| Madame de Stael by Maria Fairweather, 474 pages James Donahue 28 July 2005 An excellent biography of the famous litteratrix, arch nemesis of Napoleon, matriach of French Romanticism, and general-all-around gender-bender. De Stael, whose homestead lay just outside Geneva, intrigued me because of my upcoming trip to her hometown, but the biography is so well-written and de Stael herself such a hoot, that I cannot but recommend this book to others with a general interest in the period. | Maid Marian (2004) by Elsa Watson, 307 pages Jennifer Dear 17 July 2007 Dust jacket says, "An irresistible reimagining of the Robin Hood legend." Jen says, "It makes me want to watch' Robin Hood' again." |
Make Love! the Bruce Campbell Way (a novel) by Bruce Campbell, 306 pages Kristin Schrock 27 February 2006 Bruce Campbell goes on a series of adventures after being cast in a "A" list movie. He amusingly references his "B" movie filmography throughout--including Tornado! (which was totally awesome) and Terminal Invasion (Classic Bad Book of TiVO movie). |
Male Fantasies (Vol 1) by Klaus Thiewelt, 435 pages James Donahue 10 February 2003 Examines the phantasmal world of Nazi youth. Attempts to get at their world view by examining their attitudes towards sex, chaos, and women (who were equated all too often.) Disturbing but profound. |
Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl, 193 pages Micaela Larkin 18 November 2006 |
Margot Asquith: An Autobiography (1906) by Margot Asquith, 541 pages James Donahue 20 March 2006 Margot, wife of the PM Asquith, socialite of socialites in fin-de-siecle Britain, sums up her life thusly: "A Lot of love-making, a little fame, and even more abuse." |
Marine Sniper by Charles Henderson, 283 pages Jeff Gadd 04 August 2002 A great true story about a Vietnam sniper there ever is. He has the most confermed kill in all sniper's at 93. |
Marpingen: Apparitions of the Virgin Mary in 19th-century Germany by David Blackbourn, 470 pages James Donahue 03 October 2003 Blackbourn has written a fascinating book about a small town with child visionaries that gets caught up in the ecclesiastical and political struggles of the period. I highly recommend it. |
Martin Heidegger: Between Good and Evil by Rudiger Safranski, 452 pages James Donahue 07 June 2003 Another wonderful biography by Safranksi. This book is recent enough to include the recent connections to Nazism that have surfaced while level-headed enough to make coherent sense of such findings. In this book Safranksi actually makes Heidegger understandable and human, two nearly impossible tasks. |
Marxism and Revolution: Kautsky and the Russian Marxists by Moira Donald, 289 pages James Donahue 25 February 2003 Details Kautsky's relations with both the Mensheviks and Bolsheviks, providing critical background to Kautsky's fallout with Lenin and the dissolution of the Second International infavor of the Third. Extensive archival work but a bit tedious. |
Marxism and the Leap to the Kingdom of Freedom by Andrzej Walicki, 635 pages James Donahue 24 October 2002 A real masterpiece of intellectual history tracing the roots of totalitarianism from Marx to Kruschchev. Especially excellent analysis of the early Soviet period. |
Mary Reilly by Valerie Martin, 244 pages Jeff Gadd 15 November 1999 |
Maskerade by Terry Pratchett, 358 pages Steven Krise 05 April 2007 Pratchett's take on "The Phantom of the Opera". |
Mason and Dixon by Thomas Pynchon, 773 pages James Donahue 27 December 2003 A satirical look at two men who helped conquer the world for orthongonality. Wickedly funny at times, but sometimes devolved into quixotic goofiness. Written in the style of Enlightenment prose: this was its best and worst feature. Often made my brain sparkle but sometimes overworked it for little reward. All in all, an eccentric and good read. |
Masterpieces of Terror and the Supernatural by Marvin Kaye, 613 pages Jeff Gadd 01 November 2002 Mr. Kaye selected from author's he like,he choise his favorite story from them. Some scary and other's plain weird. |
Maude Royden: A Life (1989) by Sheila Fletcher, 289 pages James Donahue 19 February 2006 Royden was England's first woman preacher of note. This biography sheds light primarily on her suffragist and pacifist activism. But Fletcher also does a good job revealing the chaotic ecclesial debates that followed her throughout the Anglo-American world. |
Maus by Art Spiegelman, 296 pages Steve Gadd 16 November 2009 |
Max Weber: Politics and the Spirit of Tragedy (1997) by John Patrick Diggins, 268 pages James Donahue 15 February 2008 Diggins knows a lot about Weber and sociology, but unfortunately he knows less about German intellectual history (except for the highlights) and extremely little (perhaps nothing) about Protestantism (or its supposed "ethic"). Because Diggins places Weber solely in a left-of-center intellectual canon, I think he misses quite a bit of Weber. Its a good book, but perhaps better for sociologists than for historians. |
Maximum Impact by Jean Heller, 632 pages Mike Gadd 22 May 2002 Interesting but tedious story about a newspaper reporter investigating the deadliest airline crash in US history. Too many plot points to keep your interest and too few twists to tickle your fancy. Would have been much better cut in half. |
Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris, 272 pages Steve Gadd 04 March 2009 A tolerable collection of amusing stories, perhaps a bit above the level of Dave Barry, and with regular F-bombs and social criticism to remind you that you're reading hipster counterculture and not mainstream drivel. In case those two are mutually exclusive. |
Me Talk Pretty One Day (2000) by David Sedaris, 272 pages Brad Snyder 01 April 2009 I saw that Steve read this and I remembered that it was on my mental reading list. Hilarious. |
Measuring the World (2006) by Daniel Kehlmann, 259 pages James Donahue 03 May 2008 Historical fiction that covers the Enlightenment projects of Alexander von Humboldt (world explorer and geographical legend) and Carl Friedrich Gauss (mathematician and astronomer). One spends his life bringing German science to bear on the world, the other explores the "inner world" without ever leaving Prussia and Hanover. The plot sounds gimmicky. Yet Kehlmann's prose makes it work. It breathes life into these difficult characters, these Wissenshaftsmenschen, while reflecting on modernity's semi-pathological compulsion to discover the mathematical precision of the world. (It occurs to me when reading back through this review that it will not entice anyone to read this book. Damn my writing! Read the book anyway!!!) |
Medievalism by GeorgeTyrrell, 184 pages James Donahue 08 May 2002 Written in 1908 to protest both Vatican I and the papal encyclical condemning Catholic-modernism. What sets this impassioned essay apart however is the author's use of prescholastic theology and the Church Fathers to argue against Vatican I. |
MEG by Steve Alten, 337 pages Jeff Gadd 02 December 1998 |
Meiji Protestantism in History and Historiography by Aaluv Sande, 141 pages James Donahue 14 April 2004 |
Memoirs (1935) by Count Bernstorff, 365 pages James Donahue 28 September 2006 Bernstorff was the German ambassador to DC before WWI; ambassador to the League of Nations after WWI. Here would be a refreshing change: a German politician willing to put some of the blame on himself. |
Memoirs 1950-1963 by George Kennan, 372 pages Tony Pisarenkov 02 December 2007 Necessarily selective, but a fascinating peek into the life of a career diplomat and the inevitable, eternal, and, to me as it is to Kennan, deeply depressing conflict between foreign and domestic policy, and the subservience of the former to the latter. |
Memoirs of an Invisible Man by H. F. Saint, 396 pages Steve Gadd 16 November 1996 Better than H. G. Wells |
Memoirs of an Invisible Man by H F Saint, 396 pages Steven Krise 04 October 2003 Thrilling story of the adventures of an invisible securities analyst. It is amazing the extent to which Saint thought about the psychology of being invisible. It goes without saying that the book is about 8000 times better than the Chevy Chase / Daryl Hannah movie version. |
Memoirs of an Invisible Man by H. F. Saint, 396 pages Steve Gadd 07 October 2004 The author really seems to have experienced invisibility to create such a convincing story. Once again, do not try to take a shortcut and watch the movie. |
Memories of My Melancholy Whores by Gabriel García Márquez, 115 pages Steve Gadd 21 April 2007 Win a Nobel Prize and you can scribble any old thing and get it published. Fortunately Gabo does it infrequently and keeps it short and kind of sweet. |
Memory, History, and the Extermination of the Jews by Saul Friedlander, 142 pages James Donahue 05 August 2002 Seven essays by a Jewish historian on the impossibility of writing a coherent history on an irreducibly incoherent genocide. |
Mere Christianity by C. S. Lewis, 191 pages Steve Gadd 18 June 1995 |
Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis, 191 pages Erik Bauer 25 March 2000 Both affirming and challenging 'contemplations' on Christianity. |
Messiah by Boris Starling, 457 pages Mike Gadd 29 June 2002 Bad guy thinks he's the next Messiah and he's looking to kill his 'apostles' in the same manner they died in history in order to bring them to martyrdom. Rather gory but quite intense. Nice character movement throughout and non-hollywood ending a plus. |
Metapolitics (2006) by Alain Badiou, 152 pages James Donahue 08 February 2006 Badiou continues to perplex and challenge me. |
Mickelsson's Ghosts by John Gardner, 590 pages Steven Krise 06 April 2008 I thought it was a story of one man's slow descent to the bottom (ala Fight Club) but Gardner threw in some back to back murder mystery twists in the last 50 pages. |
Microserfs by Douglas Coupland, 371 pages Steve Gadd 27 July 1997 |
Microserfs by Douglas Coupland, 371 pages Kristin Schrock 18 February 2002 The journals of a Microsoft coding geek. Part of the "work sucks" genre that I'm particularly fond of. Some parts very funny, some parts way too existential. |
Middlemarch by George Eliot, 791 pages James Donahue 01 August 2003 What a beautifully written book. Everything in its place, without seeming predictable. Her writing portrays, seemingly without effort, an entire social universe that crosses religious, class, and economic lines. Like looking at an ant farm. |
Middlemarch by George Eliot, 952 pages Kristin Schrock 07 March 2004 At last! "A woman dictates before marriage in order that she may have an appetite for submission afterwards." Thank you, George Eliot. Also, for Abennett, Effigy Count=1. |
Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides, 529 pages Jaqi Ross 11 March 2004 "Expansive and radiantly generous... Deliriously American." -The New York Times Book Review |
Midnight in the Garden of Good & Evil by John Berendt, 386 pages Steven Krise 30 March 2003 The movie is much better. |
Midwives by Chris Bohjalian, 372 pages Mike Gadd 25 June 2002 This book came highly recommended from the person who gave me 'The Red Tent', otherwise I wouldn't have touched it. I don't do 'Oprah' books. This one is about a midwife who loses a mom while delivering the child. It reads like it's 900 pages long. There's some slight payoff at the end, but the cost to get there is too great. It really bugs me that I have to finish a book no matter how bad it gets. How many days of my life have I lost because of this? Where's my intervention? There must be a self-help book out there to cure me. But what if I don't like it? |
Miles: The Autobiography by Miles Davis with Quincy Troupe, 441 pages Tony Pisarenkov 02 January 2009 An interesting book that is not very enjoyable to read. Definitely pops Miles's mystique bubble. My favorite bits were his unpopular at the time, but brutally honest opinions of fellow musicians. |
Mimi & Toutou's Big Adventure by Giles Foden, 241 pages James Donahue 12 June 2005 True story of the bizarre portage of two war-speedboats across Africa into Lake Tanganyika to battle a German warboat in the Great War. The British captain was insane, the Scots dour, the Germans just plain unlucky. Like a combination of Gilligan's Island and the Heart of Darkness. Foden is a smooth writer (i.e., not a professional historian) with a writer's eye for the unnecessary connection and a good yarn. |
Mirrors of Downing Street (1921) by Gentleman with a Duster, 171 pages James Donahue 02 March 2006 Brief, biting sketches of leading British politicians, from Churchill to Cecil to Lloyd-George. |
Misery by Stephen King, 335 pages Jeff Gadd 26 June 2002 Creepy story about a insane No 1 fan of a book writer. |
Miss Shumway Waves a Wand by James Hadley Chase, 169 pages Kristin Schrock 25 March 2002 I've been looking for this book for a long time. It's out of print in the U.S, but thanks to a interlibrary loan (hooray for the public library!) I got an ancient copy of it. It's a sort of magical realism noir. Bizarre and funny up until the third act which sort of goes astray. |
Missionary of Moderation: Henry Melchior Muhlenberg and the Lutheran Church in English America by Leonard Riforgiato, 237 pages James Donahue 03 October 2002 A biography of an amazing man. Muhlenberg came to the colonies in 1742 and by the force of his pastoral leadership organized the disparate Lutheran churches into a synod, all the while staying clear of evangelical revivalism and staid seventeenth-century orthodoxy. A remarkable testimony. |
mistaken identity by Lisa Scottoline, 565 pages Steven Krise 23 June 2004 Is Connolly Bennie's twin or not? Is she dead now? |
Mistress of Justice by Jeffery Deaver, 357 pages Steven Krise 01 September 2004 Tale of corporate espionage, coke-snorting lawyers, and high pressure corporate mergers...and don't forget the blood. They're all blood, you see. |
Modern Philosophy: An Introduction and Survey by Roger Scruton, 495 pages Tony Pisarenkov 25 March 2006 A sweeping and refreshingly lucid survey of Western philosophy from Descartes onwards. Scruton mostly delivers on the promise of making philosophy applicable to daily life, at least in the sections on political philosophy and aestehtic experience. His critique of deconstructionist and "liberationist" philosophies, while effective, is a bit heavy on religious language for my taste. |
Modoc by Ralph Helfer, 325 pages Jeff Gadd 16 December 1998 |
Molding Japanese Minds by Sheldon Garon, 243 pages James Donahue 24 May 2004 |
Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game by Michael Lewis, 288 pages Micaela Larkin 13 February 2007 |
Monkeewrench by MS. P.J. Tracy, 432 pages Mike Gadd 28 February 2005 Nicely written thriller about a killer imitating scenes from an unreleased computer game. |
Monsignor Quixote by Graham Greene, 221 pages Steve Gadd 07 February 1997 |
Monsignor Quixote by Graham Greene, 256 pages Steven Krise 08 October 2003 Started reading the book on the plane from New Orleans while flying through the outer edges of Isabelle. Having left the book on the plane, I had to buy another one to finish (plus it was Shannon's book). Anyway, how can you not love the two main characters? |
Monsignor Quixote by Graham Greene, 256 pages Steven Krise 07 June 2007 The oddest couple in Spain. |
Monsignor Quixote by Graham Greene, 221 pages Steve Gadd 05 July 2007 "When one has to jump, it's so much safer to jump into deep water." |
Morality for Beautiful Girls by Alexander McCall Smith, 227 pages Jennifer Dear 29 July 2006 |
Morality for Beautiful Girls (2001) by Alexander McCall Smith, 227 pages James Donahue 01 October 2006 Another beautiful, pastoral tale from Botswana. Really weak on the mystery side of things; these books are misshelved at Borders, in my opinion. But these are still really charming and elegant stories. |
Mort by Terry Pratchett, 243 pages Steven Krise 01 January 2007 Death takes an apprentice, goes on a vacation, and then kicks ass after chaos ensues. |
Mortal Stakes by Robert B. Parker, 328 pages Mike Gadd 14 March 2002 |
Mosby's Confederacy by Thomas J Evans & James M Moyer, 134 pages Steven Krise 20 December 2002 Walking and automobile tours of Mosby's Confederacy and surrounding areas developed by the authors and Virgil Carrington Jones turned into book form. |
Moses: When Harriet Tubman Led Her People to Freedom by Carole Boston Weatherford, 44 pages Brad Snyder 12 November 2006 My wife is currently teaching African-American history at a local high school, and purchased this book from the book fair at my childrens' school for that purpose. It offers a quasi-fictional rendering of Harriet Tubman's life from the perspective of her conversations with God. It is beautifully illustrated by Kadir Nelson. I recommend it to anyone with children. |
Mostly Harmless by Douglas Adams, 219 pages Steven Krise 23 December 2005 A sort of "many worlds interpretation"-y action adventure thingy that cleverly concludes the 5-part HH trilogy right where it started. |
Motherless Brooklyn by Jonathan Lethem, 311 pages Kristin Schrock 29 July 2003 From the title, I was expecting a very heartfelt, deeply pretentious book. I was pleasantly surprised to discover that it was a sort of noir detective story. With a twist. The main character has Tourrette's. A compelling story that only fell apart towards the end when we sort of lose touch with the main character and the story is chiefly driven by tying up loose ends. Maybe that's the problem with detective stories in general. But here's a line I dug: "Guilt never tires, learns nothing." |
Mothers in the Fatherland by Claudia Koonz, 554 pages James Donahue 21 July 2002 An excellent introduction to all things Nazi. Koonz focuses her attention on women and the Church, which gives her a brilliant window into the Nazi world of terror, domesticity, and guilt-by-silence-and-collusion. |
Mouse Under Glass by David Koenig, 270 pages Mike Gadd 18 September 2002 This book isn't the one I thought it would be. There's one out there that talks about the dark underbelly of Disney and it's parks. It talks about stuff like the work crew who jumps to action when there is an accident on one of the rides. They wisk the injured party into a private meeting room, treat the injured, hose off the ride, and arrive at a settlement. The people still in line see nothing more than a 5 minute delay in getting on the ride. That's the book I wanted. This book just goes through the Disney movies talking about the story that inspired it, how many revisions it went through, plot holes and bloopers. It talks a little about the hidden images people have claimed to see and basically says that they are there. Sometimes the animators get bored or feel like goofing off and they slip stuff into the film to see who catches it. Some stuff didn't get caught. Most of it is innocent enough, although there have been recalls after someone found something. |
Moving Pictures by Terry Pratchett, 337 pages Steven Krise 03 August 2007 ? |
Mr. Britling Sees It Through (1916) by H. G. Wells, 423 pages James Donahue 26 July 2006 I never knew that Wells could write like this: touching, pastoral, significant. Written in the midst of WWI, Wells tracks the impact of the conflict on a typical British, middle-class family. |
Mrs. Miniver (1941) by Jan Struther, 288 pages A Bennett 17 June 2003 Printed in 1941, a series of Modern, impressionistic articles originally written for the London Times. Only at the very end do they enter the year 1939, and conclude on the very cusp of war. Such an introspective look at one woman’s life in London--addresses everything from problems with servants to issues of rising Socialism and the cultural shifts from post-WWI to pre-WWII. It is quite possible that I am in love with the Mrs. in the title (don’t tell Mr. Miniver!). A nice companion to the film (just what I was looking for) which was directly adapted from this. My only regret is that I have yet been unable to find a sequel that addresses the war years. |
Much to be Done by Frances Hoffman, 245 pages Julie Gephart 28 February 2003 "Private Life in Ontario from Victorian Diaries." Not as pioneer-oriented as I had been led to believe, but there were still some interesting bits. |
Murder in Amsterdam: The Murder of Theo Van Gogh and the Limits of Tolerance (2006) by Ian Buruma, 264 pages James Donahue 24 December 2006 On 2 November, a young Morroccan immigrant, juiced up on Islamism, tracked down Theo Van Gogh, great-grandnephew of the artist and the artistic version of a 'shock jock', and shot him at midday on his bike in downtown Amsterdam. Buruma is from this neighborhood. In this book he goes home and interviews people associated with the event: the youth's friends and iman, a Somali politician and friend of Van Gogh who despises her 'backward' upbringing, Dutch people who feel trapped between their resentment at the browning of their capital city and their Dutch pride in their progressivism. Buruma is even-handed in this exploration of Europe's most pressing problem. In this country Islamism is a foreign threat and a foreign war; in Europe Islamism is a quarter of the country, wrapped up in guilty feelings about the Holocaust and imperialism, more political because so much of European society is based upon nationality. |
Murder in Our Midst: The Holocaust, Industrial Killing, and Representation by Omer Bartov, 251 pages James Donahue 07 August 2002 Bartov discusses the ultimate meaninglessness of mass killing, its relation to modernity, and postwar attempts to both suffuse the Holocaust with purpose and make an ineffable, foundational event. Excellent analysis. |
Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie, 256 pages Steve Gadd 13 July 2003 A murder mystery with a surprising twist! That probably describes most of Agatha Christie's novels; this one was interesting for its locations: Baghdad, Kirkuk, Stamboul, and especially the Orient Express train itself. Hercule Poirot is not quite as charming as Father Brown, rather smug actually, but convincingly clever. |
Musicophilia by Oliver Sacks, 385 pages Steve Gadd 28 February 2009 Dr. Sacks is easy on the reader: entertaining, compassionate, and wise. This collection of case studies and reflections on music at first had the frustrations of a cookbook -- reading about something that doesn't convey well on the page. But I was soon caught up in his enthusiasm for music, and the peculiar ways in which people respond to it. Thanks, Tony, for the gift. |
Mussolini's Intellectuals (2005) by A. James Gregor, 262 pages James Donahue 27 August 2006 The ever-kranky Gregor has spent forty years making one statement: that Fascism had an intellectual foundation and was not the product of brainwashing/psycho-sexual repression/ irrationalist amour-propre/etc. This is his final statement of that case. I've assigned this for my class and I'm hoping they'll understand it. |
My Cousin Rachel by Daphne du Maurier, 288 pages A Bennett 14 May 2004 Rachel sends one husband to his death in a duel, another she poisons. Second husband's cousin/heir (and our narrator) very nearly becomes her third victim. Readers are given no motive for her actions (at least none solid and verified by her) and little proof of her guilt. She miscarried at four months once, and herself was raised by profligate parents. She spent too much money and incurred debt and slept with whom she pleased. This, we are led to believe, was the result of the influence of her Italian mother's genetic material, taking over that of her (perceived) stauncher Cornish father's. I remain vaguely fascinated by du Maurier's ability to write, seemingly effortlessly, in the mid-20th century about the 18th. Necessary vocabulary: pother, tisana, pernickety (not persnickety). |
My Four Years in Germany (1917) by James Gerard, 402 pages James Donahue 12 January 2007 Upon being expelled from his ambassadorship in Berlin in 1917, Gerard wrote this book partly as a memoir/travelogue about Berlin society (a popular genre for ex-servicemen in an America ready to move onto the world stage) and partly to inform the American public why they were fighting and what they were up against. As a personal sidelight, let me mention that Gerard married local nobility, the daughter of Marcus Daly whose copper-mining built the towns I grew up in; such glimpses into their life are fascinating. |
My Fundamentalist Education: A Memoir of a Divine Girlhood by Christine Rosen, 229 pages Micaela Larkin 05 December 2006 |
My Fundamentalist Education: A Memoir of a Divine Girlhood by Christine Rosen, 231 pages Brad Snyder 16 December 2006 "This was a world far removed from the mild Methodist devotion of my infant baptism, but I conformed to it quickly." This quote couldn't be more true for me. The difference between the author and myself is that I embraced fundamentalism at age 18 when I went away to college rather than when I was in Kindergarten like the author. I wanted to know God and to escape the demons that I knew from life to that point. Perhaps being an adult when I embraced fundamentalism made it easier to turn away from it while still in college (philosophically anyway). In any case, I learned that fundamentalism isn't God, and I never left my newfound faith in Christ. Rosen's portrait is free from animosity and often humorous. She supplies a "where are they now" chapter at the end where she offers fond updates on her friends and teachers that are featured in the book, and tells a little of her now fully secular life. Still, she makes it clear that she respects and even appreciates the education she received as a child and credits fundamentalism with her forays into intellectual pursuits later in life. Recommended for anyone who wallowed in the fundy culture for any period of time. |
Myself & I by Norma Johnston, 210 pages Micaela Larkin 07 May 2007 |
Mystic River by Dennis Lehane, 448 pages Mike Gadd 14 November 2004 Extremely well done story with lifelike characters and strong emotion. |