I tried to read a book/week again, which seems very reasonable, but fell short once again. I’m about halfway through a dozen other books, which I’ll probably just finish & count for ’09. Under each category, they’re listed in the order I read them. Incidentally, the first book I read in 2008 was The Audacity of Hope by Mister Obama.
Fiction:
- The Stranger by Albert Camus
- The Facts Behind the Helsinki Roccamatios by Yann Martel
- Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut
- Life After God by Douglas Coupland
- Siddhartha by Herman Hesse
- Armageddon in Retrospect by Kurt Vonnegut
- Jesus’ Son by Denis Johnson
Non-fiction:
- The Audacity of Hope by Barack Obama
- The End of Poverty: Economic Possibilities for Our Time by Jeffrey Sachs
- Riding With Strangers: A Hitchhiker’s Journey by Elijah Wald
- The Tilted Arc Controversy: Dangerous Precedent? by Harriet F. Senie
- Man Without a Country by Kurt Vonnegut
- Fates Worse Than Death by Kurt Vonnegut
- The Reluctant Metrosexual by Peter Hyman
- Night by Elie Wiesel
- The Diving Bell and the Butterfly by Jean-Dominique Bauby
- Wampeters, Fomas, and Granfalloons by Kurt Vonnegut
- Blue Highways: A Journey Into America by William Least Heat-Moon
- Conversations with Kurt Vonnegut ed. by William Rodney Allen
- On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society by Dave Grossman
- Liar’s Poker by Michael Lewis
Philosophy/politics/theology:
- Luther and Erasmus: Freewill and Salvation by Erasmus and Martin Luther
- Homosexuality, Science, and the ‘Plain Sense’ of Scripture ed. Timothy Bradshaw
- The Enlightenment in France by Frederick Artz
- Anarchy and Christianity by Jacques Ellul
- Why We’re Liberals: A Political Handbook for Post-Bush America by Eric Alterman
- Fixed Ideas: America Since 9/11 by Joan Didion
- Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism by Naomi Klein
- Christian Anarchy: Jesus’ Primacy Over the Powers by Vernard Eller
- The Fall of Interpretation by James K.A. Smith
- The Myth of Sisyphus by Albert Camus
- The Kingdom of God Is Within You by Leo Tolstoy
- The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism by Andrew Bacevich
- Myth of a Christian Nation: How the Quest for Political Power is Destroying the Church by Gregory Boyd
- Marx by Peter Singer
- Velvet Elvis by Rob Bell
- Culture Jam by Kalle Lasn
Night by elie weisel was a book i taught last year to my students.
Did you hear that Elie Weisels foundation was scammed by the now famous scam artist Bernard Madoff ( $50 billion financial scam … obviously not all elie’s foundation, but i heard the organization took a major hit)?
I was just in Ethiopia where they are selling copies of Dreams from my father in Amharic. Couldn’t believe it.
On a book-related note, read something by Christina Lamb this year. She’s an incredible author – The Sewing Circles of Herat (about Afghanistan) is one of my favourites, and the House of Stone (about Zimbabwe) is also good. It’s creative non-fiction.
I love any comment that starts with “I was just in Ethiopia…”
I’ll look into Lamb. Creative non-fiction is what I’d like to write myself eventually.