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Ugh. Couldn’t Finish It.	Read It.	Might Maybe Recommend It?	It’s a Keeper!	Love It Unconditionally

JANUARY

>Talking Right: How Conservatives Turned Liberalism into a Tax-Raising, Latte-Drinking, Sushi-Eating, Volvo-Driving, New York Times-Reading, Body-Piercing, Hollywood-Loving, Left-Wing Freak Show – Geoffrey Nunberg: The title pretty much explains it all. I guess Lolly and I need to get a Volvo. This was an interesting read although not much surprising contained therein. I still prefer “The Way We Talk Now” as a review of language and its uses more generally than his last two more politically geared books. [ 3 ]

>Consider the Lobster – David Foster Wallace:

>Best Non-Required Reading 2007 – ed. by Eggers: In an earlier edition I liked the short, silly stuff better, but in this edition the prose pieces – fiction and non – really were great. I wasn’t so sure at first, but a number of the stories have stuck with me and I think I will even reread some of them. [ 4 ]

FEBRUARY

>Life Interrupted – Spalding Gray: It took me some time to read this. It is mostly eulogy and best in small, meaningful, doses. The monologue is clearly only in working form, but even so has the funny moments of clarity one would expect. [ 4 ]

MARCH

>The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay – Michael Chabon: I thought this was a very well crafted novel, engaging in all the right ways, and with historical resonance that I found most compelling. [ 4 ]

>Bioethics Mediation – Dubler and Liebman: Nightmares about role-playing exercises ensued. [ 3 ]

>Age of Bronze: A Thousand Ships – Eric Shanower: It’s part one of a graphic novel about the Trojan war; not quite the Iliad with pictures. [ 3 ]

>The Ring of Brightest Angels Around Heaven – Rick Moody:

APRIL

>Age of Bronze: Sacrifice and Age of Bronze: Betrayal Part 1 – Eric Shanower: Things pick up a little in the story of the Trojan War. The characters are getting fleshed out more by the second book (and I can better tell them apart) and continue to be interesting ‘individuals’ by the third book. Better than first release. Now I might have to wait a year or more for the next installment. Rats. [ 3 ]

>Morning, Noon and Night – Spalding Gray: All about being a dad and stuff, a day in the life sort of thing. It was well done and everything, maybe I just couldn’t stop thinking about what those kids are thinking and doing now. [ 2 ]

>Black Hole – Charles Burns: A graphic novel about spooky bad things happening to Seattle teenagers in the 70’s. Creepy. And pretty. But creepy. [ 4 ]

MAY

>Lord of the Flies – William Gibson: This is one of those books I should have read in high school with everyone else, but instead my class was dressing up like Greek Gods or looking at our auras. Pretty much as expected. [ 3 ]

>Water for Elephants – Sarah Gruen: A worthy award winner, an engrossing tale. A little bit after watching this I came across “The Circus Queen Murder” from 1932 and it tied in nicely. Sorta kinda. I would just like to comment that I do not understand Aldophe Menjou as a leading man at all and that the title of this movie is a spoiler for the third act. Maybe in 1932 people didn’t want to be shocked! by their films. I don’t know. Anyway, the book was good. [ 4 ]

>My Life in France – Julia Child (with Paul Prud’homme): Paul composes Julia’s memoir of her early years in France through conversations, letters and Julia’s own writing. Nostalgic, funny and sweet, and probably a little bit fictional. [ 5 ]

JUNE

>The Fortune Cookie Chronicles: Adventures in the World of Chinese Food – Jennifer 8 Lee: Spoiler Alert! Fortune cookies have Japanese origins. And Americans are weird! [ 3 ]

JULY

>Julia Child (Penguin Lives Series) – Laura Shapiro : A brief biography of Julia that touches on key points in her life: family history, government work, getting married, going to France, writing the books, doing TV, not being homophobic so much any more, and growing old. [ 3 ]

>Game On! How Women’s Basketball Took Seattle by Storm - Jayda Evans: Overview of women’s professional basketball, with a focus on Seattle Storm thru’ 2005. Knew a lot of this stuff already but it was a fun read and I’m ready for a second edition in a couple years. [ 3 ] And… Jayda recently told me to “shut up!” :)

>Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In – Fisher and Ury: I am now unstoppable. There is no way I cannot get what I want and make you happy to give it to me. [ 2 ]

>Buffy the Vampire Slayer Omnibus Volume 1 – various: This is a nifty little collection that includes … the way the movie should have been, what happened to Pike, how bad Ripper was, and Buffy’s stint in the loony bin. Good comic work on established story lines. [ 4 ]

>Difficult Conversations: How to Discuss What Matters Most – Stone, Patton and Heen: So, what I’m hearing from you is that you thought you needed a way to have difficult conversations, to discuss what matters most to you? Would you say that’s an accurate reflection of what this is all about? [ 2 ]

AUGUST

>Julie & Julia: 356 Days, 524 Recipes, 1 Tiny Apartment Kitchen – Julie Powell: I thought this was gone to be all precious and shit, but Lolly recommended it so I gave it a go. It’s funny and not precious at all. Mrs. Powell is a foul-mouthed hot head (and Buffy fan) who says the word “fuck” to her mother. And the cooking stuff is interesting too. [ 4 ]

>Best American Comics 2007 – Anne E. Moore (ed.): Good enough. Although I love “Fun Home” I don’t know that it should be in the same anthology two years in a row. I’d already read more of these than I had from the previous compilation. Nothing jumped out as something I want to go out and get. Maybe I’d just read the best stuff already? [ 3 ]

>Letting Go of God – Julia Sweeney: Yup, the Julia Sweeney from SNL. She put out a performance a few years ago called “God Said Ha!” (which I highly recommend). This is a stand alone project, an audio book actually (with a little transcript included in the package), which I also must highly recommend. [ 5 ]

SEPTEMBER

>The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down – Anne Fadiman: Family of sick Hmong girl vs. Western medical establishment. There is too much to say about this book, really. Enlightening. Moving. Educational. Etc. etc.  [ 4 ]

>The Escapists – Brian K. Vaughn (et al.): The hardcover equivalent of a special feature from “The Amazing Adventures…” book by Chabon. Cute. [ 2 ]

OCTOBER

>The Wordy Shipmates – Sarah Vowell: Funny and as interesting as the Puritans have ever been. It would have been nice to have had this handy when I had to study the bastards back in school. It’s not heavy or excessive with the details; time will tell how well it stays in my brain. [ 3 ]

>Buffy the Vampire Slayer Omnibus Volume 2 – various: Another compendium, it is all C.O.W. — what I expected a Buffy comic to be (n/a to “season 8″) and why I haven’t been reading them. [ 2 ]

>Buffy the Vampire Slayer Omnibus Volume 3 – various: Like volume two, but one-note, poorly realized characterizations. [ 1 ]

>Best American Comics 2008 – Lynda Barry (ed.): Better than last year’s book; I didn’t glaze over anything but the excerpt from the upcoming “Berlin” book because I intend to read that one in full. I think there will be a couple books I will look into because of this so it was well worth the read. [ 4 ]

NOVEMBER

>Society Without God: What the Least Religious Nations Can Tell Us About Contentment – Phil Zuckerman: This would have been a good article in Harpers, maybe even a two-parter, but as a book it quickly got flat and repetitive. (And someone needs to tell Assistant Professor Zuckerman and his editor that people in hospice care are not actually dead yet. Twice he refers to a hospice nurse as “caring for the dead.”) The subject is interesting, but the presentation is sloppy and the conclusions lax. [ 2 ]

>Battlestar Galactica & Philosophy: Mission Accomplished or Mission Frakked Up? – Steiff and Tamblin (ed.)

DECEMBER

>Why Do Men Have Nipples?  – Leyner and Goldberg: Some interesting biology facts, but this kind of info can be found elsewhere in a less annoying format. Read it? More like skimmed it. [ 2 ]

>State by State : A Panoramic Portrait of America – Matt Weiland, Sean Wilsey