A good start to 2016, which is needed, since I suddenly find myself with less free time and no library. Time to dust off the old Kindle.

Ten Years in the Tub: A Decade Soaking in Great Books
by Nick Hornby

From the library. Picked this up after really enjoying a year's worth of his book reviews in another collection. Ten years is a long time, and it makes for a lot of book reviews to read in one sitting , but if anyone can do it, it's Nick Hornby, and I breezed through this in no time.

The Inimitable Jeeves (Jeeves, #2)
by P.G. Wodehouse

From Library. Recommended by Nick Hornby. Still a joy to read, but slightly less so than thirty years ago. But it's not you, Mr. Wodehouse. It's me.

Empire of Cotton: A Global History
by Sven Beckert

Great story that gives insight into economics, history, globalization, the slave trade and the industrial revolution. A little dry at times, but well worth it.

Hyperbole and a Half: Unfortunate Situations, Flawed Coping Mechanisms, Mayhem, and Other Things That Happened

by Allie Brosh

Gift from Worldwide to the BG and me. We both enjoyed its comic take on youth, depression and dogs.

Literary Life: A Second Memoir
by Larry McMurtry

From the library. I had never ready anything of his, and it looked interesting. Wasn't particularly.. Which is not to say that I didn't enjoy it.

The Finishing School

by Muriel Spark

From Library. Author recommended by Nick Hornby. OK story, but I want to try something earlier before I form an opinion.

Update. She is worth exploring, as an author. See "The Girls of Slender Means.

The Girls of Slender Means
by Muriel Spark

From the library. Recommended by Nick Hornby. Very British and very funny story about young women in a London boarding house and their romantic adventures. Recommended.

2015 was a good year for books, although I'll never match the 105 I read in 2012, when the BG and I were in competition and I was on a heavy diet of YA for her fifth grade reading group. The full list is below my Top Five, and you can find the Goodreads version here. Although denominated hierarchically, they are not intended as a ranking.

If I had to choose my favourite book of the year, I think it would be Infidel, because it was a gripping story of personal triumph of a remarkable woman who escaped the hardship of Somalia and the death grip of religion. But the Pinker book was fascinating; the Hornby was a fantastically written book about books and reading; and the two works of fiction were delightful, each in their own way.

Infidel

by Ayaan Hirsi Ali

I gather she's become a darling of the right for her opposition to some of the tenets of Islam, but the remarkable stories of life for a girl in Somalia and Saudi Arabia, and her escape through the bureaucracy into Europe, an education and success, is equal parts riveting and inspirational. I read a bunch of books this year trying to understand what it's like to be a Muslim woman, and this was far and away the best.

The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature

by Steven Pinker

Convincing argument that human nature is largely a product of biology, and how culture, religion and politics have twisted the facts to fit preferred narratives. I learned a great deal from this book, and it seemed, to me, balanced and easy to read.

More Baths, Less Talking (Stuff I've Been Reading #4)

by Nick Hornby

I'm a sucker for Hornby and book reviews, so the inclusion of this book should not be a surprose. What is a surprise, is that I happened on it at the library, while I was looking for something else, and was heretofore unaware that he had been doing a regular column. Great writing, and the fact that at the time (2011) he was working on a screenplay for Brooklyn--a movie that came out last December--only added to the enjoyment. He also pointed me to Murial Spark, and I've read and liked two of her books this month (I have a hold on The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie )

True Grit

by Charles Portis

I understand why everybody wanted to make this into a movie. Portis is a great writer, and Mattie Ross might be the greatest young woman in American literature. Sarah loaned me Dog of the South last year, and I enjoyed it so much, I'd thought I'd give his best known work a try. Glad I did.

All the Light We Cannot See

by Anthony Doerr

I think G Lo gave me this, with, as i recall, the instructions that I was to read this, but I wouldn't enjoy it. As a contrarian, I did enjoy it, partly for the WW I setting (particularly interesting a after reading a bunch of books in Belgrade in the centennial year of Gavrilo Princip); partly for the artful time shifting, which made the story all the more interesting; and finally, for the lyrical beauty of the prose.

2015 Books

title	author
The Tempest	Shakespeare, William
How Music Got Free: The End of an Industry, the Turn of the Century, and the Patient Zero of Piracy	Witt, Stephen
The Catcher in the Rye	Salinger, J.D.
Glengarry Glen Ross	Mamet, David
The Evolution of Everything: How New Ideas Emerge	Ridley, Matt
More Baths, Less Talking (Stuff I've Been Reading #4)	Hornby, Nick
Robert Graves: Complete Short Stories	Graves, Lucis
Irrationally yours : on missing socks, pick-up lines and other existential puzzles	Ariely, Dan
Fifteen Dogs	Alexis, André
For Writers Only	Burnham, Sophy *
The Bell Jar	Plath, Sylvia
Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future	Thiel, Peter
The Rap Year Book: The Most Important Rap Song From Every Year Since 1979, Discussed, Debated, and Deconstructed	Serrano, Shea
Mindfulness in Plain English	Gunaratana, Henepola
Misbehaving: The Making of Behavioral Economics	Thaler, Richard H.
The Three Sisters	Chekhov, Anton
Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity	Boo, Katherine
The Art of Procrastination: A Guide to Effective Dawdling, Lollygagging and Postponing	Perry, John R.
The Tell: The Little Clues That Reveal Big Truths about Who We Are	Hertenstein, Matthew *
Purity	Franzen, Jonathan
Meditations	Aurelius, Marcus
Play It as It Lays	Didion, Joan
Station Eleven	Mandel, Emily St. John *
Enduring Love	McEwan, Ian
Black Lamb and Grey Falcon	West, Rebecca
The White Album	Didion, Joan
Cuisine and Empire: Cooking in World History	Laudan, Rachel *
Huck Finn's America: Mark Twain and the Era That Shaped His Masterpiece	Levy, Andrew
The Last Thing He Wanted	Didion, Joan
The Antidote: Happiness for People Who Can't Stand Positive Thinking	Burkeman, Oliver
The Big Payback	Charnas, Dan
Leaven of Malice	Davies, Robertson
A Mixture of Frailties	Davies, Robertson
Tempest-Tost (Salterton Trilogy, #1)	Davies, Robertson
Nowhere to Run: The Story of Soul Music	Hirshey, Gerri
Distant View of a Minaret and Other Stories	Rifaat, Alifa
Much Ado About Nothing	Shakespeare, William
Real Men Do Yoga: 21 Star Athletes Reveal Their Secrets of Strength, Flexibility and Peak Performance	Capouya, John
Bel-Ami	Maupassant, Guy de
The Death of a President: November 1963	Manchester, William
Cakes and Ale	Maugham, W. Somerset
The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up	Kondo, Marie
Nomad: From Islam to America: A Personal Journey Through the Clash of Civilizations	Ali, Ayaan Hirsi
The Run of His Life : The People versus O. J. Simpson	Toobin, Jeffrey
Headscarves and Hymens: Why the Middle East Needs a Sexual Revolution	Eltahawy, Mona
I Want to Get Married!: One Wannabe Bride's Misadventures with Handsome Houdinis, Technicolor Grooms, Morality Police, and Other Mr. Not-Quite-Rights	Aal, Ghada Abdel
True Grit	Portis, Charles
The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature	Pinker, Steven
Short Cuts: Selected Stories	Carver, Raymond
Essential Manners for Men: What to Do, When to Do It, and Why	Post, Peter
The Caged Virgin: An Emancipation Proclamation for Women and Islam	Ali, Ayaan Hirsi
Brothas Be, Yo Like George, Ain't That Funkin' Kinda Hard on You?: A Memoir	Clinton, George
The Struggle for Egypt: From Nasser to Tahrir Square (Council on Foreign Relations	Cook, Steven A.
The Glass Cage: Automation and Us	Carr, Nicholas *
All the Light We Cannot See	Doerr, Anthony *
How to Be a Woman	Moran, Caitlin
The Reluctant Fundamentalist	Hamid, Mohsin
Memoirs of a Woman Doctor	Nawal el Sadawi
Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail	Strayed, Cheryl
Infidel	Ali, Ayaan Hirsi
A Girl Is a Half-formed Thing	McBride, Eimear
Salt Sugar Fat: How the Food Giants Hooked Us	Moss, Michael
Killing Yourself to Live: 85% of a True Story	Klosterman, Chuck
Spring Chicken: Stay Young Forever	Gifford, Bill
Cathedral, Forge, and Waterwheel: Technology and Invention in the Middle Ages	Gies, Frances
How We Got to Now: Six Innovations That Made the Modern World	Johnson, Steven
The Complete Stories of Truman Capote	Capote, Truman
The Broken Road: From the Iron Gates to Mount Athos	Leigh Fermor, Patrick
The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers	Horowitz, Ben *
The Balkans: Nationalism, War and the Great Powers 1804-1999	Glenny, Misha *
Mo' Meta Blues: The World According to Questlove	Thompson, Ahmir Questlove
Bad Samaritans: The Myth of Free Trade and the Secret History of Capitalism	Chang, Ha-Joon
What If? : Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions	Munroe, Randall *
All the King's Men	Warren, Robert Penn
Afternoon Men	Powell, Anthony
How to Build a Girl	Moran, Caitlin
The Great Game: The Struggle for Empire in Central Asia	Hopkirk, Peter
The Rosie Project (Don Tillman #1)	Simsion, Graeme *
Main Lines, Blood Feasts, and Bad Taste: A Lester Bangs Reader	Bangs, Lester

Sunday, March 6, 2016

February books

Book of Days: Personal Essays

Filters against Folly

The Lessons of History

The Confidence Game: The Psychology of the Con and Why We Fall for It Every Time

A Hero of Our Time

Sunday, February 7, 2016

January Books