| The Innocents Abroad by Mark Twain, 651 pages Steve Gadd 19 August 1997 | Lightning, Face of Fear, the Vision by Dean R. Koontz, 683 pages Jeff Gadd 16 January 1999 |
The Chamber by John Grisham, 676 pages Jeff Gadd 24 March 1999 |
Strange Highways by Dean R. Koontz, 614 pages Jeff Gadd 15 April 1999 |
The Aquitaine Progression by Robert Ludlum, 644 pages Jeff Gadd 12 September 1999 |
Patriot Games by Tom Clancy, 616 pages Jeff Gadd 30 July 2001 |
The Power of One by Bryce Courtenay, 629 pages Mike Gadd 28 January 2002 |
Hearts In Atlantis by Stephen King, 630 pages Steven Krise 30 January 2002 Um, not too good. The baseball glove?!? |
Shackleton (a biography) by Roland Huntford, 697 pages Kristin Schrock 19 March 2002 He was loved because he was a bohemian, fond of the ladies, and extravagant with taxis. He may have been a bit of a bungler, but no one died on his watch. |
The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco, 611 pages Steven Krise 25 March 2002 That classic 14th murder mystery. It's not who you think...or is it? Anyway, I need to brush up on my Latin before reading it again. I have to admit, I think this is the first time I ever actually read it all the way to the end (no I didn't finish it when reading it for Persecepe). |
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. |
East of Eden by John Steinbeck, 601 pages Kristin Schrock 12 August 2002 Alternative title: Sympathy for Cain. I was expecting to have to slog through this, but it was surprisingly good. There are essentially two women characters: one is an evil whore (literally) and the other a good virgin. I think the evil whore is supposed to be Eve. Also, Steinbeck wrote his own house in Salinas, CA into the story. As in, 'Past the Steinbeck house.' |
Island in the Sea of Time by S.M. Stirling, 608 pages Julie Gephart 24 August 2002 The modern-day island of Nantucket wakes up one morning to find that it's been plunked down in the middle of the Bronze Age. Thoroughly interesting look at how the town plans for survival and for building a new society with only the small reserves of food and fuel on their island to get them started. |
The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco, 611 pages Steve Gadd 02 September 2002 Certainly one of the more esoteric murder mysteries out there. I benefitted from the notes at this site: http://www.csuohio.edu/english/earl/nr0index.html |
Red Rabbit by Tom Clancy, 618 pages Steven Krise 05 October 2002 How do you make a spy novel (including the defection of a KGB agent from Russia to America by way of Yugoslavia and England and an assassination attempt on a major world figure) boring? Well, 300+ pages of trite uninteresting ''character development'' is a good first step. Read the rest of the book for all the details. |
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. |
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. |
The Gold Coast by Nelson DeMille, 626 pages Mike Gadd 27 November 2002 The Great Gatsby meets The Godfather. Very entertaining read, just took awhile to get through it. |
The Mammoth Hunters by Jean M. Auel, 645 pages Julie Gephart 27 December 2002 Third book in Earth's Children series, a series that continues to slide downhill. Still an interesting look at daily life in an ice-age culture, but this one veers too far into romantic entanglements for my taste. Also, it would appear that the main character of these books invented and discovered every single thing that was invented or discovered during the ice age. |
History of Sexuality by Michel Foucault, 684 pages James Donahue 14 April 2003 |
The Portable Nietzsche by Friedrich Nietzsche, 687 pages Steve Gadd 06 June 2003 "It is my ambition to say in ten sentences what everyone else says in a book -- what everyone else does *not* say in a book." While lugging this fat old Viking paperback around since January, I found that Nietzsche did compress his most remarkable, provocative, and memorable ideas into brilliant maxims and paragraphs. On the other hand, he also created ponderous, plodding tomes: Twilight of the Idols, The Antichrist, and the interminable Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Walter Kaufmann, the translator, explains in helpful introductions that Nietzsche did not bother much with editing, in one case beginning a new work the same day he finished the last. His philosophy, destined to be distorted by Nietzsche's sister after his death, remains less accessable as a result. |
The World According to Garp by John Irving, 609 pages Kristin Schrock 15 June 2003 Thanks to U.S. Airways and their faulty airplanes, I was able to finish this very entertaining, often poignant novel (despite Robin Williams on the cover). The more I read of Irving, the more I like him (his earlier stuff doesn't deal so much with incest). He's somehow able to combine humor and sadness in a way that makes me envy him. This one probably could've been cut back at least fifty pages, but he's a wonderful storyteller, so I'll let it slide this time. |
The Cabinet of Curiosities by Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child, 626 pages Jeff Gadd 19 August 2003 A very great plot with the most part the same characters in the book Relic. A very creepy killer with a strange way to prolong his life, by using something from his victim's body,while their still alive. Made my skin crawl. |
Jonathan Edwards: A Life by George Marsden, 600 pages James Donahue 01 September 2003 What a book! George continually impresses me as a scholar who is at once thorough, thoughtful, and readable. The research here is impeccable and built mainly on a decade of recent dissertations and whatnot. This figure, so central to American political and religious life, is portrayed warts and all, but there's still a lot to admire here. |
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon, 636 pages Kristin Schrock 03 September 2003 I picked this one up mainly because of the pretty-pretty cover. The fact that it was a pulitzer winner was secondary. I was pleasantly surprised. The tale of two cousin comic book creators during the Golden Age of Comic Books. Featured World War 2, Antarctica, super heroes, and a whole bunch of angst. What's not to love. Recommended Vocabulary: acromegaly, gelid, chorine, faience, paturition, aetataureate, tergiversations, opprobrium. |
Red Rabbit by Tom Clancy, 618 pages James Donahue 26 October 2003 What happened to Tom? I haven't picked up a book of his in some time (maybe eight years). I always admired his sense of pacing and movie-ready episodic prose. However in this book the suspense was gone, the prose was limp, and the characters sounded like unthinking call-ins on Rush Limbaugh. I've read an awful lot of memoirs and accounts by Soviet defectors for my studies (see Wolfgang Leonhard last year for a particularly good one), and none of them sound like his Reaganite defector hero. So disappointing. |
The Eye Of The Hunter by Dennis L McKiernan, 601 pages Steven Krise 01 January 2004 Shannon says this is a cheap Tolkein rip-off. I wouldn't know anything about that, but it is an overwrought pile of mokk. I've tried to read this book at least half a dozen times (usually around Christmas) in the past 10 years and have just now succeeded (thanks to this book list). |
Coding Techniques For Microsoft Visual Basic .NET by John Connell, 633 pages Steven Krise 19 April 2004 Still trying to bone up on this new technology. Unfortunately, the author left out "For Dummies" in the title. This is an intro level text (where intro means "never programmed before"). The only highlight was the author's 2 chapter discussion on ADO.NET. If I had a dollar for everytime I read the phrase "does the heavy lifting", the book would have paid for itself. It certainly didn't pay for itself in any other way. |
Embracing Defeat by John Dower, 650 pages James Donahue 22 May 2004 Dower has written a remarkably comprehensive and readable (two traits not often paired) history of the American occupation of Japan. Great insight, and interesting to read while our current occupational efforts wallow in the mud. |
The Mill on the Floss by George Eliot, 657 pages James Donahue 01 June 2004 After a couple of insomnial nights camping, I cleaned through Eliot by flashlight. Before this year I bore a deep antipathy for all things Victorian, but Eliot has bent me in this regard. Her prose -- so satirical, formal, intentionally composed, metaphorically rich -- keeps me hooked even as the stories dabble overmuch in romance. |
A History of German and Scandinavian Protestantism by Nicholas Hope, 603 pages James Donahue 01 July 2004 |
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami, 611 pages Jaqi Ross 05 August 2004 Fabulous read! If it were possible to isolate one theme, it would be responsibility. The atrocities committed by the Japanese army in China keep rising to the surface like a repressed memory, and Toru Okada himself is compelled by events to take responsibility for his actions and struggle with his essentially passive nature. |
Term Limits by Vince Flynn, 656 pages Mike Gadd 08 October 2004 |
Cuba Strait by Carsten Stroud, 610 pages Mike Gadd 06 April 2005 This will probably be the best book I read this year. Action movie pacing with a fun story. |
The Ultimate Resource 2 by Julian Simon, 616 pages Steve Gadd 19 September 2005 In this relentlessly optimistic book, economist Julian Simon presents a wide body of data supporting the idea that practically all measures of human quality of life are improving. This includes health, environment, natural resources, energy, farmland, and waste disposal. The theory he presents to explain these historical trends should continue to apply in the future: rising incomes increase demand, causing temporary scarcity and price rises. Inventors and entrepreneurs search for solutions to these problems. Some fail and lose, but in a free society solutions are found that leave us better off than if the problem had not occurred. While Simon has been criticized as a "cornucopian" for describing a rosy future of ever-cheaper resources, his presentation of historical data is compelling and a nice antidote to popular doom and gloom prognosticators. |
Righteous Victims: A History of the Zionist-Arab Conflict 1881-2001 by Benny Morris, 694 pages Tony Pisarenkov 11 October 2005 An exhaustively comrehensive, painstakingly detailed, eminently readable and, amazingly, truly unbiased history of the development of Zionism, the creation of Israel and its struggle with the Arab world. The obvious historian's detachment aside (a very good thing in this case), Morris did for the Middle East what Rbecca West had done for the Balkans. |
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (2005) by J.K. Rowling, 652 pages A Bennett 25 October 2005 Truly, a disappointment. The last book before the end, and quite frankly, all 652 pages felt like nothing but a great big stall technique not well executed. How many times, after all, can someone promise to tell Harry everything--come Monday, and then die Sunday night? It’s pointless stating the obvious: telling us everything is long overdue, as we’re to get “everything” with the final book. Still and all, it would have been interesting to see if Rowling could write plot, etc, AFTER having emptied her bag of secrets--especially since she will likely have to do so once concluding Harry’s books--unless she chooses to go into the mystery genre, in which case, bye-bye JK, I expected more. |
On Human Bondage by W. Somerset Maugham, 607 pages James Donahue 20 November 2005 A old-fashioned Bildungsroman, for the WWI generation. An orphan raised in the bourgeouis, public-school circles of his British uncle, a vicar, Philip Carey studies philosophy in Heidelberg, art in Paris, love in Soho, and medicine at the Royal College before discovering that no abstract system can make you life meaningful and that simple (British) pleasures are the most satisfying. (This latter lesson also applies to marriages.) |
The Historian (2005) by Elizabeth Kostova, 642 pages James Donahue 17 January 2006 Page-turning thriller, as a family of historians track Dracula through Ottoman manuscripts, Balkan monasteries, and Orthodox folk rituals. |
James Bryce (1927) by H.A.L. Fisher, 682 pages James Donahue 29 April 2006 Bryce was a mountain-climber, British Lord, and TR's favorite ambassador. I read this since I have always loved Mount Bryce in BC, and was always curious about its name. Interesting life, but written in that pedantic, old-Oxford style. |
The Great War: Walk In Hell (1999) by Harry Turtledove, 606 pages James Donahue 21 January 2007 In this alt-history sequel, WWI still plays out between the Confederates and the North. I love Turtledove's use of real history to flesh out his alternative universe. This episode we get to see southern slaves reading Marx, primitive tanks moving on the Roanoke, French Canadians with double reason to resist the Yankee Hun, Pres. Wilson (from Virginia) debating about whether to conscript African-Americans, and Mormons using the war to seize more local control over Utah. |
The Historian (2005) by Elizabeth Kostova, 647 pages Jennifer Dear 05 March 2007 |
Wilson: The Struggle for Neutrality, 1915-1916 (1960) by Arthur Link, 693 pages James Donahue 20 March 2007 This was the least interesting of the books to me. Link was able to go to British archives, which transformed his book into an excellent study of diplomatic history - but somewhere Wilson as a person got lost. |
Blood & Iron (2001) by Harry Turtledove, 630 pages James Donahue 24 May 2007 Turtledove continues his alternative history of the United States. In the defeated South, the KKK get political, blaming the defeat on the blacks and going after Whig politicians. In the North, Socialists finally manage to oust Teddy Roosevelt from the Powell House in Philadelphia while trying to digest the recently-swallowed parts of Canada. |
Poland by James Michener, 640 pages Micaela Larkin 11 June 2007 Awesome |
American Empire: The Center Cannot Hold (2002) by Harry Turtledove, 619 pages James Donahue 28 June 2007 Turtledove continues his alternative history through 1933, with the re-ascension of the Confederate Fascist party and the partially successful attempts of the U.S. to pacify the captured parts of Canada and the ever-simmering Mormons out West. |
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (2005) by J. K. Rowling, 652 pages Jennifer Dear 16 October 2007 There's only one left!!!!!!!! |
American Empire: The Victorious Opposition (2003) by Harry Turtledove, 618 pages James Donahue 01 December 2007 Turtledove's alternative history of North America reaches the second world war, when a a defeated Confederacy is determined to win back lands from the North while ensuring that their African slaves will not stab them in the back again. |
American Gods (2001) by Neil Gaiman, 602 pages Brad Snyder 05 December 2007 An ex-con named Shadow is enlisted to work for a man named Wednesday who turns out to be the manifestation of a pagan Norse god. Wednesday is trying to enlist the help of other pagan deities that were brought to America in the minds of millions of immigrants over thousands of years to fight the new American deities such as technology and media. Quite possibly the strangest thing I have ever read. |
The Orchestra: Origins and Transformations by Joan Peyser, ed., 646 pages Tony Pisarenkov 27 January 2008 A collection of essays on the various aspects of the symphony orchestra -- its development, history, social and commercial roles, its impact on the evolution of composition and conducting, etc. The quality of the essays varies greatly, but the best ones are quite good. |
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (2005) by J. K. Rowling, 652 pages James Donahue 30 January 2008 I stayed up way too late at night because I had to finish this book. Its a lucky thing today was a snow day or my students would have had to endure a drowsy afternoon lecture. |
New Moon (The Twilight Saga, Book 2) (2006) by Stephenie Meyer, 608 pages Brad Snyder 07 August 2008 Bella's dreamy vampire leaves, although madly in love with her, in order to protect her from bad vampires that want to kill her. So, she falls for a werewolf, the sworn enemy of vampires. Relationships are so complicated, why can't we all just be friends? |
Eclipse (The Twilight Saga, Book 3) (2007) by Stephenie Meyer, 640 pages Brad Snyder 12 August 2008 Bella, wracked with a decision between vampire-boy and a life of being his vampire queen or brushing the matted fur of her werewolf must suddenly be protected by werewolves and vampires cooperating to save her whiny, self-centered self. |
The Eve of 1914 (1936) by Theodor Wolff, 636 pages James Donahue 02 December 2008 Wolff was the longtime editor of the Berliner Tageblatt. Here he reconstructs the events leading up to WWI, relying not only on research but from his personal interaction with the German elite. If you can suffer through his long-winded, Wilhelmine style, the book reveals lots of quirkly tidbits about a fascinating range of personalities. |
The Proud Highway: Saga of a Desparate Southern Gentleman, 1955-1967 by Hunter S Thompson, 683 pages Steven Krise 25 December 2008 Collected personal letters of HST for the time period mentioned in the title (odd, that). Gems include a lot of 'em, but it's been a long sick-filled week since I finished the book and I don't remember any of the page numbers I had previously "committed" to memory for to pull out quotes for the BandML. |
GULAG: A History by Anne Appelbaum, 677 pages Tony Pisarenkov 03 October 2009 Let's face it: most of us will never have the fortitude to get through Solzhenitsyn's opus. This book is the best substitute. |