Not that this is really necessary, but...

The Girl Who Kicked The Hornet's Nest by Steig Larsson
The final book (for now) in this series, I think I liked the second one the best, but this was still really good.
776 points

While Mortals Sleep by Kurt Vonnegut
My brother picked this out for me (again). I think I liked the first one I read more, but this was still an enjoyable read, especially if you're a Vonnegut fan. This was another collection of short stories, published after he died.
472 points

The Help by Kathryn Stockett
I first heard about this book while doing a research project about libel and slander. Apparently the author is being sued for likeness of character- a women claims that Stockett uses her life stories in the novel without permission. The book has gotten hugely popular since then and there's a movie coming out based on the book. It was a good read, but I'm interested to know the truth behind the court case. I can see both sides of it, and I'm not sure what ended up happening, I'll have to look it up. I'm glad I read this before I saw the movie, something I've been bad at lately.
744 points

Starting Over by Ken Sharp
Collection of interviews with John Lennon, Yoko Ono, and other key players in the production of Lennon's last album before his death, Double Fantasy. This was interesting to me because I love them, so every little fact is fun to read about, otherwise I don't know that others would find this a thrilling read.
472 points


I think it would be great to keep this around as a book club of sorts. Great idea, Matt.

Not that this is going to help me, but...

I just finished Never Let Me Go by Kazou Ishiguro. It is amazing. Haunting is the best word to describe this for me. If not haunting, deeply relatable. I saw the movie before I read the book and I think that while the movie is amazing in its own right, I wish I had read the book first. My favorite book of this challenge.

As an aside, Would you guys want to keep this blog going just as a book "club" thing for book suggestions etc.

I can't believe it's only been a year, and I can't believe that it's been a year at the same time.

488 points

Four days...

and I've only got to read one 14,000 page book..

I haven't updated since January and this is all I remember......

Solar by Ian McEwan
Mostly I read this because I love Atonement, and it was about a scientist who works with solar power, but it ended up being mostly about that scientist screwing a lot of women and getting really fat.
352 points

I Am The Messenger by Markus Zusak
Jenna lent me this over winter break, and I really liked it. This Australian teenage cabdriver gets these mysterious playing cards that tell him an address to visit, and at each place, there's something wrong with the people who live there that he needs to fix. Parts are really sad, but cool idea.
368 points

World of Trouble: The White House and the Middle East by Patrick Tyler
I had to read this for my class on US and Middle East relations, and it was basically a history by US president. I really liked it because it presented a complex issue in an easy to understand way, bringing in the personalities of each president and helping me understand what actually goes on between the US and that region.
640 points

Alright let's do this.

I have been a lazy shit these past few months and haven't updated at all. But that's my loss, I guess, because there are a few books that I probably read in the beginning of the summer that I don't remember, so I won't be including them here.

Here's what I do have, in no particular order:

Insatiable by Meg Cabot
Trendy vampire book that I received as a graduation present. I was excited to read a Meg Cabot book after so many years of loving The Princess Diaries, but this was not my really thing.

664 points

No Impact Man by Colin Beavan

A man and his family set out to live one year without creating any impact on the environment. Honestly written, has a lot of good ideas for people who are interested in this sort of lifestyle. Had a lot of unnecessary background info on environmental issues, or maybe this book is better suited for people who are new to this topic.

488 points

The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo by Steig Larsson

If you have not yet read this book, get it out of the library. Today.

800 points

The Girl Who Played with Fire by Steig Larsson

This one was even better. I started it yesterday before dinner and stayed up til 4am to finish it.

830 points

The Road by Cormac McCarthy

Recommended by Matt, this book was a quick read but SO good. I got so scared that I had to lock my bedroom door at night and I thought people were going to eat me while I was sitting on the subway reading it.

504 points

Armageddon in Retrospect by Kurt Vonnegut
Recommended by my brother, I'm pretty sure this was the first Vonnegut book I ever read all the way through? It was actually a collection of short stories and really funny/ironic. I just got While Mortals Sleep out of the library, so I will probably read that next.

440 pages

Midnight in the Garden of Good & Evil by John Berendt
Another one of my brother's. This murder mystery took place in Savannah, Georgia and was a great, great story with some really colorful, Southern characters. Definitely recommend checking this one out.

600 points

Cooking for Mr. Latte by Amanda Hesser
Written by NYTimes food writer, this was a cool mix of recipes and narrative about her experience eating and cooking in NYC. Really enjoyable to read about restaurants in Manhattan since I'm here right now, not so enjoyable because I will probably never be able to afford them. Need to get this out of the library again so I can copy down some of the recipes.

536 points

Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer
I recommend this one for sure, the main character was so likable and the writing style was really refreshing.

568 points

The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver

I've been wanting to read this since I read Animal, Vegetable, Miracle over a year ago. A lot of people drool over this book and say it's their favorite. I thought it was really good, Matt I think you will also like it a lot. I pretty much wanted to punch the dad in the face the whole time so it got pretty frustrating, but I loved how the story was told from multiple perspectives.

776 points

Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts

I have been meaning to read this book since summer before junior year. Oops. It was definitely worth the wait though and is an awesome summer read because it is so long. If you read one book from this list, besides the Steig Larsson books, make it this one. This guy's story is really crazy and I loved reading more about living in India.

1,144 points

The end. Phew.

Edited to add: Wow, I knew that was a lot of books, but I didn't realize I was going to more than double my score. One more reason why taking the subway kicks the ass of a driving commute. Also, not being in school anymore has been pretty great as well.

NEXT

I also finished this about a month ago and am just posting it now. I read the majority of Next by Michael Crichton on my road trip, and then finished it up back in Syracuse. I couldn't put it down. The story has about 12 main characters, with intertwined story lines. The novel focuses on several issues related to bioethics and genetics. This is a fast paced, action packed novel that draws awareness to some current issues with the field of genetics. I really enjoyed reading this and look forward to reading other Crichton novels like Prey and State of Fear.

9/10

760 points

Mother Night

I have been meaning to post here for awhile now but I keep forgetting. I finally finished Mother Night by Kurt Vonnegut. This was not my favorite Vonnegut novel. I had a hard time getting into it and I felt it dragged slightly through the middle.

5/10

488 Points

Two books from a while ago.

I finished the Communist Manifesto in March but am just posting it now. To be honest, I don't really remember much of it. I do remember that while Marx was a radical, he was not insane. Other than that it was a very short read with lofty language (ironically though, because it was meant to represent and speak for the common man).

270 points

4/10

The second book was also assigned for my humanities class. It is called A Small Place by Jamaica Kincaid. It is comprised of four related "essays" or prose even that discuss Antigua. You can tell how furious the author is by her sarcastic and often scathing remarks about the British, tourists, slavery or corrupt government. I enjoyed reading this book very much. I recommend it as a short but powerful read.

296 points

7.9/10

I read.

The book is titled "Journey Through Genius: The Great Theorems of Mathematics" and it is by William Dunham. I enjoy having zero points so reading this will not count towards my total. I just wanted you all to know that I actually read a book. Thank you. Oh, and good luck on finals everybody.

π / 10
0 points

Easy Read

I used to read Sarah Dessen books all the time, my old favorite being This Lullaby. When I saw her newest, Along for the Ride, at my closing Border's for 60% off, I knew right away that I wanted to grab it. And I read the whole thing in one sitting. It felt really nice to get wrapped into a book that I couldn't wait to finish.

Also, I'm re-watching Lost and I just got to the part when they first find Ben and keep him hidden in the hatch. They toss him a copy of The Brother's Karamavoz for him to read! I had just finished reading it, it was weird. So much symbolism, haha.

8/10

583 points

I FINISHED THE BEAST!!!

The beast, of course, being Dostoyevsky's The Brothers Karamavoz.

I'm still in shock, actually. I need to read some really trashy chick lit to make up for these past 3 months of such learned reading.

7/10

976 points

An Afternoon in the Sixties

Storming Heaven: LSD and the American Dream, by Jay Stevens, was a whirlwind introduction to America's relationship with LSD, from the scientists and psychologists who controlled it in laboratories, the men who tried to start a spiritual revolution based on the discoveries from their trips, to the hippies who almost got away with an entire cultural shakedown.

I've never really been well-read on this subject, and this book offers a lot of great background information and a who's-who on the most important players. However, there was so much covered that I feel like I've only scraped through the very first layer of comprehension. I'm planning on reading more on the topic in the future, so I'm glad I read this first to give me a solid primer to the various aspects of this complex, controversial and often misinterpreted substance.

8/10

574 points

The Way Things Are

Another book for my mysticism class. Huston Smith was my professor's professor at Syracuse University back in the day, and this book is a collection of interviews that have been conducted with him throughout the years. Friend of Aldous Huxley, Timothy Leary, and the Dalai Lama (just to name a few), Smith uses his position as a spiritual guide to inspire others on their personal religious path.

I really like his approach to religion. He speaks a lot about finding your spiritual roots, which means going back to the religion you were born into and discovering the mystical aspects of it, instead of finding a whole new religion to adopt and follow. It's a weird concept for me because I have mixed feelings about Catholicism, but I'm interested. So I guess the book succeeded in that sense.

8/10

477 points

Optimism

For Humanities I read Voltaire's Candide. It was a quick read that followed the misadventures of Candide and his companions around the world. This is a satire about, among many things, the "Perfect" world in which we live. Terrible events continue to afflict Candide and co. as Candide attempts to retain the belief that "all is for the best". The book is entertaining to say the least. I've enjoyed most of the satires I have read and I would consider this one worth reading.

6.0/10

344 Points

The Essential Mystics

To be honest, I probably would not have finished reading this book if it weren't for this contest, so yay for motivation! The Essential Mystics, by Andrew Harvey, outlines the mystical aspects of the world's major religions and offers excerpts from holy books to back up his assertions. About 90% of the book was excerpts and reading that kind of stuff isn't really my thing. Our class discussions, on the other hand, are awesome and my professor is able to make the class interesting and relatable, so I'm thankful for that.

4/10

216 points

... And she don't care

I finally finished Ticket to Ride, an autobiographical account of radio reporter Larry Kane, the only American journalist to accompany The Beatles on every stop of their first American tour in 1964. The book basically follows each stop on the '64 tour, covers highlights from the '65 tour and tacks on a few other encounters Kane had with the Fab Four afterward. The subject was interesting, but I hated the way he wrote the book. After the first few chapters, you get sick of reading the same thing over and over: the fans went wild, crying, throwing jellybeans, trampling each other, etc. But I guess if you were actually there, it never got old. You could tell the author was really conservative back in the sixties, because he'd end each chapter alluding to some big scandal that happened at the next city, and all that happened was a fan offered him sexual favors to meet The Beatles or something. He didn't seem to be close enough to the band to get the nitty gritty details, and he only included a couple excerpts from his interviews in each chapter.

5/10
270 pages

The Road

As you all know I finished The Road by Cormac McCarthy. The story is rather haunting. A father and son travel to the coast not necessarily hoping to find anything but they know that they cannot survive the winter where they were. The style of writing was interesting, where the narrator has a seemingly infinite vocabulary and a distinct diction, and the characters are curt and repetitive. I think the ending is a fair compromise and accomplishes its function.

8/10

487 Points