My Reading List

This is a list of books that I have read or am in the process of reading.

You can also check out all of the highlights over the course of four years from my Kindle: My Kindle Clippings

2014

Title	Author	Year	Started	Finished	Genre	Opinion
The Museum of Innocence	Orhan Pamuk		11/2014	12/2014		An incredibly powerful book.
Greatest Russian Stories of Crime and Suspense	Otto Penzler		11/22/2014	11/22/2014		In the spirit of some of the Russian reading I've been doing lately, I took this out of the bookshelf and read some fantastic Russian stories by classic Russian authors, some referenced in The Idiot that I was unfamiliar with. This was my first exposure to Gogol, through his short story "The Portrait."
The Sword and the Shield: The Mitrokhin Archive/History of the KGB	Christopher Andrew and Vasily Mitrokhin		11/2014		Non-Fiction	Bought this for a few bucks from a Salvation Army in the Mission. This book turned out to have quite an incredible backstory. The Mitrokhin Archive was assembled by a single man, an archivist at the KGB's central archive, who began to smuggle information out of his workplace to compile information on a history of the Soviet KGB, which grew to several volumes of information from KGB files. The whole book is a gripping tale of how Russia was immediately able to establish dominance in intelligence advantages over other countries like Britain and Germany, Josef Stalin was so prone to conspiracy theories and demanding only facts that fit his interpretation, that all the good intelligence on Planet Earth wouldn't change Stalin's mind. "A mind not to be changed by place or time." — Paradise Lost Book 1 (@milton_book1) It was this book that led me to the documentary "The Goebbels Experiment" on Netflix. This, in turn, led me to Dostoyevsky's The Idiot, and to Leo Tolstoy's Anna Karenina.
The Idiot	Fyodor Dostoevsky		11/21/2014	Wed 11/30/2014		Started reading this after a reference to it in the Netflix documentary, "The Goebbels Experiment." Let me say that this book would not have been as fascinating or understandable without the SparkNotes for The Idiot. It clarified plot details and helped sort out characters, most of whom go by two names. My character list, scattered due to hastily assembling it during the reading of the novel to sort out who is who: I've found this useful in the past when navigating potentially difficult or cumbersome books. (Ulysses is another example.) I'd been told by a friend that he had tried to read the book, and hadn't been able to continue beyond a certain point; he lost interest in Myshkin, the "idiot" of the title and the main character. I found the story to begin rather slowly, Part I unfolding gradually and introducing all of the characters. (Another part of the reason it started slowly was unfamiliarity with names and places, which led me to start my character list and to start referring to SparkNotes summaries to make sure I understood what was going on.) By the time I had reached Part II, the book had really picked up, and I found that many of the quotes in the book resonated with me. One of the things I had discounted through Part I was the complexity of Myshkin's character. In Part I he seems... well, idiotic. He comes across as gullible and simple-minded. But in later sections of the book, you come to realize that, although he behaves in a simple way, Myshkin is by no means a robot immune to emotion. He experiences his own anxieties, anguish, and internal conflicts. He has a will, he has his own self-interests, and he is as complex a character as any other in the book - something other characters often neglect. While Myshkin's "role" in many situations is a Christ-like role of sacrificing himself to save others, the book illustrates how difficult Myshkin's choices can be for himself.
The Dead	James Joyce		11/22/2014	11/22/2014
The Portrait	Nikolai Gogol		11/22/2014	11/22/2014
Crime and Punishment	Fyodor Dostoyevsky		11/2014	11/2014	Fiction
Autobiography of a Corpse	Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky		10/2014	11/2014	Fiction	A writer who masterfully writes short stories that are surrealist realism, which has a serious, heavy Russian character, but abounds with wit and cleverness. See quotes!
Cambridge Companion to Sartre	Christina Howells		11/15/2014	?	Non-Fiction	(Moe's Books, 11/15) Hardly more understandable than Sartre himself. Filled with dense academic mumbo-jumbo...
Being and Nothingness	Jean-Paul Sartre		11/2014	?	Non-Fiction
The Interpreted World: An Introduction to Phenomenological Psychology	Ernesto Spinelli	1989	11/8/2014	11/15/2014	Non-Fiction	(Moe's Books, 11/8)
The Invisible Bridge: The Fall of Nixon and the Rise of Reagan	Rick Perlstein		10/2014	11/11/2014	Non-Fiction
Will You Die With Me?	Flores Forbes		9/2014	9/2014	Non-Fiction	Fascinating and well-written account by former head of security for the Black Panther Party, Huey Newton's bodyguard, Flores Forbes.
9/11 Commission Report			9/2014	9/2014	Non-Fiction
The Hidden History of the Kennedy Assassination	Lamar Waldron		8/2014	9/2014	Non-Fiction	A gripping book detailing a strong case against Carlos Marcello and his mafia associates for the murder of President John F. Kennedy.
Methods of Logic	Willard Van Quine		8/19/2014		Non-Fiction	Picked this up from the dollar bin at Adobe Books.
The Death and Life of Great American Cities	Jane Jacobs	1961	6/2014	9/2014	Non-Fiction
Icehenge	Kim Stanley Robinson		9/2014	9/2014	Fiction
Pebble in the Sky	Isaac Asimov		9/2014	9/2014	Fiction	Last Asimov book I'll ever read. The book barely scratched the surface of some really deep and profound questions about memory and identity. But rather than actually explore those difficult questions, the author focuses on convenient deus ex machina events, nothing goes wrong, everything goes as planned, the hero gets the girl, and the entire universe is saved. Talk about boring. After reading Asimov's empire trilogy, I'm left with a bad taste in my mouth. The author never dives into interesting ethical quandaries. He takes a classical, conservative, Law-and-Order, 'Merica kind of attitude and applies it to entire galaxies. Women are objects or "pretty things" and are all completely incompetent, men do all the hard work, everything is Romantic (with a capital R), and the overall effect is that the books are an awful slog. Asimov writes Republican science fiction.
The Currents of Space	Isaac Asimov		9/2014	9/2014	Fiction	Has elements of a good sci-fi novel, but the author really falls short. If it were in more capable hands, like Philip Dick, there would be so many jumping off points for things to go deliciously bad, but as it is, things pretty much go down as you expect.
The Stars, Like Dust	Isaac Asimov		8/2014	9/2014	Fiction	This is a good trashy sci-fi novel. Its the first book by Asimov that I've ever read - somehow, I'd never gotten around to reading any of his books - and I started with this one because Asimov himself recommended it as a good first book in his Foundations series. It's basically classic sci-fi - unbearably cheesy in spots, and lacking any outstanding prose. The ending is unbearably cliche and trite: the so-called "secret ancient document" which has the power to change civilization itself by describing some kind of secret weapon is.......... the US Constitution.
Data Analysis	Philipp Janert		8/2014	9/1/2014	Non-Fiction
Enemies: A History of the FBI	Tim Wiener	2012	7/2014	8/30/2014	Non-Fiction
Beginning NFC: Near Field Communication with Arduino, Android, and PhoneGap	Tom Iggoe et al	2014	7/2014	Meh	Non-Fiction
Building Wireless Sensor Networks: with ZigBee, XBee, Arduino, and Processing	Robert Faludi	2011	7/2014	?	Non-Fiction	This was one of the worst technical books I've read in a long time. While the technical descriptions were adequate, and the concepts were explained fairly clearly, the author interspersed extremely elementary concepts (as in, "This is what a computer network is") with concepts that assumed the user had very sophisticated programming knowledge. The result is a book that fails for both audiences. While reading the book, I would try and imagine the target audience for some of the sections. One section would be written for a technically incompetent person who had just bought a Windows laptop at Best Buy, and would have to ask a tech-savy friend for help setting up a printer. The next section would be written for hackers with years of programming experience and a deep understanding of network protocol layers. The result was pages of boring garbage, mixed with a few sections of very useful information. To make matters worse, the author used some of the most banal examples imaginable. Here is a technology - wireless sensor networks - with enormous potential for interesting applications - in science, engineering, business, social studies, robotics, you name it. And yet, what example does the author use to explain the technology? A "romantic light sensor," for a hypothetical awkward male nerd stereotype. Umm, what? This is idiotic on so many levels, I don't even know where to begin. Is this what O'Reilly has been reduced to? Books inflated with pathetic applications that exclude everyone but its niche audience of techies and brogrammers? It would take literally zero effort to improve on the author's complete and utter lack of creative examples. Other than that, though, the book was pretty useful.
Ripley Under Ground	Patricia Highsmith		6/2014	6/2014	Fiction
Up in the Old Hotel	Joseph Mitchell		6/2014	7/2014	Non-Fiction
San Francisco's Mission District (Images of America Series)	Bernadette C. Hooper		6/2014	6/2014	Non-FIction
The Exploration of the Colorado River and Its Canyons	John Wesley Powell		5/2014	6/2014	Non-Fiction
Wars of Watergate	Stanley Kutler		3/29/2014		Non-Fiction	Re-reading. See Wars of Watergate page for a book summary and quotes.
Legacy of Ashes: A History of the CIA	Tim Wiener	2008	2/2014	3/29/2014	Non-Fiction
The Sword of Welleran and Other Stories	Lord Dunsany	1908	3/2014		Fiction
Fifty One Tales	Lord Dunsany	1915	3/2014		Fiction	Wow. These stories are pretty mind-blowing; more like poems. Short, succinct. The influence of Dunsany on Lovecraft is immediately obvious from reading these stories, and those influences were some of the reasons I most liked Lovecraft. So Dunsany was an excellent find.
Cuba Since the Revolution of 1959: A Critical Assessment	Samuel Farber	2012	2/2014	3/2014	Non-Fiction
Tenth of December	George Saunders		12/2013	1/2014	Non-Fiction

2013

Title	Author	Year	Started	Finished	Genre	Opinion
The Friends of Eddie Coyle	George Higgins	1970	12/17/2013	12/21/2013	Fiction	Re-reading
Cuba: What Everyone Needs to Know	Julia Sweig	2009	December 2013	January 2014	Non-Fiction	A great book, despite its format. The good: Sweig gives a very comprehensive treatment of the current state of things in Cuba - the book actually lives up to its title. There were many topics covered that I had simply not thought about before, and whole periods of Cuban history that I had never heard of. Given the fact that Cuba's role in U.S. history is largely marginalized in U.S. schools and colleges, this book provides a lot of important information that simply isn't communicated to everyday people. The bad: The book is written as a series of questions and answers, which is cute and pithy for the first chapter, but gets really old, really fast. The book felt like an endless FAQ. I had a really hard time finishing it. Read it anyway.
Watergate: The Hidden History	Lamar Waldron	2012	October 2013	March 2014	Non-Fiction	The book was a deluge of interesting information. Waldron does a good job of tying together topics that are seemingly related but whose connections aren't made clear in other books. This was a book where, almost every chapter, I found myself going, "Oh, that's why this happened that way."
Roughing It	Mark Twain		12/14/2013		Non-Fiction
The Turn of the Screw	William James	1898	12/8/13	12/9/13	Fiction	So, so, so creepy. See essay Unreliable Narrators for more thoughts on this novella.
The Decameron	Giovanni Boccaccio	1350-ish	December 2013	?	Fiction	For a pre-Renaissance Medieval book of stories, written at the time of the Black Plague, this book is surprisingly dirty, perverted, irreverent, and anti-religious; there are even some fart jokes. Gotta love those Italians. Originally read/learned of this book from a New Yorker book review.
Collected Works of Edgar Allen Poe	Edgar Allen Poe	19th century	December 2013		Fiction	Inspired by a discussion of "The Cask of Amontillado," a delicious revenge story, this led into re-reading all the good Poe classics, plus reading some short stories I've always passed over (in favor of the ones I know will be sufficiently scary, insane, and/or violent).
Dracula	Bram Stoker	1897	12/1/2013	12/4/2013	Fiction	I started reading this because I saw someone sitting on a park bench in Central Park reading Dracula, and I thought to myself, it's high time I re-read a good monsters and vampires book. The book is wordy, to an absurd degree (as many gothic romantic horror novels are), so you have to be dedicated to make it through the book. But several parts have some pretty delicious language.
The Years of Rice and Salt	Kim Stanley Robinson	2002	11/21/2013	Meh	Fiction	While I enjoyed the Mars trilogy, and while I was highly impressed with the premise and opening of the book, I felt like, by Book 6 (of 10), the book lost some of its punch, and I lost steam in reading through it. (Hence, why I dropped it for several days in favor of reading Dracula). There are some really fantastic descriptions of alternate-history great scientists, in particular Book 4 (The Alchemist); but overall, I didn't feel as though the author accomplished what some said he accomplished, namely, "explor[ing] the way history is made and discuss[ing] ideas on the evolution of history and the purpose of civilization" [1]. To the contrary, I felt that the perspective of the characters was too microscopic for me to understand, (a) how the author thinks sweeping arcs of history are shaped by individuals, or (b) what those sweeping arcs actually were. I had to do a lot of cross-comparison between maps to try and uncover what exactly was going on (this page helped a lot). Ultimately, I think the author should have either limited the scope of his novel to a shorter time span (2000 years is a hell of a lot to cover in a single novel, leading to a lot of gaps in coverage) or expanded the breadth of the writing, to be multiple volumes. This would have allowed better exploration of the big-picture topics. The author tended to get bogged down in microscopic dramas that didn't always advance the story, so although he did tell engrossing stories and moved them along quite rapidly, he would have benefitted by giving himself more room to stretch out - with a longer novel, or with a shorter timespan.
The Brothers: John Foster Dulles, Allen Dulles, and Their Secret World War	Stephen Kinzer	2013	11/5/2013	11/20/2013	Non-Fiction
The Drowned World	J G Ballard	1962	September 2013	October 2013	Fiction
Bleeding Edge	Thomas Pynchon	2012	September 2013	Meh	Fiction
Paintwork	Tim Maughan	2011	September 2013	September 2013	Fiction
Red Plenty	Francis Spufford	2012	August 2013	September 2013	Fiction
Halting State	Charles Stoss	2007	July 2013	July 2013	Fiction	A good pulp cyberpunk novel. The central technology was a Google Glass-like augmented reality. It was interesting to see how some of the ideas were implemented. Unfortunately, the story took a long time to develop, so that the bulk of the really interesting action didn't begin until about 75% of the way through the book. The story also had a pretty sappy back-story. It was a quick read, interesting, and good, but I'm not sure I would read more of this author's books.
Infinite Jest	David Foster Wallace		?	Meh	Fiction	In an interview with To The Best of Our Knowledge, DFW said he didn't want this book to be the kind of book that the reader wants to throw at the wall after 100 pages. But 100 pages in, I wanted to throw the book at the wall. The pace is slow, and while it is sprinkled with DFW's signature hilarious descriptions, the story itself is empty and boring; everything moves at a snail pace; you're left wondering when something will finally happen. 200 pages in, you are suffering and ready to give up. I genuinely wanted to enjoy and finish this book. But it has been nearly two years since I began it, and every time I try to pick it up and get further with it, I end up putting it back down after 20 or 30 pages. It is simply not worth it. I have given up trying.
On China	Henry Kissinger	2011	July 2013	?	Non-Fiction	Great, sweeping history of the country. Much more macroscopic and broad-brushed than Stanley Kurnow's Vietnam. Kurnow's book was very microscopic, relying a lot on personal experiences that were widely-spaced and journalistic. But it was intended to cover the entire history of the country. Kissinger, being involved with dealings with the Chinese government at a very high level, and for an extended period of time, got to know them intimately, and so really has the optimal perspective for the type of book he's trying to write.
A Vast Machine: Computer Models, Climate Data, and the Politics of Global Warming	Paul Edwards	2010	June 2013	June 2013	Non-Fiction
Room	Emma Eonaghue		6/9/2013	Meh	Fiction	Read for the Bay Area Bookworms Bookclub. This book SUUUUUUUUUCKS
River of Shadows: Eadweard Muybridge and the Technological Wild West	Rebecca Solnit	2004	6/6/2013	?	Non-Fiction	Read for the Tech Bookclub.
The 13.5 Lives of Captain Bluebear	Walter Moers	2006	5/8/2013	?	Fiction	You can't go wrong by starting a book with miniature pirates who are born with eye-patches and get pretend-drunk...
Nonlinear Mathematics	Saaty and Bram		June 2013	?	Non-Fiction/Technical
Selected Essays	Montaigne		June 2013	?	Non-Fiction
Catalytic Chemistry	Bruce Gates		June 2013	?	Non-Fiction/Technical
Oil!	Upton Sinclair	1927	5/24/2013	5/30/2013	Fiction
The Plague	Albert Camus	1947	5/2013	5/24/2013	Fiction	A disturbing book, much like his book The Stranger. While reading this book, I stagnated a bit, as the bulk of the book is spent on somewhat drawn-out and unpleasant descriptions
Conversations with William Burroughs	William Burroughs & various others	2000	5/2013	5/30/2013	Non-Fiction	Fantastic read. I felt like this book really helped make Burroughs more accessible. Unfortunately, Burroughs' work is a complete enigma; it is incomprehensible and unapproachable. But reading what Burroughs had to say, not just about his own work but about his philosophy and world-view, really helped. He's essentially communicating some of the key ideas and themes in his work. In addition to all of that, he's got some really fantastic quotes.
The Great Shark Hunt	Hunter S. Thompson		5/2013	?	Fiction/Non-Fiction	Always a fantastic read... I try to read the Kentucky Derby piece, at the very least, whenever Derby season rolls around...
In Sputnik's Shadow	Zuoyue Wang		April 2013	?	Non-Fiction
(Job change. Lots of stress. Not much reading.)
Mark Twain's San Francisco	Mark Twain, Ed. by ___	1863-1866	3/25/2013	4/2013	Fiction and Non-Fiction
San Francisco Noir	(Various)		3/24/2013	Meh	Fiction	A rather awful collection of mostly uninteresting stories, this anthology purports to be in the noir genre, and to tell stories of memories of a sense of place, which sounds promising. Given San Francisco's rather concentrated geography, there's plenty of potential in a series like this. But, alas, both the editor and the authors of the various pieces repeatedly stumble, failing to live up to promises, succeeding only in presenting a fractal view of memories of a bunch of mistakes and tragedies, and the city ends up fading into the backdrop, barely noticeable in the ruinous messes that play out (or, don't) in each story.
Blindness	Jose Saramago		3/21/2013	Meh	Fiction	Could not finish. Moved very slowly. Writing style seemed deliberately obfuscatory, which was irritating. The storyline was moving slowly, and even when it was moving, I didn't care that much about what was happening -- mainly because I did not empathize with the (rather wooden) characters. Some books can grab your attention and have you best friends with a character a mere two or three paragraphs into a story or book. This book, though, was the opposite -- as mentioned before, wooden characters, forced dialogue, and an air of confusion and superficiality. WInning the Nobel Prize certainly doesn't make your books any more readable, or make your books matter a single bit more to its readers.
The Friends of Eddy Coyle	George Higgins		3/18/2013	3/20/2013	Fiction
Advise and Consent	Allen Drury	1960	3/2/2013	3/17/2013	Fiction
Right Ho, Jeeves!	P.G. Wodehouse		3/1/2013	3/2/2013	Fiction
Lyndon Johnson: Path to Power	Robert Caro	1985		3/1/2013	Non-Fiction
Forty Signs of Rain	Kim Stanely Robinson		1/30/2013	2/2/2013	Fiction
The Great Gatsby	F. Scott Fitzgerald	1925	1/25/2013	1/25/2013	Fiction
Starship Troopers	Robert Heinlein	1959	1/18/2013	1/26/2013	Fiction	Listened to this in an audiobook format. It was good for a long drive. The main content of the book is basic training, which provides the author an interesting mechanism through which to present a lot of his ideas/material in a "classroom" or training format. It also did a good job of highlighting the modern military and its many parallels with militaries of the past, the long line of tradition, the way the narrator would alternatively take for granted, and claim how little he knew about, different types of information. Also got me thinking about how Presidents will be viewed from (presumably) a very long historical telescope, much like Roman emperors...
Best Travel Writing 2007	(Various)		1/7/2013	1/30/2013	Non-Fiction
Dune	Frank Herbert	1963	1/6/2013	1/10/2013	Science Fiction	Dune has some really lucid descriptions, is wildly imaginative, and is sprawling in its scope. The book also has many layers, and many perspectives can be taken on what kinds of messages and lessons Herbert is sharing. Strongly recommend reading Brian Herbert's afterword while you are reading the book. I read it about a third of the way through the book, and it really enhanced my enjoyment of it and gave me some cues of things to look for that I would have otherwise missed.
Legacy of Ashes: A History of the CIA	Tim Weiner		12/26/2012	1/25/2013	Non-Fiction

2012

Title	Author	Year	Started	Finished	Genre	Opinion
Heavy Weather	Bruce Sterling	1994	12/21/2012	Meh	Fiction
Zone One	Colson Whitehead		12/22/2012	12/23/2012	Fiction
Soul Music	Terry Pratchett		December 2012	December 2012	Fiction
Vietnam	Stanley Karnow		11/13/2012	12/27/2012	Non-Fiction	An excellent, sprawling, comprehensive narrative that covers, not just the Vietnam War, but what is truly the proper context of the Vietnam War, namely the entire history of Vietnam, stretching back to pre-Common Era times, when Vietnam was in conflict with China. Karnow does an excellent job of tracing important threads from chapter to chapter, showing the cause-and-effect cascade that led to the Vietnam War, and the effect it had on the country afterwards.
Revolutionary Road	Richard Yates		11/12/2012	11/13/2012	Fiction	Absolutely haunting book. I couldn't get the book out of my mind. Made me realize that, just as in dreams we sometimes transition between first and third person seamlessly, so too do we do this in fiction, sometimes getting so engrossed in the story that we feel like we are the main character, experiencing everything ourselves, firsthand. This is how memories and books read can sometimes become jumbled...
London Fields	Martin Amis		November 2012	Meh	Fiction	Starts really... really... really slowly.
The Spy Who Came In From The Cold	John Le Carre		11/6/2012	11/8/2012	Fiction	A pretty good spy novel, and a fast read.
Hitch 22	Christopher Hitchens		10/1/2012	12/2012	Non-Fiction	Not what I was expecting, but good nonetheless. Great prose and writing style. Lots of good literary references dropped in here and there. Great way to find out about new authors and books.
Taming the Bicycle: Essays, Stories, and Sketches	Mark Twain	?	October 2012	?	Fiction/Non-Ficton	Hilarious.
Electronic Noses	Julian Gardner and Philip Bartlett	1999	08/10/2012	?	Non-Fiction	Extremely interesting scientific treatment of smell. Comprehensive coverage of the influence of chemistry and molecule shape, biological process, electronic synthesis of smell, and the many applications of electronic noses and smelling.
Viking Portable Marx	Karl Marx		August 2011	August 2011	Non-Fiction	Reading an anthology of Marx's work, rather than a single work like Capital, gives a much better comprehensive portrait of Marx as a man and as a thinker. This seems really important, given some of the ideological shifts that occurred in his life, and is also important for putting his work into the context of who he was as a person.
Their Eyes Were Watching God	Zora Neal Hurston		06/28/2012	07/04/2012	Fiction
Outliers	Malcom Gladwell		June 2012	June 2012	Non-Fiction	Excellent. Lots of good food for thought. 10,000 hour rule: to master anything, you need 10,000 hours of practice.
(Lost track of reading for a while, but was mostly reading The Economist, Foreign Affairs, and Lapham's Quarterly, as well as the occasional New Yorker.)
Collected Stories of Philip Dick	Philip Dick		?	?	Fiction
Blood Meridian	Cormac McCarthy		April 2012	June 2012	Fiction
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes	Sir Arthur Conan Doyle		April 2012	April 2012	Fiction
Ubik	Philip Dick		March 2012	March 2012	Fiction	Damn crazy. Like so much of Dick's work, deals with some mind-blowing concepts - like being dead but still interacting with people, or realizing that what you thought was reality turned out to be a simulation (ontological uncertainty)... was inspired to read this by To The Best of Our Knowledge and their show on P. K. Dick, and their interview with Umberto Rossi, discussing this particular novel and its creepiness.
Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire	William Gibbon		March 2012	?	Non-Fiction
Reaper Man	Terry Pratchett		March 2012	March 2012	Fiction	Excellent!
My Great American Unhappiness	Dean Bakopoulos		03/03/2012	03/03/2012	Fiction	Wow. A narrator who becomes harder and harder to like as the novel goes on. I couldn't stop reading this fascinating picture of a man whose life becomes a slow-motion train wreck. The author pulls off (really well) a slimy and unpleasant person. One word... Schaudenfraude.
The Trial	Franz Kafka		February 2012	February 2012	Fiction
Consider the Lobster	David Foster Wallace		02/01/2012	02/03/2012	Non-Fiction	The title essay was outstanding. The imagery and sensory picture Wallace paints is so unique it's unforgettable. I like how he brings up this really awkward question and then cuts the essay off without giving you an easy way out - like someone handing you a grenade, and pulling the pin as they walk away.
Stiff: The Curious Lives of Cadavers	Mary Roach		02/16/2012	02/19/2012	Non-Fiction	(Pittsburgh trip)
Infinite Jest	David Foster Wallace		February 2012	Meh	Fiction	Really, really slow. Wallace said in an interview that he didn't want the book to be so dense that the reader wants to throw it at the wall after 100 pages. I wanted to throw it at the wall after 100 pages.
Equal Rites	Terry Pratchett		February 2012	February 2012	Fiction
Beyond Good and Evil			January 2012	February 2012 (re-reading is ongoing)	Non-Fiction	Like anything by Nietzsche, this isn't a sit-down-and-read-it-cover-to-cover book. I got through a large chunk of it, and thoroughly enjoyed it. Having thought more about the philosophy of science, some of the themes Nietzsche addresses really resonated with me. There were parts I had read before, and hadn't really understood or fully appreciated, that now, on re-reading, were much more powerful.
Snow Crash	Neal Stephenson		January 2012	February 2012	Fiction	One of the most engaging opening chapters I've ever read.
The Best Short Stories 1992	Robert Stone (editor)		December 2011	January 2012	Fiction
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep			December 2011	January 2012	Science Fiction
How Rome Fell	Adrian Goldsworthy		December 2011	January 2012

2011

Title	Author	Year	Started	Finished	Genre	Opinion
Blue Mars	Kim Stanley Robinson		December 2011	December 2011	Science Fiction
Green Mars	Kim Stanley Robinson		November 2011	November 2011	Fiction
Red Mars	Kim Stanley Robinson		October/November 2011	November 2011	Fiction
The Nick Adams Stories	Ernest Hemmingway		October/November 2011	October/November 2011	Fiction	Great writing, as should be expected from Ernest Hemmingway. Simple stories, crisp, well-written, terse, like a soup with a few simple ingredients but full of flavor.
Stoner	John Williams		October 2011	October 2011	Fiction	NYRB series. Recommended by staff of Dog Eared Books in San Francisco. Good character profile. A book that is fascinating in its lack of fascinating qualities, the soul-numbing boredom of the main character's life like some kind of slow-motion train-wreck.
Market Forces	Richard Morgan		(?)	Meh	Fiction	awful. deceiving advertised as a "Philip K. Dick Award Winner" (they meant the author, not the book). petty, whiny author voice. uncreative, unoriginal waste of time. stopped reading halfway through out of sheer boredom with the predictable, boring characters and slow, small-minded plot. SUCH A CRAPPY BOOK
Collapse	Jared Diamond		?	November 2011	Non-Fiction	So-so book. The point was interesting, but his examples began to blend together, and he didn't do a particularly good job of bringing the story to life or making it engaging. It was like being hit with a hammer repeatedly. The first time gets your attention, but after a while it loses the intended effect.
(New job. Lost track in the chaos of moving.)
(Dissertation. Lost track of my reading entirely, but was reading mostly technical books.)
The Federalist Papers (No. 1 - No. 20)	Alexander Hamilton et al		06/14/2011	?	Non-Fiction
The Great Crash, 1929	John Kenneth Galbraith		05/15/2011	July 2011	Non-Fiction
The Wars of Watergate	Stanley Kutler		May 2011	July 2011	Non-Fiction	Gives an exhaustive level of detail, and a lot of information to sift through. It was very rewarding to go through it and learn so much about the details of Watergate.
Mathematics: The Loss of Certainty	Morris Kline		?	05/22/2011	Non-Fiction	Fantastic read about the complete lack of certainty in mathematics. It destroyed some of my long-standing beliefs about mathematics and the concept of mathematical truth. I would highly recommend it to anyone interested in, or studying, science.
Moby Dick	Herman Melville		03/04/2011	Meh	Fiction	It really couldn't keep my attention. I stopped around Chapter 60-something.
Little Brother	Cory Doctorow		04/04/2011	04/05/2011	Fiction	An excellent book for young people that belongs in more hands. It's released under the Creative Commons license, which makes it easy to get it in more hands. I originally found out about this from a To The Best of Our Knowledge podcast, called "Inside Information" (03/12/2011). The underlying message of the book is to be curious about the world around you, to take control of the world around you, and to be subversive: something young people rarely hear from "grown-ups" around them.
Ulysses	James Joyce		01/07/2011	03/09/2011	Fiction	Great book. With the exception of a few chapters, on which the majority of time was spent, the book read quicker than I anticipated, and was very funny. I recommend reading it with a guide, like Sparknotes, Don Gilbert's book James Joyce's Ulysses, or Gifford's Ulysses Annotated (I used all three).
The Secret Man	Bob Woodward	2005	03/03/2011	03/03/2011	Non-Fiction	Extremely light reading; a disappointing re-hash of All The President's Men with the main difference being Deep Throat is replaced by Felt; there is also an interesting explanation of how Woodward and Felt were first introduced, and a discussion about Felt 30 years later (losing his memory) and Woodward's dilemma in deciding whether to reveal Felt as Deep Throat; the whole book is written in really choppy English, very short sentences, very bad English; a somewhat boring but fast read
All The President's Men	Carl Bernstein, Bob Woodward	1974	03/01/2011	03/02/2011	Non-Fiction	Very interesting book; there are a lot of names thrown out, and it's difficult to follow much of the time; many of the details included are of marginal importance; it's somewhat difficult to get a "big picture" by reading this; but it gives a very accurate play-by-play of how the Watergate reporting in the Washington Post unfolded over the course of 1972 and 1973. Ends in 1973, before Nixon's resignation. (Second book by Bernstein and Woodward is The Last Days and does the same thing except it follows the resignation of Nixon). I recommend reading this as a supplement to a more comprehensive book on Watergate.
Nixonland	Richard Perlstein	2008	02/20/2011	02/28/2011	Non-Fiction	Looking past the sometimes crappy writing mistakes of the author, the grammatically ambiguous sentences, the use of last names for people introduced 50 pages ago, the lack of any year being given for frame of reference for many events mentioned in chapters that jump around... the book is great. It covers its subject matter well - focusing primarily on the way Nixon appealed to so many people, the way he won elections, the way he ultimately brought about his own end. It skips over Watergate, ending when Watergate begins (since it focuses on Nixon's elections), but gives an excellent background for learning more about the people and events involved in the leadup to Watergate. It covers the details of some of the events that receive only casual mentions in books like All The President's Men, and provides a very disturbing glimpse into the psyche of the Nixon administration, and the psyche of American society, in the late 1960s/early 1970s.
Harlot's Ghost	Norman Mailer		02/11/2011	02/19/2011	Fiction	Outstanding book. I picked it up looking for a CIA/cloak-and-dagger plot, and did not get what I was expecting. However, it was a very enjoyable read - I finished it because Mailer is an outstanding wordsmith.
I Can Get It For You Wholesale	Jerome Wiedman		01/28/2011		Fiction	Very funny narrative voice; fast-paced writing style; perspective of a Jewish New Yorker in 1920s who basically uses the capitalist system to rob his friends and leave them twisting in the wind. While it's hard to have any sympathy for the narrator, you do anyway, because he's so likable; does a great job of capturing the style of the time.
Poems New And Selected	James Laughlin		01/28/2011		Poetry	Great, clever poems.
The Stranger	Albert Camus		01/27/2011	01/28/2011	Fiction	Re-reading
Perks of Being a Wallflower	Stephen Chbosky		01/19/2011	01/20/2011	Fiction	Re-reading
Terrible Swift Sword (Civil War Trilogy Vol. 2)	Bruce Catton		01/10/2011	02/10/2011	Non-Fiction	Civil War history; covers the years 1861-1863; very good
The Coming Fury (Civil War Trilogy Vol. 1)	Bruce Catton		01/02/2011	01/09/2011	Non-Fiction	Excellent history of the Civil War. explores a lot of the behind-the-scenes politicking and buildup to the Civil War, ends with first CW battle (Battle of Bull Run)

2010

Title	Author	Year	Started	Finished	Genre	Opinion
Quicksilver: Baroque Cycle Vol. 1	Neal Stephenson		December 2010	Meh	Fiction	The storyline was interesting at first, but then it got really boring and disappointing. Won't finish. Gave to thrift store. Saw an additional copy of this book at the same thrift store.
Spook Country	William Gibson		November 2010	November 2010	Fiction	No interesting storyline, boring characters, nothing interesting happens in the entire story, forgot the entire storyline of the book a few days after I read it
American Gods	Neil Gaiman		November 2010	November 2010	Fiction	Boring storyline, but reads really fast, forgot most of what I had read a few days after I read it
Cryptonomicon	Neal Stephenson		November 2010	November 2010	Fiction	Very unusual fiction style; Stephenson goes off on these tangents that are often very in-depth (and fascinating) technical explications (probably the only fiction book where you'll ever see a Perl script); covers a lot of interesting cryptography subjects
Memories of the Future	Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky		May 2010	May 2010	Fiction (short stories)	Amazingly clever and haunting short stories

2008-2009

Title	Author	Year	Started	Finished	Genre	Opinion
(Intermission, during which I read a couple of books, but not that many, probably all engineering textbooks, and did not record any of their names.)
Godel, Escher, Bach	Douglas Hofstadter		07/12/2008	Meh	Non-Fiction	Started out as a really interesting book, but it started to get kind of tedious halfway through; may try to read through it again later
The Sound and the Fury	William Faulkner		07/07/2008	Meh	Fiction	Confusing
Pale Fire	Vladimir Nabokov		06/25/2008	07/06/2008	Fiction	Extremely clever book, unlike any other I've ever read
The Crying of Lot 49	Thomas Pynchon		06/16/2008	06/19/2008	Fiction	Really good... like a big puzzle, lots of different layers and references and fun things. Reminds me of Kurt Vonnegut. The Wikipedia article on Thomas Pynchon is really interesting.
Chaos	James Gleick		02/12/2008	Meh	Non-Fiction	Presents some very interesting ideas, but does not explore any of the math or technical parts (which is frustrating). Pulls together lots of interesting subjects. Tailed off, without finishing.
The Cleft	Doris Lessing		03/07/2008	03/12/2008	Fiction	Interesting, but kind of weird; I don't know if I would recommend it
Varieties of Disturbance	Lydia Davis		02/16/2008	02/29/2008	Fiction (short stories)	Really really creative, original, funny, easy to read... very enjoyable... won a National Book Award
Fahrenheit 451	Ray Bradbury		02/12/2008	2/21/2008	Fiction	Good, but not great, book
Persian Mirrors: The Elusive Face of Iran	Elaine Sciolino		01/11/2008	02/15/2008	Non-Fiction	Provides a "behind closed doors" view of Iran
Postmodernism & Islam	Akbar Ahmed		01/09/2008	Meh	Non-Fiction	Written in 92, updated in 96; interesting pre-9/11 viewpoint of Islam and the West, and funny because he keeps bringing up Madonna as a "contemporary" figure... it got weird tho, and boring for non-Muslims (just as detailed Christian theology or apologetics can get really boring for non-Christians).
Under the Banner of Heaven	Jon Krakauer		01/05/2008	01/09/2008	Non-Fiction	Superbly written; lots of info on Mormonism, with a focus on Mormon fundamentalism (both modern & historical) Reading this book was the first time I realized that not only can the Mormon church be weird, but it can also be kind of evil; a pattern I started to see cropping up more often after reading this book. Easily as shocking/disturbing as Lolita

2007

Title	Author	Year	Started	Finished	Genre	Opinion
The Great Shark Hunt: Strange Tales from a Strange Time	Hunter S Thompson		09/13/2007	?	Non-Fiction (anthology)	Awesome awesome awesome writer.
The physics of baseball	Robert Kemp Adair		9/26/2007	10/6/2007	Non-Fiction	Interesting perspective on baseball, esp. given that most of the pitching physics is fluid mechanics...
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time	Mark Haddon		9/18/2007	9/22/2007	Fiction	written from POV of autistic 15 y/o... very interesting take on mental disability and how austics function
Fire on the Mountain	Edward Abbey		9/10/2007	9/13/2007	Fiction	Nowhere near as good as Desert Solitaire, but an enjoyable read. Probably wouldn't recommend it though.
Visiting Mrs. Nabokov	Martin Amis		8/28/2007	Meh	Non-Fiction (anthology)	Collection of short magazine-article length pieces for Esquire, Vogue, New Yorker, etc. Got kind of hard to follow on about half of them, what with all of his literary/cultural references. Clever fellow, Martin Amis.
Bear vs Shark	Chris Bachelder		9/8/2007	9/10/2007	Fiction	a clever and funny satire
Getting sued and other tales of the engineering life	Richard L. Meehan		9/5/2007	9/7/2007	Non-Fiction	Very handy account of what lawsuits are like - i.e., never what you expect. Does a terrible job of using 10-dollar words that NOBODY uses, but also passes on a useful set of skills - the author's life experiences distilled into the important stuff
Einstein's Monsters	Martin Amis		9/2/2007	9/5/2007	Fiction	A sensible look at nuclear weapons and how utterly ridiculously stupid they (and their masters) are
Live from Golgotha	Gore Vidal		09/01/2007	Meh	Fiction	Awful book... NOT funny, and in the worst kind of way - tries really hard to be funny but just fails miserably
In Cold Blood	Truman Capote		08/30/2007	09/01/2007	Nonfiction	Great, great storytelling... amazing piece of work.
Islam	Caesar E. Farah, Ph.D.		08/23/2007	Meh	Non-Fiction	Very preachy - written on the subject of Islam, from a Muslim point of view (why Mohammad was so great, why the Qu'ran is right, which infidels will be burning in hell, etc)
Dead Babies	Martin Amis		08/26/2007	08/28/2007	Fiction	AWESOME satire, as funny as "Breakfast of Champions" but with a more New-Yorker kind of feel
Maximum Bob	Elmore Leonard		08/20/2007	08/23/2007	Fiction	Elmore Leonard says he leaves out the parts of the book that the reader doesn't read... Very quick-moving writing with a good storyline, but pretty shallow
The Psychology of Love	Sigmund Freud		08/14/2007	08/21/2007	Non-Fiction	Interesting theory - how EVERYTHING is related to sex - but boring after the first one or two chapters
Virtual Light	William Gibson		8/18/2007	8/20/2007	Fiction	Very fast-paced writing style, gritty dialogue, grim presentation of the future; interestingly, it takes place in 2005 - and was written in 1993
Brain Sex	Dr. Anne Moir		08/11/2007	08/14/2007	Non-Fiction	Obviously written by someone with an agenda, but provided some very interesting insights. It was difficult to separate scientific fact from allegorical speech & conclusions (or opinions) drawn from scientific facts, because references were all grouped by chapter, as opposed to having a reference or citation with each fact, study, etc. discussed.
The Grapes of Wrath	John Steinbeck		8/9/2007	8/14/2007	Fiction	This novel is as much of a literary milestone as it is a political milestone (reminded me of a readable and well-written version of "The Jungle" by Upton Sinclair)
Lord Jim	Joseph Conrad		08/01/2007	Meh	Fiction	Very slow-moving novel... The pace of the novel never picked up, and it got really boring after abt 40 pages
Lolita	Vladamir Nabokov		07/30/2007	08/01/2007	Fiction	Shocking, discomforting, but totally incredible...
The Secret Agent	Joseph Conrad		07/29/2007	7/30/2007	Fiction	interesting insights into human psychology
Breathing Lessons	Anne Tyler		07/23/2007	07/24/2007	Fiction	Scary view of marriage and family
Home of the Gentry	Ivan Turgenev		07/21/2007	07/23/2007	Fiction	Made me think about that point where you look back and realize, this IS my life, it's been lived... it's no longer "going to be made", it is now already "made"
Crime and Punishment	Fyodor Dostoyevsky		07/15/2007	07/20/2007	Fiction	Great presentation of human psychology, guilt, behavior, etc