Keep track of all the books I read in 2009

Leviathan is a work of steampunk fiction by one of the most wildly popular YA (young adult) writers today.

Well-worth a read. Also, check out SW’s blog and this interview with Keith Thompson, the wonderful illustrator of this unique book

Netherland by Joseph O’Neill is one of those books that is good in a literary way. It’s not exciting or flashy like the last couple of books I read, which (ironically) made me tear through it faster, (to get it over with), but it definitely makes one think, especially if one lives in NYC.

The main character, Hans, is a successful Dutch equities analyst living in NYC with his English wife and very young son when 9/11 happens. On one hand this is the story of this small family and how the tragic events expose a rift that was developing in the marriage. But this is a much larger novel as well, and it’s intriguing to follow Hans as he gets to know members of the greater New York cricketing clubs, especially one ebullient West Indian by the name of Chuck Ramkissoon, who may be just too ambitious for his own good.

• post-apocalyptic fiction with a positive twist
• strong female characters
• philosophical musing about humanity’s tendency for both good and evil, but done in an organic way that is not jarring
• page-turning excitement
• books about the near future
• books on environmental issues
• exploration of how science and religion can inform each other
• humor

Nuclear, ecological, chemical, economic — our arsenal of Death by Stupidity is impressive for a species as smart as Homo sapiens. Yet fire or flood may belong to an Armageddon whose awful grandeur may not be our fate. Plague — unlovely, heroic, unstoppable, might well get us first. That’s what happens in Margaret Atwood’s new novel, “The Year of the Flood,” her latest excursion into what’s sometimes called her “science fiction,” though she prefers “speculative fiction.” If we have to have a label, that’s a better one, since part of Atwood’s mastery as a writer is to use herself as a creative computer, modeling possible futures projected from the available data — in human terms, where we are now.

Stieg Larsson – The Girl Who Played with Fire is a great mystery, even if you don’t like mysteries.

But don’t read it until you’ve already read the first one in the Lisbeth Salander series—entitled The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo

Great book!
Some reviews:—
NYT

Huffington Post

UK’s The Guardian

and OMG. I read this like a MONTH ago, and simply forgot to put it up here!!!! go figure.

Definitely a must read.

edit: this is the Trippiest book I have read this year. While i loved it when reading it, it left me feeling sad and very conscious of the evil that lurks in the universe…

The Magicians is a Freaking aMAZing book!

if you ever loved Narnia, Middle Earth, or Hogwarts enough to wish you could go off on a quest or just even a visit, you will find out vicariously what it’s like to go to a similar land, but as an adult.

you. must. read. this book. at some point in your reading, if you’re a true lover of fantasy, you’ll prolly start hating it at some point two thirds of the way through, but stick with it. It’s dark, it’s psychological, it’s magical. it’s fantastical. but it’s also very very real, with real people experiencing life, no matter how influenced by magic.

this is a must read.

Highway to Hell is the third in the series of Maggie Quinn books by Rosemary Clement Moore…

it’s YA and it’s fine for what it is…

This is a kind of blah review, so let me explain—

I kind of blazed through it in a day as I had a deadline to make a presentation (booktalk) for work, so I enjoyed it less than i prolly wouldn have, if I’d read it in the way I usally read…

Given that, check out these reviews
http://readingtomyself.blogspot.com/2009/05/highway-to-hell-maggie-quinn-girl-vs.html (from a teenage blogger)

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/4823693.Hell_Week

Interesting premise for this book… welldone, but more so at the beginning and middle then at the end…

Great book!

explores the following:
-happiness
-science
-genetics
-writing
-creative nonfiction
-ethics
-love

I read it a couple of weeks ago, just haven’t updated this list in a while…

On Beauty – excellent book… really delves into the lives of a biracial, bicultural family with academic as well as Southern as well as British roots (and pretensions). I love how Zadie just jumps into the mess of race, culture, religion, mores, and politics and examines them from the perspective of the lives of real true families lived in all their messy glory.

I almost can’t believe that Zadie Smitha is SO young (relatively) because she gets the voice of people of so many different ages and personalities and cultures DOWN. You know??

REad it!