Favorite and Lease Favorite Books These Last Two Years

One of the usual ideas people have about PCV life is the opportunity to read a lot of books.  That has really been the case for me.  I've read a lot of stuff, and given the amount of free time I have, I've read a lot books I normally wouldn't have read.  I even recorded everything I read, increasing my nerdiness factor by at least 15% and helping me make my favorite and least favorite book lists by 100%.  The books aren't listed in any particular order.  Allons-y.

 

Favorite Fiction

 

+ One Hundred Years of Solitude, Gabriel Garcia Marquez

+ Catch-22 and Picture This, Joseph Heller

+ The Beach, Alex Garland

+ A Passage to India, E.M. Forster

+ White Teeth, Zadie Smith

+ Underworld and Libra, Don DeLillo

+ Atonement, Ian McEwan

+ The Plot Against America, Philip Roth

 

+ Honorables: Carl Hiaasen; Lunar Park, Bret Easton Ellis; Straight Man, Richard Russo

 

As you can see, I had to do some catching up on high school and college reading lists with the Marquez and Catch-22.  The latter, and Picture This, were hilarious.  Not included are books I've already read, so the Harry Potters I went through a second time aren't here (I've read the seventh one.).

 

Favorite Non-Fiction

 

* The Best and the Brightest, David Halberstam

* Three Cups of Tea, Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin

* King Leopold's Ghost, Adam Hochschild

* My Life, Bill Clinton

* The Devil in the White City, Erik Larson

* Mountains Beyond Mountains, Tracy Kidder

* DisneyWar, James B. Stewart

* Paris to the Moon, Adam Gopnik

 

* Honorables: Collapse, Jared Diamond; Homage to Catalonia, George Orwell; Cod, Mark Kurlansky

 

There are a lot of quality non-fiction books out there.  My favorite was The Best and the Brightest by David Halberstam.  If you're interested in post-World War II U.S. history, this will illuminate the Vietnam/Kennedy era immensely.  The parallels to Iraq and modern politics are easy to make, not in the kind of war fought, but in the way supposed political experts ("the best and the brightest") severely misjudged the situation and refused to rectify it.  Bill Clinton's autobiography is really interesting, King Leopold's Ghost is a history of the Belgian Congo, and DisneyWar follows the drama of the Disney boardroom under Michael Eisner.  If you read any of these four books, get ready for an appalling amount of hubris.

 

Three Cups of Tea and Mountains Beyond Mountains are books about development work that aren't depressing and actually inspiring.  Paris to the Moon is about a modern ex-pat in Paris, and The Devil in the White City is about a serial killer and the construction of the Columbia Exposition in Chicago, very interesting.

 

"Honorables" mention: the author of Cod, which is a history of the fish, Mark Kurlansky also wrote a history of salt (guess what the title was?).  I only mention this because there was a point when the White House tried to have us believe that George W. Bush reads for fun, and he was reading Salt.  Another book he was reading was The Stranger by Albert Camus, which is about a guy who emotionlessly kills Arabs.  You couldn't make that up if you tried.

 

Didn't Like, Not Impressed

 

- I Am Charlotte Simmons and A Man In Full, Tom Wolfe

- Running With Scissors, Augusten Burroughs

- The Talisman, Stephen King and Peter Straub

- Dick Francis

- The Motorcycle Diaries, Ernesto "Che" Guevara

- Surfacing, Margaret Atwood

 

If I learned anything in Peace Corps, it's that Tom Wolfe is kind of a douchebag.  I'm not saying he's a bad writer; just the opposite, he's talented and has become an American highbrow icon.  He just doesn't let you forget how good he is.  Okay, Tom, I get it, you've done a crazy amount of research and can paint a detailed picture of a time and place.  But in the two books of his I read, they were just boring.  I've read Electric Acid Kool-Aid Test before PC, and I've heard good things about Bonfire of the Vanities and The Right Stuff, so maybe he peaked in 1987.

 

Running With Scissors was a vulgar David Sedaris rip-off, probably should have read another Stephen King book (it was my first), and Dick Francis was just stale.  I liked the movie version of The Motorcycle Diaries better than the book because I couldn't get a sense of what and where Che was talking about written down.  Surfacing was just strange; if you want to read a Margaret Atwood book, try The Blind Assassin.