So Much to Read

“A man ought to read just as inclination leads him, for what he reads as a task will do him little good.”—Samuel Johnson

I've always loved a page-turner	Archives 2008 Limericks Six Words 2007 2006 2005 2004 2003 2002 2001 2000 1999 1998 1997 Songs	Books Reviewed Ten Little Indians Sherman Alexie Big Trouble Dave Barry Personals Thomas Beller, editor Postville Stephen Bloom Passionate Minds David Bodanis Mystery Ride Robert Boswell The Climb Anatoli Boukreev and G. Weston DeWalt My Husband Betty Helen Boyd Drop City T.C. Boyle The Inner Circle T.C. Boyle The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid Bill Bryson A Walk in the Woods Bill Bryson Long For This World Michael Byers In Cold Blood Truman Capote Heart, You Bully, You Punk Leah Hager Cohen Mrs. Bridge Evan S. Connell Mr. Bridge Evan S. Connell River Thieves Michael Crummey My Misspent Youth Meghan Daum The Quality of Life Report Meghan Daum The Gift of Fear Gavin de Becker Burnt Bread and Chutney Carmit Delman Brother Iron, Sister Steel Dave Draper Crunchy Cons Rod Dreher Turbulent Souls Stephen Dubner House of Sand and Fog Andre Dubus III Bait and Switch Barbara Ehrenreich Nickel and Dimed Barbara Ehrenreich Travels with Lizbeth Lars Eighner The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down Anne Fadiman Kick Me Paul Feig True Story Michael Finkel Time and Again Jack Finney Bad Times in Buenos Aires Miranda France The Corrections Jonathan Franzen Jew vs. Jew Samuel G. Freedman Jews Without Judaism Daniel Friedman Muscle Samuel Fussell The Country of Marriage Anthony Giardina White Guys Anthony Giardina Stumbling on Happiness Daniel Gilbert The Last American Man Elizabeth Gilbert Stern Men Elizabeth Gilbert Hypocrite in a Pouffy White Dress Susan Jane Gilman Blink Malcolm Gladwell Bee Season Myla Goldberg The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time Mark Haddon Holy Days Lis Harris What Was She Thinking? Zöe Heller Confederates in the Attic Tony Horwitz Waltzing the Cat Pam Houston The Remains of the Day Kazuo Ishiguro Le Divorce Diane Johnson A Death in Belmont Sebastian Junger John Stuart Mill in Love Josephine Kamm Subwayland Randy Kennedy The Pleasing Hour Lily King Seven Blessings Ruchama King Ultimate Fitness Gina Kolata Into the Wild Jon Krakauer Under the Banner of Heaven Jon Krakauer The Namesake Jhumpa Lahiri Close to the Bone Jake Lamar The Girls Lori Lansens The Devil in the White City Erik Larson The Body of Jonah Boyd David Leavitt Random Family Adrian Nicole LeBlanc Mystic River Dennis Lehane The Geography of Time Robert Levine The Inn at Lake Devine Elinor Lipman Absolutely American David Lipsky Inconspicuous Consumption Paul Lukas Lonesome Dove Larry McMurtry The Early Arrival of Dreams Rosemary Mahoney Shopgirl Steve Martin The Family That Couldn’t Sleep D.T. Max Home Comforts Cheryl Mendelson The Trouble with Diversity Walter Benn Michaels The Outside World Tova Mirvis Starting Out in the Evening Brian Morton The Time Traveler's Wife Audrey Niffenegger The Idiot Girls' Action Adventure Club Laurie Notaro The Last of Her Kind Sigrid Nunez The Orchid Thief Susan Orlean The Dive From Clausen’s Pier Ann Packer Truth and Beauty Ann Patchett Little Children Tom Perrotta The Botany of Desire Michael Pollan Blue Clay People William Powers Whispering in the Giant's Ear William Powers The Wild Trees Richard Preston Blue Angel Francine Prose Music Through the Floor Eric Puchner Don’t Get Too Comfortable David Rakoff In the Little World John H. Richardson Out of America Keith B. Richburg Stiff Mary Roach Them Jon Ronson The Israelis Donna Rosenthal Kissing in Manhattan David Schickler Me Talk Pretty One Day David Sedaris The Dangerous Husband Jane Shapiro The Size of the World Joan Silber American Wife Curtis Sittenfeld Prep Curtis Sittenfeld Before the Knife Carolyn Slaughter Name All the Animals Alison Smith A Tree Grows in Brooklyn Betty Smith A Ship Made of Paper Scott Spencer The Man Who Ate Everything Jeffrey Steingarten High-Tech Heretic Clifford Stoll Evening News Marly Swick The Mismeasure of Woman Carol Tavris Blankets Craig Thompson A Complicated Kindness Miriam Toews Summer Blonde Adrian Tomine The Men and the Girls Johanna Trollope Working Fire Zac Unger My Own Country Abraham Verghese The Tennis Partner Abraham Verghese The Glass Castle Jeannette Walls Girls Like Us Sheila Weller The Right Stuff Tom Wolfe Old School Tobias Wolff Marjorie Morningstar Herman Wouk Generation Kill Evan Wright
2 October 2008 American Wife Curtis Sittenfeld Laura Bush and her marriage have always been a bit of a mystery to the public; maybe that mystery is part of her popularity. Sittenfeld’s novel fills in the spaces between the basic facts of the first lady’s life, taking many liberties but also including entertaining stand-ins for Karl Rove and Barbara Bush and an ersatz president as appealing as he is appalling. At first, it seems like Sittenfeld has taken Laura Bush’s life and grafted on her own obsessions (namely, bodily functions and sexual humiliation), which still results in a great read very much like Prep. But later she explores the gap between a public image and a private self, speculates on the lasting effect of an early tragedy, and, most intriguingly, asks how much responsibility one spouse has for the other’s actions (actions like, say, starting a bloody and costly war for questionable reasons). In this fictional world, the first couple’s marriage makes sense. As the Laura Bush character responds to one critic, “I did not contradict myself; I live a life that contains contradictions. Don’t you?” 24 September 2008 The Size of the World Joan Silber The six narrators in this book take turns telling their overlapping stories, which span the twentieth century, several wars, and three continents. Mostly Americans, they’ve all left their homes: An American expatriate living the life of a boss-man in Thailand returns to San Francisco; an American woman leaves her husband and runs away to Mexico; an Italian bride immigrates to New Jersey. This book calls itself a novel but is really the opposite: Rather than being one story, with one narrator, peopled by many different personalities, its six sections each have separate stories and different narrators—who all speak with the same voice. I found the characters most interesting when seen from the outside in someone else's story, when they seemed most different from each other. But their common voice is a welcome one; it’s that of a person who has known tragedy, who is grateful for what he has, and who is aware of his own failings. And finding the connections among the stories is a pleasure, as each new narrator offers a change of angle, like the turning of a prism. Place matters to these characters, and Silber writes beautifully whether she’s describing the streets of Vietnam or the beaches of Florida. As one of her characters says, “I began to think of each spot on the globe as a mere part, the section any lesson had to be broken down into.” 9 September 2008 Old School Tobias Wolff A boarding school is a wonderful setting for a story. The formality, order, simplicity, and often beauty of the place; the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake; the higher calling of an honor code; the power of tradition; the nostalgia for childhood (for these stories are written by adults); the ever-present, if not openly acknowledged, complication of class; the intimacy that develops from living in an insular world—it's rich material. And single-sex schools, like the boys' academy in this book, provide an added dynamic. Wolff is a short-story writer, of course, and this isn't a novel as much as a series of stories, but that doesn't diminish its power. The main character, who is never named (that I just realized that now is testament to Wolff's skill), is enthralled by the idea of putting words on a page but is not sure yet who he is. This is a book about pretending—not always intentionally—to be what you're not. And the cameo appearances by real, famous writers are delightful. 10 July 2008 The Men and the Girls Johanna Trollope Hugh and James are lifelong friends in their sixties, both living comfortable lives in their English university town. Each is married to a woman twenty-five years his junior. In one couple, the super-capable wife provides stability for her husband when he falters; in the other, the woman is restless. Also on hand are a curmudgeonly uncle, a flighty American housewife, a handsome suitor, a sulky teenaged girl who’s a big softie underneath, and the sensible Miss Bachelor, always ready with a stern talking-to. For a while the novel, overall a middling read, seemed headed down a predictable path, so I was pleased when it surprised me. More of the latest reviews

“There was so much to read, for one thing, and so much fine health to be pulled down out of the young breathgiving air…I was rather literary in college—one year I wrote a series of very solemn and obvious editorials for the Yale News—and now I was going to bring back all such things into my life and become again that most limited of all specialists, the ‘well-rounded man.’ This isn’t just an epigram—life is much more successfully looked at from a single window, after all.”
—F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby