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Among the pleasure of the last few months has been a long, unprecedented and uninterrupted stretch of time for unassigned reading, made possible by 1) unemployment and 2) the Amazon Kindle and a tiny used book store/coffee shop near our home. Since some of you took up my call for suggestions, and perhaps may be looking for suggestions yourself, here’s the list so far, with a one-sentence review of each. I’m still looking for good ideas — keep them coming.
My Paper Chase: True Stories of Vanished Times, by Harold Evans. A surprisingly delightful memoir of an English newspaperman, commended to anyone in my dejected profession needing a pep talk about journalism‘s importance and (diminishing) personal rewards.
Empire of Liberty: A History of the Early Republic, 1789-1815, by Gordon Wood. History at its best - a beautifully organized and written synthesis of political and social history that proves remarkably on point as a lens for our current political divisions.
God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything, by Christopher Hitches. Full of erudition and some wonderful writing, but overall disjointed, disappointing and somewhat coarse.
The Fate of Africa: A History of 50 Years of Independence, by Martin Meredith. A readable, enlightening, comprehensive and phenomenally depressing political history of post-colonial Africa — its squandered promise and the price paid by its people for the bottomless greed of its first generations of leaders.
Skin Tight, By Carl Hiaasen. Much-needed brain relief by a writer you have to love.
Deaf Sentence, By David Lodge. An enjoyable meditation on aging by the reigning monarch of the campus novel genre — not his best book, but a nice one.
The Marketplace of Ideas, by Louis Menand. A short and somewhat scattered collection of essays on current issues in academia by someone who, thankfully, writes with an order of magnitude more clarity than the typical academic. Still, probably a bit New York Review of Booksy for most readers.
The Shadow of the Wind, by Carlos Ruiz Zafon: After a bit of a slow start, this turned into one of the most enjoyable novels I remember reading. Ever. Thanks to several of you for the tip.
Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs, by Alexandra Fuller: A thoughtful and haunting memoir of growing up in a white immigrant family in Rhodesia and Zambia.
Africa, Biography of a Continent, by John Reader. Covers a few hundred million years in about 700 pages from a wide range of perspectives — anthropological, ecological, economic. Generally well-written but a hard slog — and probably not something to push through unless you’re already interested in the topic.
A Thousand Hills: Rwanda’s Rebirth and the Man Who Dreamed It, by Steven Kinzer. A combination of a history of the genocide and a largely fawning profile of President Paul Kagame. Enough to get me interested in the place and inspire an upcoming visit, though an oddly organized and fairly pedestrian book, writing-wise.
The Piano Teacher, by Janice Y. K. Lee. Every book club in America seems to love this book; pretty much Yawn City as far as I was concerned.
Old School, By Tobias Wolff. Recommended to me for years and I finally got around to it. Took a while to see what the fuss was about, but by the end was thoroughly hooked — a lovely piece of writing.
The Race Between Education and Technology, by Lawrence Katz and Claudia Golden. A topic that is right on one my main areas of interest, and still I could only inch through its endless charts and graphs before falling asleep. All the stylistic excitement of the National Bureau of Economic Research Paper it probably started as.
Love in the Time of Cholera, By Gabriel Garcia-Marquez. Rereading probably 20 years after the first time and still the same verdict: one of the all-time great pieces of prose.
Angler: The Cheney Vice-Presidency, By Bart Gellman. A portrait that will make you feel all warm and fuzzy about the former vice president’s time in office.
The Audacity to Win, By David Plouffe. A memoir from Obama’s campaign manager that had me turning the pages but still reads largely like a press release. Fortunately for Obama, Plouffe managed his campaign and didn’t write his speeches — can we please banish the noun “takeaway” from the English language?
