January 2010

1) Waiting for the Barbarians, by J.M. Coetzee, 170 pages, HarperCollins Vintage Books, 1980

WHY I PICKED IT: Yann Martel recommended it to Stephen Harper (Canada's PM).

ELAPSED TIME: 3 days

RATING: Good

Waiting for the Barbarians tells the tale of a magistrate at the far reaches of an empire dealing with the empire's attacks on the people beyond their borders. I liked the end of the fifth chapter when Coetzee writes: "No one can accept than an Imperial army has been annihilated by men with bows and arrows and rusty old guns who live in tents and never wash and cannot read and write." Written in 1980, but an apt recommendation to our PM when you consider our war in Afghanistan. Ultimately, this book was more of an intellectual exercise than a compelling tale.

2) The Elegance of the Hedgehog, by Muriel Barbery, 320 pages, Gallic Books, 2006

WHY I PICKED IT: It was an employee pick at Dwyer's Bookstore in Noosa.

ELAPSED TIME: 2 days

RATING: Very Good

The first 120 pages were a pain, beautifully written but not compelling to me... But the last 200 pages were simply beautiful. Great language (I kept pausing to read my Mom passages) and a lovely story. My favourite passage is from page 234: "Personally I think there is only one thing to do: find the task we have been placed on this earth to do, and accomplish it as best we can, with all our strength, without making things complicated or thinking there's anything divine about our animal nature."

3) Born To Run, by Christopher McDougall, 287 pages, Alfred A. Knopf, 2009

WHY I PICKED IT: Ali Lila recommended it to me

ELAPSED TIME: 5 days

RATING: REQUIRED READING

THIS BOOK IS AWESOME! Part anthropological, part historical, and totally motivational! We humans are built to run, and have just forgotten it (did you know that we, as a tribe, could run down a deer?!?). The Tarahumara Indians of Mexico's Copper Canyons never forgot and can go up against America's best ultra runners. This book is compelling! A must read for runners... and anybody interested in the history of mankind.

4) Voices of the Fire, by Alan Moore, 316 pages, Top Shelf Productions, 1996

WHY I PICKED IT: It's my next book club book

ELAPSED TIME: 2 days

RATING: Not Good

The book has an interesting premise... Tell a series of stories of people in a place, from 4000BC to 1995... problem is, the style wasn't engaging, by and large the characters weren't engaging, so the stories weren't engaging :(. I am looking forward to book club; someone will feel the Wrath of Hassan.

5) Perfect Skin, by Nick Earls, 354 pages, Penguin Books, 2000

WHY I PICKED IT: I like "british guy-lit" and this was aussie guy-lit

ELAPSED TIME: 1 long day

RATING: Good

This is the story of Jon Marshall... whose wife passed away when giving birth to his daughter. The story starts 6-months after that event, and takes you through a month of his life. It's decently written, poignant, and ultimately pleasing because I'll put it down and never really remember the story. Not as good as Nick Hornby, Jonathan Tropper, or Mike Gayle, but I'll read more of his stuff :)

6) The Wayfinders, by Wade Davis, 223 pages, House of Anansi Press, 2009

WHY I PICKED IT: It was the CBC Massey Lecture for 2009.

ELAPSED TIME: 2 months from when I started

RATING: Very Good

This book is fantastic. Comparable to Ronald Wright's Short History of Progress, Davis asks the question: "Why ancient wisdom matters in the modern world." On a planet where half the languages spoken today will be extinct within a generation, the value of what is lost is a real queston. As hard as it is to articulate, Davis recognizes it is not that any of the individual losses is meaningful, but as a collective, the loss is immense. As we drift towards a more homogenous world, we are laying the foundations of a blandly amorphous and singularly generic modern culture that will have no rivals. As cultures wither away, individuals remain, often shadows of their former selves, caught in time, unable to return to the past, yet denied any real possibility of securing a place in a world whose values they seek to emulate and whose wealth they long to acquire.

X) My Life As A Fake, by Peter Carey, 304 pages, Random House Vintage Books, 2003

WHY I PICKED IT: I was looking for a book at the Sydney airport, and this seemed interesting

ELAPSED TIME: 4 days

RATING: Not good.

This is my first non-finished book of 2010. I struggled through the first 107 pages and just can't stick it out. The story is interesting, but written in a style and voice that just doesn't flow well. I can't even bear to review this book.

X) The Leopard, by Tomasi Di Lampedusa, 230 pages, Random House Vintage Books, 1958

WHY I PICKED: It was an employee pick at Dwyer's Bookstore in Noosa.

ELAPSED TIME: 3 days

RATING: Not good.

This is my second non-finished book of 2010. I struggled with the first 28 pages and just couldn't get into it at all. Maybe better in the original Italian, this story lacked the hook to keep me engaged. Perhaps if the author of the review in Noosa had written a book it would have been better.

7) 48 Shades of Brown, by Nick Earls, 289 pages, Penguin Books, 1999

WHY I PICKED IT UP: I really enjoyed my other read by Nick Earls (Book # 5)

ELAPSED TIME: 1 day (4 hours-ish)

RATING: Good

I really love finding new authors that write fluff... This is the story of a high school kid whose parents move to Europe, so he gets to live with his much-younger-than-his-parents aunt for a year. It's well written, poignant and funny.

8) Skinny Legs and All, by Tom Robbins, 422 pages, Random House Bantam Books, 1990

WHY I PICKED IT UP: My cousin Umi suggested it. She's two for two with me now (her other suggestion was Chuck Palahniuk's Survivor in 2004)

ELAPSED TIME: 3 days

RATING: Very Good

Its a slow read and took me a long time to get into it... and even when I decided I was into it, it was a struggle... But throughout this bizarre tale are paragraphs that are captivating: "The most insidious and dangerous of false religions is secular humanism. It's so crafty, so sneaky, with its kindness and its decency, that only Satan himself could've come up with it,"... as a secular humanist for much of my life the line made me laugh. I'd recommend this book.