Now, the title of this post might be a little misleading. I often give off the impression that I am someone who is well-read, and while I would like to think that this adjective fits me fairly well, I don’t want to give off the impression that I am someone like Jon Stewart, who reads the book of every single guest who comes on his show, or Tav, my Sociology professor at Dension who reads a book a day every summer. That’s right, I said a book a day. That kind of blazing reading speed just boggles my mind. I’m lucky if I get through a book a month. I guess what I’m trying to say is, I’m not pulling this Top 5 from some huge number of books that I’ve read this year. In fact, the number of books that I’ve read in the last twelve months is….um….as far as I can remember….seven. Well, technically nine, but I bought the His Dark Materials trilogy in an omnibus form, with one cover, so I’m counting it as one 900-page book. I read it pretty much as a single book, and I’ll be discussing it as such. The thing is, almost every book that I’ve read this year has been pretty good, or at least worth discussing with people. I wish I could say the same for the movies I’ve seen over the last year. So if every book I’ve read is at least decent, I’m confident in my ability to rank them as a Top 5, and besides, there are two books on this list that I’ve read just recently that I’m itching to talk about. If I decided to include all of the books I’ve read in the last two years, some other real gems could be included, such as The Constant Gardner, The Partner, The Camel Club, and…wait for it…The Secret. However, it is hard enough for me to remember which books I’ve read over the last year, so I’m pretty sure the borders of the last two years would get kinda hazy, unless I just made the post “Top 5 Books I’ve read since college”. Besides, as I mentioned, touting the fact that I’ve read more than 5 books in a year makes me sound more well-read. Anyway, on to the list:
Spoiler Alert: Plot and/or ending details follow. I’ll try my best not to deliberately give away the best parts of any book discussed here, but it’s difficult for me to discuss the merits of a book without discussing the content, which in the case of fictional novels means plot details. If you come across a book you haven’t read, and feel like I might spoil it for you, by all means skip the paragraphs I write about it.
Honorable Mention: I Am America (And So Can You!) by Stephen Colbert
As much as it pains me to leave this out of the top 5, I actually didn’t finish reading this book, so I can’t really justify placing it above any other book on this list. I really wanted to love this book. The title is hilarious. The book jacket is hilarious. The Colbert Report is possibly my favorite show on television right now. Colbert’s shameless plugging promotion of the book was a consistent source of humor on the show when it was released. I bought the book for my twin brother’s birthday, hoping he would let me borrow it, only to given a copy for my birthday by my mother. When I actually started to read the book, however, my enthusiasm waned. Don’t get me wrong — the book is funny; it just doesn’t live up to the TV show. The book kind of reads like an extended “The Word” segment from the show, only the fact that both Colbert’s words and the asides are written kind of ruins the effect. The book is kind of a testament to how funny Stephen Colbert is in person, and how important timing and delivery are to comedy. The little side pages and features were funny for the most part, but on the whole it was fewer laughs per minute than the show, and I wasn’t compelled to keep reading. I’ll probably finish it at some point, and I’m sure I’ll get some more laughs out of it. I’m just not expecting pure brilliance anymore.
5. Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind by Shunryu Suzuki
This book is more of a conversation starter than an all-time great book. A friend lent me this book so that I could learn more about Buddhism, and I must say, mission accomplished. As far as books about Eastern thought are concerned, I prefer The Tao of Pooh, but that’s probably because it’s more watered-down and catered to the Western reader, and it makes more heavy use of analogies, which are one of my favorite teaching/learning devices. Zen Mind was transcribed from spoken lectures, which I’m sure were quite fascinating and informative. However, given the fact that it read like a practical study guide for meditation, I would have liked to be at the lectures in person. If I’m going to learn a practice, I would rather learn it in person, given that I am more of an auditory and kinetic learner than visual. It did make me think a lot, though, and it gave me a new perspective on something that I didn’t know a lot about. So books like that are always worthwhile.
4. His Dark Materials by Philip Pulman
You might better know this trilogy by the name of its first book, The Golden Compass. I first became interested in this book (whenever I say book from this point, know that I mean trilogy) while reading Gregg Easterbrook’s “Tuesday Morning Quarterback” column on espn.com. He criticized the book for being too harshly anti-religious. Given that the trilogy is considered children’s literature, I figured it wouldn’t be like Neitzsche or anything, and given the fact that I often find atheist perspectives at least intriguing, if not refreshing, I began to wonder what the book had to say. I saw The Golden Compass at the cinema this winter, and I picked up on few anti-religious undertones, and got the feeling that the movie had been watered down for Hollywood’s sake. Although, I must say — kudos to the film for finally harnessing the evil potential of Nicole Kidman! Anyway, I bought the trilogy, and I just finished reading it yesterday. Its message was a fairly straightforward humanitarian message: if the idea of God/Heaven is a farce, then we must take it upon ourselves to create a Heaven here on Earth. Believing in a fictional God hampers our freedom and ability to reason, and thus detracts from our end goal of maximizing our earthly lives, because we follow irrational rules in preparation for a nonexistent afterlife, rather than focusing on making our present world the best it can be. The book also conveys the message that people as beings are neither Good nor Evil, but rather these labels should be reserved for our actions. On the level of message, I’m totally on board with this book. What I didn’t like about this book was the ending, and Pullman’s failure to create a self-contained, fully coherent and consistent universe. I had many unanswered questions at the end of the book. For example, if people were going to continue to worship God after his death, and if God as a character was not going to make any impact on the storyline, why include him at all? I guess the Kingdom’s forces needed a leader, but they had Metatron, so why include God? What did he add to the story? If the Subtle Knife created the Specters, and the Specters came from the abyss (a God-neutral zone), why did they join up with the forces of the Kingdom in the Final Battle? Shouldn’t they have been attacking parties from both sides, like the cliff ghasts? Also, where did the Land of the Dead come from? Didn’t that seem kind of like Hell? If someone (like the Authority) bothered to create a Hell, wouldn’t it be more logical and balanced to include a Heaven in the universe as well? Pullman makes dissolving into atoms and dispersing throughout the universe sound like the best possible outcome for dead people, but this only holds true because the Land of the Dead sucks so much. What about the people who become Angels when they die? Wouldn’t that be better than just dissolving? Why didn’t anyone in the book explain any of this? Does it make any sense to have the only two death alternatives be Punishment or Nothingness? I could understand if there was just Nothingness, but if there is going to be a Punishment afterlife, shouldn’t there also be a Reward afterlife? Also, it just seemed like Pullman was making up too many rules at the end about “the way things are”. For the book to claim that Lyra was going to put an end to Destiny, she didn’t seem to have much of a choice at the end. “Yes, you have put an end to the Authority, and now you are free to mold your own life as you choose, but if you make any of these choices, you will die and the Authority’s followers will win”. It’s kind of like the Matrix in a way. Neo was supposed to bring an end to the Matrix, and lead people into a new age of freedom, but by the end you found out it was all just one big stupid cycle, and everyone dies and it starts over again with a new group of people without anything actually changing. What was accomplished? That was the lingering feeling I had at the end of the book. Overall, though, I thought the book was a creative, entertaining read, with a message that is worthwhile, despite its shortcomings.
3. The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
This book was the opposite of His Dark Materials. The end of this book made it great, rather than snatching it from the clutches of greatness. I spent the first 180 pages of this book wondering what everyone thought was so great about it. I was like, “Great, a story about a sniveling, cowardly protagonist who ruins not only his life, but the lives of his father and best friend because he’s too afraid to face his own fears and inner shame. Why does anyone like this book?” I felt like I was reading A Separate Peace all over again, only with Afghan boys instead of Americans. In both books, you can sort of empathize with the protagonist, you can say, “He’s had a tough life; I understand why he would be afraid/ashamed. What I can’t understand is why he thinks he can fix the situation by continuing to act like a giant douche.” Then, all of a sudden, Amir starts to grow up and improve as a character. First, he begins to work, and take care of his dad in America, and you get the feeling he might not be totally worthless after all. Then he goes to Afghanistan, and continues to do the right things, even if he complains unceasingly about it. Then he gets the ever-loving crap beaten out of him by Assef, and you feel like, “Wow, maybe now he’s repaid his debt and I can stop hating him so much.” By the end of the book, he’s a fully sympathetic character, and it’s wonderful to see how far he’s progressed. And Hosseini accomplishes this without even resorting to a Hollywood, storybook ending. While the ending isn’t a happy one per se, I was overjoyed that it didn’t have an ending like The Awakening, which I almost expected it to have after the first 180 pages. I was glad the author didn’t go the Chopin route of “See? People in Afghanistan have it rough. Their lives are so hard that they have free license to act like idiots, ruining the lives of everyone around them, just like my protagonist.” So why is this book number 3, and not higher on the list? Well, I probably would have put it at number 2, except for 2 reasons: 1)I still feel like the book is kind of overrated, because everyone who told me about the book before I read it just told me how amazing it was without giving me any warning of how painful the first 180 pages were. 2) When I enjoy a book, I normally either feel entertained, or like I’m learning something. While I was reading this book, I mostly felt depressed. It was probably the best written book on this list, but it just didn’t evoke the same reactions for me as the top 2 books on this list.
2. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by JK Rowling
I know, I know, I’m sure there are a lot of people out there who are thinking, “You like Harry Potter better than Kite Runner? You uncultured consumer whore!” And to be fair, I don’t think that book 7 was the best in the Harry Potter series (although I would probably rate it above book 1, and possibly book 2, and definitely above the angsty parts of book 5). I don’t want to make it seem like I’m giving Deathly Hallows a make-up award, like the Academy did in giving Return of the King best picture honors, even though it was clearly the worst of the 3 films. I actually would probably rate this book on an even par with Kite Runner, but my expectations of Kite Runner were so much higher I feel like I enjoyed it less, and Deathly Hallows was simply more entertaining and less depressing. The conclusion to Harry Potter tied up many more loose ends, and left the created universe much more coherent than His Dark Materials did, although I still had a few questions at the end, mostly pertaining to why Rowling decided to kill off the characters that she did. (I won’t list them here, in an effort not to consciously spoil, but let’s just say I don’t understand her preoccupation with creating orphans). And while Rowling didn’t pull anything that unexpected, I felt she ended the book the way she had to, and I respect that (she had kind of written herself into a corner once she killed off Dumbledore in book 6). My one other serious objection to the book, although I saw it coming, was the over-glorification of Snape. I’m still convinced that he’s a giant tool, no matter what anyone tells me.
Oh, and I’m discounting the epilogue as part of the book. The epilogue is garbage! And the editor that let it come out is garbage! THAT’S WHY I DON’T READ THE NEWSPAPER! If you include the epilogue as part of the story, then that would easily drop this book to third or fourth on this list, if not lower. What a freakin’ copout. Are you kidding me? Who’s the kid here? That’s all I’ve got to say. Makes me wanna puke….
side note: Why is Dumbledore gay? Why does his sexuality matter? I always thought that Dumbledore was kinda like an incredibly powerful Teletubby; he is a character designed to entertain children, so his sexuality is quite beside the point. In fact, none of the characters in any of the Harry Potter books have any significant degree of sexuality, aside from puppy love (kissing, holding hands, etc.) among the students of Hogwarts. Why complicate something that stands so well on its own as a work by trying to throw sex into the mix? I just think this was a publicity stunt by Rowling, because she was sad that the series is over now. Or maybe she regrets not writing more Wizard Sex into the books now. Fellatiorum! Cunilingulo! Intercoursus Canidae! Oh well, I’m sure there’s probably enough fan fiction out there already….
1. The Age of Turbulence by Alan Greenspan
This book fits the second category of books that I enjoy — books that make me feel like I’m learning something. It was also entertaining, I suppose; the third of the book that was actually an autobiography had a storyline and plot that were interesting enough, or at least as interesting as I would expect a nonfiction book to be. Alan Greenspan has met and worked with some very interesting people in his lifetime, and it is fun and exciting to read his perspective and dirt on all of the presidents that he worked with. It’s kind of like People magazine, only it’s written by one of the greatest minds of a generation, and the gossip is about policies that have shaped a nation, rather than what clothes celebrities wore to an awards show. Then, of course, you get to the meat of the book; the final two thirds of the book read more like The Capitalist Manifesto than an autobiography. While I was reading it, I found myself wishing that I was still in school, so that I could go to class and have a pointed discussion about the book and the issues it raises. While I might not agree one hundred percent with everything he says in the book, there is no denying there is wisdom in Greenspan’s words. He supports all of his ideas with numerous real world examples, and the manner in which he constructs his arguments makes it clear that Greenspan is one of the most intelligent, pensive, and deliberate people on the face of this planet. His intellect seems on par with someone like a Richard Dawkins, but the subject matter that he works with is much more real-world, here-and-now than evolutionary biology. He brings together, in his economic analysis, fundamental questions not only of finance, trade, and governance, but also human nature and the perspective and the individual. He seems to see both the forest and the trees, and take them both into account when making judgments. He lets you know where his biases are, but is willing to temper them with exceptions according to his own reasoning. He labels himself a Republican, but he reports that he feels that Bill Clinton made better, more responsible economic decisions than the presidents Bush that preceded and succeeded him. While he understates them, he seems to recognize the weaknesses of capitalism, which gives credibility to his argument. He states very clearly what capitalism does well, and where it falls short (although I would probably use a stronger word than “stress” if I were in his place). He notes that no system is perfect, but he also shows that free markets are the most efficient system that has been tried at present (as demonstrated in the last two centuries in developed and developing countries). He also has progressive ideas about things such as the energy crisis, taking into account that the best ideas are not always the most popular ones. For example, in his book, he proposes a $3 a gallon tax on gasoline, taking into account that expensive gasoline is a prerequisite for the infrastructural changes that need to take place if America wants to achieve the oil independence politicians claim that they want us to. Like hiking interest rates or income taxes, this is something no politician would ever espouse if he/she wanted to get elected, but if oil dependence and global warming are outcomes we wish to avoid, it might be necessary, especially given the fact that 1/7 of the world’s oil is consumed on America’s roads and highways. I would highly recommend this book to anyone who wants to learn about the world, the economy, and some sides of America we can really be proud of (or improve).
Worpress is telling me that this post has surpassed 3300 words, which is like 11 pages, double-spaced. Anyway, I think I’ve typed enough for one day. Keep reading, check these books out if you haven’t, and I’ll see you for my next top 5. Tootles.
