Smarter than You - FOOL

Fool: A Novel by Christopher Moore
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Bawdy and brilliant, Christopher Moore is just plain funny.  This whole book is tongue-and-cheek almost to the point of The Princess Bride.  And I love The Princess Bride.  Moore never disappoints and I hope he'll try more random genre stuff in the future.

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As the Moulin Rouge says - FLAWLESS

Flawless: Inside the Largest Diamond Heist in History by Scott Andrew Selby
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Fascinating story, albeit based on multiple sources with a lot of the most interesting details still missing (because the police don't even know).  I'd be interested in a follow-up in ten years tracking how the guys who made the heist are living the life, but still keeping their stolen riches in hiding.

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Climb In - TAKE ME WITH YOU

Take Me with You by Brad Newsham
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Enjoyable travelogue, and the person Newsham selects to bring back to the US is the one I was rooting for.  But he chooses at the very end, and there's no follow-up.  In fact, Newsham spoke to my book club last week and admitted that he couldn't find a publisher to back the writing of the rest of the story.

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End of an Era: ARE THESE MY...

Are These My Basoomas I See Before Me? by Louise Rennison
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Georgia, don't leave us! I will miss Angus, Pantalizer Doll, Mr. Fish and even ADM. These books are ridiculously funny and completely mad. I will read the entire series over again someday, on vacation, and laugh like crazy all over again. If you're an anglophile or a 14-year old girl at heart, please check out Louise Rennison. Dave the Laugh never disappoints.

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Books: UNDRESS ME IN THE TEMPLE OF HEAVEN

Undress Me in the Temple of Heaven by Susan Jane Gilman
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Crazy and honest, but mostly crazy. If this happened to me I might never leave home again! Gilman highlights the wonders of the 80s without beating the theme to death, and she does not sugar-coat the hardships of traveling in Asia, under communism or in the days before cell phones and computers. I wonder if her remarkable self-deprication comes because hindsight is 20-20, and she's had 20 years to think about her adventures. I'd like to read about the rest of her travels, but I bet they don't hold the crazy candle next to these.

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Desert Dust - SOMEBODY'S HEART IS BURNING

Somebody's Heart Is Burning: A Woman Wanderer in Africa by Tanya Shaffer
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

A lovely, lyrical little book that accurately spills the gut-wrenching moments travel can create.  Shaffer describes the lives of African travelers and African natives without complaint, without dramatizing the conditions and with an almost loving reverie for the involuntary reverie of their lifestyles.  Sadly, the author's note at the end points out that her trip, taken in the early 90s, was pre-AIDS epidemic.  She hints that now she would find a very different scene before her.

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Love in the Library: COMMITTED

Committed: A Skeptic Makes Peace with Marriage by Elizabeth Gilbert
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I found this book very fulfilling.  Gilbert is an engaging writer, and her perfect self-deprecation takes the edge of her neuroses.  And neurotic she is - far more than I could ever be. I really enjoyed learning the history of various marriage customs, the thoughts (or simple acceptation) of different peoples worldwide. The American story of Gilbert's own ancestors was especially touching, as it mirrors some of the hard-working immigrant panache that my grandparents exhibited.  Ultimately finding peace, Gilbert brings her readers full circle into know that everyone can accept love and even marriage.  You just have to find something in it that works for you, even if it's something no one else has ever found.

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Inspiration - STONES INTO SCHOOLS

Stones into Schools: Promoting Peace with Books, Not Bombs, in Afghanistan and Pakistan by Greg Mortenson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

What an inspiration, and told with a real nod toward the endless hard work done by these incredible people.  Some success, some failure, and a lot of honesty.  The whole thing makes you wish you could do more than write a check in support of their efforts, but details exactly why that's not possible.  I really enjoyed his detailing of what works and what doesn't for the typical NGOs, and seeing how the CAI is able to get around/beyond so much of what a big aid organization faces.  Their intentions are good, but I enjoy hearing from a 'bootstraps' type of guy what can be done by few that cannot be accomplished by many.  A wonderful read.

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Get the Popcorn - ALTAR OF EDEN

Altar of Eden by James Rollins
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

All-out action and lots of fun.  I really enjoyed this one!  I give it the "Paul Walker movie" stamp of approval.  It would be completed ridiculous, of course, as it features giant man-eating alligators and Neanderthal-esque human children.  Riiiight.  But still...

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Waste of Time - MY NAME IS WILL

My Name Is Will: A Novel of Sex, Drugs and Shakespeare by Jess Winfield
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

Apparently I can't give something zero stars.  This book is drivel.  It starts out promisingly enough, but never rises about mediocre before crash landing in a Port-O-Potty.  The modern day main character is a lying, cheating, drug-addled wannabe academic unashamedly wasting his parents money while putting forth zero effort in his life.  Yet he manages to find no less than sex with his stepmom, sex on a bus, a threesome AND an orgy - none of which involve his girlfriend.  In one book!  At the end, apparently some kind of metaphysical, time-traveling, wormhole-crashing collision mixes Shakespeare's English world with 1980-whatever Novato, CA.  Who cares.  (Also, this is the worst story that ever featured a renaissance faire.)

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Love in the Library: SHADES OF GREY

Shades of Grey: The Road to High Saffron by Jasper Fforde

My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Fantastic and mesmerizing bizarro-world filled with detail and minutia that bring it zinging to life.  Fforde is a genius, without question.  I get perhaps half of his literary references, and consider myself extremely lucky when I catch one.  I'm sure a scholar (or maybe my mom) would get even more from his work.  Can't wait for the rest of this series.

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Thoughts on Books : The White Tiger

The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The grittiest, most revealing book I've read yet about India.  I'm fascinated by the place.  And especially this book, which I think has a striking foundation of truth wrapped in the fiction.  The idea of servitude, of a whole nation built on it, is the central tenet.  Crushing poverty, diabolical corruption, excess wealth... all just daily players in the game.  The book is very dark, but casually so.  As it's written in the form of a letter to the Chinese premiere, a treatise on entrepreneurship that the main character thinks a Communist leader needs, it has great satirical value as well.

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Thoughts on Books: Queen of the Road

Queen of the Road: The True Tale of 47 States, 22,000 Miles, 200 Shoes, 2 Cats, 1 Poodle, a Husband, and a Bus with a Will of Its Own by Doreen Orion

My rating: 3 of 5 stars
I started out hating this woman.  But I think she kind of hated herself.  She was like a bad 'Sex and the City' paraody - she couldn't shut up about shoes and track suits and martinis.  I think people tend to tone themselves down in print, the make themselves look better than reality, which turned me off even more toward Ms. Orian.  But as the book progressed and she eased up, I liked her more and more.  By the end, she arcs into a character you can understand, and she's come to understand herself.

The idea of the trip she and her husband take - one year cross-country in a converted bus - is unique and fun.  The luxury outfitting they do to their rig is amazing.  I enjoyed this tale, as soon as Ms. Orian and I both got over her desperate materialism and hysterics.

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Not So Much - THE ROAD TO OXIANA

The Road to Oxiana by Robert Byron

My rating: 2 of 5 stars
The things we are forced to do for book club. This classic travel book is the diary-style memoir of an Englishman crossing Persia and Afghanistan in 1933. He is witty and likable, also random, pompous and casually racist in that impossibly pre-WWII way. His observations are keen and his writing witty - I even laughed out loud twice. But the world he captures is ancient history, and thus seems irrelevant. The buildings no longer stand, the countries have disappeared, the cities and ethnicities have changed names a hundred times. The writing is wonderfully descriptive, yet I never had the slightest idea what he was on about. The book reads as a diary - meant for himself - with casual half-references to characters and places never elaborated. I kept picking it up, but always felt a temper tantrum simmering just below the surface. Bored, anxious and with that bratty 'this had better be over soon' feeling, I would not recommend this book. Mark Twain is all the classic I could ever want.

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Love in the Library: CONFESSOR

I had to read these back-to-back. I couldn't stop one book from the end!

Confessor by Terry Goodkind

My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Whew! Nearly 10,000 pages invested in this epic series, and I absolutely loved them. I'm a bit spent after 11 books (which I took year to read through). I'm very satisfied with the ending - it was a nail-biter that still managed to tie this all up. The material is very graphic, and I feel pounded by the warfare and horrors that Goodkind takes time and (sometimes endless) pages to detail. A bit less of that might have been nice. Still, it served the purpose of the story. His characters are complex, flawed, wonderful and horrible by turns. I won't rush into another series of such breadth and depth, but my time with the Seeker of Truth was very well spent.

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Love in the Library: PHANTOM

Phantom by Terry Goodkind

My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Ten books down! I really enjoyed this, but it's the first book in 10 that's felt like not a lot happened. It's gearing up for a big ending, and a few well-loved characters make a splash, but I felt it lost a little steam. Hopefully that steam was just donated to a whopper of a finale. No one wants to hear me go on about Richard and Kahlan being apart for another whole book, or gush about Rachel being a kick-ass guest star, or pick at Nicci's overwrought longing for Richard. Speaking of endless, Terry Goodkind, we get it. We get what the Order is like, and why. You've explained thoroughly, now you're bordering on ad nauseum. We've been here for 10,000 pages, have some faith in our collective memory. And now, let's kick Jagang's ass and restore peace to the New World!

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Love in the Library: THE BOOK THIEF

The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Beautiful and devastating, The Book Thief is also wonderfully different.  It's so creative that it's a bit tough at first, the narrator talking to himself, to you, telling the story.  Zusack writes like he thinks - not stream of consciousness (mercifully) but with phrases so exact, that capture so precisely, they are better than their grammatically perfect counterparts.  To write them correctly would be to take away their power.  Zusack doesn't do that, and I think that's the mark of a great writer.  That language can be art, can have power of its own, is the truth of The Book Thief.  It's true in the story the book is telling, and it's true in the words the book uses to tell it.

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Love in the Library: HOLY COW

Holy Cow: An Indian Adventure by Sarah Macdonald

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is a great book if you're thinking about traveling to India. Sarah Macdonald doesn't pull any punches in describing the country - it's down and dirty and it takes her a long time to fall in love with it. Late in the story, when she welcomes some friends from home into her now-Indian life on their first trip through the subcontinent, she sees in them the horror that she first experienced herself. And thus realizes how far she has come. I couldn't promise that I'd love (or even like) India, but Sarah's journey is more than geographical - it turns her into the kind of person you'd have to be to survive, and take anything from, the Indian experience.

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Best Books of 2009

I keep a list, which says I read 59 books this year.  Considering a lot of them were 700+ pages, that's not too bad!  My Amazon Wish List is well over 130 more titles, so bring on 2010.

Best Books of 2009
1) The Sword of Truth - Terry Goodkind
Oh how I do go on about these books.  I'm counting all 9 that I've read as one entry, because it's pretty much taken over my life.  It's a big commitment, but among my favorite things I've discovered this year.

2) The Last Olympian (Percy Jackson series) - Rick Riordan
Thrilling end to a whiz-bang smarty-pants series - I actually laughed and cried while reading this (on the bus, of course).

3) Pride and Prejudice and Zombies - Jane Austen (with help)
As hilarious as it sounds, and still it holds the rapture of the original story.  File under: Wish I had thought of this first.

4) The Magicians - Lev Grossman

Brilliant, meticulous and packing a few wicked surprises, I loved the idea of Harry Potter-esque idea a twisted tale for some very messed up high schoolers.

5) The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao - Junot Diaz
Brutal and brilliant, with stunning prose, this book was transported me to a dangerous, fascinating place in recent foreign history.

Bonus: A Song of Fire and Ice - George RR Martin
To avoid scary the non-fantasy fans, I'm tacking this on as a freebie.  Less magic, more intrigue - this series reads like historical fiction from a world you've just discovered.  And there are dragons (only a little!).

Worst Books of 2009 
Caveat: I did not finish these books.  Life is too short.

Maps and Legends - Michael Chabon
I can't believe I just typed that!  This book of short-story memoirs read like a self-indulgent inside joke that I had no interest in getting.  Like watching someone else's vacation slide show - boastful and boring. 

A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again - David Foster Wallace
See above.  No more uber-literary short story memoirs for me.