Books Read – 2009

1. This is a list of books I’ve read in 2009.  It does not include craft/sewing/photography books or the local paper and Wall Street Journal that I read every day along with newsletters, etc.

1. Ship of Ghosts: the story of the USS Houston, FDR’s legendary lost cruiser and the epic saga of her survivors by James D. Hornfischer.  The treatment of the allied prisoners of war by the Japanese army is illustrative of real torture and mistreatment.  The ability to survive in such conditions is inspiring.
2. Portuguese Irregular Verbs by Alexander McCall Smith.  This is the first of his books that I’ve read.  It was a fast and charmingly humorous read and a nice change from the Ship of Ghosts.
3. Cancer on $5 A Day:  How humor got me through the toughest journey of my life by Robert Schimmel.  Picked this up off a display at the library and started reading it while riding my exercise bike.  I kept peddling even after my programmed time ended so that I could keep reading.  If you have to have cancer and go through chemo, you’d sure hope you would be sitting by Robert Schimmel.  Very funny, but also a very real description of the depths that chemo takes someone too.  (Caveat:  language may be objectionable to some).
4. Winterdance, The Fine Madness of Running the Iditarod  by Gary Paulson.  This book is about Gary Paulson’s first attempt at running the Iditarod.  The book starts on a serious note – all about how he developed his relationship with his dogs and becomes one with them.  Then, it moves to his decision to do the Iditarod and how he prepared.  Those chapters were so amusing that I was laughing out loud while reading them.  Then,  back to the serious business (and sadness) of what happened during the race.  Excellent book, but it felt a little bit like whiplash going from serious to hilarious to serious again.
5. Waiter Rant, Thanks for the tip-Confessions of a Cynical Waiter by Steve Dublainica.  302 pages that should have been condensed down to 125 pages.  Way too much about trying to become an author.  Not enough about the personalities of the patrons.  Great premise, but needed much heavier editing.
6. The One Hundred, A guide to the pieces every stylish woman must own by Nina Garcia.  Interesting to skim through over lunch.  When a number limit is imposed, it means pieces are added that won’t be on everyone’s shopping list, e.g. fishnet stockings, Frye harness boots, Minnetonka moccasins, etc.  But, fun to read and great illustrations.
7. The Reagan I Knew by William F. Buckley.  WFB’s last book is comprised of personal correspondence between the Reagans and himself.  Leaves any conservative wondering where is our next Reagan?
8. Riding Rockets, the Outrageous Tales of a Space Shuttle Astronaut by Mike Mullane.  This was a great book.  Whether you’re a space junkie or not, this was an extremely entertaining read that really let’s you know what it’s like to be a space shuttle astronaut.  Mike Mullane is a very humorous writer and this is one of the best books I’ve read in a long time.
9. Supreme Courtship by Christopher Buckley.   Christopher Buckley is back writing engaging political satire.  Much closer in similarity to his earlier books that I couldn’t resist.  This book is witty, timely, and well-written.
10. The $64 Tomato by William Alexander.  Cute account of a man’s quest to take a run-down old house and bring it to life, become a gardener (organically) and the true costs, financially and physically, of growing even one perfect tomato.
11. I Like You, Hospitality under the Influence by Amy Sedaris.  Worst choice so far this year.  I was just glad it was from the library rather than a purchase.  Recipes and party ideas mixed with tips on feminine hygiene, etc.  It just seems sad that so many artists/creatives/comics don’t have the skills to be clever and witty without resorting to gratuitous foul language and subjects.
12. Dewey, the Small-Town Library Cat Who Touched the World by Vicki Myron.  Sweet, touching story of a kitten rescued from a book drop who lived out his life in a little library in Iowa.  Like many other animal stories, it’s a combination of sweet, funny, and sad.  The parts about Dewey were great.  The “filler” material about all the personal problems of the author were somewhat tedious, but they do serve the purpose of showing how much she needed Dewey in her life.
13. The Thief and the Dogs by Naguib Mahfouz.  This is our local library’s “Big Read” selection for this year.  Based in Egypt in the mid-1900s, this is the story of a thief who has just gotten out of prison and the revenge he sought for those who betrayed him.  The story deals with the thief’s inability to move beyond his past and follows his utter self-destruction.  This was a depressing book and I can’t say that I got any great insights out of it, but it was short (158 pages) and relatively interesting.
14. Cross Country, Fifteen years and 90,000 miles on the roads and interstates of America with Lewis and Clark . . . by Robert Sullivan. I love travel and adventure books and the cover of this one looked intriguing.  But, alas, it was not to be.  At close to 400 pages, I was wishing for a heavy editing hand after about page 50.  Rather than a journal of a cross country trip, this book skips around from historical facts for several pages to how his truck broke down on another trip forcing him to drink cup after cup of bitter coffee while waiting for repairs to him drinking cup after cup of bitter coffee to try to stay awake because he really, really, really wanted to stay at Holiday Inn Express along the way, etc.  It was boring.  I gave up and just quickly scanned the second half of the book.  If you really feel the need to experience Robert Sullivan’s stream of consciousness over several days, you might enjoy this book.
15. Gifted by Nikita Lalwani.  A cautionary tale of a young girl caught in the midst of a cultural clash and societal clash.  Her parents desire to see her live out their dreams and the toll it takes on the whole family, esp. the girl as she is pushed ahead academically, while being held back socially due to her parents conservative Indian values.
16. Lost in Place, Growing up Absurd in Suburbia by Mark Salzman.  This was a funny at times memoir of Mark Salzman’s teenage years.  He took his interests to extremes with the apparent tacit okay from his parents.  These extremes ended up leading to drug use, lack of purpose, and a great deal of risk taken.  Entertaining, but like Gifted above, a little depressing.
17. Comfort Food by Kate Jacobs.  This is an easy and entertaining read by the author of the Friday Night Knitting Club.  A widowed TV chef and her daughters try to heal their relationships through the cooking show.  Good read for the beach or when you want to finish a book in a day.
18. Blood River, A Journey to Africa’s Broken Heart by Tim Butcher.  Tim Butcher is a journalist who decides to retrace Henry Stanley’s route through the Congo which is one of the most violent, lawless, and backward places in the world.  From the first pages, it is clear that Mr. Butcher blames most of this on the Belgians who colonized the area after Stanley’s voyage.  He reserves a little blame for the Arab slave traders, also.  While complaining throughout the book about the horrible Europeans and the church who ruined what he says was once a good society (if you don’t count the cannibalism), he makes his trip on the backs of these same European/church entities who are still present in the Congo trying to provide aid.  He utilizes their motorbikes and knowledgeable staff to get him from place to place, takes refuge in and eats the food in a church whose priests and nuns were murdered and raped when the Congo gained its independence from Belgium, etc.  Toward the end of the book, he does acknowledge that the Africans do bear some responsibility to improve their own situation, after all, the Asian countries that were colonized did not revert to savagery when they received their independence.  This was an interesting book and did pique my interest in the Congo and definitely gave insight into what conditions are like there now and what a difficult place it is to live in much less attempt to travel in.
19. Against Medical Advice:  One Families Struggle with an Agonizing Medical Mystery by James Patterson.  True story of a family’s struggle to find answers to how to deal with their son’s Tourette’s Syndrome.  The parents are heroic in their efforts and ability to withstand the difficulty of raising a child with Tourette’s and the medical/social/educational challenges that accompany it.
20. Dog on It by Spencer Quinn.  If you ever enjoyed reading Hank the Cowdog to your children, you will probably love Dog on It.  This is a mystery told from the point of view of the private investigator’s partner – a dog who failed K-9 academy.   This is easy to read in one sitting and has moments of humor throughout.
21. Scratch Beginnings, Me $25, and the Search for the American Dream by Adam Shepard.  With $25 and the clothes on his back, Adam Shepard wanting to see if achieving the American dream was still possible.  He started out in a homeless shelter that had strict rules and offered many options for helping those who ended up there.  He possessed the one thing that defines those who achieve the American dream – that is self-control.  He exhibited it in numerous ways, very careful watch over his expenses so that he could save for the bigger items, no alcohol or drug addiction, and one of the biggest things . . . a willingness to do hard, unpleasant work for as long as was necessary to achieve what he needed.  This was another easy, interesting read, but it ended a bit abruptly.  I would have enjoyed it more if he had written it about 10 years after the experiment so that it would be possible to find out what has happened to him and the others in the book.  This was a realistic portrayal of life in and coming out of a homeless shelter and was mostly apolitical in its approach except for a gratuitous comment at the end that defense spending should be cut to pay for housing for the poor.
22. The Shack by William Young.  This popular book was recently recommended to me, so I checked it out from the library.  I had not read any reviews or heard anything about it, so had no pre-conceived opinion about it.  The first part of the book was an interesting story that led to the sad occasion of a man’s daughter being kidnapped and murdered while they were on a camping trip.    This led to an understandably deeper crisis of faith than the man had already been experiencing.  He receives a note signed Papa (God) saying for him to go back to the shack where his daughter was murdered.  When he gets there, Papa is an African-American woman who spends a lot of time baking.  Jesus is a Middle Eastern man who does carpentry and the Holy Spirit is an Asian women who flutters around humming.  Their interaction with the man takes up most of the book and I found it tedious and uninspiring.  It smacked of new age theology and read like an Oprah book club selection.  The portrayal of the Trinity was not consistent with orthodox Christian theology.  This book ties with the Amy Sedaris book for the worst book so far this year.
23. Unhooked, How Young Women Pursue Sex, Delay Love, and Lose at Both by Laura Sessions Stepp.  My college-age daughter read this for a book discussion at her college recently, so I asked to borrow it when they were done discussing it.  This book is a look at the lives of a number of young, mostly high-achieving young women and their participation in the “hooking-up” culture.  The author has very frank conversations with these girls to find out what they are doing and to try to ascertain why.  A predominate reason they give is because it is okay for guys to do, so why can’t they do the same?  In other words, they view themselves the same as guys.  This book does not attempt to make any judgements or give any conclusions about the consequences of the hooking up that these girls are doing.  It would benefit from allowing time to pass and interviewing the young women when they turn 30-35 and seeing whether they still held the same views that they do in college.
24. Eat, Pray, Love, One Woman’s Search for Everything Across Italy, India, and Indonesia by Elizabeth Gilbert.  Sigh . . . Another book that I wanted to like more than I did.  Elizabeth Gilbert is unhappy so she divorces her husband, moves in with another man, still is unhappy, so she decides to explore learning Italian in Italy, meditating in India, and finding love in Indonesia.  Parts of the book are interesting in their descriptions of her experiences in the three countries, but too much of the book is about her moods/thoughts/insecurities, etc.   She really comes across like the typical woman who likes Oprah . . . self-indulgent, ungrateful, unrealistic, and narcissistic.
25. Desert Places by Robyn Davidson.  I love travel/adventure books (Endurance by Shackelton is one of my favorites).  In this book, Robyn wishes to make a journey with the nomadic camel herders in India.  The book starts with her attempts to find a group willing to let her make the journey with them and I found it a little hard to follow at first since the names of things were so unfamiliar and there wasn’t much explanation.  About a third of the way through, it became more comfortable and interesting.  Robyn alternates between loving and hating India.  She certainly endures a lot to experience this, especially the lack of ability to communicate except minimally for long periods of time due to language barriers and the experience of being one of the rare white women in this area.  She has concern for the potential loss of the nomadic culture, but their current existence is one in which sickness, death, starvation, etc. is common place.  The land is basically used up.  Her mental and physical fatigue toward the end of the book lead to some sad consequences for her traveling companions.
26. Liberty and Tyranny:  A Conservative Manifesto by Mark Levin.  Liberty and Tyranny makes the case for conservatism.  This book explains conservatism and how its principles are aligned with the principles of our founding fathers that served to make America a great and unique country.  Well written, easy to read, and extremely well documented.  The issues discussed would be great for a book club discussion.  This book outlines what we conservatives wish our elected representatives would stand for instead of becoming liberal light.  Their failure to do so is not winning them any elections and is contributing to our country changing in a way that will be hard to reverse.
27. Ant Farm (and other desperate situations) by Simon Rich.  This is a little book that I picked up off the library shelf the other day.  It can easily be read while you are eating lunch.  Inside are little stories that can be very funny, eg “a day in the life of the swiss army”.  Others are forgettable, but I’m always happy to find one or two gems that make me laugh out loud.
28. Redneck Riviera:  Armadillos, Outlaws, and the Demise of an American Dream by Dennis Covington.  I picked this book up because it was by the author of Salvation on Sand Mountain (about the snake handling churches from close by Sand Mountain).  The author seeks to claim a piece of land in FL that was his inheritance from his father.  It was purchased in a shady land deal and the land has been taken over by “the Hunt Club” who are none to happy to see someone trespass into what they consider their turf.  He tries to have it surveyed, have law enforcement assist him when his belongings are shot up, etc., but no one wants to take on the Hunt Club.  The author then decides to relive his father’s dream by buying land in Idaho and then hoping to sell it off in parcels much like the parcel that he inherited.  The results are predictable.
29. Being Martha, the Inside Story of Martha Stewart and her Amazing Life by Lloyd Allen.  This is the second book I’ve read about Martha Stewart.  The first was one of those hit jobs parading as an unauthorized biography.  This was the exact opposite.  The author was a friend/acquaintance/neighbor and has little negative to say about Martha.  I question this book almost as much as I question the hostile book because neither of them portray her as capable of ever being different from the view they are basing the book on.  It was interesting, though and a fast read.
30. Adventures in the Ditch:  a Memoir of Family, Navigation and Discovery on the Intercoastal Waterway by Jon Coile.  We got this book because we are considering doing a boating adventure that includes the Intercoastal Waterway.  The author buys a boat and talks his 80 year old father and brother into taking it from the Chesapeake to Miami with him.  The problem with the book was that he treated the trip like a delivery captain.  It was all how fast can we get there and less about exploring the waterway.  Another objection is that the author did not exhibit good seamanship.  He did not have spare parts, life raft for when he went offshore, took non-skid off of the deck because it looked bad, etc.  He also was a very poor planner for the trip back.  The story shows his relationship evolving with his father and brother and that was interesting, along with an overview of the ICW when he wasn’t going by at top speed.
31. Honey Let’s Get a Boat . . . a Cruising Adventure of the Great Loop by Ron & Eva Stob.  The authors who are new to boating, decide to buy a boat and do the great loop boat trip.  They prepared as well as they could by taking courses, etc., but started out with minimal knowledge.  They were fast learners, though and the book documents their whole trip in good detail.  Descriptions are given of the various marinas/waterways, etc. that they experienced and really gave a sense of what that trip would be like.
32. French Women Don’t Get Fat by Mirelle Guiliano.  This is not a book I would have picked up, but our daughter brought it home from the library along with her usual big stack of books, so I read through it quickly.  The gist of it is . . . eat small amounts of fresh, high quality food, drink lots of water (plus champagne and wine), and walk.  Other than that, the book is a little off-putting in the manner in which it is written.  Every few sentences, she can’t resist throwing in phrases in French.  And the sentences in between, she is touting French superiority in fitness.
33. Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl.  One of my favorite talk show hosts, Dennis Prager, has mentioned this book as having a great impact on his life and thinking, so that puts it on the list of mandatory reading for me.  To summarize the book:  you can lose control over every single aspect of your life, except for one thing – how you react.  The first half of the book is about the author’s experiences in concentration camps and how he saw other inmates react to their circumstances.  It is a gripping account written in an unsensational manner.  The second half of the book describes “logotherapy” which is Dr. Frankl’s therapeutic way of dealing with life and suffering.  It acknowledges that suffering can not be avoided, but how you deal with it can depend on whether you have a meaning for your life outside of the suffering or not.  This book is short and written in a readable fashion, but it will require re-reading to grasp all that is within it that is valuable.
34. A Little Bit Wicked:  Life, Love, and Faith in Stages by Kristin Chenowith.  I probably wouldn’t have picked this book up, but my daughter brought it home from the library, so I read it.  It was refreshing to read a celebrity memoir where the celebrity just seems like a good, decent person without major narcissistic and other personality disorders.  She likes her family.  She’s a Christian.  Etc.  It isn’t the most well-written book I’ve ever read and I find it always unusual for people who are so young to already be putting out a memoir when they’ve experienced such a short life, but it is a pleasant enough read and her fans will most likely enjoy it.
35. The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer.  This book is written in the form of letters between an author and the residents of Guernsey immediately post WWII.  It was a little confusing at first since it was unclear who the characters were, but as the book progresses, it is easy to know and like the characters and want to know the outcome of their relationships to each other.  Their ability to not only survive, but find a way to thrive during the Occupation and the courage of one character makes an interesting read.
36. Postcards from Europe by Rick Steves.  We took advantage of some of Rick Steves recommendations on our trip to Europe two years ago.  Some were fabulous (Gimmelwald, Switzerland) and others were regrettable (Rothenburg, Germany).  This particular book of his is not a guide book, but more about his personal relationships with people in Europe.  Some of it is covered in his other books which I found more interesting than this one.  He advocates traveling in a way that immerses you with the local population which is admirable, but much easier if one has been to Europe before and has the luxury of time and local knowledge.
37. The Optimist, One Man’s Search for the Brighter Side of Life by Laurence Shorter.  The author believe himself to be an optimist and sets out across the world to seek the answers to how to help everyone else become optimists.  He approaches everyone from Bill Clinton to someone on the street corner.  Several problems are inherent in what he is setting out to do.  He is not really that optimistic a person.  In fact, a lot of the book is about his pining after someone who does not reciprocate his feelings for her.
38. Searching for Bobby Fischer by Fred Waitzkin.  This was an utterly fascinating book about a father’s journey and pre-occupation with his chess prodigy son.  It is an exceptionally honest portrayal of the highs the father felt when the son was showing passion and doing well and the angst when his son appeared to lose interest.  The book also gives a great deal of insight into the politics that play out in the international chess world and to the fact that being a brilliant chess player does not mean you are successful in many other areas of your life.
39. Stud, Adventures in Breeding by Kevin Conley.  As much as the average reader could ever want to know about the world of thoroughbred breeding.  This is where the really big money in thoroughbreds appears to be.  Interesting and a bit disturbing.
40. Men in Black, How the Supreme Court is Destroying America by Mark R. Levin.  It is no secret that judicial activism is on the rise and that the courts have assumed extra-constitutional powers.  Mark Levin outlines the history of the Supreme Court and details some of the scary and flawed decisions that the judiciary has handed down.  The life-long appointments mean that some justices have refused to step down even with mental illness, etc.
41. Sister Salty, Sister Sweet, a Memoir of Sibling Rivalry by Shannon Kring Biro & Natalie Kring.  Saw this at the library, so I picked it up.  The best thing it had going for it was that it was an easy, fast read.  The sisters are not particularly likable and neither is the book.  Self-indulgent memoirs of dysfunctional families seem to be coming out of the woodwork and most of them aren’t worth the paper they are printed on.
42. Lost in the Amazon, the True Story of Five Men and their Desperate Battle for Survival by Stephen Kirkpatrick.  The author is a wildlife photographer who ventures to places like the Amazon to try to capture the great shots that will land him in Nat. Geographic and provide a living for him.  This story happened in the days of film when not everyone was an aspiring photographer.  The author, with a very limited budget, hires a couple of guides to travel through the jungle with him and two other men.  The book details the struggle with photographing in such a wet environment (film swells in the camera not allowing it to advance or rewind).  But, photography is only one of the struggles in the Amazon, traveling pre-GPS and with only the packs on your back is another.  There is a great deal of hunger/mold/mildew/injury/etc.  The book is also a personal journey for the author in regards to his relationship with God and with his sons.  There is a hero in the book and it is the guide, Ashuco who somehow manages to find his way through the jungle and also looks out for the author.
43. I Was a Better Mother Before I Had Kids by Lori Borgman.  Another quick pick off the library shelves.  I believe this is a compilation of newspaper articles written by the author.  Some are quite funny and others – not so much.  It would be a much more enjoyable read as a once a week newspaper column than reading it straight through, but it was easy and fast and didn’t require any intellectual thought.
44. 50 Things to Do When You Turn 50 edited by Ronnie Sellers.  I will be 50 on my next birthday, so I picked this up at the library.  This was a book that I would hope most 50 year olds would not need to be told.  The suggestions were things like pay off your mortgage, wear comfortable clothes, exercise, etc.  Maybe if Diane Von Furstenberg writes that it is okay to wear comfortable clothes, that is what some people need.  I found it to be trivial.
45. Outliers, the Story of Success by malcolm Gladwell.  Another library shelf pick.  This is a very easy to read book with interesting anecdotes, but very flawed premises.  Mr. Gladwell attempts to describe what conditions will lead to successful outliers – among them, month or year of birth, being born in a rice paddy culture, etc. and finds an anecdotal story to support his theory.  For instance, it was who Bill Gates family knew and where he grew up that made him what he is and if we gave all children the same background, we’d have thousands of Bill Gates.  Sorry, but I don’t buy that.  Bill Gates made his opportunity happen and had the discipline to see it through.  Here in Huntsville, the public schools have put the only orchestra magnet at a lower income and poorly behaving inner city school where there is almost zero interest in playing the violin.  After several years of providing the opportunity, nothing has changed.  These kids don’t have the desire to become symphony musicians.  The successful people I know have made their own opportunities and don’t wait on someone to give it to them.
46. Honeymoon in Purdah, an Iranian Journey by Alison Wearing.  The author and her gay male roommate want to travel to Iran.  To do so together, they pretend they are married.  The book provides a view of the average Iranian that they encountered as being generous and interested in them.  Upon finding out they were Canadian, they were invited to stay at and dine with many families who seemed as eager to find out about them as they were to find out about Iran.  Canada, apparently is considered a “good” country in Iran, I suppose as opposed to the US.  The book was copyright 2001.  It would be interesting to know whether the experience would be the same now.  The author did encounter a number of young people who resented the life they were being forced to live under an Islamic republic – for instance girls not being allowed to ride a bike, not having the freedom to leave if they wanted, etc.
47. Crazy for the Storm, a Memoir of Survival by Norman Ollestad.  Norman Ollestad grew up with relatively dysfunctional parents and his childhood story would be relatively boring but for one horrible event.  At age 11, he was the only survivor of a private plane crash that killed his father, father’s girlfriend, and the pilot.  The book alternates between his childhood and a minute or two on the mountain where the plane crashed.  It is a technique that does not work at all and the whole book is tedious.
48. Afloat by Guy de Maupassant.  What I thought would be a log of a sailing journey (late 1800s) ended up being primarily a book of personal reflections on the state of man.  My eyes glazed over during these long reflective passages, but they were broken up with segments that are more of a small travelogue.  I spent much too long getting through this short book because I just didn’t enjoy the writing.
49. SuperFreakonomics, Global Cooling, Patriotic Prostitutes and Why Suicide Bombers Should Buy Life Insurance by Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner.  This is the sequel to the best-selling Freakonomics which I really enjoyed.  If you are like me and don’t enjoy the government nanny state dictating rules that force children into car seats until they are practically adults, you will enjoy this book.  If you aren’t, it is worth reading to reassess for yourself whether these kind of regulations REALLY save lives.  It is a fast, fun, and easy read and tackles not only the over-reaching car seat laws, but also the fallacy that global warming is caused by man and will lead to catastrophic ends which can only be remedied by costly cap and trade legislation or other such economy killing measures.
50. How Shall I Tell the Dog?:  and Other Final Musings by Miles Kington.  I won this book in an online giveaway and I’m very glad that I did.  Miles Kington was a humor writer for Punch.  When he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and given a grim sentence, he did not lose his wit.  The book is a series of letters to his agent proposing book ideas that he could write so he could “cash in on cancer.”  Maintaining his wit does not mean that he doesn’t face his situation head-on.  He does, and unfortunately, he died.  The wonderful thing for his family is the gift of his writing that he left them.