Ryan's bookshelf: all en-US Wed, 07 Aug 2024 18:29:54 -0700 60 Ryan's bookshelf: all 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg <![CDATA[The Metamorphosis and Other Stories]]> 7723 The Metamorphosis,� a story that is both harrowing and amusing, and a landmark of modern literature.

Bringing together some of Kafka’s finest work, this collection demonstrates the richness and variety of the author’s artistry. �The Judgment,� which Kafka considered to be his decisive breakthrough, and �The Stoker,� which became the first chapter of his novel Amerika, are here included. These two, along with �The Metamorphosis,� form a suite of stories Kafka referred to as “The Sons,� and they collectively present a devastating portrait of the modern family.

Also included are �In the Penal Colony,� a story of a torture machine and its operators and victims, and �A Hunger Artist,� about the absurdity of an artist trying to communicate with a misunderstanding public. Kafka’s lucid, succinct writing chronicles the labyrinthine complexities, the futility-laden horror, and the stifling oppressiveness that permeate his vision of modern life.]]> 224 Franz Kafka 1593080298 Ryan 0 to-read 4.08 1915 The Metamorphosis and Other Stories
author: Franz Kafka
name: Ryan
average rating: 4.08
book published: 1915
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]]> <![CDATA[The Civil War, Vol. 3: Red River to Appomattox]]> 874419 1120 Shelby Foote 0394746228 Ryan 4 4.53 1974 The Civil War, Vol. 3: Red River to Appomattox
author: Shelby Foote
name: Ryan
average rating: 4.53
book published: 1974
rating: 4
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]]> Mansfield Park 45032 488 Jane Austen Ryan 4 3.86 1814 Mansfield Park
author: Jane Austen
name: Ryan
average rating: 3.86
book published: 1814
rating: 4
read at: 1999/10/01
date added: 2024/08/07
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]]> <![CDATA[The Landmark Thucydides: A Comprehensive Guide to the Peloponnesian War]]> 27222 You can find an alternative cover for this ISBN here.

Thucydides called his account of two decades of war between Athens and Sparta "possession for all time, " and indeed it is the first and still most famous work in the Western historical tradition. Considered essential reading for generals, statesmen, and liberally educated citizens for more than 2,000 years, The Peloponnesian War is a mine of military, moral, political, and philosophical wisdom.

However, this classic book has long presented obstacles to the uninitiated reader. Written centuries before the rise of modern historiography, Thucydides' narrative is not continuous or linear. His authoritative chronicle of what he considered the greatest war of all time is rigorous and meticulous, yet omits the many aids to comprehension modern readers take for granted—such as brief biographies of the story's main characters, maps and other visual enhancements, and background on the military, cultural, and political traditions of ancient Greece.

Robert Strassler's new edition amends these omissions, and not only provides a new coherence to the narrative overall but effectively reconstructs the lost cultural context that Thucydides shared with his original audience. Based on the venerable Richard Crawley translation, updated and revised for modern readers, The Landmark Thucydides includes a vast array of superbly designed and presented maps, brief informative appendices by outstanding classical scholars on subjects of special relevance to the text, explanatory marginal notes on each page, an index of unprecedented subtlety and depth, and numerous other useful features. Readers will find that with this edition they can dip into the text at any point and be immediately oriented with regard to the geography, season, date, and stage of the conflict.

In any list of the Great Books of Western Civilization, The Peloponnesian War stands near the top. This handsome, elegant, and authoritative new edition will ensure that its greatness is appreciated by future generations.]]> 713 Thucydides 0684827905 Ryan 0 to-read 4.25 -411 The Landmark Thucydides: A Comprehensive Guide to the Peloponnesian War
author: Thucydides
name: Ryan
average rating: 4.25
book published: -411
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]]> Another Country 38474
Stunning for its emotional intensity and haunting sensuality, this book depicts men and women, blacks and whites, stripped of their masks of gender and race by love and hatred at the most elemental and sublime.]]> 448 James Baldwin 0141186372 Ryan 0 to-read 4.32 1962 Another Country
author: James Baldwin
name: Ryan
average rating: 4.32
book published: 1962
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/07/27
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]]> <![CDATA[Lectures on Russian Literature]]> 631671 ]]> 352 Vladimir Nabokov 0156027763 Ryan 0 to-read 4.29 1981 Lectures on Russian Literature
author: Vladimir Nabokov
name: Ryan
average rating: 4.29
book published: 1981
rating: 0
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date added: 2017/02/20
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]]> Lady Chatterley's Lover 139050 Lady Chatterley's Lover joyously affirms the author's vision of individual regeneration through sexual love. The book's power, complexity, and psychological intricacy make this a completely original work—a triumph of passion, an erotic celebration of life.]]> 400 D.H. Lawrence 0553212621 Ryan 3 3.36 1928 Lady Chatterley's Lover
author: D.H. Lawrence
name: Ryan
average rating: 3.36
book published: 1928
rating: 3
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date added: 2015/09/04
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]]> <![CDATA[Apology / Crito / Phaedo / Symposium / Republic]]> 73946 Apology, Crito, Phaedo, Symposium & Republic. Translated by B. Jowett. Edited, with Introduction, by Louise Ropes Loomis.]]> 386 Plato 0671469274 Ryan 0 to-read 4.17 Apology / Crito / Phaedo / Symposium / Republic
author: Plato
name: Ryan
average rating: 4.17
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]]> <![CDATA[Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason]]> 51934 Madness and Civilization, Foucault's first book and his finest accomplishment, will change the way in which you think about society. Evoking shock, pity and fascination, it might also make you question the way you think about yourself.]]> 304 Michel Foucault 0415253853 Ryan 2 3.85 1961 Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason
author: Michel Foucault
name: Ryan
average rating: 3.85
book published: 1961
rating: 2
read at: 2009/10/01
date added: 2015/06/22
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]]> John Donne's Poetry 134017
Criticism is divided into four sections and represents the best criticism and interpretation of Donne s writing: Donne and Metaphysical Poetry includes seven seventeenth-century views by contemporaries of Donne such as Ben Jonson, Thomas Carew, and John Dryden, among others; Satires, Elegies, and Verse Letters includes seven selections that offer social and literary context for and insights into Donne s frequently overlooked early poems; Songs and Sonnets features six analyses of Donne s love poetry; and Holy Sonnets/Divine Poems explores Donne s struggles as a Christian through four authoritative essays.

A Chronology of Donne s life and work, a Selected Bibliography, and an Index of Titles and First Lines are also included.]]> 456 John Donne 0393926486 Ryan 0 to-read 4.11 1631 John Donne's Poetry
author: John Donne
name: Ryan
average rating: 4.11
book published: 1631
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]]> Selected Poems 65338
� "The Wasteland"
� "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock"
� "Mr. Eliot's Sunday Morning Service"]]> 96 T.S. Eliot 0517227223 Ryan 0 to-read 4.03 1948 Selected Poems
author: T.S. Eliot
name: Ryan
average rating: 4.03
book published: 1948
rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[Remembrance of Things Past: Volume I - Swann's Way & Within a Budding Grove]]> 190576
Originally rendered by C.K. Scott Moncrieff from an early and unreliable French edition, Proust’s masterpiece has now been flawlessly translated by Terence Kilmartin in this acclaimed version.]]> 1056 Marcel Proust 0394711823 Ryan 3 4.29 1913 Remembrance of Things Past: Volume I - Swann's Way & Within a Budding Grove
author: Marcel Proust
name: Ryan
average rating: 4.29
book published: 1913
rating: 3
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date added: 2015/02/28
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]]> War and Peace 416057
"Backgrounds and Sources" includes the publication history of War and Peace, selections from Tolstoy's letters and diaries as well as three drafts of his introduction to the novel that elucidate its evolution, and an 1868 article by Tolstoy in which he reacts to his critics.

"Criticism" includes twenty essays, seven of them new, that provide diverse perspectives on the novel by Nikolai Strakhov, V. I. Lenin, Henry James, Isaiah Berlin, D. S. Mirsky, Kathryn Feuer, Lydia Ginzburg, Richard Gustafson, Gary Saul Morson, and Caryl Emerson, among others.

A Chronology and Selected Bibliography are also included.]]> 1200 Leo Tolstoy 039396647X Ryan 5 4.30 1869 War and Peace
author: Leo Tolstoy
name: Ryan
average rating: 4.30
book published: 1869
rating: 5
read at: 2006/10/01
date added: 2014/10/10
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]]> Continental Drift 26919 Continental Drift is a masterful novel of hope lost and gained, and a gripping, indelible story of fragile lives uprooted and transformed by injustice, disappointment, and the seductions and realities of the American dream.]]> 410 Russell Banks 0060854944 Ryan 4 3.88 1985 Continental Drift
author: Russell Banks
name: Ryan
average rating: 3.88
book published: 1985
rating: 4
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date added: 2014/07/25
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]]> The Corrections 658770 After almost fifty years as a wife and mother, Enid Lambert is ready to have some fun. Unfortunately, her husband, Alfred, is losing his sanity to Parkinson's disease, and their children have long since flown the family nest to the catastrophes of their own lives. The oldest, Gary, a once-stable portfolio manager and family man, is trying to convince his wife and himself, despite clear signs to the contrary, that he is not clinically depressed. The middle child, Chip, has lost his seemingly secure academic job and is failing spectacularly at his new line of work. And Denise, the youngest, has escaped a disastrous marriage only to pour her youth and beauty down the drain of an affair with a married man - or so her mother fears. Desperate for some pleasure to look forward to, Enid has set her heart on an elusive goal: bringing her family together for one last Christmas at home.
Stretching from the Midwest at midcentury to the Wall Street and Eastern Europe of today, "The Corrections" brings an old-fashioned world of civic virtue and sexual inhibitions into violent collision with the era of home surveillance, hands-off parenting, do-it-yourself mental healthcare, and globalised greed. Richly realistic, darkly hilarious, deeply humane, it confirms Jonathan Franzen as one of our most brilliant interpreters of American society and the American soul.]]> 568 Jonathan Franzen 0374100128 Ryan 3 3.76 2001 The Corrections
author: Jonathan Franzen
name: Ryan
average rating: 3.76
book published: 2001
rating: 3
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]]> <![CDATA[The Shakespeare Wars: Clashing Scholars, Public Fiascoes, Palace Coups]]> 32478 –David Remnick

In The Shakespeare Wars, Ron Rosenbaum gives readers an unforgettable way of rethinking the greatest works of the human imagination. As he did in his groundbreaking Explaining Hitler, he shakes up much that we thought we understood about a vital subject and renews our sense of excitement and urgency. He gives us a Shakespeare book like no other. Rather than raking over worn-out fragments of biography, Rosenbaum focuses on cutting-edge controversies about the true source of Shakespeare’s enchantment and illumination–the astonishing language itself. How best to unlock the secrets of its spell?

With quicksilver wit and provocative insight, Rosenbaum takes readers into the midst of fierce battles among the most brilliant Shakespearean scholars and directors over just how to delve deeper into the Shakespearean experience–deeper into the mind of Shakespeare.

Was Shakespeare the one-draft wonder of Shakespeare in Love? Or was he rather–as an embattled faction of textual scholars now argues–a different kind of writer entirely: a conscientious reviser of his greatest plays? Must we then revise our way of reading, staging, and interpreting such works as Hamlet and King Lear?

Rosenbaum pursues key partisans in these debates from the high tables of Oxford to a Krispy Kreme doughnut shop in a strip mall in the Deep South. He makes ostensibly arcane textual scholarship intensely seductive–and sometimes even explicitly sexual. At an academic “Pleasure Seminar� in Bermuda, for instance, he examines one scholar’s quest to find an orgasm in Romeo and Juliet. Rosenbaum shows us great directors as Shakespearean scholars in their own right: We hear Peter Brook–perhaps the most influential Shakespearean director of the past century–disclose his quest for a “secret play� hidden within the Bard’s comedies and dramas. We listen to Sir Peter Hall, founder of the Royal Shakespeare Company, as he launches into an impassioned, table-pounding fury while discussing how the means of unleashing the full intensity of Shakespeare’s language has been lost–and how to restore it. Rosenbaum’s hilarious inside account of “the Great Shakespeare ‘Funeral Elegy� Fiasco,� a man-versus-computer clash, illustrates the iconic struggle to define what is and isn’t “Shakespearean.� And he demonstrates the way Shakespearean scholars such as Harold Bloom can become great Shakespearean characters in their own right.

The Shakespeare Wars offers a thrilling opportunity to engage with Shakespeare’s work at its deepest levels. Like Explaining Hitler, this book is destined to revolutionize the way we think about one of the overwhelming obsessions of our time.]]> 601 Ron Rosenbaum 0375503390 Ryan 0 currently-reading 3.97 2006 The Shakespeare Wars: Clashing Scholars, Public Fiascoes, Palace Coups
author: Ron Rosenbaum
name: Ryan
average rating: 3.97
book published: 2006
rating: 0
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]]> The Interestings 15815333
The summer that Nixon resigns, six teenagers at a summer camp for the arts become inseparable. Decades later the bond remains powerful, but so much else has changed. In The Interestings, Wolitzer follows these characters from the height of youth through middle age, as their talents, fortunes, and degrees of satisfaction diverge.

The kind of creativity that is rewarded at age fifteen is not always enough to propel someone through life at age thirty; not everyone can sustain, in adulthood, what seemed so special in adolescence. Jules Jacobson, an aspiring comic actress, eventually resigns herself to a more practical occupation and lifestyle. Her friend Jonah, a gifted musician, stops playing the guitar and becomes an engineer. But Ethan and Ash, Jules's now-married best friends, become shockingly successful—true to their initial artistic dreams, with the wealth and access that allow those dreams to keep expanding. The friendships endure and even prosper, but also underscore the differences in their fates, in what their talents have become and the shapes their lives have taken.

Wide in scope, ambitious, and populated by complex characters who come together and apart in a changing New York City, The Interestings explores the meaning of talent; the nature of envy; the roles of class, art, money, and power; and how all of it can shift and tilt precipitously over the course of a friendship and a life.]]> 468 Meg Wolitzer 1594488398 Ryan 3 3.58 2013 The Interestings
author: Meg Wolitzer
name: Ryan
average rating: 3.58
book published: 2013
rating: 3
read at: 2014/03/13
date added: 2014/03/16
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]]> <![CDATA[Henry Adams: History of the United States During the Administrations of James Madison (1809�1817)]]> 362531 Library of America volumes, culminated Henry Adams’s lifelong fascination with the American past. Writing at the height of his powers, Adams understood the true subject as the consolidation of the American nation and character, and his treatment has never been surpassed.

Covering the eight years spanning the presidency of James Madison, this volume chronicles “Mr. Madison’s War”—the most bungled war in American history. The President and Congress delay while the United States is bullied and insulted by both England and France; then they plunge the country into the War of 1812 without providing the troops, monies, or fleets to wage it. The incompetence of the commanders leads to a series of disasters—including the burning of the White House and Capitol while Madison and his cabinet, fleeing from an invading army, watch from the nearby hills of Maryland and Virginia.

The war has its heroes, too: William Henry Harrison at Tippecanoe and Andrew Jackson at New Orleans, Commodores Perry and Decatur and the officers and crew of the Constitution. As Adams tells it, though, disgrace, is averted by other means: the ineptitude of the British, the skill of the American artillerymen and privateers, and the diplomatic brilliance of Albert Gallatin and John Quincy Adams, who negotiated the peace treaty at Ghent. The history, full of reversals and paradoxes, ends with the largest irony of all: the United States, the apparent loser of the war, emerges as a great new world power destined to eclipse its European rivals.]]> 1436 Henry Adams 0940450356 Ryan 0 to-read 4.45 1986 Henry Adams: History of the United States During the Administrations of James Madison (1809–1817)
author: Henry Adams
name: Ryan
average rating: 4.45
book published: 1986
rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[The Death of Ivan Ilych and Other Stories]]> 655
Count Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910) is best known for War and Peace and Anna Karenina, commonly regarded as amongst the greatest novels ever written. He also, however, wrote many masterly short stories, and this volume contains four of the longest and best in distinguished translations that have stood the test of time. In the early story 'Family Happiness', Tolstoy explores courtship and marriage from the point of view of a young wife. In 'The Kreutzer Sonata' he gives us a terrifying study of marital breakdown, in 'The Devil' a powerful depiction of the power of sexual temptation, and, in perhaps the finest of all, 'The Death of Ivan Ilyich', he portrays the long agony of a man gradually coming to terms with his own mortality.

Librarian's note: See alternate cover edition of ISBN 1840224533 here.]]> 304 Leo Tolstoy 0451528808 Ryan 0 to-read 4.13 1886 The Death of Ivan Ilych and Other Stories
author: Leo Tolstoy
name: Ryan
average rating: 4.13
book published: 1886
rating: 0
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]]> The Circle (The Circle, #1) 18302455 alternate cover for ISBN 9780385351393

When Mae Holland is hired to work for the Circle, the world’s most powerful internet company, she feels she’s been given the opportunity of a lifetime. The Circle, run out of a sprawling California campus, links users� personal emails, social media, banking, and purchasing with their universal operating system, resulting in one online identity and a new age of civility and transparency.

As Mae tours the open-plan office spaces, the towering glass dining facilities, the cozy dorms for those who spend nights at work, she is thrilled with the company’s modernity and activity. There are parties that last through the night, there are famous musicians playing on the lawn, there are athletic activities and clubs and brunches, and even an aquarium of rare fish retrieved from the Marianas Trench by the CEO.

Mae can’t believe her luck, her great fortune to work for the most influential company in the world—even as life beyond the campus grows distant, even as a strange encounter with a colleague leaves her shaken, even as her role at the Circle becomes increasingly public.

What begins as the captivating story of one woman’s ambition and idealism soon becomes a heart-racing novel of suspense, raising questions about memory, history, privacy, democracy, and the limits of human knowledge.]]> 493 Dave Eggers Ryan 3 3.41 2013 The Circle (The Circle, #1)
author: Dave Eggers
name: Ryan
average rating: 3.41
book published: 2013
rating: 3
read at: 2014/01/10
date added: 2014/01/12
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]]> Bleeding Edge 17208457
It is 2001 in New York City, in the lull between the collapse of the dot-com boom and the terrible events of September 11th. Silicon Alley is a ghost town, Web 1.0 is having adolescent angst, Google has yet to IPO, Microsoft is still considered the Evil Empire. There may not be quite as much money around as there was at the height of the tech bubble, but there’s no shortage of swindlers looking to grab a piece of what’s left.

Maxine Tarnow is running a nice little fraud investigation business on the Upper West Side, chasing down different kinds of small-scale con artists. She used to be legally certified but her license got pulled a while back, which has actually turned out to be a blessing because now she can follow her own code of ethics—carry a Beretta, do business with sleazebags, hack into people’s bank accounts—without having too much guilt about any of it. Otherwise, just your average working mom—two boys in elementary school, an off-and-on situation with her sort of semi-ex-husband Horst, life as normal as it ever gets in the neighborhood—till Maxine starts looking into the finances of a computer-security firm and its billionaire geek CEO, whereupon things begin rapidly to jam onto the subway and head downtown. She soon finds herself mixed up with a drug runner in an art deco motorboat, a professional nose obsessed with Hitler’s aftershave, a neoliberal enforcer with footwear issues, plus elements of the Russian mob and various bloggers, hackers, code monkeys, and entrepreneurs, some of whom begin to show up mysteriously dead. Foul play, of course.

With occasional excursions into the DeepWeb and out to Long Island, Thomas Pynchon, channeling his inner Jewish mother, brings us a historical romance of New York in the early days of the internet, not that distant in calendar time but galactically remote from where we’ve journeyed to since.

Will perpetrators be revealed, forget about brought to justice? Will Maxine have to take the handgun out of her purse? Will she and Horst get back together? Will Jerry Seinfeld make an unscheduled guest appearance? Will accounts secular and karmic be brought into balance?

Hey. Who wants to know?]]> 477 Thomas Pynchon 1594204233 Ryan 3 3.61 2013 Bleeding Edge
author: Thomas Pynchon
name: Ryan
average rating: 3.61
book published: 2013
rating: 3
read at: 2014/01/01
date added: 2014/01/01
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]]> <![CDATA[The Ocean at the End of the Lane]]> 15783514
Forty years earlier, a man committed suicide in a stolen car at this farm at the end of the road. Like a fuse on a firework, his death lit a touchpaper and resonated in unimaginable ways. The darkness was unleashed, something scary and thoroughly incomprehensible to a little boy. And Lettie—magical, comforting, wise beyond her years—promised to protect him, no matter what.

A groundbreaking work from a master, The Ocean at the End of the Lane is told with a rare understanding of all that makes us human, and shows the power of stories to reveal and shelter us from the darkness inside and out. It is a stirring, terrifying, and elegiac fable as delicate as a butterfly's wing and as menacing as a knife in the dark.]]> 181 Neil Gaiman 0062255657 Ryan 0 to-read 4.00 2013 The Ocean at the End of the Lane
author: Neil Gaiman
name: Ryan
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2013
rating: 0
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date added: 2013/12/04
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]]> <![CDATA[You Don't Know Me but You Don't Like Me: Phish, Insane Clown Posse, and My Misadventures with Two of Music's Most Maligned Tribes]]> 16130606 The A.V. Club Nathan Rabin first set out to write about obsessed music fans, he had no idea the journey would take him to the deepest recesses of both the pop culture universe and his own mind. For two very curious years, Rabin, who Mindy Kaling called "smart and funny" in The New Yorker, hit the road with two of music's most well-established fanbases: Phish's hippie fans and Insane Clown Posse's notorious "Juggalos." Musically or style-wise, these two groups could not be more different from each other, and Rabin, admittedly, was a cynic about both bands. But once he gets deep below the surface, past the caricatures and into the essence of their collective cultures, he discovers that both groups have tapped into the human need for community. Rabin also grapples with his own mental well-being-- he discovers that he is bipolar-- and his journey is both a prism for cultural analysis and a deeply personal exploration, equal parts humor and heart.]]> 261 Nathan Rabin 1451626886 Ryan 0 to-read 3.26 2013 You Don't Know Me but You Don't Like Me: Phish, Insane Clown Posse, and My Misadventures with Two of Music's Most Maligned Tribes
author: Nathan Rabin
name: Ryan
average rating: 3.26
book published: 2013
rating: 0
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date added: 2013/12/04
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]]> <![CDATA[What Purpose Did I Serve in Your Life]]> 16057319 240 Marie Calloway 0985023589 Ryan 0 to-read 3.72 2013 What Purpose Did I Serve in Your Life
author: Marie Calloway
name: Ryan
average rating: 3.72
book published: 2013
rating: 0
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]]> The Luminaries 17333230 The Luminaries is a brilliantly constructed, fiendishly clever ghost story and a gripping page-turner.]]> 848 Eleanor Catton 0316074314 Ryan 0 currently-reading 3.73 2013 The Luminaries
author: Eleanor Catton
name: Ryan
average rating: 3.73
book published: 2013
rating: 0
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date added: 2013/12/04
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]]> <![CDATA[Rabid: A Cultural History of the World's Most Diabolical Virus]]> 13403051 Rabid is a fresh and often wildly entertaining look at one of humankind’s oldest and most fearsome foes.]]> 275 Bill Wasik 0670023736 Ryan 4 3.70 2012 Rabid: A Cultural History of the World's Most Diabolical Virus
author: Bill Wasik
name: Ryan
average rating: 3.70
book published: 2012
rating: 4
read at: 2013/08/15
date added: 2013/12/04
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]]> How Fiction Works 1355465 Aspects of the Novel and Milan Kundera's The Art of the Novel, How Fiction Works is a scintillating study of the magic of fiction--an analysis of its main elements and a celebration of its lasting power. Here one of the most prominent and stylish critics of our time looks into the machinery of storytelling to ask some fundamental questions: What do we mean when we say we "know" a fictional character? What constitutes a telling detail? When is a metaphor successful? Is Realism realistic? Why do some literary conventions become dated while others stay fresh?

James Wood ranges widely, from Homer to Make Way for Ducklings, from the Bible to John le Carré, and his book is both a study of the techniques of fiction-making and an alternative history of the novel. Playful and profound, How Fiction Works will be enlightening to writers, readers, and anyone else interested in what happens on the page.]]> 265 James Wood 0374173400 Ryan 4 4.00 2008 How Fiction Works
author: James Wood
name: Ryan
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2008
rating: 4
read at: 2008/07/01
date added: 2013/12/04
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]]> <![CDATA[Paleofantasy: What Evolution Really Tells Us about Sex, Diet, and How We Live]]> 13707578
From debunking the caveman diet to unraveling gender stereotypes, Zuk gives an analysis of widespread paleofantasies and the scientific evidence that undermines them, all the while broadening our understanding of our origins and what they can really tell us about our present and our future.]]> 328 Marlene Zuk 0393081370 Ryan 2 3.66 2013 Paleofantasy: What Evolution Really Tells Us about Sex, Diet, and How We Live
author: Marlene Zuk
name: Ryan
average rating: 3.66
book published: 2013
rating: 2
read at: 2013/06/01
date added: 2013/07/12
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]]> The Silver Linings Playbook 13539044
In this enchanting novel, Matthew Quick takes us inside Pat's mind, showing us the world from his distorted yet endearing perspective.]]> 291 Matthew Quick 0374533571 Ryan 3 3.98 2008 The Silver Linings Playbook
author: Matthew Quick
name: Ryan
average rating: 3.98
book published: 2008
rating: 3
read at: 2013/07/12
date added: 2013/07/12
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]]> <![CDATA[Zona: A Book About a Film About a Journey to a Room]]> 11291982
In Zona, Geoff Dyer attempts to unlock the mysteries of a film that has haunted him ever since he first saw it thirty years Andrei Tarkovsky’s Stalker, widely regarded as one of the greatest films of all time. (“Every single frame,� declared Cate Blanchett, “is burned into my retina.�) As Dyer guides us into the zone of Tarkovsky’s imagination, we realize that the film is only the entry point for a radically original investigation of the enduring questions of life, faith, and how to live.

In a narrative that gives free rein to the brilliance of Dyer’s distinctive voice—acute observation, melancholy, comedy, lyricism, and occasional ill-temper� Zona takes us on a wonderfully unpredictable journey in which we try to fathom, and realize, our deepest wishes.

Zona is one of the most unusual books ever written about film, and about how art—whether a film by a Russian director or a book by one of our most gifted contemporary writers—can shape the way we see the world and how we make our way through it.]]> 240 Geoff Dyer 0307377385 Ryan 3 3.74 2012 Zona: A Book About a Film About a Journey to a Room
author: Geoff Dyer
name: Ryan
average rating: 3.74
book published: 2012
rating: 3
read at: 2013/04/01
date added: 2013/07/11
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]]> <![CDATA[Wolf Hall (Thomas Cromwell, #1)]]> 6101138 This is an alternative cover edition for ISBN 9780007230181

England in the 1520s is a heartbeat from disaster. If the king dies without a male heir, the country could be destroyed by civil war. Henry VIII wants to annul his marriage of twenty years and marry Anne Boleyn. The pope and most of Europe opposes him. Into this impasse steps Thomas Cromwell: a wholly original man, a charmer and a bully, both idealist and opportunist, astute in reading people, and implacable in his ambition. But Henry is volatile: one day tender, one day murderous. Cromwell helps him break the opposition, but what will be the price of his triumph?]]> 653 Hilary Mantel Ryan 3 3.90 2009 Wolf Hall (Thomas Cromwell, #1)
author: Hilary Mantel
name: Ryan
average rating: 3.90
book published: 2009
rating: 3
read at: 2013/06/01
date added: 2013/07/11
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]]> <![CDATA[A Constellation of Vital Phenomena]]> 15797715 Stegner Fellow, Iowa MFA, and winner of The Atlantic's Student Writing Contest, Anthony Marra has written a brilliant debut novel that brings to life an abandoned hospital where a tough-minded doctor decides to harbor a hunted young girl, with powerful consequences.

In the final days of December 2004, in a small rural village in Chechnya, eight-year-old Havaa hides in the woods when her father is abducted by Russian forces. Fearing for her life, she flees with their neighbor Akhmed - a failed physician - to the bombed-out hospital, where Sonja, the one remaining doctor, treats a steady stream of wounded rebels and refugees and mourns her missing sister. Over the course of five dramatic days, Akhmed and Sonja reach back into their pasts to unravel the intricate mystery of coincidence, betrayal, and forgiveness that unexpectedly binds them and decides their fate.

With The English Patient's dramatic sweep and The Tiger's Wife's expert sense of place, Marra gives us a searing debut about the transcendent power of love in wartime, and how it can cause us to become greater than we ever thought possible.]]> 384 Anthony Marra 0770436404 Ryan 4 4.13 2013 A Constellation of Vital Phenomena
author: Anthony Marra
name: Ryan
average rating: 4.13
book published: 2013
rating: 4
read at: 2013/07/07
date added: 2013/07/11
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]]> The Story of Art 222078 KEY TOPICS: Focuses on the most significant works of Western art. Considers each work of art in its context: shows how art reflects the historical setting, the artist's intentions, and the values of that civilization, and how each artist built upon, or sometimes reacted against, the style of his/her predecessors. Contains chronological charts, maps, and notes on art books. Illustrates all works that are discussed. Features a new design with each illustration appearing on the same spread as the narrative that discusses it.]]> 688 E.H. Gombrich 071483355X Ryan 0 to-read 3.96 1950 The Story of Art
author: E.H. Gombrich
name: Ryan
average rating: 3.96
book published: 1950
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2013/07/11
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Mathematical Logic (Dover Books on Mathematics)]]> 66305 432 Stephen Cole Kleene 0486425339 Ryan 0 to-read 4.33 1967 Mathematical Logic (Dover Books on Mathematics)
author: Stephen Cole Kleene
name: Ryan
average rating: 4.33
book published: 1967
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2013/07/11
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Things Fall Apart (The African Trilogy, #1)]]> 37781 Things Fall Apart is written with remarkable economy and subtle irony. Uniquely and richly African, at the same time it reveals Achebe's keen awareness of the human qualities common to men of all times and places.]]> 215 Chinua Achebe Ryan 3 3.73 1958 Things Fall Apart (The African Trilogy, #1)
author: Chinua Achebe
name: Ryan
average rating: 3.73
book published: 1958
rating: 3
read at: 2013/04/21
date added: 2013/04/21
shelves:
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]]> <![CDATA[Moral Mazes: The World of Corporate Managers]]> 279812 Based on extensive interviews with managers at every level of two industrial firms and of a large public relations agency, Moral Mazes takes the reader inside the intricate world of the corporation. Jackall reveals a world where hard work does not necessarily lead to success, but where sharp
talk, self-promotion, powerful patrons, and sheer luck might. Cheerfully-bland public faces mask intense competition in this world where people hide their intentions, and accountability often depends on the ability to outrun mistakes.
In this topsy-turvy world, managers must bring often unforgiving technology and always difficult people together to make money, an uncompromising task demanding continual compromises with conventional truths. Moral questions become merely practical concerns and issues of public relations.
Sooner or later, managers find themselves wondering how to act in such a world and still maintain a sense of personal integrity.
This brilliant, sometimes disturbing, often wildly funny study of corporate thinking, decision-making, and morality presents compelling real life stories of the men and women charged with running the businesses of America. It will interest anyone concerned with how big organizations actually
function, or with the current moral malaise in our public life.]]> 272 Robert Jackall 0195060806 Ryan 3 3.94 1988 Moral Mazes: The World of Corporate Managers
author: Robert Jackall
name: Ryan
average rating: 3.94
book published: 1988
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2013/04/14
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review:

]]> <![CDATA[Every Love Story Is a Ghost Story: A Life of David Foster Wallace]]> 13589124
David Foster Wallace was the leading literary light of his era, a man who not only captivated readers with his prose but also mesmerized them with his brilliant mind. In this, the first biography of the writer, D. T. Max sets out to chart Wallace’s tormented, anguished and often triumphant battle to succeed as a novelist as he fights off depression and addiction to emerge with his masterpiece, Infinite Jest.

Since his untimely death by suicide at the age of forty-six in 2008, Wallace has become more than the quintessential writer for his time—he has become a symbol of sincerity and honesty in an inauthentic age. In the end, as Max shows us, what is most interesting about Wallace is not just what he wrote but how he taught us all to live. Written with the cooperation of Wallace’s family and friends and with access to hundreds of his unpublished letters, manuscripts, and audio tapes, this portrait of an extraordinarily gifted writer is as fresh as news, as intimate as a love note, as painful as a goodbye.]]> 356 D.T. Max 0670025925 Ryan 4 3.73 2012 Every Love Story Is a Ghost Story: A Life of David Foster Wallace
author: D.T. Max
name: Ryan
average rating: 3.73
book published: 2012
rating: 4
read at: 2013/03/01
date added: 2013/04/14
shelves:
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]]> <![CDATA[The Transformation of American Law, 1870-1960: The Crisis of Legal Orthodoxy (Oxford Paperbacks)]]> 87672 In his pathbreaking first volume, Horwitz showed how economic conflicts helped transform law in antebellum America. Here, Horwitz picks up where he left off, tracing the struggle in American law between the entrenched legal orthodoxy and the Progressive movement, which arose in response to ever-increasing social and economic inequality. Horwitz introduces us to the people and events that fueled this contest between the Old Order and the New. We sit in on Lochner v. New York in 1905--where the new thinkers sought to undermine orthodox claims for the autonomy of law--and watch as Progressive thought first crystallized. We meet Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. and recognize the influence of his incisive ideas on the transformation of law in America. We witness the culmination of the Progressive challenge to orthodoxy with the emergence of Legal Realism in the 1920s and '30s, a movement closely allied with other intellectual trends of the day. And as postwar events unfold--the rise of
totalitarianism abroad, the McCarthyism rampant in our own country, the astonishingly hostile academic reaction to Brown v. Board of Education --we come to understand that, rather than self-destructing as some historians have asserted, the Progressive movement was alive and well and forming the roots of the legal debates that still confront us today.
The Progressive legacy that this volume brings to life is an enduring one, one which continues to speak to us eloquently across nearly a century of American life. In telling its story, Horwitz strikes a balance between a traditional interpretation of history on the one hand, and an approach informed by the latest historical theory on the other. Indeed, Horwitz's rich view of American history--as seen from a variety of perspectives--is undertaken in the same spirit as the Progressive attacks on an orthodoxy that believed law an objective, neutral entity.
The Transformation of American Law is a book certain to revise past thinking on the origins and evolution of law in our country. For anyone hoping to understand the structure of American law--or of America itself--this volume is indispensable.]]> 384 Morton J. Horwitz 0195092597 Ryan 0 to-read 4.07 1991 The Transformation of American Law, 1870-1960: The Crisis of Legal Orthodoxy (Oxford Paperbacks)
author: Morton J. Horwitz
name: Ryan
average rating: 4.07
book published: 1991
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2013/04/11
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Devil and Sonny Liston 40673 288 Nick Tosches 0316897469 Ryan 4
Which leads me to this book, 24 years later. I still know very little about boxing, really nothing more than can be gleaned from repeated playing of Mike Tyson's Punch Out!, but this book isn't actually about boxing and requires little to no knowledge of the Sweet Science. It's all about Sonny Liston, who just happened to be the most feared boxer of his generation (and still the scariest man I have ever laid eyes on). A guy caught up in the world as it was, that was then passed by.

Tosches paints a finely detailed portrait of someone who's often cast as a cartoon character of sorts. Liston comes across as brutal and thuggish, but highly intelligent (although functionally illiterate) and in his own way, completely pure. Tosches has no love lost for Clay/Ali and posits very reasonable theories about how Liston/Clay I and II could have ended as they did.

Stories about the mob and fight structure starting from the 30s onward as spliced over the top of Liston's story. Since this book documents what was essentially a criminal enterprise, a lot of it is innuendo and inference after the fact. But that makes it a good read, and a good mystery, like Liston himself. Tosches clearly enjoys talking about Mob business, and he's very good at it.

Not exactly an uplifting story, but not meant to be either. A contemplative one that forces you to speculate about how people end up who they are and where they are.]]> 3.84 2000 The Devil and Sonny Liston
author: Nick Tosches
name: Ryan
average rating: 3.84
book published: 2000
rating: 4
read at: 2013/02/18
date added: 2013/02/19
shelves:
review:
The first time I ever heard of Sonny Liston was in - I believe, it's a little hazy that far back - 1989. There was a 25th anniversary documentary about Clay-Liston, where Liston is of course presented as the villain on the way down fighting the soon-to-be-Muslim-and-famous Cassius Clay. Given that I was bored 14 year old who knew nothing about boxing, this documentary was quite a history lesson. I remember coming away from watching it with 2 indelible impressions - a) Cassius Clay was a really obnoxious and annoying dude and b) Sonny Liston seemed about the scariest man I have ever laid (virtual, via the television) eyes on.

Which leads me to this book, 24 years later. I still know very little about boxing, really nothing more than can be gleaned from repeated playing of Mike Tyson's Punch Out!, but this book isn't actually about boxing and requires little to no knowledge of the Sweet Science. It's all about Sonny Liston, who just happened to be the most feared boxer of his generation (and still the scariest man I have ever laid eyes on). A guy caught up in the world as it was, that was then passed by.

Tosches paints a finely detailed portrait of someone who's often cast as a cartoon character of sorts. Liston comes across as brutal and thuggish, but highly intelligent (although functionally illiterate) and in his own way, completely pure. Tosches has no love lost for Clay/Ali and posits very reasonable theories about how Liston/Clay I and II could have ended as they did.

Stories about the mob and fight structure starting from the 30s onward as spliced over the top of Liston's story. Since this book documents what was essentially a criminal enterprise, a lot of it is innuendo and inference after the fact. But that makes it a good read, and a good mystery, like Liston himself. Tosches clearly enjoys talking about Mob business, and he's very good at it.

Not exactly an uplifting story, but not meant to be either. A contemplative one that forces you to speculate about how people end up who they are and where they are.
]]> <![CDATA[Blood Meridian, or, the Evening Redness in the West]]> 394535 Blood Meridian is an epic novel of the violence and depravity that attended America's westward expansion, brilliantly subverting the conventions of the Western novel and the mythology of the Wild West. Based on historical events that took place on the Texas-Mexico border in the 1850s, it traces the fortunes of the Kid, a fourteen-year-old Tennesseean who stumbles into a nightmarish world where Indians are being murdered and the market for their scalps is thriving.]]> 351 Cormac McCarthy Ryan 3 4.18 1985 Blood Meridian, or, the Evening Redness in the West
author: Cormac McCarthy
name: Ryan
average rating: 4.18
book published: 1985
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2013/02/03
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]]> <![CDATA[Surfaces and Essences: Analogy as the Fuel and Fire of Thinking]]> 7711871 Analogy is the core of all thinking.

This is the simple but unorthodox premise that Pulitzer Prize–winning author Douglas Hofstadter and French psychologist Emmanuel Sander defend in their new work. Hofstadter has been grappling with the mysteries of human thought for over thirty years. Now, with his trademark wit and special talent for making complex ideas vivid, he has partnered with Sander to put forth a highly novel perspective on cognition.

We are constantly faced with a swirling and intermingling multitude of ill-defined situations. Our brain’s job is to try to make sense of this unpredictable, swarming chaos of stimuli. How does it do so? The ceaseless hail of input triggers analogies galore, helping us to pinpoint the essence of what is going on. Often this means the spontaneous evocation of words, sometimes idioms, sometimes the triggering of nameless, long-buried memories.

Why did two-year-old Camille proudly exclaim, “I undressed the banana!�? Why do people who hear a story often blurt out, “Exactly the same thing happened to me!� when it was a completely different event? How do we recognize an aggressive driver from a split-second glance in our rearview mirror? What in a friend’s remark triggers the offhand reply, “That’s just sour grapes�? What did Albert Einstein see that made him suspect that light consists of particles when a century of research had driven the final nail in the coffin of that long-dead idea?

The answer to all these questions, of course, is analogy-making—the meat and potatoes, the heart and soul, the fuel and fire, the gist and the crux, the lifeblood and the wellsprings of thought. Analogy-making, far from happening at rare intervals, occurs at all moments, defining thinking from top to toe, from the tiniest and most fleeting thoughts to the most creative scientific insights.

Like Gödel, Escher, Bach before it, Surfaces and Essences will profoundly enrich our understanding of our own minds. By plunging the reader into an extraordinary variety of colorful situations involving language, thought, and memory, by revealing bit by bit the constantly churning cognitive mechanisms normally completely hidden from view, and by discovering in them one central, invariant core—the incessant, unconscious quest for strong analogical links to past experiences—this book puts forth a radical and deeply surprising new vision of the act of thinking.
]]> 578 Douglas R. Hofstadter 0465018475 Ryan 0 to-read 3.80 2011 Surfaces and Essences: Analogy as the Fuel and Fire of Thinking
author: Douglas R. Hofstadter
name: Ryan
average rating: 3.80
book published: 2011
rating: 0
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date added: 2013/01/19
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]]> NW 13537891 NW is a quietly devastating novel of encounters, mercurial and vital, like the city itself.]]> 296 Zadie Smith 0241144140 Ryan 3 3.49 2012 NW
author: Zadie Smith
name: Ryan
average rating: 3.49
book published: 2012
rating: 3
read at: 2012/11/28
date added: 2012/12/09
shelves:
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]]> <![CDATA[Head and Heart: A History of Christianity in America]]> 3746103
Gary Wills has won significant acclaim for his bestselling works of religion and history. Here, for the first time, he combines both disciplines in a sweeping examination of Christianity in America throughout the last 400 years. Wills argues that the struggle now, as throughout our nation's history, is between the head and the heart, reason and emotion, enlightenment and Evangelism. A landmark volume for anyone interested in either politics or religion, Head and Heart concludes that, while religion is a fertile and enduring force in American politics, the tension between the two is necessary, inevitable, and unending.]]> 640 Garry Wills 0143114077 Ryan 4
All his conclusions were seemingly very reasonable. Wills is a devout Catholic (he's written a number of books about the Bible and Christianity), but his seemingly deep faith never clouds his logic. There are a number of surprises (to me) that came through the book. Jefferson comes across as a deeply spiritual man, but skeptical of organized religion. Madison as well. Also, there's a good explanation of how Christianity has evolved through the years - it's waxing and waning through the times. Ultimately, the last large portion of the book is devoted to the W. Bush years, and how government and religion commingled in unprecedented ways. Wills is a ruthless writer with a huge vocabulary. He will fly through complex subjects and quickly dispatch with people and ideas he finds unworkable. I enjoy his direct, antagonistic style.

Added bonus - an argument against abortion even being a religious question.]]> 3.77 2007 Head and Heart: A History of Christianity in America
author: Garry Wills
name: Ryan
average rating: 3.77
book published: 2007
rating: 4
read at: 2009/11/26
date added: 2012/11/26
shelves:
review:
I've read two other books by Wills - Nixon Agonisties and The Kennedy Imprisonment - but both of those were almost purely political. This one was certainly not. I liked where Wills started from. He takes on the oft-reported opinion that American is today a less religious nation, with the Establishment Clause being the thing that's slowly killing religion in America. Also, he addresses the evidence around whether or not the Founding Fathers were "Christian". All of these things he finds to be untrue. His assertion is that the Establishment Clause actually strengths religion - in a sense keeps it pure - while also strengthening government.

All his conclusions were seemingly very reasonable. Wills is a devout Catholic (he's written a number of books about the Bible and Christianity), but his seemingly deep faith never clouds his logic. There are a number of surprises (to me) that came through the book. Jefferson comes across as a deeply spiritual man, but skeptical of organized religion. Madison as well. Also, there's a good explanation of how Christianity has evolved through the years - it's waxing and waning through the times. Ultimately, the last large portion of the book is devoted to the W. Bush years, and how government and religion commingled in unprecedented ways. Wills is a ruthless writer with a huge vocabulary. He will fly through complex subjects and quickly dispatch with people and ideas he finds unworkable. I enjoy his direct, antagonistic style.

Added bonus - an argument against abortion even being a religious question.
]]> The Case for God 6359293
Answering these questions with the same depth of knowledge and profound insight that have marked all her acclaimed books, Armstrong makes clear how the changing face of the world has necessarily changed the importance of religion at both the societal and the individual level. And she makes a powerful, convincing argument for drawing on the insights of the past in order to build a faith that speaks to the needs of our dangerously polarized age. Yet she cautions us that religion was never supposed to provide answers that lie within the competence of human reason; that, she says, is the role of logos. The task of religion is “to help us live creatively, peacefully, and even joyously with realities for which there are no easy explanations.� She emphasizes, too, that religion will not work automatically. It is, she says, a practical its insights are derived not from abstract speculation but from “dedicated intellectual endeavor� and a “compassionate lifestyle that enables us to break out of the prism of selfhood.”]]> 406 Karen Armstrong 0307269183 Ryan 4
Based upon the title, I though the book was going to be a plea of standard conversion to Christianity, which was surprising from what I know about Armstrong's own struggles. But it was much different than that - Armstrong is trying to make a case for a different conception of God than the one contained within modern culture. At the root, she makes a case for religion as a particularly different (and evolving) way of thinking, rather than a rote set of behaviors and beliefs (a word which Armstrong notes has lost it's original meeting) that people learn and conform to.

Armstrong's claim is that traditional religion used the concept of God as a way to express what lay beyond conscious thought and expression. Contemplation of myths and other mysteries would allow someone to enter and reside in an different mental space. To fully appreciate the power took practice and commitment. And there really was no question of an existence proof. But somewhere along the way, namely when the Enlightenment got involved, God became a concept of original cause, or first mover. Once God became the source of our everyday world, slowly the fights over his existence became relevant and discussions turned more towards proving literal connections rather than understanding and applying old myths. Consequently, the symbolic power of religion to take people to a different type of thinking began to drain away as fights over certainty took center stage.

Armstrong traces this development through the Enlightenment all the way to our current day, where fundamentalist groups of all stripes - Christian, Islamic, Judaic and Atheist - battle over explanations of the world and what's provable.

As someone who's pretty sick of everyone involved in this conversation - from Osteen to Dawkins - I found Armstrong's path much more palatable. And much more useful.]]> 3.84 2009 The Case for God
author: Karen Armstrong
name: Ryan
average rating: 3.84
book published: 2009
rating: 4
read at: 2012/11/11
date added: 2012/11/11
shelves:
review:
I've read a few of Armstrong's books, but it was many years ago. I came to this one by accident - I was sitting next to a gentlemen on a flight and he was reading it. I'm certainly glad I picked it up.

Based upon the title, I though the book was going to be a plea of standard conversion to Christianity, which was surprising from what I know about Armstrong's own struggles. But it was much different than that - Armstrong is trying to make a case for a different conception of God than the one contained within modern culture. At the root, she makes a case for religion as a particularly different (and evolving) way of thinking, rather than a rote set of behaviors and beliefs (a word which Armstrong notes has lost it's original meeting) that people learn and conform to.

Armstrong's claim is that traditional religion used the concept of God as a way to express what lay beyond conscious thought and expression. Contemplation of myths and other mysteries would allow someone to enter and reside in an different mental space. To fully appreciate the power took practice and commitment. And there really was no question of an existence proof. But somewhere along the way, namely when the Enlightenment got involved, God became a concept of original cause, or first mover. Once God became the source of our everyday world, slowly the fights over his existence became relevant and discussions turned more towards proving literal connections rather than understanding and applying old myths. Consequently, the symbolic power of religion to take people to a different type of thinking began to drain away as fights over certainty took center stage.

Armstrong traces this development through the Enlightenment all the way to our current day, where fundamentalist groups of all stripes - Christian, Islamic, Judaic and Atheist - battle over explanations of the world and what's provable.

As someone who's pretty sick of everyone involved in this conversation - from Osteen to Dawkins - I found Armstrong's path much more palatable. And much more useful.
]]> <![CDATA[1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created]]> 9862761
More than 200 million years ago, geological forces split apart the continents. Isolated from each other, the two halves of the world developed radically different suites of plants and animals. When Christopher Columbus set foot in the Americas, he ended that separation at a stroke. Driven by the economic goal of establishing trade with China, he accidentally set off an ecological convulsion as European vessels carried thousands of species to new homes across the oceans.

The Columbian Exchange, as researchers call it, is the reason there are tomatoes in Italy, oranges in Florida, chocolates in Switzerland, and chili peppers in Thailand. More important, creatures the colonists knew nothing about hitched along for the ride. Earthworms, mosquitoes, and cockroaches; honeybees, dandelions, and African grasses; bacteria, fungi, and viruses; rats of every description—all of them rushed like eager tourists into lands that had never seen their like before, changing lives and landscapes across the planet.

Eight decades after Columbus, a Spaniard named Legazpi succeeded where Columbus had failed. He sailed west to establish continual trade with China, then the richest, most powerful country in the world. In Manila, a city Legazpi founded, silver from the Americas, mined by African and Indian slaves, was sold to Asians in return for silk for Europeans. It was the first time that goods and people from every corner of the globe were connected in a single worldwide exchange. Much as Columbus created a new world biologically, Legazpi and the Spanish empire he served created a new world economically.

As Charles C. Mann shows, the Columbian Exchange underlies much of subsequent human history. Presenting the latest research by ecologists, anthropologists, archaeologists, and historians, Mann shows how the creation of this worldwide network of ecological and economic exchange fostered the rise of Europe, devastated imperial China, convulsed Africa, and for two centuries made Mexico City—where Asia, Europe, and the new frontier of the Americas dynamically interacted—the center of the world. In such encounters, he uncovers the germ of today’s fiercest political disputes, from immigration to trade policy to culture wars.

In 1493, Charles Mann gives us an eye-opening scientific interpretation of our past, unequaled in its authority and fascination]]> 557 Charles C. Mann 0307265722 Ryan 4 4.12 2011 1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created
author: Charles C. Mann
name: Ryan
average rating: 4.12
book published: 2011
rating: 4
read at: 2012/10/01
date added: 2012/11/11
shelves:
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]]> <![CDATA[Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945]]> 29658 Postwar is the first modern history that covers all of Europe, both east and west, drawing on research in six languages to sweep readers through thirty-four nations and sixty years of political and cultural change-all in one integrated, enthralling narrative. Both intellectually ambitious and compelling to read, thrilling in its scope and delightful in its small details, Postwar is a rare joy.

Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize
Winner of the Council on Foreign Relations Arthur Ross Book Award
One of theNew York Times'Ten Best Books of the Year.

Table of contents

About the author
Copyright page
Dedication
Preface & acknowledgement
Introduction

PART ONE - Post-War: 1945-1953
1. The legacy of war
2. Retribution
3. The rehabilitation of Europe
4. The impossible settlement
5. The coming of the Cold War
6. Into the whirlwind
7. Culture wars
CODA The end of old Europe

PART TWO - Prosperity and its discontents: 1953-1971
8. The politics of stability
9. Lost illusions
10. The age of affluence
POSTSCRIPT: A Tale of two economies
11. The Social Democrat moment
12. The spectre of revolution
13. The end of the affair

PART THREE - Recessional: 1971-1989
14. Diminished expectations
15. Politics in a new key
16. A time of transition
17. The new realism
18. The power of the powerless
19. The end of the old order

PART FOUR - After the Fall: 1989-2005
20. A fissile continent
21. The reckoning
22. The old Europe -and the new
23. The varieties of Europe
24. Europe as a way of life

Photo crdits
Suggestions for further readings]]> 933 Tony Judt 0143037757 Ryan 0 to-read 4.36 2005 Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945
author: Tony Judt
name: Ryan
average rating: 4.36
book published: 2005
rating: 0
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date added: 2012/11/11
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[Easy Riders, Raging Bulls: How the Sex, Drugs and Rock 'n' Roll Generation Saved Hollywood]]> 1070272 506 Peter Biskind 0684809966 Ryan 3 4.05 1998 Easy Riders, Raging Bulls: How the Sex, Drugs and Rock 'n' Roll Generation Saved Hollywood
author: Peter Biskind
name: Ryan
average rating: 4.05
book published: 1998
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2012/06/18
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]]> <![CDATA[A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century]]> 568236 Barbara Tuchman anatomizes the century, revealing both the great rhythms of history and the grain and texture of domestic life as it was lived.]]> 714 Barbara W. Tuchman 0345349571 Ryan 4 4.04 1978 A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century
author: Barbara W. Tuchman
name: Ryan
average rating: 4.04
book published: 1978
rating: 4
read at: 2012/04/28
date added: 2012/04/28
shelves:
review:

]]> Selected Poetry 303653 272 William Wordsworth 0192834886 Ryan 0 to-read 4.00 Selected Poetry
author: William Wordsworth
name: Ryan
average rating: 4.00
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2012/03/15
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The House of Mirth / The Reef / The Custom of the Country / The Age of Innocence]]> 2306
The four novels in this Library of America volume show Wharton at the height of her powers as a social observer and critic, examining American and European lives with a vision rich in detail, satire, and tragedy. In all of them her strong and autobiographical impulse is disciplined by her writer’s craft and her unfailing regard for her audience.

The House of Mirth (1905), Wharton’s tenth book and her first novel of contemporary life, was an immediate runaway bestseller, with 140,000 copies in print within three months of publication. The story of young Lily Bart and her tragic sojourn among the upper class of turn-of-the-century New York, it touches on the insidious effects of social convention and upon the sexual and financial aggression to which women of independent spirit were exposed.

The Reef (1912) is the story of two couples whose marriage plans are upset by the revelation of a past affair between George Darrow (a mature bachelor) and Sophy Vener, who happens to be the fiancée of his future wife’s stepson. Henry James called the novel “a triumph of method,� and it shares the rich nuance of his own The Golden Bowl.

The Custom of the Country (1913) is the amatory saga of Undine Spragg of Apex City—beautiful, spoiled, and ambitious—whose charms conquer New York and European society. Vulgar and voracious, she presides over a series of men, representing the old and new aristocracies of both continents, in a comedy drawn unmistakably from life.

The Age of Innocence (1920) is set in the New York of Wharton’s youth, when the rules and taboos of her social “tribe� held as-yet unchallenged sway. A quasi-anthropological study of a remembered culture and its curious conventions, it tells the story of the Countess Olenska (formerly Ellen Mingott), refugee from a disastrous European marriage, and Newland Archer, heir to a tradition of respectability and family honor, as they struggle uneasily against their sexual attraction.]]> 1328 Edith Wharton 0940450313 Ryan 0 to-read 4.31 1920 The House of Mirth / The Reef / The Custom of the Country / The Age of Innocence
author: Edith Wharton
name: Ryan
average rating: 4.31
book published: 1920
rating: 0
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date added: 2012/02/05
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Rising Up and Rising Down: Some Thoughts on Violence, Freedom and Urgent Means]]> 45637 752 William T. Vollmann 0060548193 Ryan 0 to-read 4.17 2003 Rising Up and Rising Down: Some Thoughts on Violence, Freedom and Urgent Means
author: William T. Vollmann
name: Ryan
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2003
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2012/01/26
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Daydream Nation 234752 Daydream Nation when the record's aggregate narratives, boggling sound composites, and distributed energies reach a level of intensity so pitched the whole thing seems to hover on the brink of self-implosion. These moments, when the record is played at appropriately upsetting volumes, have physical corollaries that often involve shooting waves of alarm up the spine, flushes of energy through the lobes and sternum, lockjaw, palpitations, and visual disorientation. If the act of listening to music requires some degree of participatory commitment from the listener, then this record asks for one hell of a commitment.

A landmark album for alternative rock, Daydream Nation was the pinnacle of what Sonic Youth had been working towards during their first decade together. Ambitious, sprawling. and often astoundingly noisy, it's a serious record that somehow never takes itself too seriously. Here, Matthew Stearns traces how Sonic Youth reached this point and - with the help of the band - guides us through the album in a way that's at once informed, inspired, and flat-out awestruck.]]> 174 Matthew Stearns 082641740X Ryan 0 to-read 3.13 2007 Daydream Nation
author: Matthew Stearns
name: Ryan
average rating: 3.13
book published: 2007
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2012/01/23
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Out of Sheer Rage: Wrestling With D.H. Lawrence]]> 49423 ]]> 256 Geoff Dyer 0865475407 Ryan 4 4.04 1997 Out of Sheer Rage: Wrestling With D.H. Lawrence
author: Geoff Dyer
name: Ryan
average rating: 4.04
book published: 1997
rating: 4
read at: 2012/01/23
date added: 2012/01/23
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[How to Write a Sentence: And How to Read One]]> 9561867 How to Write a Sentence is much more than a writing manual—it is a spirited love letter to the written word, and a key to understanding how great writing works.

]]> 165 Stanley Fish 0061840548 Ryan 3 3.43 2011 How to Write a Sentence: And How to Read One
author: Stanley Fish
name: Ryan
average rating: 3.43
book published: 2011
rating: 3
read at: 2011/07/27
date added: 2011/09/01
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Disaster Preparedness: A Memoir]]> 7810741
When Heather Havrilesky was a kid during the '70s, harrowing disaster films dominated every movie screen with earthquakes that destroyed huge cities, airplanes that plummeted towards the ground and giant sharks that ripped teenagers to shreds. Between her parents' dramatic clashes and her older siblings' hazing, Heather's home life sometimes mirrored the chaos onscreen.

A thoughtful, funny memoir about surviving the real and imagined perils of childhood and early adulthood, Disaster Preparedness charts how the most humiliating and painful moments in Havrilesky's past forced her to develop a wide range of defense mechanisms, some adaptive, some piteously ill-suited to modern life. From premature boxing lessons to the competitive grooming of cheerleading camp, from her parents' divorce to her father's sudden death, Havrilesky explores a path from innocence and optimism to self-protection and caution, bravely reexamining the injuries that shaped her, the lessons that sunk in along the way, and the insights that carried her through.

By laying bare her bumps and bruises, Havrilesky offers hope that we can find a frazzled and unruly, desperate and wistful, restless and funny and frayed-at-the-edges way of staring disaster in the face, and even rising to meet it head on. By turns offbeat, sophisticated, uproarious and wise, Disaster Preparedness is a road map to the personal disasters we all face from an irresistible voice that gets straight to the unexpected grace at the heart of every calamity.]]> 256 Heather Havrilesky 1594487685 Ryan 4 3.47 2010 Disaster Preparedness: A Memoir
author: Heather Havrilesky
name: Ryan
average rating: 3.47
book published: 2010
rating: 4
read at: 2011/08/25
date added: 2011/09/01
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Impossible: Rodney Mullen, Ryan Sheckler, And The Fantastic History Of Skateboarding]]> 10843333 304 Cole Louison 0762770260 Ryan 3
This book describes the two primary figures in recent skateboarding - Rodney Mullen, who invented nearly every trick done today, and Ryan Sheckler, who's perfected nearly every trick done today. Tony Hawk is thrown in for good measure, and a number of other skaters show up a long the way. Louison describes the ebb and flow of skateboarding's popularity through the years and how it's changed in the last 10 years.

I bought this book as a vacation read and became so engrossed, I nearly finished it before even getting to my destination. It's a quick read, especially if you remember much of the history as I did. And I claim it's truly an interesting story. Rodney Mullen is an interesting character - essentially a skateboard monk, taking it to the edge purely for the joy of discovery.

The writing in the book is a little weak though. Sometimes, Louison sounds a little like a middle schooler who's unable to get his thoughts down on paper. He apologizes for having to talk about "uncool" stuff like wheel and board technology. And has an annoying of telling the reader he's going to talk about something before talking about it. Just talk about it, for god's sake.

Nonetheless, worth a read.]]> 3.99 2011 Impossible: Rodney Mullen, Ryan Sheckler, And The Fantastic History Of Skateboarding
author: Cole Louison
name: Ryan
average rating: 3.99
book published: 2011
rating: 3
read at: 2011/07/23
date added: 2011/09/01
shelves:
review:
I was once a skateboarder: from 1987 - 1989 I terrorized the streets of my Macon, GA neighborhood. I still have my Rainbow Gator board as a souvenir. But I broke my Caballero deck long ago.

This book describes the two primary figures in recent skateboarding - Rodney Mullen, who invented nearly every trick done today, and Ryan Sheckler, who's perfected nearly every trick done today. Tony Hawk is thrown in for good measure, and a number of other skaters show up a long the way. Louison describes the ebb and flow of skateboarding's popularity through the years and how it's changed in the last 10 years.

I bought this book as a vacation read and became so engrossed, I nearly finished it before even getting to my destination. It's a quick read, especially if you remember much of the history as I did. And I claim it's truly an interesting story. Rodney Mullen is an interesting character - essentially a skateboard monk, taking it to the edge purely for the joy of discovery.

The writing in the book is a little weak though. Sometimes, Louison sounds a little like a middle schooler who's unable to get his thoughts down on paper. He apologizes for having to talk about "uncool" stuff like wheel and board technology. And has an annoying of telling the reader he's going to talk about something before talking about it. Just talk about it, for god's sake.

Nonetheless, worth a read.
]]> Gravity’s Rainbow 415 776 Thomas Pynchon 0143039946 Ryan 3
It took me 14 years and 4 tries to finally get through this whole thing. Hopefully you'll go faster. My advice? Buy a reader's guide and just devote yourself with the idea that in the end, it may not be worth it, but it'll be interesting.

Parts of this book I loved, parts I hated and parts I just didn't understand. I claim there are parts that Pynchon himself doesn't understand, but perhaps that's wishful thinking.

As for what this book is about? It's ostensibly about an American Lt. in London in late 1944. He has a particularly strange relationship to V2 rockets. As the war winds down, he ends up being chased across Europe while looking for a specific rocket. What's it really about? Paranoia, conspiracies, the occult, drugs, sex, songs and kazoos. (yes, kazoos)

There is a lot to love here. There are a myriad of forms and narrations permeating the book, which can make it a real trip to read. Pynchon's writing is extremely imaginative and has a voice that resonates with my engineer mind. He often maps scientific concepts onto his descriptions and not in a particularly showy way, but rather as a peculiar form of fun that people of a certain bent have in looking at the world. I love the tension of Calvinism vs. Statistics, crosscut by Pynchon's obsession with paranoia. I also enjoyed the description of post-WWII Europe as a "Zone" with individuals roaming while the world shifts below their feet. The manipulations that he subjects his characters to at the hands of Them show a cynical, but coherent view of where Pynchon thinks the real power in the world lies. Also, the obsession to detail with respect to the rockets, the weather on particular days, etc... is amazing.

I have a pretty simple example to demonstrate what I hated. From "A Gravity's Rainbow Companion" -

----

[page #s] "For De Mille, young fur-henchmen can't be rowing!" The most elaborately staged pun in all of GR. Camouflaged within it is the declaration, "Forty million Frenchmen can't be wrong," itself a variation on a phrase attributed to actress, speakeasy owner, and dance girl Texas Guinan. In 1931 she attempted to take a troupe of fort-two girls to Paris, where she hoped to open a nightclub free from Prohibitionism and the harassments of J. Edgar Hoover's G-men. However, French officials refused to let the troupe disembark. Legal proceedings commenced, during which it became clear from the popular outcry that French males were delighted to have th Americans. Nevertheless, after ten days Texas and her girls were deported. Arriving back in New York on March 21, 1931, they were met by throngs of well-wishers and reports. Texas proclaimed: "*Fifty* million Frenchman can't be wrong" about a sexy display of skin. Her saying stuck and has since been taken to comment in general on the (supposed) sexual preferences of Frenchmen. Note that Pynchon has fashioned an entire narrative digression about illicit trading in furs, oarsmen in boats, fur henchmen, and De Mille - all of it in order to launch this pun.

----

I'm sorry, but 700+ pages of things like this will eventually drive you crazy.

As for things I didn't understand, the narrative becomes quite incoherent when Slothrop starts fading. I completely lost focus of what was going on at that point. I believe that is intentional, but it also makes an already difficult book even more so. I'm not very familiar with Tarot and other occult-ish things, and so a lot of that was lost on me.

All-in-all, it was an adventure, but I'm sort of glad I'm done. Not sure I'll be visiting GR land ever again. In what I thought was an appropriate gesture to finishing, I composed a Limerick to post on FB -

There once was a Texas read with pluck
Who knew Gravity's Rainbow would test his luck
It took 14 years
But not enough beers
`Cause at the end he still thought "What the fuck?" ]]> 4.01 1973 Gravity’s Rainbow
author: Thomas Pynchon
name: Ryan
average rating: 4.01
book published: 1973
rating: 3
read at: 2011/08/31
date added: 2011/09/01
shelves:
review:
What can I say about this book that hasn't been said about a million times. It's ironic that while I was reading it, Slate ran a list of books their writers believed to be the most overrated. GR featured prominently in that list. I can't say I totally disagree.

It took me 14 years and 4 tries to finally get through this whole thing. Hopefully you'll go faster. My advice? Buy a reader's guide and just devote yourself with the idea that in the end, it may not be worth it, but it'll be interesting.

Parts of this book I loved, parts I hated and parts I just didn't understand. I claim there are parts that Pynchon himself doesn't understand, but perhaps that's wishful thinking.

As for what this book is about? It's ostensibly about an American Lt. in London in late 1944. He has a particularly strange relationship to V2 rockets. As the war winds down, he ends up being chased across Europe while looking for a specific rocket. What's it really about? Paranoia, conspiracies, the occult, drugs, sex, songs and kazoos. (yes, kazoos)

There is a lot to love here. There are a myriad of forms and narrations permeating the book, which can make it a real trip to read. Pynchon's writing is extremely imaginative and has a voice that resonates with my engineer mind. He often maps scientific concepts onto his descriptions and not in a particularly showy way, but rather as a peculiar form of fun that people of a certain bent have in looking at the world. I love the tension of Calvinism vs. Statistics, crosscut by Pynchon's obsession with paranoia. I also enjoyed the description of post-WWII Europe as a "Zone" with individuals roaming while the world shifts below their feet. The manipulations that he subjects his characters to at the hands of Them show a cynical, but coherent view of where Pynchon thinks the real power in the world lies. Also, the obsession to detail with respect to the rockets, the weather on particular days, etc... is amazing.

I have a pretty simple example to demonstrate what I hated. From "A Gravity's Rainbow Companion" -

----

[page #s] "For De Mille, young fur-henchmen can't be rowing!" The most elaborately staged pun in all of GR. Camouflaged within it is the declaration, "Forty million Frenchmen can't be wrong," itself a variation on a phrase attributed to actress, speakeasy owner, and dance girl Texas Guinan. In 1931 she attempted to take a troupe of fort-two girls to Paris, where she hoped to open a nightclub free from Prohibitionism and the harassments of J. Edgar Hoover's G-men. However, French officials refused to let the troupe disembark. Legal proceedings commenced, during which it became clear from the popular outcry that French males were delighted to have th Americans. Nevertheless, after ten days Texas and her girls were deported. Arriving back in New York on March 21, 1931, they were met by throngs of well-wishers and reports. Texas proclaimed: "*Fifty* million Frenchman can't be wrong" about a sexy display of skin. Her saying stuck and has since been taken to comment in general on the (supposed) sexual preferences of Frenchmen. Note that Pynchon has fashioned an entire narrative digression about illicit trading in furs, oarsmen in boats, fur henchmen, and De Mille - all of it in order to launch this pun.

----

I'm sorry, but 700+ pages of things like this will eventually drive you crazy.

As for things I didn't understand, the narrative becomes quite incoherent when Slothrop starts fading. I completely lost focus of what was going on at that point. I believe that is intentional, but it also makes an already difficult book even more so. I'm not very familiar with Tarot and other occult-ish things, and so a lot of that was lost on me.

All-in-all, it was an adventure, but I'm sort of glad I'm done. Not sure I'll be visiting GR land ever again. In what I thought was an appropriate gesture to finishing, I composed a Limerick to post on FB -

There once was a Texas read with pluck
Who knew Gravity's Rainbow would test his luck
It took 14 years
But not enough beers
`Cause at the end he still thought "What the fuck?"
]]> The Lovely Bones 12232938
So begins the story of Susie Salmon, who is adjusting to her new home in heaven, a place that is not at all what she expected, even as she is watching life on earth continue without her -- her friends trading rumors about her disappearance, her killer trying to cover his tracks, her grief-stricken family unraveling. Out of unspeakable tragedy and loss, The Lovely Bones succeeds, miraculously, in building a tale filled with hope, humor, suspense, even joy.]]> 372 Alice Sebold 0316166685 Ryan 3 3.87 2002 The Lovely Bones
author: Alice Sebold
name: Ryan
average rating: 3.87
book published: 2002
rating: 3
read at: 2002/10/01
date added: 2011/08/09
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The American Civil War: A Military History]]> 6315836 416 John Keegan 0307263436 Ryan 3
Keegan's description of generals is in stark contrast to Foote's undying admiration for Lee and Jackson. Grant and Sherman are the strategic geniuses of the bunch, while Lee and Jackson are fantastic tacticians. I tend to agree with Keegan on this point - even though I am a product of the Georgia public school system and therefore programmed to believe Sherman second only to the antichrist in evil.

And thus, I enjoyed Keegan's point of view and turn of phrase. On the downside, Keegan is strangely repetitive in places, as if this was some kind of textbook. Also, the factual errors are very well documented in the NYT and other places.

There are better (and more thorough) introductions to the war, but Keegan's book is a good quick read.]]> 3.78 2009 The American Civil War: A Military History
author: John Keegan
name: Ryan
average rating: 3.78
book published: 2009
rating: 3
read at: 2011/06/15
date added: 2011/07/18
shelves:
review:
I'm not as familiar with Keegan as most of the people who have previously reviewed the book, so I cannot contrast it with his other works. But I did enjoy reading this book. I have read Shelby Foote's 3000+ page tome on the subject, so there was little truly new in terms of the military strategy.

Keegan's description of generals is in stark contrast to Foote's undying admiration for Lee and Jackson. Grant and Sherman are the strategic geniuses of the bunch, while Lee and Jackson are fantastic tacticians. I tend to agree with Keegan on this point - even though I am a product of the Georgia public school system and therefore programmed to believe Sherman second only to the antichrist in evil.

And thus, I enjoyed Keegan's point of view and turn of phrase. On the downside, Keegan is strangely repetitive in places, as if this was some kind of textbook. Also, the factual errors are very well documented in the NYT and other places.

There are better (and more thorough) introductions to the war, but Keegan's book is a good quick read.
]]> Debt of Honor (Jack Ryan, #7) 19670 He has devised a plan to cripple the American greatness, humble the US military, and elevate Japan to a position of dominance on the world stage.

Yamata's motivation lies in his desire to pay off aDebt of Honor to his parents and to the country he feels is responsible for their deaths—America. All he needs is a catalyst to set his plan in motion.

When the faulty gas tank on one Tennessee family's car leads to their fiery death, an opportunistic U. S. congressman uses the occasion to rush a new trade law through the system. The law is designed to squeeze Japan economically. Instead, it provides Yamata with the leverage he needs to put his plan into action.

As Yamata's plan begins to unfold, it becomes clear to the world that someone is launching a fully-integrated operation against the United States. There's only one man to find out who the culprit is—Jack Ryan, the new President's National Security Advisor.

]]> 990 Tom Clancy 0425147584 Ryan 3 4.08 1994 Debt of Honor (Jack Ryan, #7)
author: Tom Clancy
name: Ryan
average rating: 4.08
book published: 1994
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2011/07/17
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Explaining Hitler: The Search for the Origins of His Evil]]> 54277 496 Ron Rosenbaum 006095339X Ryan 4 4.01 1998 Explaining Hitler: The Search for the Origins of His Evil
author: Ron Rosenbaum
name: Ryan
average rating: 4.01
book published: 1998
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2011/05/18
shelves:
review:

]]> Columbine 5632446
What really happened April 20, 1999? The horror left an indelible stamp on the American psyche, but most of what we "know" is wrong. It wasn't about jocks, Goths, or the Trench Coat Mafia. Dave Cullen was one of the first reporters on scene, and spent ten years on this book-widely recognized as the definitive account. With a keen investigative eye and psychological acumen, he draws on mountains of evidence, insight from the world's leading forensic psychologists, and the killers' own words and drawings-several reproduced in a new appendix. Cullen paints raw portraits of two polar opposite killers. They contrast starkly with the flashes of resilience and redemption among the survivors.]]> 417 Dave Cullen 0446546933 Ryan 4 4.28 2009 Columbine
author: Dave Cullen
name: Ryan
average rating: 4.28
book published: 2009
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2011/05/18
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Unbearable Lightness of Being]]> 9717 The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Milan Kundera tells the story of a young woman in love with a man torn between his love for her and his incorrigible womanizing and one of his mistresses and her humbly faithful lover. This magnificent novel juxtaposes geographically distant places, brilliant and playful reflections, and a variety of styles, to take its place as perhaps the major achievement of one of the world’s truly great writers.]]> 314 Milan Kundera 0571224385 Ryan 0 to-read 4.12 1984 The Unbearable Lightness of Being
author: Milan Kundera
name: Ryan
average rating: 4.12
book published: 1984
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2011/05/18
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Marcel Proust 852284 165 Edmund White 0670880574 Ryan 0 to-read 3.86 1999 Marcel Proust
author: Edmund White
name: Ryan
average rating: 3.86
book published: 1999
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2011/04/30
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The First Circle 98969
Set in Moscow during a three-day period in December 1949, 'The First Circle' is the story of the prisoner Gleb Nerzhin, a brilliant mathematician.

At the age of thirty-one, Nerzhin has survived the war years on the German front and the postwar years in a succession of Russian prisons and labor camps.

His story is interwoven with the stories of a dozen fellow prisoners - each an unforgettable human being - from the prison janitor to the tormented Marxist intellectual who designed the Dnieper dam; of the reigning elite and their conflicted subordinates; and of the women, wretched or privileged, bound to these men.

A landmark of Soviet literature, 'The First Circle' is as powerful today as it was when it was first published, nearly thirty years ago.]]> 580 Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn 0810115905 Ryan 0 to-read 4.22 1968 The First Circle
author: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
name: Ryan
average rating: 4.22
book published: 1968
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2011/03/14
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> I, Claudius (Claudius, #1) 18765
I, Claudius and its sequel, Claudius the God, are among the most celebrated, as well the most gripping historical novels ever written.

Cover illustration: Brian Pike]]> 469 Robert Graves 067972477X Ryan 0 to-read 4.24 1934 I, Claudius (Claudius, #1)
author: Robert Graves
name: Ryan
average rating: 4.24
book published: 1934
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2011/03/14
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Brideshead Revisited 30933 Brideshead Revisited looks back to the golden age before the Second World War. It tells the story of Charles Ryder's infatuation with the Marchmains and the rapidly-disappearing world of privilege they inhabit. Enchanted first by Sebastian at Oxford, then by his doomed Catholic family, in particular his remote sister, Julia, Charles comes finally to recognize only his spiritual and social distance from them.]]> 351 Evelyn Waugh 0316926345 Ryan 2 4.01 1945 Brideshead Revisited
author: Evelyn Waugh
name: Ryan
average rating: 4.01
book published: 1945
rating: 2
read at:
date added: 2011/03/14
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Home: A Short History of an Idea]]> 134218 272 Witold Rybczynski 0140102310 Ryan 4 3.94 1986 Home: A Short History of an Idea
author: Witold Rybczynski
name: Ryan
average rating: 3.94
book published: 1986
rating: 4
read at: 2011/01/20
date added: 2011/03/14
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Selected Stories of Patricia Highsmith]]> 80886 The Talented Mr. Ripley, Strangers on a Train, A Suspension of Mercy, and others) Highsmith is an all-too-frequently forgotten master of the short story. These stories in this volume examine the dark soul of humanity in a deceptively simple voice that draws you in and won't let go. The sheer beauty of the streamlined prose disguises a complexity of character and situation that is the mark of a true master.

Highsmith's ability to create believable characters with very little exposition, but rather through their behavior and dialog, is incredible. None of the stories in this volume is particularly long, but you're drawn in and seduced by the power of the prose. Whether it's a cat driven to commit murder to protect his mistress ("Ming's Biggest Prey"), a rat exacting a horrible revenge on a family that maimed him ("The Bravest Rat in Venice"), or a house party interrupted by something grisly ("Something the Cat Dragged In"), these stories are impossible to put down.

A great example of Highsmith's artistry is "Mermaids on the Golf Course," about a presidential adviser who took an assassin's bullet to protect the president. This seemingly heroic man is slowly exposed throughout the story as something completely different, mainly through his dialogue and the reactions of his family to him. Highsmith deftly exposes the many layers in his character, shows that the surface we see often disguises the truth below, and asks the question, "How well do we know anyone?"

Likewise, "The Female Novelist" is so consumed with herself and her craft that she destroys herself. "The Hand" is a chilling twist on the age-old custom of asking for someone's hand in marriage. Highsmith's stories linger on after they are read, and show that for true horror, you don't need the supernatural; you merely need to write about people.]]> 736 Patricia Highsmith 0393327728 Ryan 0 to-read 4.14 2001 The Selected Stories of Patricia Highsmith
author: Patricia Highsmith
name: Ryan
average rating: 4.14
book published: 2001
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2011/03/14
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Book of Other People 29705
With an introduction by Zadie Smith and brand-new stories from over twenty of the bet writers of their generation from both sides of the Atlantic, "The Book of Other People" is as dazzling and inventive as its authors, and as vivid and wide-ranging as its characters.]]> 289 Zadie Smith 0143038184 Ryan 0 to-read 3.48 2008 The Book of Other People
author: Zadie Smith
name: Ryan
average rating: 3.48
book published: 2008
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2011/03/14
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Four Novels of the 1960s: The Man in the High Castle / The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch / Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? / Ubik]]> 14182
This Library of America volume brings together four of Dick’s most original novels. The Man in the High Castle (1962), which won the Hugo Award, describes an alternate world in which Japan and Germany have won World War II and America is divided into separate occupation zones. The dizzying The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch (1965) posits a future in which competing hallucinogens proffer different brands of virtual reality, and an interplanetary drug tycoon can transform himself into a godlike figure transcending even physical death.

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (1968), about a bounty hunter in search of escaped androids in a postapocalyptic society where status is measured by the possession of live animals and religious life is focused on a television personality, was the basis for the movie Blade Runner. Ubik (1969), with its future world of psychic espionage agents and cryonically frozen patients inhabiting an illusory “half-life,� pursues Dick’s theme of simulated realities and false perceptions to ever more disturbing conclusions, as time collapses on itself and characters stranded in past eras search desperately for the elusive, constantly shape-shifting panacea Ubik. As with most of Dick’s novels, no plot summary can suggest the mesmerizing and constantly surprising texture of these astonishing books.

Posing the questions “What is human?� and “What is real?� in a multitude of fascinating ways, Dick produced works—fantastic and weird, yet developed with precise logic, marked by wild humor and soaring flights of religious speculation—that are startlingly prescient imaginative anticipations of 21st-century quandaries.]]> 830 Philip K. Dick 1598530097 Ryan 3 to-read 4.38 2007 Four Novels of the 1960s: The Man in the High Castle / The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch / Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? / Ubik
author: Philip K. Dick
name: Ryan
average rating: 4.38
book published: 2007
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2011/03/14
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Passions: Emotions and the Meaning of Life]]> 107223
“A mature, wise, and provocative work . . . . The main lines of argument—that the emotions are ways we constitute our lives with meaning; that they are in some important sense things we do rather than things that merely happen to us; that emotions have their own sort of rationality and logic and are subject to evaluation and criticism as such; that emotions are, in some important sense, evaluative judgments—remain an important, credible contemporary view. . . . Solomon is clear, clever, and deep (also often funny).�
—Owen Flanagan, Duke University]]> 352 Robert C. Solomon 0872202267 Ryan 3 4.10 1976 The Passions: Emotions and the Meaning of Life
author: Robert C. Solomon
name: Ryan
average rating: 4.10
book published: 1976
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2011/03/14
shelves:
review:

]]> East of Eden 4406
Adam Trask came to California from the East to farm and raise his family on the new rich land. But the birth of his twins, Cal and Aaron, brings his wife to the brink of madness, and Adam is left alone to raise his boys to manhood. One boy thrives nurtured by the love of all those around him; the other grows up in loneliness enveloped by a mysterious darkness.

First published in 1952, East of Eden is the work in which Steinbeck created his most mesmerizing characters and explored his most enduring themes: the mystery of identity, the inexplicability of love, and the murderous consequences of love's absence. A masterpiece of Steinbeck's later years, East of Eden is a powerful and vastly ambitious novel that is at once a family saga and a modern retelling of the Book of Genesis.]]> 601 John Steinbeck 0142000655 Ryan 3 4.41 1952 East of Eden
author: John Steinbeck
name: Ryan
average rating: 4.41
book published: 1952
rating: 3
read at: 2010/12/26
date added: 2011/03/14
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Rip It Up and Start Again: Postpunk 1978-1984]]> 6493386 Rip It Up and Start Again is the first book-length exploration of the wildly adventurous music created in the years after punk. Renowned music journalist Simon Reynolds celebrates the futurist spirit of such bands as Joy Division, Gang of Four, Talking Heads, and Devo, which resulted in endless innovations in music, lyrics, performance, and style and continued into the early eighties with the video-savvy synth-pop of groups such as Human League, Depeche Mode, and Soft Cell, whose success coincided with the rise of MTV. Full of insight and anecdotes and populated by charismatic characters, Rip It Up and Start Againre-creates the idealism, urgency, and excitement of one of the most important and challenging periods in the history of popular music.]]> 434 Simon Reynolds 1101201053 Ryan 3
The major problem with this book is the tendency of the chapters to fall into a similar pattern. The basic outline is : first, explain a particular hot spot of post-punk activity (generally geographic, often based upon a well-known label), second go into some detail about the flagship band of that hot spot and then last, quickly move through all the bands this flagship influenced. Clearly, this taxonomic style owes a lot to journalism and appeals to a typically fetish-like view of bands and their influences. But after about 5 chapters, it becomes a little mundane.

Minor quibble - the cover of the book claims it to be "NME's Book of the Year". Incidentally, NME is mentioned a number of places in the book as being very influential in the post-punk movement. So it's not particularly surprising they would pick a book for "Book of the Year" that so heavily advertises their street cred.]]> 4.08 2005 Rip It Up and Start Again: Postpunk 1978-1984
author: Simon Reynolds
name: Ryan
average rating: 4.08
book published: 2005
rating: 3
read at: 2009/07/31
date added: 2010/12/25
shelves:
review:
I bought this book as an ideal airplane book - potentially interesting, but not likely to be particularly taxing. And it was pretty much as a I expected. I'm not a post-punk disciple (born a little late), and know the music mostly from a "looking-back" perspective. Coming from this point of view, the beginnings of the book were pretty interesting, starting with PiL and moving forward. I've always wondered about the story of PiL, and it was well explained by Reynolds.

The major problem with this book is the tendency of the chapters to fall into a similar pattern. The basic outline is : first, explain a particular hot spot of post-punk activity (generally geographic, often based upon a well-known label), second go into some detail about the flagship band of that hot spot and then last, quickly move through all the bands this flagship influenced. Clearly, this taxonomic style owes a lot to journalism and appeals to a typically fetish-like view of bands and their influences. But after about 5 chapters, it becomes a little mundane.

Minor quibble - the cover of the book claims it to be "NME's Book of the Year". Incidentally, NME is mentioned a number of places in the book as being very influential in the post-punk movement. So it's not particularly surprising they would pick a book for "Book of the Year" that so heavily advertises their street cred.
]]> <![CDATA[Blood's a Rover (Underworld USA, #3)]]> 6094181
Martin Luther King assassinated. Robert Kennedy assassinated. Los Angeles, 1968. Conspiracies theories are taking hold. On the horizon looms the Democratic Convention in Chicago and constant gun fire peppers south L.A. Violence, greed, and grime, are replacing free-love and everybody from Howard Hughes, Richard Nixon and J. Edgar Hoover to the right-wing assassins and left-wing revolutionaries are getting dirty. At the center of it all is a triumvirate: the president’s strong-arm goon, an ex-cop and heroine runner, and a private eye whose quarry is so dangerous she could set off the whole powder keg. With his trademark deadly staccato prose, James Ellroy holds nothing back in this wild, startling and much anticipated conclusion to his Underworld USA trilogy.



From the Trade Paperback edition.]]> 656 James Ellroy 0679403930 Ryan 3 3.93 2009 Blood's a Rover (Underworld USA, #3)
author: James Ellroy
name: Ryan
average rating: 3.93
book published: 2009
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2010/12/20
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Jeff in Venice, Death in Varanasi]]> 3690187
Every two years the international art world descends on Venice for the opening of the Biennale. Among them is Jeff Atman–a jaded and dissolute journalist–whose dedication to the cause of Bellini-fuelled partygoing is only intermittently disturbed by the obligation to file a story. When he meets the spellbinding Laura, he is rejuvenated and ecstatic. Their romance blossoms quickly, but is it destined to disappear just as rapidly?

Every day thousands of pilgrims head to the banks of the Ganges at Varanasi, the holiest Hindu city in India. Among their number is a narrator who may or may not be the Atman previously seen in Venice. Intending to visit only for a few days he ends up staying for months, and suddenly finds–or should that be loses?–a hitherto unexamined idea of himself, the self. In a romance he can only observe, he sees a reflection of the kind of pleasures that, willingly or not, he has renounced. In the process, two ancient and watery cities become versions of each other. Could two stories, in two different cities, actually be one and the same story?

Nothing Geoff Dyer has written before is as wonderfully unbridled, as dead-on in evocation of place, longing and the possibility of neurotic enlightenment, and as irrepressibly entertaining as Jeff in Venice, Death in Varanasi.

]]> 304 Geoff Dyer 0307377377 Ryan 3 3.50 2008 Jeff in Venice, Death in Varanasi
author: Geoff Dyer
name: Ryan
average rating: 3.50
book published: 2008
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2010/12/20
shelves:
review:

]]> A Bend in the River 5845 336 V.S. Naipaul 0330487140 Ryan 4 3.78 1979 A Bend in the River
author: V.S. Naipaul
name: Ryan
average rating: 3.78
book published: 1979
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2010/12/20
shelves:
review:

]]> 33� Greatest Hits, Volume 2 1659855 David Barker 0826428762 Ryan 0 to-read 3.48 2007 33⅓ Greatest Hits, Volume 2
author: David Barker
name: Ryan
average rating: 3.48
book published: 2007
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2010/11/17
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Fall of Constantinople 1453]]> 428521
"... an excellent tale, full of suspense and pathos... He [Sir Steven Runciman] tells the story and, as always, tells it very elegantly."
- History

"This is a marvel of learning lightly worn..."
- The Guardian]]> 270 Steven Runciman 0521398320 Ryan 3
The writing is pretty solid, but one annoying tick is Runciman's dearth of commas, which more than once led me to start a sentence, get completely confused, only to clear the fog with a strategically placed comma. All in all, an excellent telling of what amounts to 8 exciting weeks in the spring of 1453.]]> 4.32 1965 The Fall of Constantinople 1453
author: Steven Runciman
name: Ryan
average rating: 4.32
book published: 1965
rating: 3
read at: 2010/08/14
date added: 2010/08/14
shelves:
review:
I picked this book up as a result of being mentioned in Volume 2 of "Your Face Tomorrow". It's a pretty good book, but probably a little difficult for anyone not already reasonably versed in the Byzantine Empire. The cast of characters is enormous, esp for a book of only 191 pages. Also, the geography isn't foremost in my mind, as I am a product of the US public school system. If you're like me, be prepared for a little wikipedia research.

The writing is pretty solid, but one annoying tick is Runciman's dearth of commas, which more than once led me to start a sentence, get completely confused, only to clear the fog with a strategically placed comma. All in all, an excellent telling of what amounts to 8 exciting weeks in the spring of 1453.
]]> Critique of Pure Reason 18288 'The purpose of this critique of pure speculative reason consists in the attempt to change the old procedure of metaphysics and to bring about a complete revolution'

Kant's Critique of Pure Reason (1781) is the central text of modern philosophy. It presents a profound and challenging investigation into the nature of human reason, its knowledge and its illusions. Reason, Kant argues, is the seat of certain concepts that precede experience and make it possible, but we are not therefore entitled to draw conclusions about the natural world from these concepts. The Critique brings together the two opposing schools of philosophy: rationalism, which grounds all our knowledge in reason, and empiricism, which traces all our knowledge to experience. Kant's transcendental idealism indicates a third way that goes far beyond these alternatives.]]> 785 Immanuel Kant 0521657296 Ryan 0 to-read 3.95 1781 Critique of Pure Reason
author: Immanuel Kant
name: Ryan
average rating: 3.95
book published: 1781
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2010/08/14
shelves: to-read
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]]> Writing and Difference 765346 Writing and Difference, a collection of Jacques Derrida's essays written between 1959 and 1966, has become a landmark of contemporary French thought. In it we find Derrida at work on his systematic deconstruction of Western metaphysics. The book's first half, which includes the celebrated essay on Descartes and Foucault, shows the development of Derrida's method of deconstruction. In these essays, Derrida demonstrates the traditional nature of some purportedly nontraditional currents of modern thought—one of his main targets being the way in which "structuralism" unwittingly repeats metaphysical concepts in its use of linguistic models.

The second half of the book contains some of Derrida's most compelling analyses of why and how metaphysical thinking must exclude writing from its conception of language, finally showing metaphysics to be constituted by this exclusion. These essays on Artaud, Freud, Bataille, Hegel, and Lévi-Strauss have served as introductions to Derrida's notions of writing and 徱ڴéԳ—the untranslatable formulation of a nonmetaphysical "concept" that does not exclude writing—for almost a generation of students of literature, philosophy, and psychoanalysis.

Writing and Difference reveals the unacknowledged program that makes thought itself possible. In analyzing the contradictions inherent in this program, Derrida goes on to develop new ways of thinking, reading, and writing,—new ways based on the most complete and rigorous understanding of the old ways. Scholars and students from all disciplines will find Writing and Difference an excellent introduction to perhaps the most challenging of contemporary French thinkers—challenging because Derrida questions thought as we know it.]]> 362 Jacques Derrida 0226143295 Ryan 0 to-read 4.01 1967 Writing and Difference
author: Jacques Derrida
name: Ryan
average rating: 4.01
book published: 1967
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2010/08/14
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[An Area of Darkness: A Discovery of India]]> 5854
“Whatever his literary form, Naipaul is a master.� � The New York Review of Books

Traveling from the bureaucratic morass of Bombay to the ethereal beauty of Kashmir, from a sacred ice cave in the Himalayas to an abandoned temple near Madras, Naipaul encounters a dizzying cross-section of browbeaten government workers and imperious servants, a suavely self-serving holy man and a deluded American religious seeker. An Area of Darkness also abounds with Naipaul’s strikingly original responses to India’s paralyzing caste system, its apparently serene acceptance of poverty and squalor, and the conflict between its desire for self-determination and its nostalgia for the British raj. The result may be the most elegant and passionate book ever written about the subcontinent.]]> 304 V.S. Naipaul 0375708359 Ryan 0 to-read 3.67 1964 An Area of Darkness: A Discovery of India
author: V.S. Naipaul
name: Ryan
average rating: 3.67
book published: 1964
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2010/08/14
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Poison, Shadow, and Farewell (Your Face Tomorrow, #3)]]> 6415928 Poison, Shadow, and Farewell, with its heightened tensions between meditations and noir narrative, with its wit and and ever deeper forays into the mysteries of consciousness, brings to a stunning finale Marías’s three-part Your Face Tomorrow. Already this novel has been acclaimed “exquisite� (Publishers Weekly), “gorgeous� (Kirkus), and “outstanding: another work of urgent originality� (London Independent). Poison, Shadow, and Farewell takes our hero Jaime Deza―hired by MI6 as a person of extraordinarily sophisticated powers of perception―back to Madrid to both spy on and try to protect his own family, and into new depths of love and loss, with a fluency on the subject of death that could make a stone weep.]]> 546 Javier Marías 0811218120 Ryan 4 4.53 2007 Poison, Shadow, and Farewell (Your Face Tomorrow, #3)
author: Javier Marías
name: Ryan
average rating: 4.53
book published: 2007
rating: 4
read at: 2010/08/07
date added: 2010/08/14
shelves:
review:

]]> Kafka on the Shore 4929 Kafka on the Shore, a tour de force of metaphysical reality, is powered by two remarkable characters: a teenage boy, Kafka Tamura, who runs away from home either to escape a gruesome oedipal prophecy or to search for his long-missing mother and sister; and an aging simpleton called Nakata, who never recovered from a wartime affliction and now is drawn toward Kafka for reasons that, like the most basic activities of daily life, he cannot fathom. Their odyssey, as mysterious to them as it is to us, is enriched throughout by vivid accomplices and mesmerizing events. Cats and people carry on conversations, a ghostlike pimp employs a Hegel-quoting prostitute, a forest harbors soldiers apparently unaged since World War II, and rainstorms of fish (and worse) fall from the sky. There is a brutal murder, with the identity of both victim and perpetrator a riddle—yet this, along with everything else, is eventually answered, just as the entwined destinies of Kafka and Nakata are gradually revealed, with one escaping his fate entirely and the other given a fresh start on his own.]]> 467 Haruki Murakami 1400079276 Ryan 3 4.14 2002 Kafka on the Shore
author: Haruki Murakami
name: Ryan
average rating: 4.14
book published: 2002
rating: 3
read at: 2010/08/14
date added: 2010/08/14
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Dance and Dream (Your Face Tomorrow, #2)]]> 60033 Your Face Tomorrow, Javier Marias's dazzling unfolding magnum opus, is a novel in three parts, which began with Volume One: Fever and Spear. Described as a "brilliant dark novel" (Scotland on Sunday), the book now takes a wild swerve in its new volume. Skillfully constructed around a central perplexing and mesmerizing scene in a nightclub, Volume Two: Dance and Dream again features Jacques Deza. In Volume One he was hired by MI6 as a person of extraordinarily sophisticated powers of perception. In Volume Two Deza discovers the dark side of his new employer when Tupra, his spy-master boss, brings out a sword and uses it in a way that appalls Deza: You can't just go around hurting and killing people like that. Why not? asks Tupra.


Searching meditations on favors and jealousy, knowledge and the deep human desire not to know, violence and death play against memories of the Spanish Civil War, as Deza's world becomes increasingly murky.]]> 341 Javier Marías 081121656X Ryan 3 4.33 2004 Dance and Dream (Your Face Tomorrow, #2)
author: Javier Marías
name: Ryan
average rating: 4.33
book published: 2004
rating: 3
read at: 2010/06/05
date added: 2010/06/08
shelves:
review:

]]> A House for Mr Biswas 5849 623 V.S. Naipaul 0330487191 Ryan 4 3.82 1961 A House for Mr Biswas
author: V.S. Naipaul
name: Ryan
average rating: 3.82
book published: 1961
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2010/06/08
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[What Are Intellectuals Good For?]]> 6414568 252 George Scialabba 0978515668 Ryan 4 4.20 2009 What Are Intellectuals Good For?
author: George Scialabba
name: Ryan
average rating: 4.20
book published: 2009
rating: 4
read at: 2010/06/08
date added: 2010/06/08
shelves:
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]]> The Master and Margarita 117833 The first complete, annotated English Translation of Mikhail Bulgakov's comic masterpiece.

An audacious revision of the stories of Faust and Pontius Pilate, The Master and Margarita is recognized as one of the essential classics of modern Russian literature. The novel's vision of Soviet life in the 1930s is so ferociously accurate that it could not be published during its author's lifetime and appeared only in a censored edition in the 1960s. Its truths are so enduring that its language has become part of the common Russian speech.

One hot spring, the devil arrives in Moscow, accompanied by a retinue that includes a beautiful naked witch and an immense talking black cat with a fondness for chess and vodka. The visitors quickly wreak havoc in a city that refuses to believe in either God or Satan. But they also bring peace to two unhappy Muscovites: one is the Master, a writer pilloried for daring to write a novel about Christ and Pontius Pilate; the other is Margarita, who loves the Master so deeply that she is willing literally to go to hell for him. What ensues is a novel of inexhaustible energy, humor, and philosophical depth, a work whose nuances emerge for the first time in Diana Burgin's and Katherine Tiernan O'Connor's splendid English version.]]> 372 Mikhail Bulgakov 0679760806 Ryan 5 4.31 1967 The Master and Margarita
author: Mikhail Bulgakov
name: Ryan
average rating: 4.31
book published: 1967
rating: 5
read at: 2010/04/21
date added: 2010/04/21
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Fever and Spear (Your Face Tomorrow, #1)]]> 254351 396 Javier Marías 0811216128 Ryan 3 4.03 2002 Fever and Spear (Your Face Tomorrow, #1)
author: Javier Marías
name: Ryan
average rating: 4.03
book published: 2002
rating: 3
read at: 2010/03/23
date added: 2010/03/23
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Human Natures: Genes, Cultures, and the Human Prospect]]> 159685 544 Paul R. Ehrlich 0142000531 Ryan 0 to-read 3.81 2000 Human Natures: Genes, Cultures, and the Human Prospect
author: Paul R. Ehrlich
name: Ryan
average rating: 3.81
book published: 2000
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2010/03/13
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil]]> 52090 The New Yorker, Hannah Arendt’s authoritative and stunning report on the trial of Nazi leader Adolf Eichmann sparked a flurry of debate upon its publication.

This revised edition includes material that came to light after the trial, as well as Arendt’s postscript directly addressing the controversy that arose over her account. A major journalistic triumph by an intellectual of singular influence,

Eichmann in Jerusalem is as shocking as it is informative—an unflinching look at one of the most unsettling and unsettled issues of the twentieth century that remains hotly debated to this day.]]> 312 Hannah Arendt Ryan 0 to-read 4.22 1963 Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil
author: Hannah Arendt
name: Ryan
average rating: 4.22
book published: 1963
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2010/03/13
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found]]> 4364
As each individual story unfolds, Mehta also recounts his own efforts to make a home in Bombay after more than twenty years abroad. Candid, impassioned, funny, and heartrending, Maximum City is a revelation of an ancient and ever-changing world.]]> 542 Suketu Mehta 0375703403 Ryan 4
I came to this book via Mehta's interview in the Believer. He seemed a funny, smart guy and I figured his book would be the same. And it is. But the book is more about going back to places your once knew and trying to understand them again.

Mehta doesn't spend a lot of time on 9-to-5-vers in Mumbai. (maybe there's less of them) This book is more a tour of the groups that seem to define the city. From gangsters to their mirror twins, cops, and onward to their distillations - Bollywood stars. Along the way he visits a variety of other folks, but mostly tries to understand where Bombay is today and how it has moved from the city he remembers. A lot of the characters are held together through various connections to the 1993 riots and bombings. All this is interspersed with his own trials trying to carve out a life for his family over two and a half years.

The writing is sharp, at times funny and insightful. He doesn't rationalize his interview subjects, but lets them speak their mind at length, which can be quite interesting, especially with the hitmen.

This book does presuppose some level of knowledge about India, especially Bollywood. I had to spend some extra time trying to piece together the importance of the references. But altogether a good read.]]> 3.94 2004 Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found
author: Suketu Mehta
name: Ryan
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2004
rating: 4
read at: 2010/02/15
date added: 2010/02/15
shelves:
review:
I can't say I've ever had a strong desire to move to Bombay, but this book was convincing enough that I safely believe it not the place for me. But, there's a certain subconscious, almost sadomasochistic draw to the place - as if moving there would be a particularly creative form of (potentially physical) suicide to the person I am today. Like Los Angeles - only 10 times stronger.

I came to this book via Mehta's interview in the Believer. He seemed a funny, smart guy and I figured his book would be the same. And it is. But the book is more about going back to places your once knew and trying to understand them again.

Mehta doesn't spend a lot of time on 9-to-5-vers in Mumbai. (maybe there's less of them) This book is more a tour of the groups that seem to define the city. From gangsters to their mirror twins, cops, and onward to their distillations - Bollywood stars. Along the way he visits a variety of other folks, but mostly tries to understand where Bombay is today and how it has moved from the city he remembers. A lot of the characters are held together through various connections to the 1993 riots and bombings. All this is interspersed with his own trials trying to carve out a life for his family over two and a half years.

The writing is sharp, at times funny and insightful. He doesn't rationalize his interview subjects, but lets them speak their mind at length, which can be quite interesting, especially with the hitmen.

This book does presuppose some level of knowledge about India, especially Bollywood. I had to spend some extra time trying to piece together the importance of the references. But altogether a good read.
]]> Pnin 30593 Pnin features his funniest and most heart-rending character. Professor Timofey Pnin is a haplessly disoriented Russian émigré precariously employed on an American college campus in the 1950's. Pnin struggles to maintain his dignity through a series of comic and sad misunderstandings, all the while falling victim both to subtle academic conspiracies and to the manipulations of a deliberately unreliable narrator.

Initially an almost grotesquely comic figure, Pnin gradually grows in stature by contrast with those who laugh at him. Whether taking the wrong train to deliver a lecture in a language he has not mastered or throwing a faculty party during which he learns he is losing his job, the gently preposterous hero of this enchanting novel evokes the reader’s deepest protective instinct.

Serialized in The New Yorker and published in book form in 1957, Pnin brought Nabokov both his first National Book Award nomination and hitherto unprecedented popularity.]]> 184 Vladimir Nabokov 1400041988 Ryan 0 3.89 1957 Pnin
author: Vladimir Nabokov
name: Ryan
average rating: 3.89
book published: 1957
rating: 0
read at: 2010/02/15
date added: 2010/02/15
shelves:
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]]> Musical Composition 2000612 196 Reginald Smith Brindle 0193171074 Ryan 0 to-read 4.11 Musical Composition
author: Reginald Smith Brindle
name: Ryan
average rating: 4.11
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2010/02/15
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[SuperFreakonomics: Global Cooling, Patriotic Prostitutes And Why Suicide Bombers Should Buy Life Insurance]]> 6402364
Four years in the making, SuperFreakonomics asks not only the tough questions, but the unexpected ones: What's more dangerous, driving drunk or walking drunk? Why is chemotherapy prescribed so often if it's so ineffective? Can a sex change boost your salary?

SuperFreakonomics challenges the way we think all over again, exploring the hidden side of everything with such questions as:

How is a street prostitute like a department-store Santa?
Why are doctors so bad at washing their hands?
How much good do car seats do?
What's the best way to catch a terrorist?
Did TV cause a rise in crime?
What do hurricanes, heart attacks, and highway deaths have in common?
Are people hard-wired for altruism or selfishness?
Can eating kangaroo save the planet?
Which adds more value: a pimp or a Realtor?

Levitt and Dubner mix smart thinking and great storytelling like no one else, whether investigating a solution to global warming or explaining why the price of oral sex has fallen so drastically. By examining how people respond to incentives, they show the world for what it really is � good, bad, ugly, and, in the final analysis, super freaky.

Freakonomics has been imitated many times over � but only now, with SuperFreakonomics, has it met its match.]]> 270 Steven D. Levitt 0060889578 Ryan 3
I read the original NYT magazine article about Levitt back in 2002, so I'm familiar with his work. This book does not disappoint with more stories of simple, sometimes counter intuitive solutions to real-world situations. After the first section, I realized that I walked through ground zero of one of Chicago's prostitution zones during it's busiest weekend (July 4th). Too bad I didn't stop to talk to anyone.

The most controversial section of the book is the global warming chapter, which tries to make a historical and economic argument that Gore and others are on the wrong path. Levitt and Dubner do leave it up to the reader to make up their mind, but their suggestions of cheap solutions to try make a compelling argument.

This book suffers the same problem as other works of it's type - a friendly sort of smugness. Levitt and Dubner are definitely less smug than most, but you still want to refer to them as Misters "Smarty Pants" at times.

The epilogue is the best part of the book.]]> 4.00 2009 SuperFreakonomics: Global Cooling, Patriotic Prostitutes And Why Suicide Bombers Should Buy Life Insurance
author: Steven D. Levitt
name: Ryan
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2009
rating: 3
read at: 2010/01/25
date added: 2010/01/25
shelves:
review:
Again, I wish there was a 3.5 stars, as this is no masterwork, but definitely an interesting read. I read this book during times when I was otherwise indisposed. Which is a testament to both it's breezy readability and slim size.

I read the original NYT magazine article about Levitt back in 2002, so I'm familiar with his work. This book does not disappoint with more stories of simple, sometimes counter intuitive solutions to real-world situations. After the first section, I realized that I walked through ground zero of one of Chicago's prostitution zones during it's busiest weekend (July 4th). Too bad I didn't stop to talk to anyone.

The most controversial section of the book is the global warming chapter, which tries to make a historical and economic argument that Gore and others are on the wrong path. Levitt and Dubner do leave it up to the reader to make up their mind, but their suggestions of cheap solutions to try make a compelling argument.

This book suffers the same problem as other works of it's type - a friendly sort of smugness. Levitt and Dubner are definitely less smug than most, but you still want to refer to them as Misters "Smarty Pants" at times.

The epilogue is the best part of the book.
]]> <![CDATA[Changing My Mind: Occasional Essays]]> 6425404 A sparkling collection of Zadie Smith's nonfiction over the past decade.

Zadie Smith brings to her essays all of the curiosity, intellectual rigor, and sharp humor that have attracted so many readers to her fiction, and the result is a collection that is nothing short of extraordinary.

Split into four sections�"Reading," "Being," "Seeing," and "Feeling"�Changing My Mind invites readers to witness the world from Zadie Smith's unique vantage. Smith casts her acute eye over material both personal and cultural, with wonderfully engaging essays-some published here for the first time-on diverse topics including literature, movies, going to the Oscars, British comedy, family, feminism, Obama, Katharine Hepburn, and Anna Magnani.

In her investigations Smith also reveals much of herself. Her literary criticism shares the wealth of her experiences as a reader and exposes the tremendous influence diverse writers—E. M. Forster, Zora Neale Hurston, George Eliot, and others—have had on her writing life and her self-understanding. Smith also speaks directly to writers as a craftsman, offering precious practical lessons on process. Here and throughout, readers will learn of the wide-ranging experiences—in novels, travel, philosophy, politics, and beyond—that have nourished Smith's rich life of the mind. Her probing analysis offers tremendous food for thought, encouraging readers to attend to the slippery questions of identity, art, love, and vocation that so often go neglected.

Changing My Mind announces Zadie Smith as one of our most important contemporary essayists, a writer with the rare ability to turn the world on its side with both fact and fiction. Changing My Mind is a gift to readers, writers, and all who want to look at life more expansively.]]> 320 Zadie Smith 1594202370 Ryan 5 3.84 2009 Changing My Mind: Occasional Essays
author: Zadie Smith
name: Ryan
average rating: 3.84
book published: 2009
rating: 5
read at: 2010/01/24
date added: 2010/01/24
shelves:
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]]> <![CDATA[The Century of Revolution, 1603-1714]]> 189317 368 Christopher Hill 0415267390 Ryan 3
The book itself is written well, but I think it requires some decent prior knowledge of the English Civil War to fully appreciate. I would not have put myself in that category. (Being from the US, when we talk about Revolutions and Civil War, we tend to focus on the local ones rather than broadening out to even England. It's rare that England's even acknowledged as having history that could be instructive for our own.)

Nevertheless, I learned a good deal from this book. One of the major things I learned from self-study triggered by this book is that there's a great deal of debate about what actually caused the English Civil War. Being of a Marxist perspective, most of the book's discussion is economic or class based, but there's also a good amount about religion and ideas of the period. Hill divides about a 100 year period into 4 sections. Each section has a chapter that quickly describes the events, one chapter each for "Economics", "Politics and the Constitution" and "Religion and Ideas" and finally a conclusion. This gives the book the feel of a textbook.

Hill's writing is pretty good. I did find one particularly good nugget in here -

"When Bunyan's Mr Badman asked, 'Who would keep a cow of their own that can have a quart of milk for a penny?' we may deplore the attitude towards holy matrimony which he was advocating; but we note that he confirms Pepys's view of the cheapness of dairy produce."

Why buy the cow when you can get the milk for cheap?]]> 3.94 1961 The Century of Revolution, 1603-1714
author: Christopher Hill
name: Ryan
average rating: 3.94
book published: 1961
rating: 3
read at: 2010/01/10
date added: 2010/01/11
shelves:
review:
I happened upon this book while searching for ever more Routledge Classics titles to indulge in. After I had already ordered this book, I read a little about Christopher Hill, beginning with the description "Marxist Historian" and realized that this probably wasn't going to be what I expected.

The book itself is written well, but I think it requires some decent prior knowledge of the English Civil War to fully appreciate. I would not have put myself in that category. (Being from the US, when we talk about Revolutions and Civil War, we tend to focus on the local ones rather than broadening out to even England. It's rare that England's even acknowledged as having history that could be instructive for our own.)

Nevertheless, I learned a good deal from this book. One of the major things I learned from self-study triggered by this book is that there's a great deal of debate about what actually caused the English Civil War. Being of a Marxist perspective, most of the book's discussion is economic or class based, but there's also a good amount about religion and ideas of the period. Hill divides about a 100 year period into 4 sections. Each section has a chapter that quickly describes the events, one chapter each for "Economics", "Politics and the Constitution" and "Religion and Ideas" and finally a conclusion. This gives the book the feel of a textbook.

Hill's writing is pretty good. I did find one particularly good nugget in here -

"When Bunyan's Mr Badman asked, 'Who would keep a cow of their own that can have a quart of milk for a penny?' we may deplore the attitude towards holy matrimony which he was advocating; but we note that he confirms Pepys's view of the cheapness of dairy produce."

Why buy the cow when you can get the milk for cheap?
]]> <![CDATA[The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (Routledge Classics)]]> 435817 272 Max Weber 041525406X Ryan 0 to-read 3.75 1904 The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (Routledge Classics)
author: Max Weber
name: Ryan
average rating: 3.75
book published: 1904
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2009/12/18
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Sync: The Emerging Science of Spontaneous Order]]> 354421 Chaos and The Elegant Universe, Sync is a tour-de-force of nonfiction writing.]]> 338 Steven H. Strogatz 0786868449 Ryan 4
If you've ever wondered about why your sleep patterns are they way they are, or why when you try to go to bed early you end up with terrible insomnia, or how fireflies all flash at the same time or the 6 degrees of Kevin Bacon, this is the book for you. It's the kind of book with surprising enough stuff to tell your spouse or lunch friends about (as I did). The information is presented pretty clearly, with decent metaphors to deal with the inexpressible (at least w/o mathematics). Chaos lovers will find a lot of discussion about non-linear dynamics, as Strogatz is a leader in that field. It helps to have some basic exposure to modern physics topics in places.

My '4' rating is really for the information in the book. The writing is pretty good for a Math professor, but there are places where it gets a little awkward. (probably would give it a '3') I've read enough "popular" science books to no longer get all excited with stories about the "search" for something. Sentences that begin "I then called my buddy, so-and-so at Harvard. We spent summers together blah blah blah..." are not my favorite. But there's not much of that here. All-in-all a pretty fun read.]]> 4.06 2003 Sync: The Emerging Science of Spontaneous Order
author: Steven H. Strogatz
name: Ryan
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2003
rating: 4
read at: 2009/12/15
date added: 2009/12/18
shelves:
review:
I read this book on the advice of an old friend who studies neuroscience. I have occasion to deal with synchronization problems in my own life, so I thought it would be fun to read about the science of it. And it was!

If you've ever wondered about why your sleep patterns are they way they are, or why when you try to go to bed early you end up with terrible insomnia, or how fireflies all flash at the same time or the 6 degrees of Kevin Bacon, this is the book for you. It's the kind of book with surprising enough stuff to tell your spouse or lunch friends about (as I did). The information is presented pretty clearly, with decent metaphors to deal with the inexpressible (at least w/o mathematics). Chaos lovers will find a lot of discussion about non-linear dynamics, as Strogatz is a leader in that field. It helps to have some basic exposure to modern physics topics in places.

My '4' rating is really for the information in the book. The writing is pretty good for a Math professor, but there are places where it gets a little awkward. (probably would give it a '3') I've read enough "popular" science books to no longer get all excited with stories about the "search" for something. Sentences that begin "I then called my buddy, so-and-so at Harvard. We spent summers together blah blah blah..." are not my favorite. But there's not much of that here. All-in-all a pretty fun read.
]]> <![CDATA[Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity]]> 86098 220 Richard Rorty 0521367816 Ryan 4
Sadly, I wasn't able to dance as this book completely captivated me by throwing aside many notions I had about "truth". This book was a tough read for me - at best, I'm but a dilettante when it comes to philosophy, but with some Wikipedia assist, I could keep up. I just think it's a very well written, very well thought out book. And Rorty seems to actually care about what happens in the world, with people. This opposed to some abstract philosophical construct that we should aspire to. That gives the book a good deal of it's power, because it's talking about things we can do to make life a little better.]]> 4.14 1989 Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity
author: Richard Rorty
name: Ryan
average rating: 4.14
book published: 1989
rating: 4
read at: 2007/12/01
date added: 2009/12/17
shelves:
review:
I read this book as a challenge to myself. An engineering education tends to engender a Manichean sensibility, as solutions are either correct or incorrect. When Richard Rorty died in 2007, I read a slate.com profile that classified him as that worst pariah of American middle-class sensibility - a relativist. But, there was a definite measure of respect for the positions he took. So I decided to give him a try, hoping to open my mind, but expecting to dance gleefully on his bleeding heart.

Sadly, I wasn't able to dance as this book completely captivated me by throwing aside many notions I had about "truth". This book was a tough read for me - at best, I'm but a dilettante when it comes to philosophy, but with some Wikipedia assist, I could keep up. I just think it's a very well written, very well thought out book. And Rorty seems to actually care about what happens in the world, with people. This opposed to some abstract philosophical construct that we should aspire to. That gives the book a good deal of it's power, because it's talking about things we can do to make life a little better.
]]>