A list of books I completed reading in 2007. The date in brackets is the date I finished reading the book.

January:
1. [2 Jan] On Beauty - Zadie Smith. An excellent novel exploring race, religion, and class relations within two families in New England. Ms. Smith has a gift for description and dialog. I really enjoyed this book.

2. [6 Jan] Next - Michael Crichton. Typical Crichton - take a scientific idea, run with it. Less plot and intensity than his classic novels; one of his weaker efforts.

3. [11 Jan] The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time - Mark Haddon. A short but unique novel - narrated by a teenaged autistic boy. Good stuff. Oh, and the protagonist’s first two names are Christopher John.

4. [14 Jan] The Archivist: A Novel - Martha Cooley

5. [18 Jan] Treasure of Khan - Clive Cussler. I’ve enjoyed the Dirk Pitt novels through the years, but I think the series is getting tired.

6. [21 Jan] Empire - Orson Scott Card. OSC envisions a near future where a powerful political mastermind kicks off a Red State - Blue State civil war. The crisp prose we’ve come to expect from Card, the story nearly believable.

7. [22 Jan] A Star Is Found: Our Adventures Casting Some of Hollywood’s Biggest Movies - Janet Hirshenson and Jane Jenkins. A quick conversational read about the business of casting movies. These two women have cast some of my favorite movies (The Princess Bride, for instance), so the stories of casting are a fun inside look at what might have been, or what almost wasn’t.

8. [26 Jan] This Is Your Brain On Music - Daniel J. Levetin. A fascinating look at hour our brains hear, remember, and respond to music.

9. [27 Jan] Velvet Elvis - Rob Bell. A more extended review here.

February:

10. [3 Feb] Hell’s Best Kept Secret - Ray Comfort. A more extended review here.

11. [6 Feb] The Traitor - Stephen Coonts. Coonts has managed to succeed where Tom Clancy failed: continuing a series even after the main character has been promoted too far to be useful. How? Introduce a new character (in this case, Tommy Carmellini), and keep Jake Grafton around as a minor player. It works.

12. [9 Feb] Love Is A Mix Tape: Life and Loss, One Song at a Time - Rob Sheffield. A short but touching account of the author’s love for and loss of his wife, and the music that provided the soundtrack.

13. [12 Feb] Sagramanda - Alan Dean Foster. “A Novel of near-future India.” A somewhat basic action thiller, it manages to be reasonably futuristic without abandoning a firm sense of reality. A good read.

14. [17 Feb] The Everlasting Man - G. K. Chesterton. I’ve been working on this one for a while. You gotta read it slow just to take in all that Chesterton is saying. A brilliant response to the humanists and Rationalists of his day, and a nice end focusing on the person of Christ.

15. [20 Feb] The Emperor’s Children - Claire Messud. Recommended by Kari, this one explores morality and life choices in an intriguing way. Reminded me of On Beauty from earlier this year - this one might have been better… tough call.

16. [24 Feb] Variable Star - Robert Heinlein & Spider Robinson. A sci-fi novel originally mapped out by Heinlein, then completed by Robinson after Heinlein’s death. The lead character, after finding out the girl he loves is the heir to the galaxy’s largest fortune, takes off on an “intergalactic bender”… hey, it’s a good story. Probably my favorite of the year thus far.

March:

17. [1 Mar] The Historian - Elizabeth Kostova. Fun to read a novel dealing with medieval times that isn’t a DaVinci Code knock-off. This one, instead, dealt with Dracula. Nothing groundbreaking, but a good escapist novel.

18. [1 Mar] Cannery Row - John Steinbeck. I’m still trying to catch up on my Steinbeck reading. This one is short but wonderful.

19. [6 Mar] Wild Fire - Nelson DeMille. I kept feeling like I’d read the book before… but I don’t remember reading it. A decent premise, but I’m growing more and more tired of books that have the hero averting the really bad thing. I’m more interested in the author exploring the results after the really bad thing has happened.

20. [10 Mar] The Children of Men - P. D. James. I hear that the movie is only very loosely based on the book, but I’ll still be interested to see it (I haven’t seen it yet). This book wins points from me based on the criteria I mentioned in my previous review: the author predicates a novel idea, and then explores the “what-if’s”. In this case, “what would happen if the entire human race lost the ability to reproduce?” It’s a compelling question, and the author handles it pretty well. I enjoyed this book.

21. [15 Mar] A Farewell to Arms - Ernest Hemingway. Somehow along the way I’ve missed most of Hemingway’s stuff. Ultimately a sad, somewhat depressing story, but he draws beautiful word pictures.

22. [16 Mar] Magic City: A Novel - James W. Hall. The flyleaf claims that this novel is to Miami what LA Confidential is to Los Angeles. I don’t know that I’d go that far, but it was a decent little novel that tries to tie in the Cuban experience in Miami. A quick read.

23. [18 Mar] The Thief of Time - John Boyne. An interesting story narrated by a man who stopped aging at 50 and is now 256 years old. Mixing historical and fictional characters, it’s a compelling read.

April:

24. [17 Apr] Our Iceberg Is Melting: Changing and Succeeding Under Any Conditions - John Kotter, Holter Rathgeber. I broke my book fast a little early to read this little volume as requested by the chair of our elder board in preparation for a planning meeting. In general, I am skeptical of short leadership/motivational books like this one, but this one was pretty good.

25. [25 Apr] Odyssey - jack McDevitt. A sci-fi adventure that reminds the reader that while there are mysteries “out there”, there is also no changing human nature. Acceptably interesting but not just blow-me-away awesome.

May:

26. [3 May] Sun of Suns (Virga, Book 1) - Karl Schroeder. A new sci-fi series with a neat premise: in the far future, these “worlds” are housed in space inside giant (several thousand kilometer diameter) balloons, and the whole world has an atmosphere, but gravity is only provided as the cities generate their own by rotating. There’s a lot more to it - I’m not gonna summarize the whole book, but if you’re in to this genre (*dan, this means you), you should read this book.

27. [12 May] Emperor: Time’s Tapestry Book 1 - Stephen Baxter. I’ve been a big fan of Baxter’s sci-fi writing in the past (the Manifold: series is worth a re-read here sometime soon) so I picked this one up on the strength of his name alone. Supposedly this is an “alternate history” novel. I’ll have to admit that I guess I’m not familiar enough with the early Roman domination of Britain to know which parts were alternate. It does have an ending that really sets up the next book, though… not a bad read.

28. [17 May] The Collectors - David Baldacci. Fairly basic, but fun sort of whodunit/thriller. Too many twists too late in the game for my taste, but still enjoyable.

29. [21 May] In War Times - Kathleen Ann Goonan. Now this was a heck of a book. Wrapping multiple time continuums up with jazz music in the setting of World War II… thoughtful, insightful. Excellent. In my top 2 for the year this far.

30. [22 May] The Sun Also Rises - Ernest Hemingway. I can never decide whether I’m bored with Hemingway or whether I really like him. This time, his spare prose won me over. Now I need to re-listen to Andy Osenga’s Marilyn.

31. [24 May] The Alexandria Link: A Novel - Steve Berry. I should’ve known better than to pick this one up. Fresh off his last novel which was part of the whole set of DaVinci Code knock-offs, this one set out to deny the other testament of the Bible. In this one, Sts. Jerome and Augustine conspired to mistranslate the Old Testament to give the Jews claim to Palestine rather than the real place they were from: Arabia. Give me a break. I won’t be picking up another Steve Berry book.

32. [31 May] The Hunters - W. E. B. Griffin. W.E.B. is probably my favorite author of this genre, especially now that Clancy isn’t writing any more. Good military adventure fiction.

June

33. [ 5 June] Manifold: Time - Stephen Baxter. [Reread] I really enjoyed Baxter’s Manifold trilogy. A perspective on time that you won’t soon forget.

34. [8 June] Deep Storm: A Novel - Lincoln Child. I’ve enjoyed Child’s stuff in the past - this one was just OK. Crichton’s Sphere is a better undersea thriller, and the sci-fi aspect of this one was almost nil. Meh.

35. [9 June] My Life with the Great Pianists - Franz Mohr. A short, quick, read by the man who was the primary concert piano technician for Steinway for many years. He worked closely with Horowitz, Rubinstein, and Van Cliburn. Some nice stories and anecdotes.

36. [14 June] Rollback - Robert J. Sawyer. I became a fan of Sawyer’s a few years ago, but this one cements him as one of my current favorites in the sci-fi genre. In Rollback, a husband and his famous scientist wife are offered the chance for gene therapy to “roll back” their aging process - to take them from age 85 to age 25. His rollback works - hers doesn’t. Sawyer does a good job of exploring the dilemmas and frustrations a man in that position would face. Fun reading.

37. [18 June] The Gladiator (Crosstime Traffic) - Harry Turtledove. An OK story - I just have a hard time getting into the “Crosstime” genre. The basic idea is that the Communists win the Cold War, and this is set some 150 years in the future. When you get down to it, there’s not that much story, which is probably what annoys me.

38. [24 June] The Righteous Men - Sam Bourne. I think we can all admit by now that The Davinci Code spawned a whole new genre of ancient-religious-mysticism thrillers. This is another one. I swore off Steve Berry a few books above for yet another novel bashing Christianity. This one was much better written than any of Berry’s novels, and the plot centered on Jewish mysticism rather than Christian. So far, so good, I’m thinking. But guess who the bad guys end up being? That’s right, radical, “right-wing” Christians. *sigh* Still, pretty well written. Entertaining.

39. [27 June] The Children of Húrin - J. R. R. Tolkien. This was my first foray into Tolkien’s backhistory of LOTR; I haven’t tried the Simarillion or any of its kin in many years, and I never got through them in the first place. However, this volume of Tolkien is magnificent, accessible, and heartbreaking. A true epic.

40. [29 June] The Execution Channel - Ken Macleod. The flyleaf of this book called it a “blogothriller”, and while I’m not exactly sure that’s a real genre yet, Macleod shows a good grasp for how online news sources and blogs might strategically be used in the future. A moderately entertaining book.

41. [30 June] Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln - Doris Kearns Goodwin. I’ve been working on this one for a while. Goodwin does a heck of a job at weaving an engaging narrative. She shows how Lincoln brilliantly pulled his political rivals onto his team, and then managed to keep them together and effective throughout the Civil War. I knew before that I was impressed with Lincoln; after this book I am even more so. Good, good book.

July

42. [10 July] Kepler’s Witch: An Astronomer’s Discovery of Cosmic Order Amid Religious War, Political Intrigue, and the Heresy Trial of His Mother - James A. Connor. This biography of Johannes Kepler chronicles how his faith interacted with his scientific discoveries, and the persecution he went through as a Lutheran in a land dominated by Catholics. A well-written book, respectful of Kepler’s faith, and drawn from new, first-time translations of several of Kepler’s letters. Interesting stuff.

43. [12 July] Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone (Book 1) - J. K. Rowling. I have resisted the HP craze until now, but with all the furor both for and against the books, I figured it was time to read them for myself. You know what? It was a fun book. Fairly imaginative, good characters, fun to read. I’ll go ahead and read the next one.

44. [16 July] Exile: A Novel - Richard North Patterson. I’ve been a fan of RNP’s novels for a while - generally lengthy (which I like) and detailed/twisted enough to be enjoyable. This story, though, was less a twisted novel and more an excursus into the politics of the Middle East wrapped in a slim fictional wrapper. Still an interesting read, though - he did a lot of research, and the characters and situations, while fictional in detail, are undoubtedly representative of real people.

45. [20 July] Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (Book 2) - J. K. Rowling. I don’t know that I’m a die-hard Harry fan yet, but I’m interested enough to keep reading. Another entertaining book.

46. [23 July] Bad Luck and Trouble - Lee Child. I’ve enjoyed the Jack Reacher series, and this one didn’t disappoint. Reacher is a retired Army investigator whose entire belongings are the toothbrush in his pocket and the clothes on his back. He wanders through life and runs into his share of trouble. This one was a pretty good story.

47. [24 July] Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (Book 3) - J. K. Rowling. This volume seems to be where Rowling decides to make the novels a little more involved. This one is more detailed and more complicated than the first two volumes, which to me makes it even more enjoyable. I’ll keep reading.

48. [26 July] Magic Street - Orson Scott Card. A fascinating book of fantasy, set in Los Angeles and loosely based on A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Card consistently turns out some of my favorite prose.

49. [28 July] The Book of Fate - Brad Meltzer. I was taking a chance on this one; I have gotten sick of the Davinci-esque novels, but I have enjoyed Meltzer in the past. I wasn’t disappointed here; the whole thing with the Freemasons seems to have been hacked in just so the publisher could try to sell it as being in the Davinci genre; in reality, it’s just a solid thriller/whodunit. An entertaining read.

August:

50. [4 Aug] Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (Book 4) - J. K. Rowling. With this installment in the HP series, Rowling seems to have realized that she has the opportunity to hook readers who are older than 12. Ergo, 800+ pages, a slightly more complicated, less formulaic novel. This is my favorite so far. Three more to go.

51. [7 Aug] Strike Force: A Novel - Dale Brown. I enjoy Brown’s novels for being a bit forward-looking, and yeah, for the sweet technology. However, his plots are getting tired; every book for the last several has been the general with all the cool toys saving the world whilst facing opposition from a political and military establishment that distrusts him. It worked the first few times, but now, it’s getting a bit threadbare.

52. [12 Aug] Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (Book 5) - J. K. Rowling. This one is darker than the previous books, but the story really starts to develop here. It feels less like a standalone story and more like a piece of a longer saga. Good stuff.

53. [14 Aug] Chosen Soldier: The Making of a Special Forces Warrior - Dick Couch. The author, himself a former Navy SEAL, takes us on a journey through the five phases of an Army Special Forces (aka Green Berets) training course. I find this sort of stuff fascinating, and Couch’s ear for dialogue makes it all the more enjoyable.

54. [21 Aug] Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (Book 6) - J. K. Rowling. Six down, only one to go. I’m hooked.

55. [23 Aug] Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (Book 7) - J. K. Rowling. Finished the series. Wow. Just wow. A nearly perfect ending.

56. [27 Aug] The Echelon Vendetta - David Stone. The flyleaf reviews made glowing comparisons to Ludlum and LeCarre. I’ve got a grain of salt here for ya. It wasn’t bad, but certainly not up to those lofty standards.

September

57. [3 Sep] Making Room for Life: Trading Chaotic Lifestyles for Connected Relationships - Randy Frazee. Pastor Richard bought this one for all of the elders and we’re gonna go through it together. I found it reasonable, but not exactly revolutionary. Frazee’s conclusion: live a community-based, integrated life, and restrict your work to half the day (he suggests 6 AM - 6 PM), saving the remaining hours for family time and sleep. A bit pie-in-the-sky, the more I think about it.

58. [8 Sep] The Echo Maker - Richard Powers. I’m not quite sure about this one. I read through to the end, but my big motivation was just finishing the book, not because I was quite so interested in the story. An exploration of a brother-sister relationship and who we think we are. Meh.

59. [14 Sep] The First Commandment: A Thriller - Brad Thor. I’ve enjoyed this series; this one similarly does not disappoint. A fun read.

60. [17 Sep] Dr. Seuss & Mr. Geisel: A Biography - Judith and Neal Morgan. A biography of that writer we all know and love, Dr. Seuss. A fascinating picture of a man who wasn’t really interested in fame and hated the spotlight, but loved wit, wordplay, and cartooning.

61. [22 Sep] The Double Agents - W.E.B. Griffin and William E. Butterworth IV. I have long been a fan of Griffin’s various wartime series; they are some seriously good writing and characters. This one was a weaker effort; it felt less like a story in its own right and more like a bunch of narrative and character development that needed to happen to connect the previous book to the presumably-upcoming book. Ah well, still enjoyable.

62. [27 Sep] Category 7 - Bill Evans and Marianna Jameson. A cheap sort-of thriller about the possibilities of people being able to create and control the weather. Confusing, actually. I couldn’t keep track of the characters well at all.

63. [30 Sep] Conqueror: Time’s Tapestry Book Two (Time’s Tapestry) - Stephen Baxter. The second in the series, this “alternate history” deals with the ages leading up to the Battle of Hastings in 1066. Interesting to think about that period. I have enjoyed the series thus far.

October

64. [5 Oct] Volk’s Game: A Novel - Brent Ghelfi. The review on the front said “Brent Ghelfi writes like Dostoevsky’s hooligan great-grandson on speed.” How can you resist a line like that? The hero of this international thriller is a rather bad Russian guy. It’s hip and hooligan for sure. It was OK, I enjoyed some of the characters, but it had a little too much off-color material for my taste.

65. [6 Oct] Overclocked: Stories of the Future Present - Cory Doctorow. A collection of short sci-fi stories. This is the first time in recent memory that I’ve read sci-fi that really seemed to be tuned in to the present - Doctorow has managed to grab on to the realities of the internet age and project them just a bit into the future. Good stuff.

66. [9 Oct] Requiem for an Assassin - Barry Eisler. I love the John Rain series. Love love love. In the Japanese-American hit man John Rain, Eisler has created a rich, multifaceted character that keeps you engaged. Another great book in the series.

67. [11 Oct] Circumference of Darkness - Jack Henderson. This post-9/11 novel revolves around a brilliant computer hacker and an equally brilliant government computer expert who join forces to hold off the *next* attack. A bit uneven, yeah, but quite a novel for a first-time author. A fun read.

68. [14 Oct] White Night (The Dresden Files, Book 9) - Jim Butcher. I decided to give the Dresden series another try, and I enjoyed this one. I should probably try to back up and read from the beginning - might help with the confusion level.

69. [18 Oct] Simple Genius - David Baldacci. Baldacci’s investigative thrillers have always been of medium quality to me - readable, enjoyable, but not great. This one continues the trend. Too much agonizing over psychologists, too unlikely a plot. Meh.

70. [28 Oct] No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt: The Home Front in World War II - Doris Kearns Goodwin. A history of the American experience in 1940-1944, through the lens of the Roosevelt White House. DKG knows how to tell a story by pulling in the lives of the people surrounding the “name” players. (Another good example of this is her more recent book on Lincoln.) Interesting stuff. I don’t read enough history.

71. [28 Oct] The Road - Cormac McCarthy. No, I didn’t read this one because Oprah recommended it. But I’d heard talk of McCarthy and realized I’d never read anything of his, so I grabbed this one. Wowza. Dark, harrowing, but not entirely despairing. A chilling picture of the post-apocalyptic experience.

November

72. [6 Nov] All the Pretty Horses - Cormac McCarthy. OK, so I didn’t really plan to read two McCarthy novels in a row, but I ditched the Salman Rushdie book about a hundred pages in. So instead I catch up on McCarthy. Superlatives fail me. Not a complex plot, but beautifully written and picturesque in a way you rarely find. I can understand why they rate McCarthy as one of the top American authors. Good stuff.

73. [14 Nov] Spook Country - William Gibson. Gibson is one of those authors I know I’m supposed to like, but I struggle with really getting into his books. This one was OK - I was tempted to put it down half-way through, but I hate quitting books in the middle. Still, it took me a week to read it because I didn’t have any trouble putting it down to do other things.

74. [17 Nov] Darkness Falls - Kyle Mills. I’ve enjoyed most of Mills’ novels, so I picked this one (his latest) up. I was mildly disappointed. The basic idea is that an environmental terrorist gets his hands on an oil-eating bacteria and contaminates all the worlds oil wells, causing a massive world oil shortage. The problem is that Mills can’t decide whether he wants to write his usual thriller or an environmental missive. The result is a hodge-podge that isn’t all that thrilling, is only mildly preachy, and fails to really explore how the world might change if oil was suddenly scarce.

75. [21 Nov] Engleby: A Novel - Sebastian Faulks. A rather interesting first-person narrative by a character who is a liar and cheat, and may or may not have had something to do with the disappearance of a girl.

76. [24 Nov] The Manhattan Project: The Birth of the Atomic Bomb in the Words of Its Creators, Eyewitnesses and Historians - Cynthia Kelly and Richard Rhodes, Editors. A compilation of bits and pieces from a multitude of writers surrounding the US development of the first atomic bomb. What could have been rather dry history stays lively and interesting as you get differing voices and viewpoints.

77. [25 Nov] Red Sea: A Novel - Emily Benedek. A darn good novel for a first-time novelist, spinning a yarn about a newspaper reporter who works in league with an Israeli intelligence agent and an FBI agent to stop a terrorist plot.

78. [25 Nov] The Wheel of Darkness - Lincoln Douglas and Preston Child. This Agent Pendergast series by Douglas/Child is another one I really enjoy. This one was far more into the spiritist/Buddhism angle than previous books have been, but it still wound into the story OK. It was enjoyable to have Constance Greene (Agent Pendergast’s “ward”) play a larger role in this story, too.

79. [30 Nov] Malice - Robert K. Tanenbaum. The name sounds familiar, but I can’t remember reading one of this guy’s novels before. It was really quite good - a legal sort of thriller, complex in plot and flawless in execution. I’ll have to see what else he’s written.

December

80. [1 Dec] Travels in the Scriptorium - Paul Auster. A short, baffling, almost recursive story. I’m not sure what else to say about it. It wasn’t bad; it was, though, rather curious.

81. [1 Dec] A More Perfect Constitution: 23 Proposals to Revitalize Our Constitution and Make America a Fairer Country - Larry J. Sabato. A fascinating book. I’m not sure I agree with all his assumptions about what’s “fair”, but on the whole there are some good suggestions in there. I should really think about interacting with it in a longer blog post.

82. [7 Dec] Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close - Jonathan Safran Foer. Ryan recommended this one to me, and it was well worth the read. A unique storytelling style and voice provide a story about an exceptional boy dealing with the personal aftermath of 9/11.

83. [12 Dec] The Execution of Sherlock Holmes - Donald Thomas. Newly-written Sherlock Holmes stories are nearly their own genre these days. I’ve read a bunch of them, but few come as close to replicating Arthur Conan Doyle’s voice of John Watson, M. D., as does Mr. Thomas. Enjoyable little stories.

84. [19 Dec] The Book of Air and Shadows - Michael Gruber. Tangentially in the DaVinci Code genre, this one focuses on a long-lost ancient manuscript, but at least this time religion isn’t involved. Scholars and mobsters cross continents and unravel codes in search of the lost play of William Shakespeare. I dug it for a while, but by the end it was losing me. Just OK, really, not great.

85. [24 Dec] The Ghost - Robert Harris. A small story of political intrigue framed around the experience of a ghost writer. Less detailed and complex (and therefore, less interesting) than I thought it might be.

86. [30 Dec] The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window Into Human Nature - Steven Pinker. A rather lengthy, and somewhat thick look at the English language and language in general. He uses the study of words, particularly verbs, to give some insight on how the brain works and how we process things at a sub-language level. Interesting read.

Tags: Books