn thing. It was awesome. I sort of wish all books were so easy to read and so much of a pleasure; it makes me feel guilty to have derived so much pleasure from such a painful story, but then again, that's what these stories are for, and that's why they're called guilty pleasures. Not educational, not soul-enhancing, not enlightening, but a really great and really quick read, a one-night-stand kind of book. Or in my case a two-evening stand, whatever that is. This book was read September 7 and 11, 2008, in New York, in the Barnes & Noble at Union Square, in about five hours, total.
	ONE HUNDRED TWENTY-THREE.- Benedetti: LA MUERTE Y OTRAS SORPRESAS:: * * * ½ I read this book on the subway to and from work during a few weeks. The short-story format suited me, and I usually read at least one, often two stories per trip. Most of them are fun little stories, surprising as the title suggests, and all entertaining, some more than others. I liked them. I sort of miss them. The stories were organised in a favourable manner in this collection. My favourite was the last one, a fantastical realist tale about a couple meeting in Paris in a deserted train station. Benedetti is amazing and although there were a couple stories I wasn't feeling, on the whole, I love this stuff. This book was read in about 2-3 weeks of September, 2008, in New York, on subway cars to and from work, in 20-minute chunks.
	ONE HUNDRED TWENTY-FOUR.- Ferraris: FINDING NOUF:: * * This fictional mystery tale deals with a Saudi pair of ad hoc investigators exploring the puzzling death of Nouf, a heiress to the majestic Shrawi family. Set in the context of the Muslim religion and Saudi custom, the book offers a biased, yet candid insight into these two hidden realms from an American perspective. Though Ferraris seems to work hard to hide this bias, it is still one of the most compelling and obvious things shining through her work. It is not necessarily a bad thing, because all writing comes from a perspective; it is just worth mentioning because it is so noticeable. As the rating shows, I did not particularly enjoy this book. Ferraris is a good writer, but the way she wrote this book was not particularly enjoyable to me. It felt too plodding, too structured, too much pointless description and not enough narration. The plot is not particularly compelling, and certain important plot points are entirely too predictable, which becomes particularly annoying when the main characters fail completely to consider these blindingly obvious propositions. Finally, the ending struck me as unrealistic and as a completely unnecessary surprise twist to such an otherwise bland plot, making the entire story utterly unbelievable. What sadness. It was only under duress that I was able to finish this book--it is the first book I have read for my book club. This is in fact the reason I have so much to say about it--we discussed it at length at our book club meeting and we did agree on our basic dislike for the story. So, at least, this served the purpose of igniting a discussion of why we disliked it! This book was read in about 2-3 weeks of September and October, 2008 (finished October 15), in New York, in the Barnes and Noble bookstore on Union Square and the NYU bookstore.
	ONE HUNDRED TWENTY-FIVE.- Díaz: THE BRIEF WONDROUS LIFE OF OSCAR WAO:: * * * * ½ As the second book for the book club, Wao had a big role to live up to after Nouf. And the Pulitzer-prize winner did not disappoint. This powerful book, impossible to translate to any other language without losing massive quantities of charm and character, deals with the lives of a Dominican family throughout the Trujillato, i.e. the reign of the dictator Trujillo in DR. Junot explores the use of the semi-omniscient narrator to great effect. His voice and style are impeccable and give the story great power, developing a true affinity between reader and narrator and a true liking for the sometimes deluded, always irrational characters. Junot's ability to weave in and out of different subplots, to link different times and places, to use footnotes non-pedantically, and to keep the story flowing smoothly is the stuff of literary genius. I greatly enjoyed expanding my Dominican vocabulary as well. Fukú. Zafa. Cibao, Baní, Azua. Many others that I have already forgotten. This book was read in four installments, on October 19, 25. 26, and 29, 2008, in New York, in the Barnes and Noble bookstore on Union Square and the NYU bookstore.
	ONE HUNDRED TWENTY-SIX.- Pinchbeck: 2012: THE RETURN OF QUETZALCOATL:: * * * * ½ Daniel Pinchbeck is on the modern forefront of research into the occult, the spirit world, and the traditions and practices of drug-enhanced revelation. This book documents his personal journey into the exploration of all the things he saw and learned while on his trip into the unknown, and it is a truly amazing, eye-opening and fantastic narrative. The merging of the personal journey with deeply researched material makes for a sometimes fragmented but ultimately educational, engaging, entrancing read. Among the many theses of this book, you will find: the primacy of consciousness over matter; the role of the calendar in the programming of the brain; the origin and dialectic of crop circles; the existence of psychic fields and supraphysical entities, daimons, and spirits; the use of ayahuasca, DMT, and iboga to access the hidden fields of perception into the spirit world; the predictions of the Mayans, the Hopi, the Hindus, and other ancient cultures in regards to the end of the "Great Cycle" in 2012; and what this means in terms of the events surrounding and leding up to this prophetic date. The reason I picked this book up, completely on a lark, in the St Marks bookshop the balmy night of July 24, was that I have always been interested in the various predictions surrounding the title of the book--the year 2012. I felt drawn to the book and began reading it, and once I was 50 pages in and the bookstore was closing, I knew I would buy it because I knew I would never finish reading this book in this bookstore, like the two previous books in this countdown; I had to own this book. It was a fortunate decision, because this is the definitive book on the subject. It's almost as if this book had been waiting for me there my entire life. Something that truly impressed me about this book--besides making previously discredited, loudly ridiculed ideas seem plausible again--was that it correctly predicted an event in 2008, our very own Global Credit Crisis. Actually, this prediction is made by one Carl Johan Calleman; but in this context, what matters is the big picture. So--yes, I really liked this book. This book was read in the months of July, August, September and October, 2008, in New York, starting with the St Marks bookshop on July 24 and ending in my room, early morning hours of All Hallow's Eve, October 31.
	ONE HUNDRED TWENTY-SEVEN.- Margonelli: OIL ON THE BRAIN:: * * * * I almost feel like a fraud saying I've read this book, because it took me months. I started reading it probably at some point in October or November of 2008, and finished it today, February 10, 2009. That's horrible. Especially for a book I know I could have read in a couple of days, because it's so good. I don't understand. I just wasn't so into reading, period, during these past few months. I wanted to read this book in short instalments in the subway, but I started reading the paper on the subway sometime in October, and that was the end of that. Poo. So I basically ended up reading it... wait for it... on the commode! Don't tell the person who lent it to me though! Anyway, I loved this one. It is basically a superbly educational, immensely entertaining and informative narrative of the author's factfinding mission around the world, from Texas to Chad, from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to the drilling rig, all in search of that elusive and valuable knowledge about oil. How petroleum came to rule our energy supply, how it gets from the underground into one's gas tank, and the power politics all along the edges of every transaction. It is truly eye-opening in many ways. Do you know how the price of oil is set on world commodities markets? Do you know that the price of (most) oil is calculated based on its distance from a single location in the United States? Do you know what the SPR looks like? What does it take to get oil out of it? How did the OPEC come to be? What is the power relationship between the modern petrostate and its host/parasite, the state petroleum company? How do warlords in the Niger Delta influence the day-to-day price of petroleum? What is the future of energy consumption in fast-growing China? Rare is the book that is so compelling and at the same time so informative and awe-inspiring. This book was read in the months of October (maybe), November, and December 2008, and January and February 2009, in New York. Mostly on commodes.
	ONE HUNDRED TWENTY-EIGHT.- Soros: THE NEW PARADIGM FOR FINANCIAL MARKETS:: * * * * My co-worker Jennifer lent me this book which she thought would make the crisis clearer to her but instead confused her even more. I tried to explain the book to her a little bit, so she lent it to me to read. It also took me forever to do, which is embarrassing given the book's length (barely 160 pages). I finally finished it on March 1st. I liked this book. It deals mainly with Soros's «Theory of Reflexivity», which is a hypothesis on the workings of societies which postulates that human endeavours cannot be completely modelled mathematically, because the inherent endogeneity of such processes will affect the direction of the result from the quantum to the macro level, c.f. the butterfly effect. Human constructs suffer from «radical fallibility»: they are all ultimately flawed, though the flaws may be hidden long enough for the constructs to flourish. Such is the case, Soros argues, with financial markets and the theory of equilibrium: though the theory has allowed unprecedented growth and wealth creation since World War II, the cracks in the systems of credit expansion and the «market fundamentalism» doctrine of the Reagan and Bush years have finally begun to show. We are living through a pivot point in the history of the financial markets; as the American model of capitalism based on market fundamentalism (i.e., «the market is always right») crumbles before our eyes, a new paradigm to explain the behaviour of financial markets is needed. Soros here proposes his theory of reflexivity. Only when we comprehend how market participants may influence the very fundamentals of the markets will we gain a fuller understanding of their behaviour. A very wordy summary, but there you go. The book made sense to me, and I liked it. Soros has a very good point when he says that economics ignores to its detriment many of the real-life characteristics of markets, e.g. that supply and demand are not given but are the active consequence of markets, or that rational expectations do not always exist. His theory makes sense; however, it's also too vague not to, it seems. Hopefully, he will be able to flesh out the theory a bit in the future. This book was read in January, February, and March 2009, in New York.
	ONE HUNDRED TWENTY-NINE.- Keller: THE REASON FOR GOD:: * * * * ½ My roommate Ilari lent me this book close to the beginning of our roommateship (roommatedom?), around August or September of 2008 probably. Since I am a loser, and since this book was pretty much impossible to carry anywhere since, being a hardback, it was so bulky, it has taken me many, many months to finish. The book itself is very good, it's just that I suck at reading. Keller explores in this book the common refutations to Christianity he has heard over the years as a pastor, and follows with a well-explained and well-reasoned list of reasons for faith. Keller is an excellent speaker as pastor of Redeemer, and here he proves he is also a superb writer. The content is easy to read, rings true and deep, and I very much enjoyed learning about both the refutations of the refutations and the refutations themselves. The same goes for the reasons for faith Keller illustrates. These are issues and ideas that I had never been exposed to before, or at least, very passively exposed to, and the learning aspect of this book enthralled me. Again, like the last book, this is one I'm embarrassed to say it took me so long to read, because it's such an easy read. I feel I should probably read it again... when I'm done with all the books on my waiting list, which are currently around 15-20. Sigh! This book was read from August or September 2008 to March 6, 2009, in New York.
	ONE HUNDRED THIRTY.- Avi: THE TRUE CONFESSIONS OF CHARLOTTE DOYLE:: * * * ½ I first read this book some time in middle school, back in Nicaragua. I guess I didn't think much of it then because it didn't even record on this conscious book list. Had it recorded, it would have been around number 11, 12, or 13; but now, it is also number 130. And that, I believe, is because it recorded subconsciously, and strongly. I'd wanted to reread Confessions for years now, and I put it on my Amazon wishlist. I got it for my birthday, and I read it over a long period of about three weeks in March. I loved it because I didn't remember most of it (the first and only reading was 15 years ago--damn, I'm old) and I like the way Avi writes: with flow, and good attention to character development. However, I did find the book definitely written for children; it's obvious in the language and the plot development, which requires an almost implausible suspension of disbelief not typically required for adult novels. But no matter--I still liked it a lot. This book was read in March 2009, ending March 30, in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and back.
	ONE HUNDRED THIRTY-ONE.- Knowles: A SEPARATE PEACE:: * * * * ½ This is my favourite type of fiction. Short, with an engaging story and not too many characters to assimilate, written in a strong expository style that emphasizes narration over description in simple and effective prose. I had wanted to reread this book for a long time. I recalled having read bits of it in middle school, but didn't think I'd got through the whole book. As it turned out, I probably did get through it all, because the more I read the more I recognised it, like an old friend whose face has changed over the years, but the more you talk to them, the more you reminisce and the more you are convinced this is the same person as all those years ago, that these thing really did happen. I'm glad I got to reread this book. Even though the story is so simple, it resonates really deeply because it's so beautifully written. It makes me happy. This book was read early April - early May 2009, in New York.
	ONE HUNDRED THIRTY-TWO.- Ishiguro: NEVER LET ME GO:: * * * ½ The paperback edition of this novel has a very attention-grabbing picture of a human face as a cover, and this is why I knew exactly what book people were talking about when it was suggested for book club. The cover alone made me want to read it, and I wasn't disappointed when my book suggestion lost to this one. The book itself--well, I liked it, overall, but I had a couple of issues. Ishiguro's writing style is not my favourite. This was especially obvious as I was reading this book at the same time as A Separate Peace, in which the style is, in my humble opinion, as good as it gets. I found Ishiguro's style to be too meandering and ambivalent. In particular I disliked his tendency to phrase things thusly: "we were doing activity A, and it would have been fine if it hadn't been for what happened next. This is what happened..." It gets tiring after awhile to hear this kind of construction. I did like certain things though. At first it was disconcerting how much time the narrator spent talking about feelings and implied meanings, but after awhile I kind of took to it, because this is an unusual track that often isn't seen, at least in the more masculine type of fiction I'm used to. It was refreshing to be exposed to this side; definitely a realm I don't often think about. This book was read from early April to early March 2009, in New York.