The Big Book Post

The 50 books challenge/resolution has been around for a while...the basic idea being to read 50 books in one year...but it's new to me this year. I'm only sort of halfway going to do it though--we'll see how many I get to. Now that I've set the bar sufficiently low I'll get around to the books, it's week 15 and I'm woefully behind having made it through only 8 books so far. Number 5 is at fault for the behindedness.

#1. Death's Acre: Inside the Body Farm, the legendary forensic lab
by Bill Blass and Jon Jefferson
Jan.1-Jan.5, 2007
I read this book after being fascinated by Stiff: the Curious Lives of the Human Cadaver by Mary Roach over the summer. I don't have a weak stomach--at least when I'm reading--so I find this topic endlessly fascinating. This book had a nice blend of forensic problem solving, anthropology, biography, and scientific method.

#2. His Excellency: George Washington
by Joseph J. Ellis
Jan.5-Jan.18, 2007
The theme of this book was: George Washington had demons, flaws, and was generally human...these turned out to be a) He wanted power, but didn't want to appear to want power; b) He worried about what people thought of him; c) He married up (see social climber); d) He edited his diaries so as to look better in the eyes of history. Despite all the flaws, Ellis manages to make him sympathetic, if a little stiff. Ellis makes Washington look best when describing his presidency- that he knew he was setting precedents, and that the most important thing for the country was to manage to stay together. A good book even though the subject matter wasn't all that new.

#3. Life Of Pi
by Yann Martel
Jan.10-Jan.25, 2007
The first two-thirds were really good, then the ending fell apart. The writing was good enough to make an unbelievable plot seem possible, until (and this doesn't seem like a fair criticism for a fiction novel) he started making things up. The beauty of the first two thirds was that everything that happened seemed possible, albeit unlikely, then Martel broke a sort of pact I believe all author's have with the reader-he broke his own set of rules, or maybe just changed them to get out of the plot alive. Fantasy is great, but if you are going to start telling a story with a real life setting, and suddenly decide you need an algae island populated by meerkats that becomes poisonous after dark.

#4. George Washington
by James MacGregor Burnsand Susan Dunn
Jan.19-Feb.1, 2007
Nothing new, nothing surprising, but a good overview-you know if you have to write a 9th grade history paper.

#5. John Adams
by John Patrick Diggins
Feb.1-Feb.13, 2007
After reading the George Washington volume in this series I am glad I read the 'overview' book before I get to David McCullough's John Adams which I have on my pile to read. John Adams may have been the most underappreciated of the founding fathers-so I'm really interested in reading a more in depth book about him.

#6. The Pickwick Papers
by Charles Dickens
Jan.26-Mar.29, 2007
This book is the reason I'm so behind-because I felt like killing the main character through much of the book for being so naive. I liked Bleak House a great deal, so I had high hopes for this book. Also, it is given high praise in one of my favorite books Anne of the Island for all of the great food descriptions. I really liked Sam, which I suspect is the point- he was making fun of the upper and middle classes while the real intelligence is in the lower class hero. It was Dicken's first novel and alot of later themes are evident- the backwards legal system for example. I enjoyed reading the book when I was reading it, but wasn't motivated to pick it up most of the time because it lacked an overarching storyline that I was interested in finding out the resolution too.

#7. Pigs Have Wings
by P.G. Wodehouse
Mar.30-Apr.3, 2007
I realize by now I sound like I've hated every book I've read this year-although not true-the sound is about to change. P.G. Wodehouse is the master of the comic novel, sure you can see all or most the plot devices and twists coming, but the execution and language are so good it doesn't matter. If reading Dickens was like eating cold oatmeal then reading Wodehouse is like eating Pop Rocks. If you haven't read Wodehouse, then do it now, it doesn't matter which one.

#8. Things Fall Apart
by Chinua Achebe
Apr.3-Apr.6, 2007
This book deserves its reputation for the last paragraph alone. The title of the book tells you what will happen, the anticipation is part of the beauty, the ending is the kick in the stomach. It is a surprisingly short book-an economic use of words as one review put it-just don't read the ending first.