Mabith's Non-Fiction in 2012

I always read a fair bit of non-fiction but I'm reading a lot more of it this year. Partly that's due to the fact that I mostly have to listen to audiobooks (due to chronic pain issues) and I'm having such a hard time finding well-read fiction. I would never be happy if I could only read fiction, but would be quite content if I could only read non-fiction. It's such a fascinating world, after all.

Mostly I want to keep track of how many non-fiction books I read this year (and my thoughts on them!), and this is much easier than counting them up at the end of the year.

Read so far in 2012:
The Guns of August by Barbara Tuchman
On Gold Mountain by Lisa See
One and Only: The Untold Story of On The Road by Gerald Nicosia
Caesar's Gallic Commentaries
To Hell and Back by Sidney Loch

The Fry Chronicles by Stephen Fry
The Time Traveler's Guide to Medieval England by Ian Mortimer
Ten Days in a Mad-House by Nellie Bly
Seizing the Enigma by David Kahn
Wild Swans by Jung Chang

Red in Tooth and Claw by Pu Ning
Outwitting History by Aaron Lansky
Lies My Teacher Told Me by James Loewen
Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! by Richard Feynman
Survival in Auschwitz by Primo Levi

Chocolate Wars by Deborah Cadbury
A Gentle Madness by Nicholas Basbanes
The Bounty: The True Story of the Mutiny on the Bounty by Caroline Alexander
England's Mistress by Kate Williams
Beer is Proof God Loves Us by Charles W. Bamforth

The Proud Tower by Barbara Tuchman
My Lobotomy by Howard Dully
A Commonwealth of Thieves by Thomas Keneally
The Endless Steppe by Esther Hautzig
All Creatures Great and Small by James Herriot

The Adventure of English by Melvyn Bragg
An Utterly Impartial History of Britain by John O'Farrell
Destiny of the Republic by Candice Millard
Two Rings by Millie Werber
Europe Under the Old Regime by Albert Sorel

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot
The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls
Exorcising Hitler by Fred Taylor
Forged: Writing in the Name of God by Bart D. Ehrman
Cleopatra: A Life by Stacy Schiff

A Room of One's Own by Virginia Woolf
The Civil War by Julius Caesar
The Wolf: How One German Raider Terrorized the Allies in the Most Epic Voyage of WWI by Richard Guilliatt
Bad Science by Ben Goldacre
Sex Lives of Cannibals by J. Maarten Troost

Grammar Snobs are Great Big Meanies by June Casagrande
The Dragon Seekers by Christopher McGowan
She-Wolves: The Women who Ruled England Before Elizabeth by Helen Castor
The Forgetting River by Doreen Carvajal
Bonk by Mary Roach

Are You My Mother? by Alison Bechdel
Galileo's Daughter by Dava Sobel
Bright-Sided by Barbara Ehrenreich
A Girl Named Zippy by Haven Kimmel
How Great Generals Win by Bevin Alexander

Hedy's Folly by Richard Rhodes
A People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn
The Great Bridge by David McCullough
The Disappearing Spoon by Sam Kean
A Different Kind of Courage by Gretel Wachtel

When Everything Changed by Gail Collins
The Time Traveller's Guide to Elizabethan England by Ian Mortimer
Half Broke Horses by Jeannette Walls
Lost on Planet China by J. Maarten Troost
Bats Sing, Mice Giggle by Karen Shanor and Jagmeet Kanwal

You Are Not So Smart by David McRaney
The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins
The Crusades Through Arab Eyes by Amin Maalouf
Sheltered From the Swastika by Peter Kory
A Land So Strange by Andrés Reséndez

The Black Count by Tom Reiss
Cahokia by Timothy R. Pauketat
Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? by Mindy Kaling
How Children Succeed by Paul Tough
The Worst Hard Time by Timothy Egan

Stuff by Randy Frost and Gail Steketee
The Poet and the Dream Girl by Lilian Steichen and Carl Sandburg
George, Nicholas, and Wilhelm by Miranda Carter
The Good Girls Revolt by Lynn Povich
Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain by David Eagleman

Debt: The First 5,000 Years by David Graeber
The Science of Discworld by Ian Stewart, Jack Cohen, and Terry Pratchett
Under the North Light by Lawrence Webster
Krakatoa by Simon Winchester
Empires of the Sea by Roger Crowley

Inventing Japan by Ian Buruma
Nothing to Envy by Barbara Demick
The Swerve by Stephen Greenblatt
Nature Via Nurture by Matt Ridley

84

1 - The Guns of August by Barbara Tuchman

This, to me, is one of the most perfect books. It's deeply researched and detailed, it's extremely well-written, it's not at all dry, and it's important. I think it's the most important WWI book ever written, because it really focuses on how the war started and why it became a trench war in one short month, which is really the key thing. I would hate to find out what high schoolers know about WWI (and they didn't cover it at all during any of my years of schooling).

It is insane how utterly stupid the majority of the generals are, how only their intransigence towards their plans (often decided years before the war started) turned it into a trench war, how both the French and Germans came SO close to really running over the other...

I have a bit of a personal interest, as my grandfather was involved in WWI (born in 1900, lied about his age, etc...), but it's mostly that Tuchman is one of the best non-fiction writers ever.

2 - On Gold Mountain by Lisa See

An utterly fascinating biography/memoir combination. She writes much of it as if we're eye witnesses, and while that leads to a bit of speculation it's just SO well-done.

It is honestly one of the most interesting books I've ever read. Her family's history is unique but also part of the larger history of California's Chinatowns.

This is a fairly long book, but I never lost interest for a second and heartily recommend it.

3 - One and Only: The Untold Story of On The Road by Gerald Nicosia

This book IS an untold story. There are people arguing with that statement, because we have other viewpoints of the trip and the book and the people involved. Lu Anne's story, however, was untold up to this point, and it's nice to finally get to know her. This book does fill a gap in the ever-popular and crowded beat genre.

The interview material from which this book sprang has been well-edited. It still feels like a personal interview but is easy to read (unlike most transcribed interviews).

4 - Caesar's Gallic Commentaries

Love Caesar, love the commentaries, love that archaeologists have found his descriptions of fortifications and such to be completely accurate.

The audio version I listened to changed the writing from third person to first person, which really annoyed me. I know that's a small thing, but it's one of those well-known facts and always made me a little happy inside (I grew up reading Asterix comics).

5 - To Hell and Back by Sidney Loch

This book is primarily the novelization, The Straits Impregnable, which is about Loch's real experiences but was labelled a novel to avoid censorship, as it was published during WWI. He was a English soldier in an Australian regiment sent to Gallipoli.

Loch was a really amazing guy. He suffered from shell shock when he first returned (and nearly died of Typhus) and devoted the rest of his life to helping the victims of war. At first he helped other shell shocked soldiers but then spent most of his time working with the Quakers to help civilians caught in war zones.

They keep his original prose (possibly edited down a bit?), and it's very well-written. He's extremely descriptive and I found his metaphors particularly charming.

6 - The Fry Chronicles by Stephen Fry

This is the second of Fry's memoirs, both of which are excellent. He and I have a lot of odd things in common, which is a comfort not because I've long admired his work, but because it's nice to remember that people born in drastically different areas, decades apart, with very different upbringings and lives can be SO similar.

His writing is funny, interesting, and heartfelt. It's everything you'd expect of him, really.

7 - The Time Traveler's Guide to Medieval England by Ian Mortimer

I absolutely loved this book. I loved the writing, loved the detail, and loved the way the information is presented. It's definitely going on my list of "books to send my nieces and nephews when they're 13," because I don't see how they could fail to be interested or learn from it.

8 - Ten Days in a Mad-House by Nellie Bly

This book was rather a disappointment. Partly that's due to a truly horrible reader, who I struggled through since it's a short book, but it's also the writing. It's vague and random and "Oh dear, I'm just a lady." I'm sure that's how you had to be if you were a lady of that period wanting to be published in newspapers, but it was still annoying.

I'll probably read a biography of Bly this year though, and some more rigorous book on the subject of mental institutions in the late 19th century.

9 - Seizing the Enigma by David Kahn

This was a very interesting book, though quite dry and vaguely mathematical (I don't mind either). The one thing I disliked was that it's not in chronological order. You'll be steaming ahead and then go back three years to cover what the Germans were doing then or he'll just insert a random paragraph about something that happens two years later/before.

While it talks about how much it helped us in the submarine war in the beginning, you don't get that impression from what's in the book later on. What I got from it is that there was a brief period fairly late in the war when the British were right on top of things in the naval sphere.

It's really more interesting to hear about the technological advancements created at Bletchley Park, most of the which the British basically gave away to the Americans (and rightly focused on recovery from the war and paying debts and such).

10 - Wild Swans by Jung Chang

This book is such a fascinating look into the development of Mao's China. It follows three generations, so it sees the Communists come to power, but it also follows two loyal party members (Chang's parents). I haven't seen any other books which give you that view from the inside.

It's also interesting since you've got the grandmother who was a concubine, is highly resourceful and spirited, yet traditional, then the parents who joined the party very early on and gradually become disillusioned, then the kids who grow up completely indoctrinated and then see what the party is doing to their completely honest and loyal father.

I know that was a too-long sentence, but I just absolutely loved this book.

11 - Red in Tooth and Claw: Twenty-Six years in Communist Chinese Prisons by Pu Ning

I've been on a bit of a Communist China kick since last year. Lisa See's book Dreams of Joy led me to read two books about the Great Leap Forward and the resulting massive famine. Now I'm hooked.

This book was quite graphic, of course, but fairly full of hope. The book is Han Wei-tien's story. He was a Nationalist intelligence worker and was arrest in 1951. The way the book is written is personable, though a bit detached (as you'd have to be, I suspect). The style feels different, in a good way, though it's hard for me to describe why it's different.

12 - Outwitting History by Aaron Lansky

Aaron Lanksy learned Yiddish in his early twenties and found it nearly impossible to find Yiddish books. He then starts a foundation to rescue Yiddish books and truly dedicates his life to doing it.

The book is funny and interesting and rather inspiring. It's so nice to read about people in their early twenties starting this kind of project and really throwing themselves into it with extreme devotion.

The audiobook is extremely well-read (by George Guidall) and you get to listen to quite a lot of Yiddish (a joy for me!), with translations of course.

13 - Lies My Teacher Told Me by James Loewen

I read bits of this back when I was 14 but stopped in part because it was my first year of boarding school and hello, I had things to do! Happily, that boarding school was extremely academically rigorous and we never used text books for our humanities classes.

I did have horrible teachers and books through 8th grade though, and it was always torture. My real American history education (before high school) was Rocky and Bullwinkle for the full range and Pogo comics for mid-20th century political history. The quest to 'get' more jokes in Rocky and Bullwinkle actually led me to study it on my own.

This book is wonderful of course, and important. There's nothing to say on that score.

What makes me curious is what children do learn, especially pre-high school. We studied the damn colonists every. single. year, starting in 3rd grade and NEVER covered WWI.

Our West Virginia history courses were so abominable, not even touching on the labor struggles (our books were helpfully paid for by one of the coal companies), which is odd since it took 30 years to unionize southern WV. During that time there was a land battle lasting five days, with 10,000 miners and 30,000 assorted police and strikebreakers all holed up in the woods on Blair Mountain, madly shooting at each other. The US army had to intervene to end it but they don't teach that event in any West Virginia history course that I've ever heard of (I ask every West Virginian I meet).

14 - Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! by Richard P. Feynman

An excellent, excellent book. I think I'd make this required reading for high school seniors or college freshman, just to get across the idea that being great at one thing doesn't mean you're also not good at other things. I know too many young professionals who ignore their non-career strengths and don't develop well-rounded interests. Perhaps they're just boring people though.

15 - Survival in Auschwitz/If This is a Man by Primo Levi (first title is the US one)

A great book, but written/translated in a style that caught me off-guard. It took me a while to get used to that, so I actually read the first two-thirds again so I could really appreciate it.

>15 mabith:

What did you find strange in the translation of the Levi? I don't remember anything weird so... just curious?

It was just the style and some of the word choices. It's not something I can really put my finger on (other than the word choices but it wasn't JUST that). That's why I say writing/translating, because I don't know which presented the issue for me.

Well, and the fact that only about 50% of the non-English words and phrases were translated, but that's not really what made it difficult for me.

And here comes the question - which edition had you been reading? (not sure how many translations are there though...) :)

The one I had was translated by Stuart Woolf.

So the same one I was reading... Comes to show how different people see books and the written word I guess. I was fascinated by the style - something clicked from the first page and worked beautifully for me....

I think it probably also depends on what else we've been reading recently. I think this one would have been been a great audio-book and much easier for in that form. All the other paper books I've read recently were non-fiction as well, but just veeery different stylistically.

16 - Chocolate Wars by Deborah Cadbury

This book was EXCELLENT! It's mostly about Cadbury but gives you quite a lot of information about all the early chocolate makers, how developments happened, and what happened to those old firms. Also, I'm a Quaker and Cadbury (plus the two other major British chocolate companies) was founded by Quakers. So if you've ever said "Quakers? What are they about?" This book is perfect background, while also being really interesting and well-written.

The only thing I disliked in this was that she gave prices in different currencies. It's meaningless to go from pounds to dollars, because I have no idea what the exchange rate was in 1904! It makes giving dollar amounts pointless.That's a really minor issue and didn't affect my enjoyment of the book, but that sort of thing just grates on me a bit, because it's so illogical and useless.

22: Monetary conversion website we found while doing a tutored read.

Thanks! That's a useful link, though authors should still stick with one currency. I mostly listen to audiobooks so I would constantly have to take notes in order to compare the numbers (since two currencies are rarely mentioned in the same sentence or even paragraph). Not to mention the issue of not having the internet.

17 - A Gentle Madness: Bibliophiles, Bibliomanes, and the Eternal Passion for Books by Nicholas Basbanes

This was a great book, but the way it's organized was a bit hard for me. The chapters have loose themes, but the first one (or maybe the first two) were just SO random and scattered. He very briefly mentions SO many people and events, runs through time so swiftly (only to start over again in the next chapter), and just overwhelms you with information.

It wasn't actually a scattered book, but it felt that way. Feeling like that at the beginning made it more difficult for me to really get into it. I didn't get completely sucked in until chapter 6 (page 225 of 533).

I do recommend this, but I think I'd have been happier if I'd taken it more slowly and treated it as a number of separate books/magazine issues. It was a library book though, so you know...

18 - The Bounty: The True Story of the Mutiny on the Bounty by Caroline Alexander

This was an incredibly thorough book. It occasionally dragged a bit, but I think that was due more the narration of the audiobook than to the writing. I'm very happy I read it and would certainly recommend it.

It's nice to know what really happened and how/why the truth evolved into the myth that's presented in the movie (in the 1935 version that is, I never watched the 60s remake). It really makes you feel incredibly sorry for Captain Bligh though, which I'm almost annoyed about since Charles Laughton makes such a great villain.

Just now catching up to your thread, Meredith. You have certainly been reading some interesting books and I have added several to my wishlist. Thanks!

Linda, which ones did you add to your list? I'm always curious!

19 - England's Mistress by Kate Williams

This book is a biography of Emma Hamilton. It's more investigative than anything else I've seen and is well-written. It is extremely thorough and makes some good points. Plus it finally looks at Emma from the female perspective and with the attitudes toward and opportunities for women at this time kept firmly in mind.

I've seen criticism of it that it leaps to conclusions, but I don't agree. Williams points out "This was the usual way of things, but this is what so-and-so did, let's think about why they didn't behave in the normal fashion." She's not asserting that it's the incontestable truth, just trying to make sense of events.

However, the audio book was horribly done. The reader over-enunciated to the point of sounding robotic and had to pronounce all the non-English names and phrases extremely slowly in order to get them right. I had some sort of odd version of it, narrated by Anne Flosnick, which I can't find anywhere. There are two other narrators available who hopefully do a better job!

>28 mabith: These are the ones that caught my attention:

On Gold Mountain
Wild Swans
Red in Tooth and Claw
A Gentle Madness

Can't recommend On Gold Mountain and Wild Swans highly enough. Hope you love them as much as I did when you get to them.

20 - Beer is Proof God Loves Us by Charles W. Bamforth

This is a very short book, luckily, as it's not very good. The book is peppered with so many "As we'll discuss in X chapter" and "See chatper X" lines it's ridiculous. I mean, this is a very short, light book, not a long, scholarly work. Add to that fact that the author comes across as somewhat hypocritical, rather smug, and generally unlikeable. He's English and the book mostly uses British terms, but will randomly thrown in a chips instead of crisps, which I find to be a really bad sign in a book, as it generally means it didn't have a good editor.

If you're looking for a lovely overview of beer and beer-drinking, this isn't the book for you. It focuses heavily on business management and technology right from the get go (I would have started the book with the lighter more everyday-people chapters and saved the 'which company bought up which other companies' for the end).

I don't really think I'd recommend this to anyone.

1: Mostly I want to keep track of how many non-fiction books I read this year (and my thoughts on them!), and this is much easier than counting them up at the end of the year.
Glad this is useful! :-)
2: On Gold Mountain has been sitting in my TBR stack for three months now... and meanwhile other books keep inserting themselves into the queue. Too many books, too little time.
16: I live near Hershey PA, so Chocolate Wars goes onto the wishlist.

It's also super useful for getting recommendations, so I'm quite happy I joined the group. I rarely buy books I haven't read, and rely on the library, so I don't have much of a TBR pile.

I put off starting On Gold Mountain for a bit myself, but after getting a couple chapters in I couldn't put it down. Super gripping and utterly fascinating all the way through. The only more interesting thing I've read this year is probably Chocolate Wars, haha.

21 - The Proud Tower: A Portrait of the World Before the War: 1890-1914 by Barbara Tuchman

I like to start off the month with a book I know I'll enjoy, so beginning with this was a no-brainer. I've read all of her books relating to WWI now, and thought "Oh, I've read them in an odd order," only to find I read them in the order that she wrote them.

This wasn't exactly what I was expecting, but in the forward Tuchman says it wasn't the book she was expecting to write either. It's a really good over-view of political realities of the period and the rising (and falling/changing) of the Anarchist and Socialist movements in the United States, England, France, Germany, Russia, and Italy.

One of my favorite aspects was her focus on a few men who were considered the greatest politicians of the day in the US and England. Looking at people who were admired even by the opposition and learning why they *were* admired and what made them different (and inevitably caused them to lose power and fade away) is a really good way of determining purported values vs. real values of any given time.

In some ways that was the whole book - purported values vs. real values, why the time wasn't the "golden age" that everyone claimed when WWI was over (those statements having been made only AFTER the war), and why the loss of innocence people experienced was just as much a political innocence as an "oh who knew we could kill so many in one day of battle" innocence.

22 - My Lobotomy by Howard Dully

This was a very interesting, absorbing book. The subject is incredible, and Dully's life was certainly a difficult journey, though the book got fairly repetitive at the end. When he's talking about the radio broadcast of his story he starts stating "You can hear how emotional/whatever it was in my voice" about every other sentence.

The audio book was... odd. The reader's pacing was just strange, and I wondered if he was trying to mimic Dully's actual speaking style. It was also interesting since at the end he mentions his "wonderful radio voice" over and over, yet he didn't do the reading of the audio book.

I recommend this book quite highly, and those complaints didn't make me wish I hadn't read it, they were just a bit grating.

23 - A Commonwealth of Thieves: The Improbable Birth of Australia by Thomas Keneally

I am oddly torn about this book. I really enjoyed it, but I think it's one I should have read in print, rather than as an audio book. When it ended I felt like I'd learned an immense amount, but at the same time felt like I hadn't learned anything. I think maybe it could have been focused just a *little* more tightly.

It was fascinating all the way through, though. It really just covers from 1788 to 1792 (the first governor's term of service), giving you background and basic information about a startling number of people, including the governor and various marines, sea men, and prisoners.

24 - The Endless Steppe: Growing Up in Siberia by Esther Hautzig

World War II was the first non-fiction reading frenzy I engaged in. Starting in fourth grade I read almost nothing but books about World War II, mostly about the Holocaust, but also about the course of the war, life in the occupied cities, Japanese-American internment camps, the Blitz, etc... I read both children's and adult books. This continued for about three years, at which point I got tired of not being able to talk about books with my friends (whose parents sometimes called my mother asking her to tell me I shouldn't loan any more books to their children - Maus gave other fourth graders nightmares, apparently, whereas it started my WWII obsession).

The introduction is by way of saying that I'm always glad to find a book about part of the WWII experience that I know nothing about, and there's always something else that fits that description.

The Endless Steppe is written for the 10 and up age range, which makes me like it all the more, since kids are often given very few types of perspective on any given event. It flows easily, though I wish the passage of time had been more explicitly stated throughout the book. The writing is good and doesn't *feel* like a children's book, and the content doesn't either really, since it's obviously going to focus on her feelings and experiences as she was a child at the time. That, to me, is the mark of a good children's book. Some authors talk down to children, some talk to them. This feels perfectly suitable for children, rather than feeling like a children's book.

25 - All Creatures Great and Small by James Herriot

Great book (and lovely audio edition), which makes me appreciate how well-cast the TV show was! I'm afraid I rather took my time with it, as I had to interrupt for cleaning quite a lot.

26 - The Adventure of English by Melvyn Bragg

I read, and greatly enjoyed, Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue: The Untold Story of English last year, and was a bit worried that The Adventure of English would be highly repetitive. They are, however, very different books, the first being much more philological and the second being cultural.

While Bragg's work is generally good and enjoyable, there were some issues. For one thing, there is the notion that the US has fewer distinct accents/dialects than Britain. We have just as many, but because we're a massive country, they're just more spread out. In my city alone there are three common accents belonging to people born in the area, and we DO have regionalisms, thanks very much. Also, Bragg makes the statement that "Americans still love spelling," which is ridiculous, and I can only assume it's based on our National Spelling Bee and the fact that parents push their kids to extremes to win this (much more related to winning than spelling). Then later he made a statement of the early convicts sent to Australia which was the opposite of something in A Commonwealth of Thieves and I trust the specialist book rather more.

I think that there was also some very important information that he left out. He relates the word father in numerous European languages to the word in Sanskrit but doesn't mention the consonant shifts which account for the Ps shifting to Fs and Vs. He doesn't mention consonant shifts anywhere in the book and yet expects readers to understand how close father is to the sanskrit (which is really close to pater). This is fun, relatively light non-fiction, not something that's going to bring in many readers who know much about the developments and splits of language, so I think it should have been included. Also, he could have summarized it in a few sentences, so it's not like it wouldn't have really lengthened the book to include that titbit.

It IS a generally good book, with lots of interesting information and perspectives, but I really think it needed a little more information about language (as it is almost entirely a social/cultural study). Also, Brits apparently need a better source of information on the US as it never feels like it's an American giving them this stuff (this is a common problem on the show QI, as well). Maybe there's a con man in England who pretends to be an expert but is actually just someone doing an accent.

27 - An Utterly Impartial History of Britain: Or 2,000 Years of Upper Class Idiots in Charge by John O'Farrell

This was a fun, interesting little book, though I flagged a bit once we reached the 20th century, where I don't think I learned anything new. Oh no, strike that, I learned that Switzerland didn't let women vote until the 1970s and that France didn't until 1944. I've been trying to find out if that was a Vichy enactment. Surely it must have been, because who would have been thinking "first things first, female suffrage!" right after the Nazis left but while the war was still on?

While I did enjoy it, I think O'Farrell missed a few tricks by not pointing out some areas where "common knowledge" is wrong. He does point these instances out sometimes, but it's pretty sporadic. I rather appreciated his full and complete Britishness, in basically being slightly offensive to everyone, while still calling attention to historical British stupidities.

Granted, someone should have kept him from the doing the narration on the audio book. He's not terrible, but he often speaks too quickly, mumbles, and whispers. I did keep find myself wishing that it was David Mitchell (the British comedian, not the author) doing the reading.

28 - Destiny of the Republic: A Tale of Madness, Medicine, and the Murder of a President by Candice Millard

Jumping Jesus on a Pogo Stick, this was an AMAZING book! Seriously. Also, Garfield was a great guy, and who knows where we'd be now if he'd lived. I don't know why he isn't emphasized more in middle school and high school, not so much for his "Came from absolute poverty" but more for the way he behaved and the fact that he knew it was luck and hard work combined.

I think in general we do our children a disservice when we teach them that all you need is to work hard and you'll succeed. We need to teach them how to think critically, work hard, take advantage of chance opportunities, and to understand that luck does play a crucial role. There are too many people who think that everyone on welfare is just lazy and other similar nonsense.

Destiny of the Republic is extremely well-written, with loads of information about Guiteau, medicine at the time, and the general state of the US. I can't recommend this book highly enough. Garfield was SUCH a good guy that I sat there smiling like an idiot while I listened to most of the book (oh, and the audio book is very well-read), and actually felt a little choked up toward the end, which is quite unusual for me. I feel like he must have been a big inspiration for The West Wing's President Bartlet.

29 - Two Rings: A Story of Love and War by Millie Werber

This is a wonderful memoir. It felt so honest, both to the failure of memory and to the conflicting emotions of the author.

It's a difficult book to describe, but I really enjoyed and recommend it.

An interesting review of Destiny of the Republic, Meredith. My partner enjoys books on presidential history so I may just have to buy this for him.

30 - Europe Under the Old Regime by Albert Sorel

This is a very short book, which is actually the very long preface to Sorel's book about the French Revolution. It was really quite good, both in viewing his prejudices and partialities, and just in the subject matter.

What it boils down to is that affairs were being conducted in such a horrible, underhanded way that the French Revolution just took the tools it had seen in practice and ran with them, that there was no other way for things to go. So any violence and abuses of power that seemed extreme aren't because politics and war were like that before the revolution, which is generally true, though I disagree with the assumption that there was no way to change.

It's an interesting book, especially as an example to all the people who talk about 'the good old days.' There are references to 'the good old days' in every decade of history stretching way back. Blinding yourself to the true nature of the past is always a bad idea.

Dear Adults Everywhere,

The decade of your childhood only seems like 'the good old days' because you were a CHILD, with no responsibilities other than cleaning your room and only the barest concept of the adult world.

Sincerely,
Captain Obvious

31 - The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot

This is an absolutely wonderful book, and highly recommended.

It's about the first immortal cells ever grown, which were taken from a woman who died of cervical cancer in 1951. They were grown and sent to scientists all over the place (and then sold to them) without her family's knowledge. It is a fascinating and at times heartbreaking book,

Skloot goes back and forth between focusing on the personal side (Henrietta's life, her family's life...) and the science, including all the breakthroughs that come about because of these cells. It documents her efforts to be trusted by the Lacks family and the reflections of scientists and doctors both on extreme importance of those cells and on how the family was treated (at one point someone at Johns Hopkins released Henrietta's full medical records to a journalist!).

My only criticism is that the writer says "X-Person told me years later," about two million time. We KNOW they told you years later because you weren't alive in 1951 and you only started working on this book in the late 90s! Your readers aren't idiots! Otherwise I found the writing solid and enjoyable.

The pacing and structure of the book really give it that "Oh my god, everyone has to read this" edge. Also, the audiobook is very well-done.

46: My only criticism is that the writer says "X-Person told me years later," about two million time.

I didn't notice, but I suppose it's the sort of thing that once you notice, it grates every time you see it again.

Yeah, it definitely did. Then I would think of five other phrases to express the same point. It was mostly in the first third or first half of the book that it just happened over and over (and I think maybe you notice it more with an audio book than if you're reading it in print).

32 - The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls

I was still working in a bookstore when this came out, which is probably why I've waited so long to read it (things that are crazily popular tend to get on the bookstore worker's nerves for a variety of reasons). Also, when it came out it felt like people were looker even further down on West Virginia, my home state, as if the state is to blame for her childhood rather than her insane parents.

These memoirs always amaze me, because I just find it so hard to believe. The book was fascinating and disturbing and sad, of course. I find it hard to truly enjoy this sort of memoir, because it's like slowing down when you pass a car accident. Most of us do it, but not really out of desire for enjoyment.

33 - Exorcising Hitler: The Occupation and Denazification of Germany by Frederick Taylor

This is a really excellent book. I've never read much about the post-war occupation or about the allies specific relationships with each other. Taylor is blunt about the numerous problems and common perceptions, and seems pretty damn unbiased to me (though not having studied the subject I'm not the best judge). He certainly doesn't focus on one nation's flaws more than the rest.

Much of the first half actually deals with situations before the war is over, but doesn't focus on the big-picture war so much as various allies' priorities, POW camps, plans for occupation, behavior in overrun towns, etc... It's necessary to give background on what followed. His really in-depth coverage only goes to about 1949-50, and after that still provides a lot of information up to the present day just not in such great details and covering fewer aspects.

The only odd thing was that he initially talked about how history should have informed the politician's and military's views/policies towards the Iraq and Afghanistan invasions but didn't, only to basically drop the subject. He'd occasionally make a one or two sentence remark later, but with that little attention focused on it he should have dropped the comparisons completely.

It really was fascinating, and he provides quotes and stories from numerous sources (both civilian and military), which makes the book much more readable than it might have been. The writing is very good, and while it's not completely chronological the book is broken into multiple topics which are then presented chronologically. I found it easy to follow and engaging. The audio book edition is extremely well-read.

Exorcising Hitler does indeed sound interesting, Meredith. Most of my reading has been from the war period itself, but practically nothing from its immediate aftermath. Thanks for the review!

Linda, that's how I was too. It's odd that most of us do that since the post-WWI period was so integral to what happened later you'd think we'd look at the aftermath more with all wars.

34 - Forged: Writing in the Name of God--Why the Bible's Authors Are Not Who We Think They Are by Bart D. Ehrman

This was an excellent book. I'm not at all religious but I think this is the kind of book everyone should read, no matter what their religious beliefs are. I think it's especially important for the very fervently Christian folks to remember that it is a human book, assembled by humans.

The organization and pacing of the book was good and it was interesting all the way through, even for a Quaker Atheist like myself!

35 - Cleopatra: A Life by Stacy Schiff

This really was an excellent book. Schiff solidifies what we know about Cleopatra, shucking off the theatrical dumbings-down she's endured. Some reviewers have complained that they didn't enjoy the book since we know so little, but I don't get that at all. It's not as through the book said "here's a list of all we know... the end."

We learn a lot through context and a fair bit of the book focuses on tentative educated guesses (Schiff explicitly notes when she is looking at possibilities rather than fact). Moreover, Schiff is better able to look at her actions from the female perspective, which is very important, and something a male biographer (or historian) is always going to struggle to do. With any well-known female figure this is important, but especially so with female rulers.

Schiff's book is interesting and well-written, bringing in everything we know and building up loads of context around it. It's also very heavily footnoted, which I appreciate.

Reading some of the reviews makes me slightly think that some people just don't want to replace Shakespeare's Cleopatra in their mind. You don't have to choose though, you can enjoy both the reality and fantasy.

36 - A Room of One's Own by Virginia Woolf

Short as this essay is, I had a bit of trouble making myself sit down and finish it. I attribute this to the fact that most of it is still depressingly relevant.

Bit of a parallel in reading it at the same time I was reading Cleopatra: A Life, in that Woolf focuses on the characters (in fiction and in life) who are seen only in their relations with men and Cleopatra 'ceases to exist without a Roman in the room,' etc...

Thanks for the reviews! I have been meaning to read Schiff's Cleopatra--glad that it was good.

37 - The Civil War by Julius Caesar

Caesar's commentaries on the civil wars. SO much fun! I wish I'd read these when I was a kid. I was obsessed with Caesar then (thank you, Asterix comics!) and used to daydream about commanding his legions during the Gallic campaigns (all 13-year-olds do that, right??).

Banjo, I'm glad if my reviews have been a bit useful!

38 - The Wolf: How One German Raider Terrorized the Allies in the Most Epic Voyage of WWI by Richard Guilliatt and Peter Hohnen

An excellent and thorough book! I found it well-written and easy to listen to (read by the lovely Michael Page). The way the authors structured the beginning was very smart. They first told you about the young family who were traveling on the Beluga and its seizing by the Wolf's crew, but then go back and give you a brief history of the other raiders which operated early on in the war. This hopefully draws folks in with the personal but then makes you understand the background of the Wolf's voyage and mission before getting on with the slightly tedious list of other ships it captured before the Beluga.

It is a rather amazing story, and it's interesting to see how the different people involved behaved once it was over, especially in terms of who told the truth about the Germans' behavior and who did not. I think the only part that dragged at all for me was the previously mentioned list of early captures.

39 - Bad Science by Ben Goldacre

This book should be required reading for everything, but I think especially for parents and prospective parents, who tend to take newspaper 'health' stories more seriously than they should.

The book is organized and written well, with humor and good will. It is informative without being difficult to understand and again, everyone should read it. These issues affect EVERYONE. Even if you already take these kinds of stories and health treatments with a grain of salt, you should learn WHY you shouldn't believe them outright.

The audio book, however, wasn't as good. You would think they'd instruct non-fiction book readers how a famous person from another country pronounces their name, but they do not. Though the audio book does contain one of the worst Groucho Marx impersonations I've ever heard.

40 - The Sex Lives of Cannibals: Adrift in the Equatorial Pacific by J. Maarten Troost

This was an absolutely wonderful book! Well-written, funny, interesting... This isn't the type of memoir I usually go for (when I want a 'travel' book I just pick up anything in the history section), but I'm really pleased I read it. I think it's worth listening to the audio book, as Simon Vance's accent adds an extra level of humor.

41 - Grammar Snobs are Great Big Meanies by June Casagrande

I absolutely loved this book, and I'm astounded by how many of the reviewers on Goodreads seem to have misunderstood its purpose. They keep making comments about how it's not really a good usage guide, and I'm wondering why on earth they think it's *supposed* to be a usage guide! One user commented that the discussion of when to use may/might was confusing, when Casagrande's point was precisely that none of the books explained it well and that it IS confusing!

In essence, it's a hilarious book about common grammar issues, and especially the ones most markedly targeted by grammar snobs. Actually, I think the addition of humor will help me remember when to use lay/lie for a longer period (I look that up periodically but the knowledge fades in a few months). That's part of Casagrande's message - some things are hard to remember, most 'rules' aren't universally agreed upon, and most of us have good instincts about word/punctuation usage.

This is a book for people who roll their eyes at the influx of rigid grammar books and people who want a little extra reminding about certain rules served with a heap of humor. It's also good for those who want to make snappy retorts to grammar snobs who go about needlessly correcting people.

I leave you with a quote from the book: "Copy editors need hyphens like prison inmates need cigarettes and Karl Rove needs pentagrams and babies' blood."

42 - The Dragon Seekers: How an Extraordinary Circle of Fossilists Discovered the Dinosaurs and Paved the Way for Darwin by Christopher McGowan

While I really enjoyed the information in this book, the writing could have been much better. It was awkward and often redundant, though I can never tell whether you notice that more or less with an audio book (I would think more). The information wasn't presented randomly, but at times the progression did feel a bit random, though I'm not sure why. Oh, maybe because very few things were related forward to Darwin's publishing. It felt that like that was a slightly tacked on angle because someone thought it would sell more books. It was certainly not an equal focus of the book.

What honestly annoyed me most was the last 40 minutes, which were one big chapter about the author and the species he's named and how great he is because he's named them after their collectors. While I can understand saying "We're still discovering new types of those first species discovered way back when," as a way to say "Wait, look, it's still an exciting subject," he did say that kind of thing all the through the book. It seems self-congratulatory at least to have your entire last chapter deal with yourself, and have nothing to do with the premise of your book! Seriously, I don't know what's happened to editors now-a-days, but they seem to suck. In MY day... (incoherent, curmudgeonly, and inappropriate rambling).

This book was mostly interesting, and mostly worth reading, though if you're interested in the subject of the early fossilists I might look around to see if there's another book out there.

I have a biography of Mary Anning, which I haven't yet read... Seems from your review maybe I should stick with that and see where it leads.

Yeah. I mean, there's good information in the book, and the writing seemed to get a bit better in the middle. It just didn't really fulfill what the subtitle stated. If it had just been "early fossilists in England and their discoveries" then that would have been fine and dandy and stricter editing could have easily improved the writing (it's not really horribly written, just awkward and as though no one but the author ever did any editing in that sense).

It turns out that Deborah Cadbury, who I find to be quite a good writer, has a book on the subject: Terrible Lizard, so if you're looking for something about the whole crowd (rather than just Anning), that might be the way to go.

43 - She-Wolves: The Women who Ruled England Before Elizabeth by Helen Castor

I went rather slowly with this one, as I haven't had much time this month for reading in print (vs audio books). It is a great book though, solidly written and impeccably organized.

Castor points out when something is a guess, though occasionally she'll go on to talk about said guess as though it's fact without reminding the reader that there's no solid evidence for it other than the figure's actions. I think I only noticed that in one instance though. Castor's reading of the various women certainly seems apt from a psychological point of view, especially in looking more closely at some of the 'history' published about them.

Each ruler's section includes a family true and a map of England's territories. The tree for the Wars of the Roses period went onto two pages, and one section of it could have been a little more clear (the parents were on one page and their children on the next, but there was still a line down on the first page leading to people who definitely weren't that couple's children, rather than a 'see next page' or whatever).

I definitely recommend this book. We tend to focus so heavily on Queen Elizabeth (as far as the casual history geek goes, and in terms of popular culture) and not understand what came before her. The book definitely held my interest all the way through.

44 - The Forgetting River: A Modern Tale of Survival, Identity, and the Inquisition by Doreen Carvajal

I received this through the Early Reviewer program.

This is a book that I really wanted to love. The first few chapters drew me in very quickly and I was intrigued by the subject.

Doreen Carvajal, is a journalist and it shows with this book, which reads as individual columns in a series. My problem with this is that single threads of the book are separated from each other by other threads. The chapters are mostly quite short and it's disrupting to become interested in something only for it to end abruptly and the subject to pick back up in three chapters.

The chapters could have easily been consolidated into three or four main sections of the book, and I can only imagine that the author wanted it to feel more like her own journey. This makes for a very unsatisfying book though, and if I hadn't received this to review I don't think I would have finished, to be honest (and I rarely put down a book without finishing it). Every time I felt myself start to enjoy the book again the chapter would end and the moment, the focus, would be broken.

There are also a few chapters toward the end which really don't have anything to do with the book's subject. They seem to be stories she just wanted to tell and then sort of vaguely related to her subject at the end of each story. They were yet another barrier between the reader and any sort of conclusion.

Carvajal's writing is very good, her interpretations seem valid, her instincts are good, and the subject is fascinating. It is only the organization of this book which allows all of those positive aspects to falter. While this aspect doesn't seem to have bothered other reviewers it meant I couldn't fully immerse myself in the book.

45 - Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex by Mary Roach

When I read my first Mary Roach book, Stiff, I hadn't expected to like her that much, so of course I did. This was another amusing and informative non-fiction interlude.

She definitely has a knack for organizing her books in a pleasing way and worming her way into the presence of a lot of interesting people (or maybe the scientists are just kind of bored). She writes well and I enjoy her sense of humor, if I do feel a *bit* sorry for her children.

46 - Are You My Mother? by Alison Bechdel

I grew up reading Bechdel's Dykes to Watch Out For, and I love her drawing style, so I've had to read her memoirs as well if just for the drawing. Am I alone in not usually being interested in the lives of authors, actors, or musicians I like?

Are You My Mother? is a very different type of memoir than Fun Home, and I think people probably appreciate it less. She's also drawing in a looser, less detailed style. The book focuses a lot of psychology, in it's classics forms and ideas, which I tend to disagree with and that made it a bit difficult for me to enjoy.

I think this book was a necessary reply to Fun Home though, both for Bechdel and for readers. Dysfunction doesn't simply strike one part of the family and the rest untouched. Certain behaviors in one parent must automatically affect the behavior of the other parent both towards the spouse and the children. It is interesting to see how Bechdel and her mother's relationship has grown and yet remained much the same, and how she learned to stop seeking things her mother couldn't give (an important lesson for all of us).

Mostly, this book made me want to give my parents hugs, because they've always been so wonderful, even in the face of numerous difficulties. If you're reading and all the psychobabble (many, many quotes from Donald Winnicott) starts to bore or overwhelm you, just skim it and focus on the sections with Bechdel's family. It's still enjoyable.

47 - Galileo's Daughter by Dava Sobel

We read excerpts from this in my high school humanities class but I'd never made time to read the entire thing.

It's been out for long and had so much hype around that I don't think I need to say much. It's well-written, well-organized, and the act of bringing in her letters really gives it an extra bit of life, and...realness than it would otherwise have.

48 - Bright-Sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking has Undermined America by Barbara Ehrenreich

This book seems to have sprung in part, from Ehrenreich's experiences with breast cancer - or rather, her experiences with breast cancer support groups. It is a great book, covering the way excessive positive thinking infiltrated religion, the corporate world, and politics, plus the cancer support community.

I have a chronic pain disease and have been disabled since the age of the 20, and there is massive pressure to always be cheerful and upbeat. It's less about helping me than making those around me more comfortable and less concerned. The moment you express weakness or depression to anyone they immediately say "Oh but you're so strong," to try to shut you up and reduce their own worry.

Where I think Ehrenreich misses a trick is in pointing out the difference between blind optimism and the act of finding joy in small things. That's not applicable to the business or political world, but it is to the medical and the spiritual. I am not constantly optimistic, but I'm extremely good at living in the moment and letting the little everyday things make me happy. It's an important skill for everyone to have, since the vast majority of us will have periods of depression.

I heartily recommend this book to absolutely everyone.

Some interesting reviews. I am a little afraid to read the Ehrenreich book --- I think optimism is what gets me through most days. :)

Banjo. I felt the same way, and put off reading it for a while. She's not attacking optimism in general, just forced and utterly blind optimism which leads us into bad decision making.

There definitely wasn't anything in there that had much to do with individual optimism, and I ended up loving the book.

49 - A Girl Named Zippy by Haven Kimmel

This is a memoir about living growing up in a small town in Indiana. The author writes it from the perspective, and in the voice, of her 7-9 year old self.

It is absolutely brilliant! While her family is a bit dysfunctional, that's not the focus on the book. The focus is really just the mostly-normal events of childhood in a small town with some odd characters.

Kimmel's writing is wonderful and it does sound exactly like what a kid would be thinking. It's hard for me to describe why I like this so much. I've never drifted far from feeling like a seven-year-old, or more accurately, I just never changed much. I do highly recommend this book though, especially the audio edition which is read by the author.

50 - How Great Generals Win by Bevin Alexander

A nice dry overview of the rules of warfare and why they don't really change, regardless of the way technology changes. Alexander explains ten different battles, starting with the defeat of Hannibal and ending with MacArthur in Korea. In the last chapter he summarizes the similarities between various battles covered in the book, pointing out that both used the same strategy despite the separation of decades of hundreds of years between then.

I did enjoy this, though it is really very dry.

51 - Hedy's Folly: The Life and Breakthrough Inventions of Hedy Lamarr, the Most Beautiful Woman in the World by Richard Rhodes

I was really excited about this book and only partially let down. I feel the subtitle is a bit misleading. The book contains an over view of Hedy's early life, but is just as much about her inventing partner, composer George Antheil. It also covers in detail the inventions that may have helped lead to their discoveries and the ones that followed from it.

I enjoyed the way it was written and the focus of the book (which is relatively short), but the subtitle and various blurbs on covers just don't adequately describe the book. It's a silly thing to get annoyed about, but I'm sure that aspect has garnished some more negative reviews. I would not say that the majority of the book was about Hedy, but I suppose that was the best way to sell it.

She was a fairly amazing woman, and it's hard to say how the world might have changed if she'd been allowed to join the National Inventors Council or if her intelligence had been taken at all seriously. She certainly seems to be a unique figure in Hollywood history.

52 - A People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn

For some reason I'd put off reading this for quite a long time.

I can't say I thoroughly enjoyed it, because how can you enjoy hearing about so much rich men being concerned with only their own interests. Everything post 1970 was especially difficult to take, not because people were behaving in worse ways but because we're supposed to be better people now, less consumed by only our own interests. It was so upsetting I gave myself stomach aches. I am very glad I read it and plan on buying a copy for my personal library.

Re: the audiobook - Jeff Zinn is an okay reader, but as usually no one bothered to find out how place names are pronounced by their inhabitants (Norfolk Virginia is definitely not Nor-Folk) and there were some other pronunciation issues. What I find really odd is how many people will pronounce a Spanish name HALF correctly. So for the country of Chile they'll leave behind Chill-Ee for Chill-eh instead of Chee-leh. Bizarre.

53 - The Great Bridge: The Epic Story of the Building of the Brooklyn Bridge by David McCullough

I had a lot of difficulty staying interested in this book. I think this was partly due to the reader of the audiobook, whose voice was incredibly easy to space out. The whole audiobook production was actually a bit odd.

There's a lot of interesting information in this book, but I think it could have been organized in a slightly better way. A few times they'd just go back to someone's personal life story for no conceivable reason. This was also McCullough's second book, so perhaps he hadn't quite perfected his style yet.

Perhaps, also, the story just isn't as interesting as you'd think. Most of the really interesting stuff sort of... surrounded the project rather than being within in, such as Tweed's interest in it and the entire corrupt political system of New York City and Brooklyn. There were a couple accidents with the construction, some trial and error, and no one yet understood the bends, the end.

54 - The Disappearing Spoon by Sam Kean

I love a good light science book, and this was a fun one. It tells the story of various elements of the periodic table and the table's history. The stories are oddments, silly things, interesting things that no one will tell you in science courses.

The book does lose some of the humor maybe half-way through, when the content becomes denser and more difficult for the laymen to understand. It was still very enjoyable, but better read in print than listened to, and better read in installments rather than one fell swoop (for those of us who never went past high school chemistry, in any case).

55 - A Different Kind of Courage by Gretel Wachtel

I really wanted to love this book, but it felt... odd. I feel horrible saying this, but it was too perfect, too cliche. She was denounced for a chance comment and found herself in an arms factory, it depicts an anti-Nazi who wasn't a great person, everyone immediately loves the narrator and she has the best luck in the world. She finds herself in various jobs where she can help a bit, she encounters plenty of anti-Nazis, but it also depicts a non-political person and why many felt they had to stay non-political.

It brings in every single cliche of the "average German trying to fight the Nazis when they can." I'm sure if there were serious doubts about the authenticity that would have been discovered already, but it honestly didn't feel real. Her tone strikes just the right balance between being upset about the relentless bombing and supporting the allies. I know all these things happened to people, but I have trouble believing that they all happened to this ONE person.

I found the audio book problematic as well. The reader was an English woman, only she does some dialogue with German accents and some without. She tends to only give German accents to the disliked figures, which really annoying as in, "Oh, let's extra Anglify all the *good* people." If you're going to do all these accents anyway then for heaven sakes have a German read the audio book.

56 - When Everything Changed: The Amazing Journey of American Women from 1960 to the Present by Gail Collins

This is an excellent book. It covers a huge range aspects of the women's rights movement, and it follows a number of specific people through their lives (the very famous, the pioneers in fields, the bringer of landmark lawsuits). It doesn't just follow the big changes in society but the way women's day to day lives actually changed. So many things really changed quite quickly, but at the same time we're still struggling with many of these issues.

I actually found myself getting misty-eyed a few times (very out of character for me). It was difficult to read without breaks because so much of it is honestly upsetting, all the more so since this is the world my mother grew up in.

I recommend this book to absolutely everybody, it should be required reading. My mum (born in 1951) read this first and was really enthused about it because of course when you're living during a period like that you can't really notice how much things do change or how quickly. So, even if you lived through this period I still recommend it.

When Everything Changed sounds fabulous -- it's on my list now

57 - The Time Traveller's Guide to Elizabethan England by Ian Mortimer

I read his The Time Traveller's Guide to Medieval England a while back and it was so brilliant. These books are really amazing, and incredibly detailed. Don't let the silly title fool you, these are seriously informative and you will be drowned in information.

Both books are really the perfect guides for anyone writing fiction set in either period or even for those doing a sort of alien or alternative history that's set in a similar period.

Highly recommend both titles, though I think I enjoyed the Medieval one a bit more.

58 - Half Broke Horses by Jeannette Walls

I'm slightly hesitant to put this on the list, since it's sort of novelized. I think the majority of it is based firmly in fact though.

This book is by the author of The Glass Castle, a memoir that makes you really mad about the whole "how other people raise their kids is none of our business" attitude. This one is about Walls' maternal grandmother.

The subject, Lily Casey Smith, rather annoyed me. Yes she faced incredible odds and worked very hard to get the life she did, blah blah blah. Only she doesn't think ahead very often when it counts and is honestly a terrible mother. Yet the book pretty much acts like she's an amazing superhero that everyone should aspire to be like. By the end of the book I honestly disliked her, partly due to the way she seems to be placed on a platform throughout the book.

It does answer a lot of questions about why Walls' mother was the way she was.

59 - Lost on Planet China by J. Maarten Troost

I really enjoyed this. Like The Sex Lives of Cannibals, it combines personal experience with general experience with commonly held ideas (which are then confounded) with cold hard facts.

Maybe it got a bit sloppy towards the end (though I'm also just feeling restless and a burnt out), but this book was seriously informative. I certainly felt more informed by the end and as though I'd heard what I wanted to know. What happens in politics and in the papers is one thing, what's going on with ordinary people is another, and I'm always most interested in the ordinary people.

I definitely recommend this book to basically everyone, and I think i"ll be buying it as a Christmas present for my mum.

60 - Bats Sing, Mice Giggle: The Surprising Science of Animals' Inner Lives by Karen Shanor and Jagmeet Kanwal

Nice light, popular science book, quite short. There was a lot of interesting information in this one, but it was focused and organized enough not to feel too list-ish. I would have been happier with a longer book.

The writing could have been better, or maybe just edited more tightly, but it wasn't a huge issue. One odd thing was that in telling of the two authors' personal experiences both were talked about in the third person using only their first names from the first mention. That just felt... weird, though I'm not sure how it could have been better except by shifting book control to one author or the other.

61 - You Are Not So Smart by David McRaney

A wonderful light science book to tell us all how dumb and unlogical we are. I enjoyed the way it was written and the range of topics. It really was surprising to hear how much even simple decisions, which should be completely logical, are tied to emotion.

If you think you're the most rational person on the block and get huffy when accused of acting emotionally, this book may not be for you.

There's a Terry Pratchett quote quite early on in the book, which is obviously an excellent sign.

The audio book was really odd. This book is written relatively informally and with lots of young references (Rescue Rangers, Jem, etc...), but they chose to have an older man read it in a very formal way. Because there are no younger (or younger sounding) audio book readers? I swear... It was slightly amusing to hear him say certain phrases ('She's dropping it like it's hot' comes to mind), though annoying to hear bio-pic pronounced like optic. Surely you want a reader familiar with all the references in the book? Glugh.

62 - The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins

While I certainly didn't need convincing in this area, I thought I'd see what Dawkins was saying about it. It's a really interesting book, full of scientific studies and interesting bits of information. I suppose if you're in a position where you need to defend your atheism then this might give you some good come-backs (though they could be long-winded).

I didn't find Dawkins to be particularly venomous, rude, or unfair, but I've never been religious and wasn't really brought up with religion. I have been around idiotic or venomous atheists though, so it's not like I can't recognize that. I think the part about teaching the Bible in the same way we are taught about ancient Greek religion is a great idea (since the Bible does tie into quite a lot of literature and popular sayings). That's honestly how I thought people viewed Christianity when I was a child. It was just an old thing and you learned about it and people still went to church to socialize (certainly true of many).

If you're tempted by the audio book, don't be! There are two narrators who switch back and forth almost every PARAGRAPH, and sometimes within a sentence. I thought maybe one was doing all the quotes, but that's not the case. It had no rhyme or reason and was extremely jarring.

63 - The Crusades Through Arab Eyes by Amin Maalouf

I enjoyed this book, though it was not quite what I expected. From the description I'd read I thought it was mostly going to be letters and reports from people who lived through the various crusades with small sections of general background. There were a lot of a very short period quotes and I think those items are what Maalouf based the book on, but the majority of the writing is his own.

I've seen some criticisms of the book around, but I'm not sure if they're valid or not, as my knowledge of these subject is basically limited to this book, at the moment. However, it was not written with fanaticism, and Maalouf points out numerous times when some record of the period is likely to be wrong. The book isn't meant to be a huge encompassing history, but meant to show how Arabs viewed the crusades at the time, and at the end brings in a bit about how they are still viewed in many countries.

64 - Sheltered from the Swastika by Peter Kory

This was an interesting book, but it seemed oddly put together. It felt a bit like Mr. Kory wrote two types of memoir and both were too short so they were combined.

There's an immense about of detail about military doings, long descriptions of specific houses or people who don't otherwise feature much in the book (I do not refer to his family history, which I felt was nice, not all that long, and relevant), and two and a half pages comparing the French and American school systems, among other things.

It is still an interesting book, and worth reading, but all of the random detail and over-long descriptions took away from the personal story. The writing is not bad, though a bit awkward in spots.

I would like to see this book adapted specifically for children, as I think it would have more impact. Sometimes we focus too heavily on one type of perspective on the Holocaust, particularly in children's books, and it's good to impress upon them the wide range of experiences.

65 - A Land So Strange: The Epic Journey of Cabeza de Vaca by Andrés Reséndez

This is a wonderful book, though rather short (it's not like there are masses of sources to investigate, after all). It's about a group who set out to colonize Florida in 1528, and were shipwrecked there. It took them ten years of trekking westward from Florida to the American Southwest, living with various indigenous tribes, often enslaved, to find other Spaniards. Out of 400 men, four of them survived the entire ordeal.

I highly recommend this book. It gives you a good background of some of the men and on the colonization of the Caribbean and the early forays into Mexico at the beginning. It is absolutely fascinating, and well-written.

I actually listened to this while reading The Black Count, which was kind of interesting, particularly since a lot of the beginning is about the colonization of the islands where Alexandre Dumas' father grew up. I think if I could resurrect an author, I'd take Dumas and get him to write a novel about Cabeza de Vaca's journey across the US. If you're thinking about going with the audiobook, the reader is fine, with a good Spanish accent.

66 - The Black Count: Revolution, Betrayal, and the Real Count of Monte Cristo by Tom Reiss

This book is definitely going in my list of utterly perfect non-fiction. Given the people giving it relentlessly positive blurbs, I had high hopes.

The Black Count is a biography of Alexandre Dumas' father, who inspired many characters and aspects of his son's fiction. He was the son of a French count and a black Haitian slave, who grew up in Haiti, was leased into slavery by his father (to help pay the count's passage back to France), and then led the life of a rich playboy when he arrived in France before joining the army and becoming a committed Republican fighter.

Now, that's one hell of a hook. This biography is written exquisitely and I found myself applauding the author over what he chose to include and to point out, and the amount of historical background he included. There's enough background for a novice of the period to feel well-informed, but not so much to bore the knowledgeable, and every bit relates back to Dumas' life.

The book is full of extracts from Alexandre Dumas' memoir, letters written to and from the General and his close family and friends, and various military dispatches. I was honestly slightly shocked over just how many source documents were available. The book is exciting, joyous, and heart wrenching at times, with the flow and intensity of a novel. Just the history of slavery and race relations within France in this period would make a fascinating book on it's own.

The only momentary annoyance I felt was during some references to Napoleon's height. The annoyance coming from the fact that his height was actually slightly above average for the period. Granted perhaps all of his generals were exceptionally tall, but the author could have pointed out that Napoleon really wasn't short in the least. That's just me being nitpicky though.

67 - Cahokia: Ancient America's Great City on the Mississippi by Timothy R. Pauketat

There are a lot of burial mounds in my area, or areas we commonly traveled, and while I loved visiting them I never picked up a book about any of the mound building cultures. My dad lived in Adams county, Ohio for a while and if you're ever nearby I highly recommend a visit to the Serpent Mound. It's just incredible (Fort Hill and Fort Ancient are close by as well, and also worth a visit).

Anyway, this book is quite short, and probably just for the general interest reader. It had a hell of a lot of information, and interesting information at that. I really enjoyed it, although the audio recording wasn't of the best quality and didn't have the best reader. Obviously with a subject like this there are leaps of thought being made, but the author points out when there's not a consensus between scientists and when something is a best guess.

I've seen criticisms that there are no illustrations in the book (though these days at least it's easy to look them up). Someone on Amazon said it was far too dry, but I don't agree with that. I think sometimes people get too used to to the humorous skittering non-fiction (which I also enjoy) and forget that many subjects can't be covered in random bursts and then packed to the gills with laughs.

68 - Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? by Mindy Kaling

This is a humorous sort-of memoir by comedy writer and actress Mindy Kaling. I am not sure why I picked this up.

It was very short, but not really interesting to me. I think Ms. Kaling and I wouldn't get along, so a lot of the book was just not my cup of tea. There are some parts that I enjoyed quite a bit, mostly being personal stories related to actually being a comedy writer (as opposed to shopping and men and such).

69 - How Children Succeed: Grit, Curiosity, and the Hidden Power of Character by Paul Tough

This is definitely not a parenting book, but more of a pop. science/education book. It's really well-researched and well-written. My only quibble was that I wanted a longer book.

The author mostly talks about how strictly cognitive skills are not good predictors of success, both in terms of IQ tests and things like the SAT and ACT college entrance tests not being a good indicator of success in college or life.

He spent a lot of time on various high school programs that help prepare kids for college, especially two that help low-income students, who are often behind their peers in grades, catch up and learn how to be good at school, basically, and encourage them to complete college. He examines one middle school program that initially just focused on cognitive skills, which had amazing success while the kids were in that school but watched the majority of students fall behind once they moved on to high school. Then there's another school that also focused heavily on character traits (self-control, perseverance, etc...) and had more success at getting their students to attend and complete college. The author spent a good bit of time in these schools, talking to students and teachers, and it shows.

I seriously recommend this book.

70 - The Worst Hard Time by Timothy Egan

I feel like I'm the last one to read this (though I have beaten my parents at it)!

This is a great book. It focuses specifically on the dust bowl regions, particularly Oklahoma and Texas, and on the relationship of the people to the land. It also focuses on a few specific towns and people/families, which gave it a really nice readability.

The world of the Great Depression and the measures that were enacted to combat it are SO relevant today, yet some people seem to have no understanding of why Social Security and a minimum wage that pays a living wage were and are so important. That it was and is a matter of life and death escapes their notice.

71 - Stuff: Compulsive Hoarding and the Meaning of Things by Randy Frost and Gail Steketee

An interesting and wide ranging look at hoarding. The authors worked with and studied numerous compulsive hoarders and tried to develop the best ways to treat the condition. It's wonderful in that mostly the book is talking to and about specific real people and general observations often refer back to them.

Very much worth reading.

I feel I could easily become a hoarder of books (were the money available, or if library book sales and used book stores suddenly became much more wheelchair accessible), as having books around is so comforting. Luckily I feel strongly about keeping books on shelves and can't afford more book cases. I also slightly worry that my mother has hoarding tendencies, so I felt like knowledge gleaned from this book could possibly be used in the future.

72 - The Poet and the Dream Girl: The Love Letters of Lilian Steichen and Carl Sandburg

I've been reading this book for an entire year, and really savoring it. I'm rarely to type to do that, as I'm perfectly happy to re-read books over and over again, but it occasionally happens that I put off finishing a book.

If I had to pick one favorite writer, from all genres, it would be Sandburg. Poetry, children's stories, biography, journalism... He was an incredible man.

The letters are fun and silly and intelligent and idealistic and beautiful. They reveal a great friendship and a romance built on so many levels. Here's a little piece I particularly liked:

"So that's the sort of Boy You are! You! You rip out a section of Ensor to take with you to study! Haven't you any respect for books? Don't you know that books must be handled with reverent care? Are you going to shatter the last idol--you Iconoclast, You!--H'm--So books are to be ripped up! You seem to think that books are for actual use, instead of for ceremonial worship!

...Gee, but I'm glad you're not afraid to rip a book up. You're no mystic book-worshipper! You've met that sort of people tho surely. B is of that type. Books are kept in painfully perfect condition. His library looks like a book-store--the books are so carefully handled, they look unused. That's fetishism, sayings Kitty Malone*--who loves the thought in the books with all her heart--but feels no reverence for the paper and type and binding!

*Steichen and Sandburg had a number of nicknames (some with personas) for each other, Kitty Malone being one.

73 - George, Nicholas, and Wilhelm: Three Royal Cousins and the Road to World War One by Miranda Carter

This is an absolutely excellent book. The larger historical events were familiar to me from Barbara Tuchman's The Guns of August but this is more detailed and of course heavily focused on the royals.

It was fascinating to look at the relationships between the monarchs (and you get that from the whole bunch, not just the three in the title) and see what power (or lack there of) they really had. It's easy to view them as one dimensional characters, and ignore all the average human qualities and desires that had to fight with the positions they held.

To me, this is the most important thing to study about WWI - the twenty years or so leading up to it and the first month or two of the war itself. To understand why it happened and how it developed into trench warfare is the key. Highly recommended, especially read with The Guns of August.

74 - The Good Girls Revolt: How the Women of Newsweek Sued their Bosses and Changed the Workplace by Lynn Povich

This lawsuit against Newsweek was the first female class action lawsuit by journalists, and inspired a string of similar lawsuits from a variety of publications.

The book is relatively short and very easy to read. Povich interviewed around forty people and the book is full of quotes by the women involved and the men who were at the top at the time.

Povich goes into detail about what each women wanted, or didn't want, why some joined the lawsuit and others didn't, and why the victory was good for some of the women and bad for others. She also talks about the difficulty in implementing changes and dealing with men who were often very liberal and just didn't see or admit the problems.

It's a quick read, and I really recommend it. It also goes into three young women working at Newsweek int he mid-2000s, who had never felt/noticed that kind of institutional sexism until working there. The lawsuit was a great victory for women journalists in general, but it's important to realize that there are still huge problems, and that feminism is still 'needed' and important to young women today.

75 - Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain by David Eagleman

This is an interesting, light, popular science book. However, if you've already read You Are Not So Smart then I'd give this a miss, or at least put a gap of six months to a year between reading the two. There's quite a bit of overlap. While both books are well-written, You Are Not So Smart has more humor and Incognito brings up more serious social topics. There's a great chapter or two on crime and criminal sentencing.

76 - Debt: The First 5,000 Years by David Graeber

This book is perfect. It's fascinating, well-written, accessible, and funny to boot.

I would say that at least two thirds of the book deals with pre-16th century issues, which is fine by me. It discusses the origin of different types of markets, the use of barter and the myth around it, coinage vs credit systems, and the various cycles of history.

Can't recommend this book highly enough. It's relevant to current worldly issues but not so focused on the present day that it's overly depressing. It's actually a prep book I picked out before reading The Student Loan Scam, because I'm a strange adult who prepares for reading other books, apparently. Not that the subjects are hugely relatable (to my knowledge), but I find it best to let the brain warm up slowly.

This year I've read a lot of excellent non-fiction, but this is definitely in my top five.

Now I have Debt on by wish list, even though it's a topic I didn't know I was interested in!

Ha, I didn't know I was interested either, honestly. I went into it without much excitement, but it immediately pulled me in.

77 - The Science of Discworld by Ian Stewart, Jack Cohen, and Terry Pratchett

This isn't about science IN Discworld, because of course they have magic, it's about looking at our own scientific history (creation and evolution of the earth, mostly) partly through eyes which don't see our world as the obvious one. So there will be short Discworld bits with the wizards observing Round World and then a long chapter or two about science.

It's a pop science book for a more niche audience, as I wouldn't go into this if you haven't read a number of Discworld books. Likewise, if you just like Discworld and aren't interested in the science, I wouldn't pick this up, as it is mostly science.

Quoting from Wikipedia: "The science centres on the origins of the universe, earth and the beginnings of life, the fiction on the creation of a world (the Earth) in a jar. One of the themes is that most scientific explanations are in reality a good deal more complicated than most of us realize. It is explained that this is because their teachers use Lies-To-Children."

All in all it was enjoyable. It went quite quickly and I was always happy to start it up again (listened to the audiobook). Makes me wish I'd planned more and that I was reading a more in-depth book on the subject soon. I know that without reenforcement I'll forget everything, and that makes me sad.

78 - Under the North Light: The Life and Work of Maud and Miska Petersham by Lawrence Webster

This is a beautiful book, and done very well.

The first 40 pages contain quick biographies of Maud and Miska and their life together. The rest of the book is broken up into various periods of their collaborative working lives. For instance there's a section on their early days illustrating books written by other people. The text of that section is followed by ten pages of solid pictures and this is the case with each chapter. The writing is solid and covers everything you'd want to know in a way that keeps you reading.

Really it's difficult to open to any page without a picture, which I love. There's enough text to get a feel for their lives and careers while still having plenty of beautiful pictures to admire. Each page of this book is a glossy one, and it really is a gorgeous edition. I can only hope it will spur the reprinting of some of their titles. I grew up with their illustrations it was impossible not to be fascinated by them, thus making me more interested in the text of the book as well.

79 - Krakatoa: The Day the World Exploded: August 27, 1883 by Simon Winchester

I have an odd love-hate relationship with Simon Winchester. I thoroughly enjoyed The Man Who Loved China, and liked The Professor and the Madman quite well. Then I was really lukewarm over Atlantic which went in an odd direction and used ridiculous language.

I enjoyed Krakatoa far more than Atlantic, but there were some issues. This book definitely isn't just about the explosion, island, or aftermath. It spends a lot of time talking about the science of plate tectonics and continental drift, which is good, but then also takes a long while talking about how those theories developed. I care about the science, I don't care about the history of that science, since it's really not relevant. Then there's quite a lot of time spent on Batavia and the history of that settlement. The effect of the eruption on the settlement is important, but I think Winchester just goes too far.

What I really grind my teeth over is some of the language. These exact phrases are found in this book: “soon about to happen” and “just about to begin shortly.” Seriously. Sometimes I think he does that just to see if people are paying attention.

The audiobook is okay, but not great. Winchester narrates it, and he's not awful, but it's easy to space out to his voice. Also, for some reason he makes an effort to pronounce the Javanese and other native names and the Dutch names correctly, but can't bother to pronounce Bogota correctly. Spanish pronunciation is super crazy consistent and that's the one he neglects? Then for some reason he does an American accent when quoting a few Americans. This baffles me since he doesn't do that with any other quotes, most of which come from Dutch persons. It's so unnecessary.

107: I haven't read that one, but I've read others... The Map That Changed the World for one. I have something of the same reaction: interesting subjects, but padded with unnecessary details.

80 - Empires of the Sea: The Siege of Malta, The Battle of Lepanto, and the Contest for the Center of the World by Roger Crowley

This was a good book, well-written, and generally interesting. It didn't quite make the leap to excellent for me, though this kind of military history is less interesting to me, so I'm sure it's partly that. This one has a fair number of direct quotes from various people involved and contemporary (or near contemp.) historians, which I really appreciate.

And it did allow me to understand another joke from Rocky and Bullwinkle (even if their reference was to a later thing with the same name). That, for me, is one of the greatest things about reading history - suddenly saying "Hey, I've heard that name before on Rocky and Bullwinkle!" Best cartoon ever.

81 - Inventing Japan: 1853-1964 by Ian Buruma

This was an interesting book, but not thoroughly enjoyable. It's relatively short, but the tone sometimes veered into the patronizing and that would ruin the next 20 minutes of reading for me. This is very much a surface book, and never goes very deeply into anything.

It does contain a lot of interesting information, though the title is never explained. Obviously it's not literally inventing Japan, and I assume it's related to the creation of modern Japan and the hand that western countries played in that. I think I would have called it "Manipulation Japan" in that case though.

82 - Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea by Barbara Demick

This was an excellently written and fascinating book. It's one of those that I think everyone should read, since it's important to know what's going on in our world.

The book follows the lives of various North Korean defectors, from their childhoods and lives in Korea to their defection and their lives in South Korea. It's very well written, the audiobook production was excellent, and there's not much else to say.

I was on the fence about reading this, since I think it's a subject that could easily be done badly, but I was very impressed with how Demick treated the subject. I recommend this to everyone, but especially if you've been waffling about it.

Thanks for the review. Nothing to Envy is definitely in my plans for 2013.

83 - The Swerve: How the World Became Modern by Stephen Greenblatt

I really enjoyed this book. It was interesting all the way through, and the layering of the information through studying Poggio's life made it exceptionally easy to read.

The information stays pretty surface, as it's more of a pop. history book than a scholarly work. Luckily, there are plenty of other books to explore on similar topics or themes brought up in this one.

Feeling rather guilty and worried that I don't have more to say on this, as I picked it for the first read for my non-fiction book club!

Not counting this as one of my 2012 books since I just couldn't finish it, but thought I'd post the review here anyway.

Divine Vintage: Following the Wine Trail from Genesis to the Modern Age by Randall Heskett

This book was not quite what I expected. From the description given I didn't expect it to be quite so religious in tone. The preface states that they're not treating the Bible as a history book, but throughout the first chapters they appear to do just that, or even to switch back and forth.

Aside from that, the book is just not well-written. It reads as though no one but the authors did any editing. Much of the writing is awkward and poorly worded. Early on you find gems like this:
"...where the desire for wine would have been a newfound, even exotic, produce."
"The vine does require sufficient water to survive."
"The presence of malvidin, a compound that gives red wine its color, reavealed that the wine being made was red wine."

Sometimes dates are given in reference to events, but often they're not, even when they're presenting information which leads you to believe they have specific dates in mind. When talking about the ratios of water to wine (in reference to watered wine in Rome) they don't point out which number represents wine and which water in the first instance, but they do later on. This is really basic stuff, that any editor should have pointed out.

The second half of the book is just a tasting tour of Middle Eastern wines with a few pages about the history of modern wine making in those areas.

There is some interesting information in this book, which is the only reason I give it two stars, but the writing and inconsistencies just make it hard to get through.

84 - Nature Via Nurture: Genes, Experience, and What Makes Us Human by Matt Ridley

This was a really interesting book. Psychological analysis and always been a talent of mine, and an interest from a young age (I blame having four older siblings none of whom were close enough to my age to be playmates). The nature/nurture debate is always interesting and this book does seem to put the 'competition' to rest. I should really make a point to reread The Soul's Code by James Hillman now and see how the theories compare.

My only quibble is that the writing can be a little awkward/misleading when he's presenting the theories of various scientists. At times it sounds like the author is the one expressing a particular idea, though I don't think that's entirely the case. There were a few parts of the book that make me roll my eyes, but it is full of very interesting information and I do recommend it.

115: Hmm... of course I'd add it to the wishlist, but one review says it's similar to Genome, which I read a few years ago. I probably have enough on the wishlist anyway.

Yeah, there's quite a lot of overlap in that type of science book. This one focuses about equally on genes and psychology (well, actually the balance might slightly favor psychology) and on the way some genes seem to respond only to nurture factors.

I'm really happy with my non-fiction reading this year. I read some great titles and a read a bit more non-fiction than fiction each month. It was a good balance and generally kept me from feeling burnt out by mediocre fiction.