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book report

things I’ve been reading:

  1. The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference, Malcolm Gladwell
  2. Going Solo, Roald Dahl
  3. Middlesex, Jeffrey Eugenides
  4. Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies, Jared Diamond
  5. Nine Hills to Nambonkaha: Two Years in the Heart of an African Village, Sarah Erdman (RPCV)
  6. Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything, Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner
  7. Walking Across Egypt, Clyde Edgerton
  8. White Noise, Don DeLillo
  9. The Mystery of Capital: Why Capitalism Triumphs in the West and Fails Everywhere Else, Hernando de Soto
  10. The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and Six More, Roald Dahl
  11. Things Fall Apart, Chinua Achebe
  12. Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim, David Sederis
  13. Mountains Beyond Mountains: The Quest of Dr. Paul Farmer, a Man Who Would Cure the World, Tracy Kidder
  14. The Girls’ Guide to Hunting and Fishing, Melissa Bank
  15. Naked, David Sederis
  16. Everything is Illuminated, Jonathan Safran Foer
  17. Lords of Poverty: the Power, Prestige, and Corruption of the Inter-national Aid Business, Graham Nancock
  18. On the Road, Jack Kerouac
  19. Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, Jared Diamond
  20. A Culture of Corruption: Everyday Deception & Popular Discontent in Nigeria, Daniel Jordan Smith
  21. Unbowed: A Memoir, Wangari Maathai
  22. Sound Bites, Alex Kapranos
  23. A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, Dave Eggers
  24. High Tide in Tucson: Essays from Now or Never, Barbara Kingsolver
  25. The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down: a Hmong Child, her American Doctors, and the Cllision of Two Cultures, Anne Fadiman
  26. Dreams from my Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance, Barack Obama
  27. Singing for Life: HIV/AIDS and Music in Uganda, Gregory Barz
  28. The Shadow of the Sun, Ryszard Kapuscinski
  29. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Robert M. Pirsig
  30. Purple Hibiscus, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
  31. How Soccer Explains the World: An Unlikely Theory of Globalization,
    Franklin Foer
  32. The Alchemist, Paulo Coelho
  33. The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Milan Kundera
  34. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, J. K. Rowling
  35. Letting Them Die: Why HIV/AIDS Prevention Programmes Fail,
    Catherine Campbell
  36. Digging to America, Anne Tyler
  37. The Dead Beat: Lost Souls, Lucky Stiffs, and the Perverse Pleasures
    of Obituaries    , Marilyn Johnson
  38. The Namesake, Jhumpa Lahiri
  39. Three Cups of Tea: One Man’s Mission to Promote Peace…One School
    at a Time    , Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin
  40. Tender is the Night, F. Scott Fitzgerald
  41. The Soccer War, Ryszard Kapuscinski
  42. Timequake, Kurt Vonnegut
  43. Love in the Time of Cholera, Gabriel Garcia Marquez
  44. Waiting for the Barbarians, J. M. Coetzee
  45. The Glass Castle, Jeannette Walls
  46. Floating in My Mother’s Palm, Ursula Hegi
  47. Half of a Yellow Sun, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
  48. Don’t Get Too Comfortable, David Rakoff
  49. Me Talk Pretty One Day, David Sedaris
  50. 31 Songs, Nick Hornby
  51. Franny and Zooey, J. D. Salinger
  52. Sula, Toni Morrison
  53. When You Are Engulfed In Flames, David Sedaris
  54. The Places In Between, Rory Stewart
  55. A Crime in the Neighborhood, Suzanne Berne
  56. Banker to the Poor: Micro-Lending and the Battle Against World Poverty, Muhammad Yunus
  57. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, Michael Chabon
  58. Three Junes, Julia Glass
  59. Long Way Down, Nick Hornby
  60. Acts of Faith, Philip Caputo
  61. The God of Small Things, Arundhati Roy
  62. Julie and Julia: 365 Days, 524 Recipes, 1 Tiny Apartment Kitchen, Julie Powell
  63. The Invisible Cure: Why We Are Losing the Fight Against AIDS in Africa, Helen Epstein
  64. The Elegance of the Hedgehog, Muriel Barbery
  65. An Anthropologist on Mars: Seven Paradoxical Tales, Oliver Sacks
  66. Water for Elephnts, Sara Gruen
  67. In Arabian Nights: A Caravan of Moroccan Dreams, Tahir Shah
  68. Road of Lost Innocence, Somaly Mam
  69. Olive Kitteridge, Elizabeth Strout
  70. Cat’s Cradle, Kurt Vonnegut

Leave comments with suggestions for me.

Comments»

1. Megan - 31 July 2006

If you liked The Tipping Point, read Blink. It’s awesome – totally interesting and fun. Freakonomics wasn’t too bad either. Next on my list in this sort of genre: The Wisdom of Crowds. Also on my to do table, another of your authors: Jared Diamond’s The Third Chimpanzee. Looks less intimidating than Guns, Germs … was that as hard to get through as it looks? … and another that Carol just finished, by Franklin Foer, about how soccer explains the world: an unlikely theory of globalization. which has a chapter on my nigerian boyfriend who wanted to take me home with him! It’s funny, fiction fanatic me, with a whole paragraph on non-fiction!

As for fiction, loved Middlesex. Was amazed by his voice, his ability to write as Cal and Callie. I just finished Richard Russo’s The Risk Pool and LOVED it. Almost as much (as much?) as Nobody’s Fool (same author, one of my all time favorite novels).

Talk to me about Going Solo.

2. Karlheinz Stockhausen - 2 May 2007

Since realizing my true birthplace (planet Sirius, duh!), I seem to have forgotten how to perform certain basic human functions, such as reading, mini-golf, and general toilet cleanliness. However, I just wanted to say, “ALOHA mit Herzen!” from the lovely land of Rhode Island, where I currently reside.