"the year of living biblically: one man's humble quest to follow the bible as literally as possible" by a.j. jacobs

this is the best non-fiction book i've read in quite some time. a.j. jacobs, a new york agnostic jew, decides to live by the bible for a full year. we're all familiar with the ubiquitous ten commandments, but the bible has hundreds of rules that are a lot less straightforward than "thou shalt not kill".

who knew that the bible forbid the wearing of clothes made of wool and linen? and not only that, but there is an association of people who will test your clothes for the offending mix. huh.

jacobs' year takes him to a creationist museum, the wailing wall in israel, a mega church, a hasidic dance party and many other wonderful and fascinating sites. he consults rabbis and pastors and other clergy on his quest to divine the interpretation of biblical passages that could be taken literally or metaphorically.

a touching, hilarious and insightful memoir, "the year of living biblically" had me up past my bedtime many nights.

"outlander" by diana gabaldon

a quote on the first page of this book proclaims it's "a feast for ravenous readers of eighteenth-century scottish history, heroism and romance". i'd never have thought this niche existed.

the first of a many part series, the book's protagonist is claire randall, an englishwoman readjusting to normal life after world war ii. married before the war, she was separated from her husband at its beginning to work as a combat nurse. claire and her husband are reunited after the war and go on a second honeymoon to scotland. roaming around the scottish highlands one day with a local, claire is taken to a stone henge-ish rock formation where she touches one of the rocks and is hurtled 200 years back in time. scotland in 1743 is rough and war-torn and she is soon caught up with a clan and catapulted into a new life of adventure.

despite it's 850 pages, i breezed through this page turner. there's a lot of fighting, intrigue and sex. yes, sex. lots and lots of sex. so much sex that i was almost embarrassed to read it in public. this novel’s a bit trashy, but well-written and immensely enjoyable. i’m not going to rush to read the sequel, but it was a good respite from my usual literature.

"stoner" by john williams

this book was highly recommended by a co-worker. in his review, he told me "it's a little slow going, but by around page 50, i realized i cared for the main character more than i care for most real people".

while john williams certainly has a strong ability to create sympathy for a character, i wasn't as overcome as my colleague. "stoner" is the story of william stoner, who grows up as a single child on a farm. he goes to the city to get a degree in agriculture, but soon discovers a latent passion for literature and changes his course of study. the novel follows stoner as he starts a long teaching career at the university, marries, has a child, has an affair, upsets his colleagues, falls ill, eventually retires and dies.

a strongly written and minimalist book with flowing prose and beautiful descriptions, "stoner" is a portrait of a man who faces his many disappointments in life with a stoic-ness that is heartbreaking.

"then we came to the end" by joshua ferris

this novel centers on an ad agency in chicago that is quickly going down the drain. as work dries up and layoffs become more and more frequent, the remaining employees keep up a facade of busyness, gossip and pull pranks. the character's are quirky, yet believable. they steal each other's chairs, have affairs, black out their windows with construction paper and wear multiple shirts.

i have never encountered a novel quite like this. it is written in the first person plural so the people in the office become a unit, referred to as we. "we went to this meeting", "we had a 40 minute coffee break", "we worried about so-and-so". you are never sure which one of the characters is actually the narrator, and while frustrating intially, it's an interesting device that keeps any one character from becoming the single protagonist or antagonist. that said, the first person plural also muddles the narrative slightly. character's often relay past conversations to other characters and this creates confusion.

this book was just alright.

"middlesex" by jeffrey eugenides

my rating would be
eight and a half out of ten
excellent and rich

it doesn't matter
that it was on oprah's list
she chooses good books

a hermaphrodite
a family history
a beautiful tale

three generations
from greece to america
tragic and lovely

"early bird: a memoir of early retirement" by rodney rothman

i don’t know about memoirs. some are masturbatory (“a heartbreaking work…”), some unbelievable (“running with scissors”), some just plain untrue (“a million little pieces”). (note: i haven’t actually read “a million little pieces”) i don’t know if i’ve ever read one i’ve really enjoyed, but the cover of this book really appealed to me, plus there was a jon stewart quote on the front and if jon stewart endorses it, how can it possibly be bad?

rodney rothman was a writer for the david letterman show when he got fed up with his 70 hour work weeks and decided to retire at the age of 28. he moved into a senior’s residence in florida where he takes up shuffleboard and eats supper at 5pm.

it is books like these that give me hope of one day writing a novel. not that it’s bad, but just very simple and, in a word, cute. it’s funny, but not the laugh-out-loud david sedaris funny that rothman was going for. it’s not going to make any best-of list’s, but it’s well-written and i enjoyed reading it.

"the hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy" by douglas adams

as previously mentioned, i've been having trouble getting into books this month. i've been meaning to give this book a re-read for quite a while, and this seemed like an apt time.

arthur dent is all that remains of earth when an alien race decides to blow the planet up to make way for a galactic superhighway. he is is rescued by his friend, ford prefect, a space traveller from betelgeuse who was stranded on earth where he was conducting research for the titular publication.

this book is hilarious and imaginative. god disappears in a poof of logic, a suicidally depressed robot saves the day, earth is merely a experiment run by superintelligent mice and the president of the galaxy is a two-headed, three-armed idiot.

nothing really comes to a conclusion at the end, but having read the series previously, i'm not in a panic to find out what happens next.

selected quotes:

"Time is an illusion. Lunch doubly so."

"It must be Thursday. I could never get the hang of Thursdays."

"Space," it says, "is big. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly hugely mindboggingly big it is. I mean you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist, but that's just peanuts to space."