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Papa Hemingway   by A. E. Hotchner, 335 pages Steve Gadd   06 November 2002 The last 15 years of Hemingway's life, as chronicled by one of his closest companions. Hemingway planned both his work and his leisure with military rigor, counting both as essential parts of a good life. The result is an impressive itinerary: spring in Paris at the racetrack, summer following bullfighters in Spain, fall hunting in Ketchum, and winter entertaining celebrities at the Cuban finca. "Hotch" freely admits his admiration for Papa, but is also quite frank in describing the sad descent into paranoia leading to the author's suicide in 1961.

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.

Watchmen   by Alan Moore, 413 pages Steve Gadd   24 July 2006 The graphic novel that revolutionized a genre, ushering in an era of mature, adult-oriented comics. Its multilayered plot, rich symbolism, and vivid imagery make it a very immersive read.

Cry The Beloved Country [audio]   by Alan Paton, 0 pages Steve Gadd   15 February 1999 The touching story of a priest who travels to South Africa in search of his son.

The World Without Us (audio)   by Alan Weisman, 432 pages Steve Gadd   14 July 2009 This extended thought experiment is quite interesting in many parts, with visits to people-free zones in Cyprus and the Korean peninsula, and informed speculation as to what will become of bridges and other landmarks. A good deal of print (or breath, in the recorded version) is spent less engagingly rehashing fears about ecology and overpopulation.

A Happy Death   by Albert Camus, 167 pages Steve Gadd   14 September 1995

The Stranger   by Albert Camus, 154 pages Steve Gadd   24 July 2002 Monsieur Meursault's brush with the law leads to his recognition of the 'benign indifference of the universe.'

Escape from the Deep   by Alex Kershaw, 288 pages Steve Gadd   09 October 2009

Endurance   by Alfred Lansing, 282 pages Steve Gadd   11 April 1999 Inspiring, absolutely incredible account of a disasterous attempt to cross the south pole on foot.

The Unthinkable (audio)   by Amanda Ripley, 288 pages Steve Gadd   28 August 2009 [audio]

The Joy Luck Club   by Amy Tan, 288 pages Steve Gadd   25 July 1995

The Climb   by Anatoli Boukreev and G. Weston DeWalt, 297 pages Steve Gadd   11 November 2006 Boukreev was a villain in Jon Krakauer's bestselling account of the 1996 Everest disaster. He was described as irresponsibly climbing without supplemental oxygen, and descending from the summit ahead of clients, "extremely questionable behavior for a guide." Boukreev here defends his behavior, providing a riveting account of the tragedy from his point of view.

The Ottomans   by Andrew Wheatcroft, 239 pages Steve Gadd   16 April 2002 Beginning with the conquest of Constantinople, this book vividly describes some historic battles. The rest of the survey of Ottoman history is kind of disjointed, often focusing more on the image of the Ottomans as seen by Westerners. I did enjoy seeing the word 'yataghan' in print for the first time.

The Killjoy   by Anne Fine, 189 pages Steve Gadd   01 October 1997

A Clockwork Orange   by Anthony Burgess, 185 pages Steve Gadd   31 January 1996

The Fiancée and Other Stories   by Anton Chekhov, 232 pages Steve Gadd   21 September 2000 Some favorite and some more forgettable short stories.

Descartes' Error   by Antonio R. Damasio, 267 pages Steve Gadd   09 December 2002 A neurologist argues for the importance of emotions and physical sensations to thought. Much of the text is conjecture, but his analysis of case studies adds some color. The most interesting of these is Phineas Gage, who in 1848 amazingly survived an accident in which an iron rod was shot through his head. His mental abilities appeared normal afterwards, but he became cold emotionally and lost the ability to plan for his future. Thanks to Steven Krise for the gift.

Maus   by Art Spiegelman, 296 pages Steve Gadd   16 November 2009

The Fountainhead   by Ayn Rand, 736 pages Steve Gadd   30 December 1999 Meet Howard Roark: architect, protagonist, and ideal man of the author's Objectivist philosophy. A readable fable with the ambitious goal of attacking altruism as a virtue.

Nickel and Dimed   by Barbara Ehrenreich, 221 pages Steve Gadd   24 September 2006 A courageous bit of journalism, as the author takes minimum-wage jobs and tries to make ends meet. She doesn't let you forget that she's really a writer though -- required vocabulary: tchotchke, encomium, aphasic, intercalation, hortatory.

North Pole, South Pole   by Bertrand Imbert, 175 pages Steve Gadd   30 December 1998

A Short History of Nearly Everything   by Bill Bryson, 478 pages Steve Gadd   14 June 2005 Ever wonder how we know the mass of the earth, or the size of the universe? Years after being put off by dry science textbooks as a child, this author decided to learn as much as he could about the world, and significantly, to find out how we know these things. The result is an entertaining overview of the natural sciences as we understand them today, including the most interesting stories of the historic researchers.

In a Sunburned Country   by Bill Bryson, 304 pages Steve Gadd   28 August 2007 Quite a charming travel book about Australia, with much attention given to the ways you can die or be maimed there. Little-known fact: Australian prime minister Harold Holt died in power when he went for a swim in the sea and was carried off by a rip current, never to be seen again.

A Walk in the Woods   by Bill Bryson, 274 pages Steve Gadd   16 September 2007 "Now here's a thought to consider. Every twenty minutes on the Appalachian Trail, Katz and I walked farther than the average American walks in a week."

I'm a Stranger Here Myself   by Bill Bryson, 288 pages Steve Gadd   24 November 2007 This collection of weekly columns for a British newspaper following Bryson's return to the U.S. after 20 years draws comparisons to Dave Barry. Each makes light of some aspect of American lifestyle and ends with a weak zinger.

Growing Up Hockey   by Brian Kennedy, 384 pages Steve Gadd   01 January 2008 This book easily doubled my knowledge of hockey.

Impossible Victories   by Bryan Perrett, 215 pages Steve Gadd   07 October 2003 Disappointing collection of battle stories. Despite the maps, I had a hard time following the action and learned very little about battlefield tactics or military history. The chronological format (from the 1811 Peninsular War to 1967 Vietnam) does give a vivid feel for the the improvements in the brutal efficiency of warfare.

Mere Christianity   by C. S. Lewis, 191 pages Steve Gadd   18 June 1995

Billions & Billions   by Carl Sagan, 230 pages Steve Gadd   04 April 2007 Dr. Sagan used his last book to deny ever saying the phrase by which he is remembered. Some of the chapters in this diverse collection are interesting and informative, and his farewell chapter is unflinching and touching. The majority of the book is taken up by sermonizing on the environmental crisis. As seems typical, these sections are annoying for calls to action based on facts asserted without reference to any supporting data (no endnotes, four pages of largely general-interest references), worst-case scenarios, and illogic.

Great Expectations   by Charles Dickens, 454 pages Steve Gadd   21 April 1997

A Tale of Two Cities   by Charles Dickens, 304 pages Steve Gadd   22 December 1998 I was surprised to find that I didn't like this any better than when we read it in high school.

Cold Mountain   by Charles Frazier, 356 pages Steve Gadd   31 August 1997

Cold Mountain [audio]   by Charles Frazier, 0 pages Steve Gadd   02 January 2000 Inman's journey home from a Civil War hospital is even more captivating in this reading by the author.

No Longer At Ease   by Chinua Achebe, 159 pages Steve Gadd   29 September 1997

Things Fall Apart   by Chinua Achebe, 209 pages Steve Gadd   25 December 1998 Unhappy, but memorable and well-crafted story set in a Nigeria struggling with modern influences.

Deadly Waters   by Christopher H. Meehan, 238 pages Steve Gadd   26 September 1995

Dr. Faustus   by Christopher Marlowe, 56 pages Steve Gadd   15 July 1995

Chuck Klosterman IV   by Chuck Klosterman, 356 pages Steve Gadd   04 October 2007 Interviews with celebrities, ruminations on robots, basketball, and music videos, and a bit of forgettable fiction make for a respectable and entertaining collection of pop culture analysis.

Fight Club   by Chuck Palahniuk, 224 pages Steve Gadd   28 September 2009 Lessons learned: The movie can be better than the book, when the book is written like a screenplay. There's no line so good that it can't be used three or four times. It's still possible to use four-letter words like "butt wipe" without sounding lame.

The Man Who Walked Through Time   by Colin Fletcher, 239 pages Steve Gadd   29 May 1998 He was the first person to walk the length of the Grand Canyon nonstop. A stirring and reflective story.

All the Pretty Horses   by Cormac McCarthy, 302 pages Steve Gadd   17 February 1997

The Crossing   by Cormac McCarthy, 426 pages Steve Gadd   22 July 1997

Cities of the Plain   by Cormac McCarthy, 292 pages Steve Gadd   20 June 1998 Required reading for anyone who read All the Pretty Horses, part one of the Border Trilogy.

The Crossing   by Cormac McCarthy, 426 pages Steve Gadd   09 August 2000 The introspective and tragic sequel. Another young cowboy experiences the merciless world of unforseen consequences.

All the Pretty Horses   by Cormac McCarthy, 302 pages Steve Gadd   09 August 2000 In the Hollywood spirit of finding a category to create a superlative, I would name this my favorite contemporary American realist novel.

Cities of the Plain   by Cormac McCarthy, 292 pages Steve Gadd   04 September 2000 Wrapping up the trilogy with hearty portions of bleakness and beauty, with a helping of Borges for dessert.

Blood Meridian   by Cormac McCarthy, 335 pages Steve Gadd   05 January 2002 Ornate, rich prose chronicles a violent southwestern saga. Could be titled Bloody Blood Meridian of Blood.

The Road   by Cormac McCarthy, 287 pages Steve Gadd   21 June 2008 An extremely bleak and utterly absorbing tale of a father and son's road trip through a post-apocalyptic wasteland.

No Country for Old Men   by Cormac McCarthy, 0 pages Steve Gadd   02 August 2008 Read by Tom Stechschulte.

Johnny Got His Gun   by Dalton Trumbo, 243 pages Steve Gadd   18 January 1999 The absolutely unforgettable horror story of a disfigured veteran.

The Da Vinci Code   by Dan Brown, 454 pages Steve Gadd   08 July 2004 Umberto Eco on speed. The story is so gripping, you blow right past the clunkers of prose and unlikely plot devices. A novel of esoterica, mystery, and conspiracy for the MTV generation.

A Journal of the Plague Year [audio]   by Daniel Defoe, 0 pages Steve Gadd   16 December 1999 A firsthand account of the devistating Black Plague in London in 1665.

The Seekers   by Daniel J. Boorstin, 259 pages Steve Gadd   18 November 1998 Much shorter than The Discoverers or The Creators, this reads more like a survey, but very informative nonetheless.

The Americans: The National Experience [audio]   by Daniel J. Boorstin, 0 pages Steve Gadd   16 April 1999 It took two months to get through, but this second part of the trilogy offered several fascinating side stories from the first century of United States history.

Galileo's Daughter   by Dava Sobel, 368 pages Steve Gadd   08 February 2009 A very enjoyable, readable biography of the celebrated heliocentrist.

Complete Guide to Guys   by Dave Barry, 184 pages Steve Gadd   27 August 1995

The Camel Club   by David Baldacci, 593 pages Steve Gadd   29 April 2007 A serviceable spy thriller, in which loose ends were avoided with increasingly implausible plot turns.

High Exposure   by David Breashears, 309 pages Steve Gadd   23 August 2008 Another eyewitness account of the 1996 Everest disaster, by the director of the IMAX film.

The Machinery of Freedom   by David Friedman, 235 pages Steve Gadd   13 August 2002 A primer on libertarianism. In fact, the author describes his ideal system as anarcho-capitalism, but it is a far cry from the Mad Max lawlessness I was expecting. Friedman advocates the privatization of every institution now provided by government. He admits that providing for national defense without a national government is difficult, and the private money systems he proposed seemed untenable. But otherwise, he does a fine job of arguing the practical possibilities of market-based services such as security, courts, transportation, and education. Thanks Ray for the loan.

Therapy   by David Lodge, 321 pages Steve Gadd   27 July 1996

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.

Salon.com's Wanderlust   by Don George, Ed., 338 pages Steve Gadd   26 May 2002 Great collection of travel stories, including "Absinthe Makes the Heart Grow," "On Japanese Trains," and Simon Winchester's great "Romance in Romania." Also a great forward on "Why We Travel" by Pico Iyer.

Blue Like Jazz   by Donald Miller, 242 pages Steve Gadd   18 October 2005 Not a theology book by any stretch, but a sort of autobiographical apology for the author's faith, written with a sense of humor and honesty. Thanks Jonathan for the gift.

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy   by Douglas Adams, 159 pages Steve Gadd   06 January 1998 The classic. Look for the book-on-tape version, recorded by the author. It is pure delight.

The Restaurant at the End of the Universe   by Douglas Adams, 250 pages Steve Gadd   13 January 1998 Part Two of the so-called trilogy. My attempt to read through all my books in order was foiled when I accidently returned my copy of Life, the Universe, and Everything to the library.

Last Chance To See   by Douglas Adams, 218 pages Steve Gadd   30 March 2000 Yes, that Douglas Adams, travelling with a zoologist to exotic corners of the world looking for the most endangered species. Highly entertaining and not too preachy.

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (audio)   by Douglas Adams, 0 pages Steve Gadd   10 April 2008 This has got to be one of the best "read by the author" readings, but it is still not quite as great as the BBC version.

Generation X   by Douglas Coupland, 183 pages Steve Gadd   04 January 1997

Microserfs   by Douglas Coupland, 371 pages Steve Gadd   27 July 1997

The Mind's I   by Douglas R. Hofstadter, 482 pages Steve Gadd   28 July 1995

Le Ton beau de Marot   by Douglas R. Hofstadter, 598 pages Steve Gadd   21 May 1998 Another giant, sprawling masterpiece by the author of Gödel, Escher, Bach, this one focusing on the subtlties of translation.

Howards End   by E. M. Forster, 271 pages Steve Gadd   01 December 1996 Not "Howard's End"

Great Mambo Chicken And The Transhuman Condition   by Ed Regis, 289 pages Steve Gadd   10 November 2009

The Visual Display of Quantitative Information   by Edward R. Tufte, 191 pages Steve Gadd   02 October 2007

The Visual Display of Quantitative Information   by Edward R. Tufte, 191 pages Steve Gadd   17 August 2008 A classic of design, and a minor masterpiece of publishing in its own right.

Visual Explanations   by Edward R. Tufte, 151 pages Steve Gadd   17 August 2008 Another classic treatise in design, showing what can go right (arresting a cholera epidemic) and wrong (loss of a Space Shuttle) based on the way information is presented.

Why Things Bite Back   by Edward Tenner, 354 pages Steve Gadd   27 January 2006 This could be an interesting study in the unintended consequences of new technologies, but there are too few examples and too much analysis. Football helmets lead to "spearing" and neck injury, antibiotics breed superbugs, computers create paperwork, prevention of major health hazards leads to chronic conditions. The general trend is that advancing technology solves big problems, leaving us with many small problems that require more vigilance.

Flatland   by Edwin A. Abbott, 82 pages Steve Gadd   04 January 1998 Fanciful story of A. Square, whose comfortable existence in two dimensions is interrupted by his encounter with a sphere.

Adam, Eve, and the Serpent   by Elaine Pagels, 154 pages Steve Gadd   14 July 1996

Irish Myths and Legends   by Eoin Neeson, 126 pages Steve Gadd   04 July 1996

For Whom the Bell Tolls   by Ernest Hemingway, 507 pages Steve Gadd   30 June 1998

Islands in the Stream   by Ernest Hemingway, 435 pages Steve Gadd   25 July 1998 A favorite, left unpublished by the author.

A Moveable Feast   by Ernest Hemingway, 208 pages Steve Gadd   30 August 1999 Papa reminisces about being "very poor and very happy" in Paris.

Winner Take Nothing   by Ernest Hemingway, 162 pages Steve Gadd   23 April 2000 A small collection of some of Papa's best short works.

Death in the Afternoon   by Ernest Hemingway, 278 pages Steve Gadd   09 July 2002 Papa's textbook on bullfighting. Plenty of goring and an occasional anecdote liven up the story.

A Farewell to Arms   by Ernest Hemingway, 314 pages Steve Gadd   30 September 2002 Classic tragedy, a bit flat on the romance.

The Sun Also Rises   by Ernest Hemingway, 251 pages Steve Gadd   01 August 2007 When I read Hemingway, I hear the voice of Wolfram Kandinsky, who recorded this and several other of Papa's works for Books on Tape.

We   by Eugene Zamiatin, 218 pages Steve Gadd   20 September 1995

Fun With Milk & Cheese   by Evan Dorkin, 96 pages Steve Gadd   05 July 2004 Dairy products gone bad! A half-gallon of milk and a wedge of cheese wreak death, mayhem, and destruction. A comic of dada ultraviolence you won't soon forget! Thanks Ray for the loan.

Brideshead Revisited (audio)   by Evelyn Waugh, 351 pages Steve Gadd   11 September 2009 Though it was a set of ten CDs and the book read aloud by Jeremy Irons, I am counting the pages I would have clocked with the paperback.

Codebreakers   by F. H. Hinsley, Alan Stripp, eds., 310 pages Steve Gadd   07 February 2002 Accounts by the participants at Bletchley Park of their work cracking the Enigma code.

The Great Gatsby   by F. Scott Fitzgerald, 200 pages Steve Gadd   08 May 2000 Another classic we were forced to read in high school, actually quite enjoyable when read at leisure.

The Ultra Secret   by F. W. Winterbotham, 191 pages Steve Gadd   16 January 2002 A convincing account of how the cracking of the German Enigma code played a decisive role in World War II.

The Trial   by Franz Kafka, 286 pages Steve Gadd   15 January 1999 The dizzying origin of the adjective 'kafkaesque.' Not as poignant as the short stories, though the parable ('Before The Law') toward the end is quite potent.

The Castle   by Franz Kafka, 417 pages Steve Gadd   29 January 1999 A sprawling, disorienting, and unfinished opus. Camus has an enlightening essay on Kafka's work in the collection The Myth of Sisyphus.

The Complete Stories   by Franz Kafka, 460 pages Steve Gadd   14 December 1999 As good as existential dystopian literature gets.

Letter to His Father   by Franz Kafka, 63 pages Steve Gadd   26 December 2001 Revealing glimpse into the troubled relationship that fueled Kafka's nightmares.

Painted Desert   by Frederick Barthelme, 243 pages Steve Gadd   06 April 1996

Painted Desert   by Frederick Barthelme, 243 pages Steve Gadd   06 April 1998 Hilarious story with great cover art.

Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass   by Frederick Douglass, 124 pages Steve Gadd   28 January 1998 Somewhat short but insightful autobiography.

Infinite In All Directions   by Freeman Dyson, 299 pages Steve Gadd   05 October 1995

Disturbing the Universe   by Freeman Dyson, 261 pages Steve Gadd   15 November 1995

From Eros to Gaia   by Freeman Dyson, 345 pages Steve Gadd   15 February 1996

Imagined Worlds   by Freeman Dyson, 208 pages Steve Gadd   12 July 2000 An imaginative and sensitive scientist looks deep into the future and imagines what might become of the human race. Other essays contrast Napoleonic and Tolstoyan modes of doing science.

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 Idiot   by Fyodor Dostoyevsky, 597 pages Steve Gadd   25 June 1995

Notes From Underground   by Fyodor Dostoyevsky, 110 pages Steve Gadd   20 January 1996

The Brothers Karamazov   by Fyodor Dostoyevsky, 940 pages Steve Gadd   29 December 1997

Crime and Punishment   by Fyodor Dostoyevsky, 532 pages Steve Gadd   09 December 1998

Notes From Underground and other stories   by Fyodor Dostoyevsky, 239 pages Steve Gadd   10 October 1999 A classic short work by the classic author. 'White Nights' another favorite.

The Brothers Karamazov   by Fyodor Dostoyevsky, 940 pages Steve Gadd   08 December 2006

Notes From Underground   by Fyodor Dostoyevsky, 110 pages Steve Gadd   12 August 2008

The Man Who Was Thursday   by G. K. Chesterton, 122 pages Steve Gadd   12 January 1997

The Innocence of Father Brown   by G. K. Chesterton, 248 pages Steve Gadd   29 July 2002 Twelve mysteries, all solved by the clever parson.

Love in the Time of Cholera   by Gabriel García Márquez, 348 pages Steve Gadd   27 July 1995

Chronicle of a Death Foretold   by Gabriel García Márquez, 120 pages Steve Gadd   14 October 1996

In Evil Hour   by Gabriel García Márquez, 183 pages Steve Gadd   10 October 1997

Story of a Shipwrecked Sailor   by Gabriel García Márquez, 106 pages Steve Gadd   05 April 2000 A member of the Colombian navy was swept overboard and drifted for ten days in a life raft. García Márquez, a young reporter at the time, serialized the story.

One Hundred Years of Solitude   by Gabriel García Márquez, 383 pages Steve Gadd   31 October 2005 I remembered this as one of my favorite novels, but this time through it seemed like a century since I started reading early this summer. The tone is that of a grandfather relating the story of a family, going back in forth in time and adding some fanciful touches. I still love the opening chapters, as the patriarch recapitulates the history of scientific progress with tools provided by a band of roving gypsies.

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.

The Hypochondriac's Guide to Life. And Death.   by Gene Weingarten, 197 pages Steve Gadd   20 August 2003 Dave Barry meets Dr. Sherwin "How We Die" Nuland in this funny inventory of mostly terminal illnesses and the sometimes innocuous symptoms that herald them. Includes handy self-diagnostic tests to help the reader get into the hypochondriac spirit. "When your uvula throbs in time with your heartbeat it is called Mueller's sign, and it can indicate heart disease! You could die!"

I'm With Stupid   by Gene Weingarten and Gina Barreca, 240 pages Steve Gadd   15 February 2004 "10,000 years of misunderstanding between the sexes cleared right up." The authors acknowledge that the differences between men and women is the most hackneyed, overdone subject in the history of publishing. They aim to stand out from the Venus-Mars canon as the first book cowritten by a man and a woman. In this case, the fact that both authors are hilarious writers makes all the difference.

Down and Out in Paris and London   by George Orwell, 0 pages Steve Gadd   07 July 2003 Twenty-five year old Eric Blair left his comfortable middle-class lifestyle to get an appreciation for the way the other half lives. This journal of dishwashing and tramping became his first book. Very entertaining and eye-opening if you can ignore the racial stereotypes. In some countries the copyright has expired so you can find the complete text available for download.

Homage to Catalonia [audio]   by George Orwell, 0 pages Steve Gadd   23 June 2005 Animal Farm and 1984 deserve credit for making high school students everywhere aware of this author, but to my mind his non-fiction is much better reading. His skill at the anecdote form was honed in Burma, Paris, and London before he signed up to fight in the Spanish Civil War. His memoirs of the experience include some isolated chapters focusing on the politics of the war, a diversion he describes as necessary but "like diving into a cesspool". The rest is entertaining and sometimes riveting. You know you are in for a good time when you encounter a line like "The whole experience of being hit by a bullet is very interesting and I think it is worth describing in detail."

Collected Stories   by Graham Greene, 562 pages Steve Gadd   10 June 1995

Monsignor Quixote   by Graham Greene, 221 pages Steve Gadd   07 February 1997

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."

Our Man in Havana   by Graham Greene, 0 pages Steve Gadd   04 September 2008 Mediocre comedy, audio version. After Lolita, the mediocrity was especially telling. Glad to be done with it.

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 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.

The Emperor's New Clothes   by Hans Christian Anderson, 85 pages Steve Gadd   07 June 2006 The title story was the least interesting of the six in this collection, maybe because it was so familiar. The rest offered a nice taste of whimsy and Grimm-style morbidity.

To Engineer Is Human   by Henry Petroski, 232 pages Steve Gadd   09 May 1999 Case-by-case analysis demonstrating that engineers often learn more from failure than from success.

Engineers of Dreams   by Henry Petroski, 397 pages Steve Gadd   04 April 2002 A history of bridge building in America. Petroski presents the personalities and politics behind these great engineering achievements, including embarrassments such as Tacoma Narrows. Interesting to learn that one of the most serious dangers facing early bridgebuilders was the bends, which was known as 'caisson disease,' after the large structures built midriver to support a bridge.

The Evolution of Useful Things   by Henry Petroski, 250 pages Steve Gadd   23 April 2002 There are quite interesting stories behind such commonplace items as the fork, zipper, paper clip, soda can, hammer, and Post-It note. Petroski does a great job telling these, but really hammers on his pet idea that 'form follows failure' -- the mother of invention is really a dissatisfaction with current ways of doing things.

The Book on the Bookshelf   by Henry Petroski, 252 pages Steve Gadd   14 January 2004 The bookshelf would seem a mundane object of a design history, even for an author who has written readable accounts of the pencil and paper clip. While not as awe-inspiring as the history of bridge building, this book manages to weave in the technological development of the book, as well as touching on library history. This may sound even more dull, but readers of The Name of the Rose will recall the conflict between preserving old books and making them available. Books in medieval libraries were actually chained to the bookshelf. Touching on shelving practices, Petroski shows that books used to be shelved with the spines to the back. Books came to be printed with an extra title page which could be removed and attached to the outside as an identifier, a tradition maintained today with the "fly-title" page. Thanks to Tony for the gift.

Small Things Considered   by Henry Petroski, 244 pages Steve Gadd   12 November 2004 I can't get enough of this author, despite his flaws: less than compelling prose, and a habit of methodically repeating his chosen theme. In this case it is spelled out clearly enough in the subtitle: "Why There Is No Perfect Design." The author did some legwork and wrote some insightful histories of objects like the paper cup, office chair, and toothbrush. These stories are a treat and make up for the dull ramblings on restaurant service and home remodeling.

Bartleby, the Scrivener   by Herman Melville, 57 pages Steve Gadd   20 September 2008 "At present I would prefer not to be a little reasonable," was his mildly cadaverous reply.

Nature's Numbers   by Ian Stewart, 150 pages Steve Gadd   21 January 2002 Poorly written, but introduces some interesting concepts in chaos theory.

When Nietzsche Wept   by Irvin D. Yalom, 301 pages Steve Gadd   04 February 1996

Love's Executioner   by Irvin D. Yalom, 270 pages Steve Gadd   24 May 2005 Thelma cannot function because of her ardent love for Matthew, though she hasn't seen him in eight years. Saul quakes with fear over three letters that he hasn't opened, certain that they will reveal that his entire career has been a fraud. Penny can't relate to her sons after losing a daughter to cancer. Marvin, a boring, shallow accountant nearing retirement, seeks help for his migraines, but he has little faith in therapy and no inclination toward introspection -- meanwhile his amazingly rich and suggestive dreams show that he is paralyzed with fear of death. These are among the ten tales of psychotherapy which provide an absorbing look at what goes on in the room with the couch. Judging from his success in these stories, Dr. Yalom is an adept, existentialist practitioner of the "talking cure." He doesn't put much store in textbook diagnoses and feels that productive work only comes from the development of a meaningful relationship between the patient and therapist. He likes to quote Nietzsche and lists four factors as particularly relevant to his work: "the inevitability of death for each of us and for those we love; the freedom to make our lives as we will; our ultimate aloneness; and, finally, the absence of any obvious meaning or sense to life."

Lust For Life   by Irving Stone, 453 pages Steve Gadd   29 November 1998 Fictionalized biography of van Gogh. Hard to tell what's made up; I think I would prefer Dear Theo, the letters of the artist to his brother, collected by this author.

Nightfall and Other Stories   by Isaac Asimov, 312 pages Steve Gadd   19 March 1999 Despite the author's insistence, 'Nightfall' is still the best, later expanded into a novel co-authored by Robert Silverberg.

Fathers and Sons   by Ivan Turgenev, 203 pages Steve Gadd   12 December 1998

The Catcher in the Rye   by J. D. Salinger, 214 pages Steve Gadd   14 December 2004 My name is Holden Caulfield and I am a famous literary character. That kills me. If you want to hear about the madman stuff that made me famous you can read this book. I am sure you will get a bang out of it. Certainly you will. The critics sure seem to love it, but they are all a bunch of phonies. There is nothing I hate more than those goddam phony hot-shots.

The New Science of Strong Materials   by J. E. Gordon, 279 pages Steve Gadd   11 July 2004 Most materials exhibit only a fraction of their theoretical strength. Stress accumulates around microscopic cracks, enlarging them and leading to fracture. (A glazier exploits this by etching a scratch in a pane of glass to make a clean break.) The most successful light materials, like wood and fiberglass, incorporate weak layers that trap the point of cracks, dulling and stopping them. Iron is not very strong, but metallurgists over the centuries found ways to treat it to create steels with a strong crystalline structure. Gordon explains why traditional methods, such as quenching a sword in urine, are effective. His style is very readable, and what sounds like a sleep-inducing chapter on "Glue and Plywood" becomes a fascinating history of wooden warplanes in World War II. Thanks to Brian Chandler for the recommendation.

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone   by J. K. Rowling, 309 pages Steve Gadd   24 July 2007 Not bad I suppose for a kid's book but I expected more after hearing about 300 million copies sold. There was a bit of leading by the nose (at the halfway point: "Had Hagrid collected that package just in time? Where was it now? And did Hagrid know something about Snape that he didn't want to tell Harry?") and a classic villain speech at the end. You're never too young for a literary cliché.

To Build a Fire and Other Stories   by Jack London, 84 pages Steve Gadd   08 October 2008 "Love of Life" (here) is better than the more famous story in this collection -- at least it had a protagonist you could root for.

Connections   by James Burke, 295 pages Steve Gadd   04 April 1996

Shogun   by James Clavell, 1152 pages Steve Gadd   16 May 2005 John Blackthorne wants to be the first Englishman to sail around the world, but he arrives in Japan with four of five ships lost and most of his crew perished. He, and his knowledge and inventory of firearms especially, find favor with a leader, and so begins an epic of war and love. There is plenty of swashbuckling, but there is some plodding as well, perhaps to be expected in a book this long. I don't know how accurate it is, but the view of sixteenth-century Japan is quite interesting.

Faster   by James Gleick, 281 pages Steve Gadd   11 February 2004 Subtitle: "The Acceleration of Just About Everything." Feeling rushed? Gleick explains why in this wide-ranging look at all the ways we try to save time, and the multitude of distractions, obligations, and leisure activities that soak up all that banked time. He covers the elevator's (frequently disconnected) Door Close button, airline scheduling, modifications of professional sports for television broadcast, and the effects of MTV (try counting shots in a typical commercial). Food preparation provides great examples. Once upon a time you mixed flour, sugar, and baking soda to make pancakes. Then came boxed pancake mix. Now you toast frozen waffles. Or: Homemade frosting, frosting mix, frosting in a can. But no matter how much time you save, it never seems enough. There is no longer minute than the one spent waiting for the microwave. Gleick cites surveys that inventory the daily 1,440 minutes and finds that, on average, four minutes a day are spent in what Americans describe as their most enjoyable activity. The same amount of time goes to filling out government forms, according to the "Sex and Paperwork" chapter. We spend about a year of our lifetime searching for lost objects. We all know that an awful lot of time is spent in traffic, but time researchers calculate their lifetime total for time spent tying shoes and switch to velcro.

Genius   by James Gleick, 560 pages Steve Gadd   26 April 2006 More sober than I remembered, this biography does not retell any of the funny anecdotes from the books that popularized the Feynman legend, either steering clear of them or pointing out the ways in which they were embellished.

The Dead   by James Joyce, 59 pages Steve Gadd   05 October 2008 A cunning format for a story: dry, dinner party dialog for the first half making the reflective, melancholic second half all the more effective. "She was walking on before him so lightly and so erect that he longed to run after her noiselessly, catch her by the shoulders and say something foolish and affectionate into her ear. She seemed to him so frail that he longed to defend her against something and then to be alone with her. Moments of their secret life together burst like stars upon his memory. A heliotrope envelope was lying beside his breakfast-cup and he was caressing it with his hand. Birds were twittering in the ivy and the sunny web of the curtain was shimmering along the floor: he could not eat for happiness. They were standing on the crowded platform and he was placing a ticket inside the warm palm of her glove. He was standing with her in the cold, looking in through a grated window at a man making bottles in a roaring furnace."

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man   by James Joyce, 253 pages Steve Gadd   20 December 2008 Not as compelling as I remembered it, though the extensive lecture on hell is still harrowing. Probably the only place you'll find fart jokes in Latin, or the tidbit that "bollocks" is "the only English dual number."

Guns, Germs, and Steel   by Jared Diamond, 425 pages Steve Gadd   27 July 2008 I suspect that this is a book that many more people have started than finished. The book has a great thesis, by which the author intends to explain the advancement of some cultures over others by crediting environmental factors rather than innate ability. This idea is supported by many diverse examples, showing that cultivable plants and soil, domesticable animals, and favorable climates were the mundane but critical ingredients of empires. I was captivated by the story in Chapter 3 of the fall of the last Incan emperor, Atahualpa, in his own land surrounded by thousands of loyal soldiers, at the hands (and guns) of Piazarro and his ragged band of conquistadores. Things bog down quite a bit as the book plods on. The text seems repetitive, and the illustrating examples become more and more spread out. At times it seems the language came straight from a lecture hall, as one paragraph after another is begun by posing a question and then giving the answer -- you can almost see the Powerpoint slides.

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly   by Jean-Dominique Bauby, 132 pages Steve Gadd   29 August 1999 Written by a man who, following a stroke, could only communicate by blinking one eye.

The Words   by Jean-Paul Sartre, 255 pages Steve Gadd   12 February 1996

The Size of the World   by Jeff Greenwald, 420 pages Steve Gadd   27 November 1999 Having seen more of the world than Magellan or Marco Polo but feeling less accomplished than they, this travel writer decided to attempt to circle the world without ever boarding a plane.

The Mole People   by Jennifer Toth, 256 pages Steve Gadd   20 September 2000 Seven stories below the streets of New York City, in the extensive disused subway tunnels and abandoned stations, live literally thousands of people down on their luck. Toth tells their stories.

A Fez of the Heart   by Jeremy Seal, 334 pages Steve Gadd   22 November 1999 Inspired by an old fez found in an attic, the author travels through modern Turkey looking for the story behind the outlawed hat.

Apollo 13   by Jim Lovell and Jeffrey Kluger, 382 pages Steve Gadd   05 December 2004 The book gives some background on the Apollo program and a detailed account of the unlucky mission. It was interesting to see that after the oxygen tank explosion, the oxygen supply problem was fairly minor. The ordeal was more a marathon of mundane challenges: keeping the ship oriented and warm, saving power, and modifying the ship's trajectory to actually return to Earth instead of becoming a permanent tomb orbiting the sun for centuries.

Chocolat   by Joanne Harris, 306 pages Steve Gadd   26 December 2002 A small French town is transformed by the arrival of Vianne Rocher and her chocolate shop. Opposed by the local priest and his minions, she eventually prevails, armed with her tasty morsels. Now what's this about Juliette Binoche?

Red Lobster, White Trash, and the Blue Lagoon   by Joe Queenan, 188 pages Steve Gadd   10 October 2000 Bored silly with the highbrow culture to which he had become acustomed, this film critic decided to dive head-first into the worst of America's excesses: Cats, Yanni, "Encino Man," Geraldo, and Atlantic City.

Touching the Void   by Joe Simpson, 215 pages Steve Gadd   01 July 2009

Defining Vision   by Joel Brinkley, 435 pages Steve Gadd   04 January 1999 Fascinating account of the race to develop high-definition television.

The Emperors of Chocolate   by Joël Glenn Brenner, 324 pages Steve Gadd   28 January 2002 The author takes full advantage of her unique invitation to see Planet Mars from the inside. A fascinating history of the chocolate business in America.

The Sufferings of Young Werther   by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, 160 pages Steve Gadd   26 April 1999 A moving and expertly written epistolary novel that created a sensation in its day.

I Think, Therefore I Laugh   by John Allen Paulos, 155 pages Steve Gadd   12 June 1995

Richard Feynman: A Life in Science   by John and Mary Gribbin, 284 pages Steve Gadd   14 February 1998 The least worthy of all the Feynman material. They pad out the same information found in the better written Genius (by James Gleick) with tabloid revelations from personal letters.

The French Lieutenant's Woman   by John Fowles, 366 pages Steve Gadd   09 September 1995

The Collector   by John Fowles, 288 pages Steve Gadd   08 February 1999 An unsettling narrative by the author of the more interesting The French Lieutenant's Woman.

Grendel   by John Gardner, 154 pages Steve Gadd   05 September 1998 Very clever and memorable.

Grendel   by John Gardner, 174 pages Steve Gadd   11 May 2007 He stretched his wings -- it was like a huge, irascible yawn -- then settled again. "Things come and go," he said. "That's the gist of it."

Grendel (audio)   by John Gardner, 0 pages Steve Gadd   23 June 2009 "My advice to you, my violent friend, is to seek out gold and sit on it."

The Summons   by John Grisham, 341 pages Steve Gadd   02 March 2002 Another good story from John 'The' Grisham. For the record, the Also By page shows 13 titles, 10 of which begin with 'The.'

The Brethren   by John Grisham, 440 pages Steve Gadd   07 May 2004 Say what you will about John "The" Grisham, he's reliable for a quick read. Just compare the numbers on my last two entries: eye-opening, memorable travelogue/exposé, 6.5 pages per day; page-turning, forgettable, made-for-movies dirty lawyer conspiracy story, 88 pages per day.

The Russia House   by John Le Carré, 431 pages Steve Gadd   15 April 2007 From the back cover: "An exciting spy story, which is at the same time a lively international comedy ... A well-informed, up-to-the-minute political parable, incisive and instructive ... rich ... poignant ... fascinating." --The New York Times Book Review. My excerpts from that same review would be different: "Portentous ... rather wooden ... Mr. le Carré is less good at portraying ... professional spies ... A sham and a mess ... distressing ... horse manure ... inherently pointless."

Travels with Charley in Search of America   by John Steinbeck, 224 pages Steve Gadd   18 October 2009

Eiger Dreams   by Jon Krakauer, 186 pages Steve Gadd   22 May 2003 I wish I could find a hundred books like this one, a collection of 12 magazine articles, mostly from Outside and Smithsonian. Each one profiles a mountaineering adventure or disaster. Interesting note: K2, the second-highest mountain in the world, is regarded as the most difficult ascent. The is partly because it is so remote that no permanent human settlement is close enough to see it.

Into the Wild   by Jon Krakauer, 207 pages Steve Gadd   13 November 2007

How to Be Alone   by Jonathan Franzen, 288 pages Steve Gadd   18 January 2003 It seems that about half the essays in this collection amount to an indictment of the dulling effects of pop culture and technology, especially in the way they have affected reading. Other essays cover on a variety of topics -- government at work in the post office and supermax prisons, his father's struggle with Alzheimer's, and his amusing encounter with Oprah. Thanks Tony for the gift.

The Corrections   by Jonathan Franzen, 566 pages Steve Gadd   16 March 2005 A powerful novel that manages to live up to its considerable hype. Franzen's knack for prose makes the character-driven story engrossing without needing much of a plot engine.

Sophie's World   by Jostein Gaarder, 513 pages Steve Gadd   04 May 2002 "Ladies and gentlemen, we're floating in space!" This would have been just a cute and clever novel about a Norwegian girl. Add an unpretentious history of philosophy and it's a European bestseller. A pleasant introduction or review of philosophy.

La vuelta al mundo en ochenta días   by Jules Verne, 326 pages Steve Gadd   01 October 2008 Cuando dije que apuesto- respondió Stuart : es en formalidad. Aceptado -dijo Fogg: y luego, volviéndose hacia sus compañeros, añadió : Tengo veinte mil libras depositadas en casa de Baring hermanos. De buena gana las arriesgaría. ¡Veinte mil libras!- Exclamó John Suilivan-. ¡Veinte mil libras, que cualquier tardanza imprevista os puede hacer perder! No existe lo imprevisto- respondió sencillamente Phileas Fogg. ¡Pero, Míster Fogg, ese transcurso de ochenta días sólo está calculado como mínimo! Un mínimo bien empleado basta para todo. ¡Pero a fin de- aprovecharlo, es necesario saltar matemáticamente de los ferrocarriles a los vapores y de los vapores a los ferrocarriles! Saltaré matemáticamente.

A History of the World in 10 1/2 Chapters   by Julian Barnes, 307 pages Steve Gadd   31 May 1997

A History of the World in 10 1/2 Chapters   by Julian Barnes, 307 pages Steve Gadd   03 October 2000 This is a wonderful book. It reads like a 'best-of' collection of short stories, but they are all more or less directly linked to a central recurring image. Sort of a Milan Kundera with a self-effacing British sense of humor.

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.

The Prophet   by Kahlil Gibran, 96 pages Steve Gadd   12 January 1996

The Kite Runner   by Khaled Hosseini, 371 pages Steve Gadd   05 July 2005 Reading this story, you get a bit of a feel for what Afghanistan has been through over the last thirty years. Mostly the author pulls out all the stops trying to break your heart with an overly tragic story.

Galapagos   by Kurt Vonnegut, 295 pages Steve Gadd   30 July 1998 After hearing about him for so long, I was not so impressed by my first exposure to this author. Have to try again later.

Breakfast of Champions   by Kurt Vonnegut, 295 pages Steve Gadd   17 September 2002 This book is just dumb. The story is dumb, the writing is dumb, and the author's drawings are dumb. Here are the three most clever things in the book: 1) The author inserts himself as a character. 2) He calls mirrors 'leaks.' 3) He describes some commonplace things in a super-literal fashion. This last gimmick is actually amusing a few of the hundreds of times he uses it. Really, there's nothing here that would surprise you coming from a slightly precocious fourteen-year-old. Why is this guy such a favorite?

Like Water for Chocolate [audio]   by Laura Esquivel, 0 pages Steve Gadd   19 March 2000 A romantic family epic in the magical-realism style following Tita, who by family tradition is bound to remain single and care for her mother until she dies.

An Autobiography   by Lee Iacocca, 341 pages Steve Gadd   09 September 2002 The savior of Chrysler tells his side of the story at Ford, how he rose through the ranks with hard work and great success, only to be fired by a paranoid Henry Ford. Includes Iacocca's argument in favor of a government bailout for Chrysler, despite being a champion of the free-enterprise system, and a chapter against airbags, written before Chrysler's about-face on that topic.

Anna Karenina   by Leo Tolstoy, 851 pages Steve Gadd   06 March 1999 If you're one of the few people for whom the ending hasn't been spoiled, read it soon.

The Cossacks   by Leo Tolstoy, 159 pages Steve Gadd   23 May 2000 It took a while to find this novelette, but the enjoyable story and touching portrait of these people made it worth the search.

Looking for Trouble   by Leslie Cockburn, 273 pages Steve Gadd   02 May 2004 Memoirs of a fearless news correspondent who traveled to hotspots around the world interviewing leaders and covering conflict. Includes encounters with the Hussein brothers, drug lords, and other bad guys from Afghanistan to Cambodia. In a notable interview, we learn that Iranian vice-president Mohajirani admires Salman Rushdie, comparing him to García Márquez and James Joyce, his favorite writer.

Little Women   by Louisa May Alcott, 504 pages Steve Gadd   09 March 1998 Great book. A short-lived attempt to continue my goal of eliminating unread books from my shelf, bogged down by Northanger Abbey.

The Autobiography of Malcolm X   by Malcolm X, 460 pages Steve Gadd   20 March 1996

The Handmaid's Tale   by Margaret Atwood, 395 pages Steve Gadd   21 April 1996

Black Hawk Down [audio]   by Mark Bowden, 0 pages Steve Gadd   26 February 2000 The ill-fated American intervention in Somalia, as seen by both sides on the ground. A gruesome and gripping minute-by-minute account of modern urban warfare.

Black Hawk Down   by Mark Bowden, 430 pages Steve Gadd   14 May 2002 Minute-by-minute, bullet-by-bullet account of the peacekeeping mission in Somalia gone awry.

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time   by Mark Haddon, 226 pages Steve Gadd   09 October 2007

The Innocents Abroad   by Mark Twain, 651 pages Steve Gadd   19 August 1997

Time's Arrow   by Martin Amis, 165 pages Steve Gadd   19 February 1996

The Information   by Martin Amis, 376 pages Steve Gadd   01 March 1996

The Flight of Peter Fromm   by Martin Gardner, 280 pages Steve Gadd   10 April 1996

The Night Is Large   by Martin Gardner, 565 pages Steve Gadd   05 August 1999 This collection of essays written from 1938 to 1995 demonstrates the versatility of this author, perhaps best known as a purveyor of puzzles.

Frankenstein   by Mary Shelly, 206 pages Steve Gadd   25 February 2008 Spurned by his creator, all Frankenstein's monster wanted was a friend. Not a bad story for a 19-year-old author (and I just learned where she got her last name). The writing is as literary as you would expect from someone cooped up with master poets during the Year Without a Summer.

Sphere   by Michael Chrichton, 371 pages Steve Gadd   21 December 1995

Airframe [audio]   by Michael Crichton, 0 pages Steve Gadd   29 March 2000 A thriller set amid the political drama of the aircraft industry, sure to become a movie before long.

Timeline   by Michael Crichton, 444 pages Steve Gadd   17 June 2000 An imaginative and well-paced take on the time travel theme. The detailled and engrossing scenes of medieval life and combat reflect a good deal of research on the author's part.

Travels   by Michael Crichton, 416 pages Steve Gadd   29 November 2003 Turns out the guy behind "Jurassic Park" and "ER" is a hardcore globetrotter. He starts off with stories about his days in medical school, when he wrote thrillers to pay school bills. After moving to California and finding success in Hollywood, he began travelling to exotic places in search of new experiences. He climbed Kilimanjaro, dived with sharks, sat around with African gorillas, and sought out jungle headhunters. Meanwhile, he explored the nutty fads of California -- psychics, spoon bending, meditation, auras. His training in science makes these passages interesting. He is open to anything, but remains skeptical even as he has experiences he can't explain.

Five Patients   by Michael Crichton, 228 pages Steve Gadd   05 December 2003 Meandering, dated essays on medical practice in the late 1960's, when he was working at Massachusetts General Hospital.

Disclosure   by Michael Crichton, 497 pages Steve Gadd   27 December 2006 As usual, Crichton has done his homework and includes some interesting factual background on his theme, in this case the legal consequences of sexual harassment in the workplace. The plot was engaging enough to be a quick read, but hardly compelling. The surprise ending was in the postscript revealing that the book is based on a true story, but it has been so obfuscated that it hardly matters.

The Omnivore's Dilemma   by Michael Pollan, 415 pages Steve Gadd   05 February 2008 It's no surprise that corn finds its way into everything we eat, but the story of how corn became dominant is pretty interesting. Pollan also gives a mercifully brief look at industrial meat processing and makes vegetarianism sound pretty appealing. But a chapter later he has you ready to pick up a gun and go hunting. An engaging look at where modern food comes from. Thanks to Tony for the gift.

The Unbearable Lightness of Being   by Milan Kundera, 314 pages Steve Gadd   28 June 1995

The Book of Laughter and Forgetting   by Milan Kundera, 237 pages Steve Gadd   04 October 1997

The Joke   by Milan Kundera, 317 pages Steve Gadd   08 October 1997

Slowness   by Milan Kundera, 156 pages Steve Gadd   25 December 1998

Immortality   by Milan Kundera, 345 pages Steve Gadd   21 March 2002 The author needlessly inserts himself as a character in the story, despite the fact that most of the book is taken up by his ponderous musings on life and love anyway. Some parts are memorable, but I was often wishing for a bit more of the 'dramatic tension' the fictional author disparages.

Yanomamo: The Fierce People   by Napoleon A. Chagnon, 214 pages Steve Gadd   27 August 2003 Another perspective-broadening volume in the Case Studies in Cultural Anthropology. The Yanomamo are a tribe living in the jungles between Brazil and Venezuela, subsisting mainly on cultivated plantains. The groups of 50 to 200 individuals are mistrustful of their neighbors and warfare is a major feature of the culture, resulting in about one in four adult males dying of violence. Interesting also for the detailed look at the inevitable process of Westernization and cultural influence from outside.

In the Heart of the Sea   by Nathaniel Philbrick, 278 pages Steve Gadd   25 February 2002 The tale of the Essex, a Nantucket-based whaleship that was attacked and sunk by a sperm whale, forcing its crew to sail for South America in three small boats. The inspiration for Moby-Dick.

Snow Crash   by Neal Stephenson, 471 pages Steve Gadd   09 August 2000 Wow. Action-packed, crisply written, and carefully structured, this is a big chunk of sci-fi that makes the real world seem terribly boring every time you reluctantly stop reading.

Cryptonomicon   by Neal Stephenson, 1139 pages Steve Gadd   07 August 2003 A sprawling, thrilling opus full of WWII adventure, codebreaking, treasure hunting, and hacking. A ripping good yarn!

The Diamond Age   by Neal Stephenson, 499 pages Steve Gadd   14 September 2003 Stephenson paints a rich portrait of the nanotech future. The big scheme of the story was disorganized, especially toward the end. Whose side is the Mouse Army on, anyway?

Quicksilver   by Neal Stephenson, 916 pages Steve Gadd   27 March 2007 Not one to coast on the success of his early work, Stephenson weighs in with a handwritten tome set in seventeenth-century Europe. Newton, Leibniz and other historical personages are minor characters, along with ancestors of various fictional characters from Cryptonomicon. While there is plenty of interesting material, one starts to feel that the novel itself is like the enciphered letters it quotes at length, in which five lines of text are required to convey one line of content.

The Size of Thoughts: Essays and Other Lumber   by Nicholson Baker, 255 pages Steve Gadd   25 November 1998 Highly original and entertaining collection of essays on such diverse topics as movie projectors, nail clips, and an exhaustive search for arcane uses of the word 'lumber.' Really, it's much better than it sounds.

Vox   by Nicholson Baker, 165 pages Steve Gadd   28 February 2003 After reading only 50 pages of Nietzsche over a snowy four-day weekend, I decided to go looking for some lighter fare. This book is a single conversation between two witty conversationalists who discover each other on an adult chat line. Baker lends his voice, with its fine-tuned attention to detail and wry imagination, to both partners. In the end it doesn't amount to much other than soft-core, but it is a nice complement to the wonderful magazine essays on boring subjects like nail clips and library card catalogs (in the collection The Size of Thoughts).

The Fermata   by Nicholson Baker, 303 pages Steve Gadd   13 March 2003 The dust jacket spells it out: "Arno Strine likes to stop time and take women's clothes off. He is hard at work on his autobiography." Perhaps you have wondered what you would do if you could stop time and move around the frozen world. Baker answers the question, assuming the time-stopper is a friendly, lonely man with raging hormones. The titillating conversation that worked in Vox just doesn't come off when the character is actually misbehaving and not just fantasizing about it. Baker seems to realize this and frames the explicit scenes in recordings, fictions within the fiction, and an entire chapter written with conditional verbs. Except for the overindulgence in puns, the writing is still good. It just reads too much like a test to see how much the author could get away with in a Random House book.

Vox   by Nicholson Baker, 165 pages Steve Gadd   16 March 2006 Somehow this book came home with me when I picked up The Mezzanine at the library, and I read through it in two sittings.

The Mezzanine   by Nicholson Baker, 135 pages Steve Gadd   19 March 2006 A guy goes up an escalator. Brilliant.

A Box of Matches   by Nicholson Baker, 192 pages Steve Gadd   27 September 2006 As long as I'm calling myself a fan, I may as well read the rest of this guy's canon. This book is a collection of thoughts captured over several weeks while the narrator got up before dawn to build a fire. No real plot, no chronology, just trademark close observation of everyday banality -- the way his toes automatically rise in the shower in the presense of falling soap, his duck's defensive maneuvers against the house cat, the amazing longevitiy of one ant which outlived all its comrades in an ant farm, the "negative thump" of a paper match pulled from its book.

Checkpoint   by Nicholson Baker, 115 pages Steve Gadd   30 September 2006 A pretty weak effort that managed to get the author in hot water with the Secret Service but otherwise doesn't have much going for it.

Vox   by Nicholson Baker, 165 pages Steve Gadd   07 March 2009 The rare book that lives up to the blurbs inside the cover. A receipt tucked inside indicates that it was purchased at the Virgin Megastore San Francisco on March 25, 1999.

Dead Souls   by Nikolai Gogol, 417 pages Steve Gadd   24 January 1998 Fragmented, but a classic. Jointly read with some school friends, I couldn't find a copy and had to download, print, and bind the text from the Online Books page.

Portrait of Picasso as a Young Man   by Norman Mailer, 370 pages Steve Gadd   13 January 1999 Sometimes flattering, sometimes not, an engaging bio of the often profligate young artist.

Seeing Voices   by Oliver Sacks, 162 pages Steve Gadd   28 April 2000 An interesting and very educational look at the community and language of the deaf, including a report on the uprising at Gallaudet University to demand a deaf president.

The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat   by Oliver Sacks, 233 pages Steve Gadd   15 December 2002 Best book I read this year. The most interesting clinical tales from the 'Awakenings' neurologist. Read about the woman who, following a stroke, cannot see or perceive the idea of 'left.' She makes up the right half of her face, and eats the right half of her dinner. If she is still hungry, she must turn to the right in a circle until she finds the half-portion, and she eats half of that. Amnesiacs and hypermnesiacs. And the amazing twins, who couldn't do basic math, but entertained each other by calling out large primes. What keeps the book from becoming a freak show is the extremely literate and sensitive writing of the author, whose fascination for mental abberations is balanced by his compassion for the people who suffer (or in some unusual cases, benefit) from them.

An Anthropologist on Mars   by Oliver Sacks, 296 pages Steve Gadd   04 April 2003 An artist loses his color vision after a car accident, a surgeon with Tourette's syndrome shows no symptoms while he works, a man blind from birth regains sight after cataract surgery but has no comprehension of vision. Seven case studies presented in detail by the Awakenings doctor.

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.

The White Castle   by Orhan Pamuk, 161 pages Steve Gadd   15 December 2000 A short novel about two lives so intertwined as to become exchanged, it is no substitute for the Kafka or Borges to which it is compared.

The Best of Outside   by Outside Magazine, 416 pages Steve Gadd   15 October 2006 This magazine published the articles which later became the bestsellers "The Perfect Storm" and "Into Thin Air." This collection includes those articles and a few other hits, but overall it was a disappointment.

Right Ho, Jeeves   by P. G. Wodehouse, 224 pages Steve Gadd   19 October 2009

Parliament of Whores   by P. J. O'Rourke, 233 pages Steve Gadd   28 October 2006 O'Rourke applies his acid tongue to excesses of American government, a pretty easy target. His conclusion: God is a Republican and Santa Claus is a Democrat. "God is an elderly or, at any rate, middle-aged male, a stern fellow, patriarchal rather than paternal and a great believer in rules and regulations. ... He has little apparent concern for the material well-being of the disadvangtaged.... Santa Claus is another matter. He's cute. He's nonthreatening. He's always cheerful.... He gives everyone everything they want without a thought of a quid pro quo.... Santa Claus is preferable to God in every way but one: There is no such thing as Santa Claus."

Holidays in Hell   by P.J. O'Rourke, 257 pages Steve Gadd   18 September 2004 It's a fun formula: send a journalist into the most rotten, war-torn corners of the world to fill us in on what life is like without Starbucks and good roads. O'Rourke fancies himself a modern Mark Twain, an Innocent Abroad, but he reads more like Dave Barry. He does deserve credit for cracking jokes in some genuinely inhospitable places.

Peace Kills   by P.J. O'Rourke, 197 pages Steve Gadd   20 July 2007 O'Rourke on Kosovo, Israel, Egypt, Iraq, and Iwo Jima. Reads like Dave Barry but with bombs and policy instead of boogers and poop.

Give War a Chance   by P.J. O'Rourke, 256 pages Steve Gadd   13 April 2008 Political commentary soaked with scorn and sarcasm serves as a good antidote to CNN earnestness.

Archimedes' Revenge   by Paul Hoffman, 260 pages Steve Gadd   27 May 2003 An eclectic collection of essays in various mathematical fields: number theory, cryptography, topology, artificial intelligence, and game theory. The title refers to a cattle-counting problem posed by Archimedes that stood unsolved until the age of computers. The survey of other classic problems is interesting, as is the game theory demonstration that a truly democratic election is impossible. The chapters on artificial intelligence computer chess players are dated, however, and the book reads like notes for a lecture on the whole.

The Man Who Loved Only Numbers   by Paul Hoffman, 268 pages Steve Gadd   21 March 2005 Paul Erdös was the most prolific mathematician of the twentieth century, surpassed historically only by Euler's seventy volumes of collected work. For most of his life, Erdös was an itinerant workaholic, often unable to go home to Hungary for political reasons. He would arrive at the doorstep of a colleague unannounced and work 19-hour days, fueled by amphetamines, then move on to the next host. His extensive collaboration has made him the Kevin Bacon of the math world -- mathematicians calculate their Erdös Number based on paper co-authorship, and almost all published mathematicians are within eight links. His genius seemed to come at the expense of any practical knowledge, and he would even ask for help tying his shoes. Thanks to Tony for this memorable biography.

The Walk West   by Peter and Barbara Jenkins, 431 pages Steve Gadd   05 April 1999 Peter and his new bride honeymoon with a hike to the Pacific. More great encounters with everyday Americans.

J. Robert Oppenheimer   by Peter Goodchild, 288 pages Steve Gadd   04 June 2000 A long-sought biography of the man behind the atomic bomb project. This book, part of a BBC production, is richly illustrated and very readable.

A Walk Across America   by Peter Jenkins, 320 pages Steve Gadd   14 March 1999 New York to New Orleans on foot. Pretty impressive.

Last Breath   by Peter Stark, 292 pages Steve Gadd   12 October 2005 This was not the anthology of outdoor adventure/disaster stories I was expecting. Instead, it was a collection of fictional exploits, each illustrating one of the dangers that adventurers face. Much like Dr. Nuland's book How We Die but focusing on hypothermia, drowning, avalanche, scurvy, heatstroke, predators and thirst rather than more common killers. The fiction is not great, but I found the background information interesting, and reading about how the body reacts to threats is always amazing. The history of scurvey and the amazing lifecycle of the malaria bug make great conversation starters.

Tropical Classical   by Pico Iyer, 314 pages Steve Gadd   20 September 1999 Travel essays, profiles, book reviews.

Alive: The Story of the Andes Survivors   by Piers Paul Read, 318 pages Steve Gadd   10 May 1998 Unbelievable true story of a soccer team whose plane crashed in the Andes. Find out all the frightful details the movie left out.

The Worst-case Scenario Survival Handbook: Travel   by Piven and Borgenicht, 191 pages Steve Gadd   07 September 2007 I picked this up expressly to pad my page count. The only thing it's likely to save anyone from is boredom, but it's pretty good at that.

Tuva Or Bust   by Ralph Leighton, 245 pages Steve Gadd   20 September 1998 The saga of Richard Feynman and friends trying to visit a remote Soviet territory, basically because they have cool postage stamps and a capital named Kyzyl.

One Hundred Years of Solitude: Modes of Reading   by Regina Janes, 132 pages Steve Gadd   27 July 1998 Very accessable lit-crit on my favorite novel.

Talk of the Devil   by Riccardo Orizio, 199 pages Steve Gadd   26 December 2003 Interviews with seven of the world's most notorious one-time dictators. The common thread among them is a complete lack of remorse and a variety of excuses for mass death and suffering. An interesting Where Are They Now for the rich and infamous.

The Dobe !Kung   by Richard B. Lee, 157 pages Steve Gadd   30 August 1998 Guess what: the hunter-gatherer people of the Kalahari desert have more free time than we do in the 'developed' world. This fascinating anthropology study is an easy read, and a good temporary escape from industrialized life.

The Blind Watchmaker   by Richard Dawkins, 453 pages Steve Gadd   28 November 2007 Dawkins' answer to William Paley's argument that complexity in nature requires the existence of a designer begins by making a stronger case than Paley. He describes the intricately fine-tuned echolocation used by bats, employing sophisticated techniques developed for sonar and radar. How could such a wonderful system appear by chance? The answer, of course, is by degrees. Chance plays an essential but minor role; selection is the primary force. To the classical objection of a complex organ like the eye having to appear all at once to be useful, he presents a parade of animals -- single-celled organism, worm, mollusk, squid -- that in fact do have eyes of progressing levels of complexity and acuity. He tends to belabor his points, often writing a whole paragraph where a "vice versa" would do, but many examples of plants and animals keep the writing colorful.

Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!   by Richard Feynman, 317 pages Steve Gadd   15 October 1995

What Do You Care What Other People Think?   by Richard Feynman, 248 pages Steve Gadd   25 October 1995

Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!   by Richard Feynman, 317 pages Steve Gadd   26 January 1997

The Pleasure of Finding Things Out   by Richard Feynman, 257 pages Steve Gadd   11 May 2000 This collection of essays and lectures includes much material found elsewhere with some additional material.

Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!   by Richard Feynman, 317 pages Steve Gadd   16 June 2000 The great anecdotes, adventures, and experiments, always worth another read.

Six Easy Pieces   by Richard Feynman, 138 pages Steve Gadd   21 March 2004 Feynman's Lectures on Physics are widely recognized as paragons of instruction. These selections were taken from his freshman-level course. Feynman brings the science to life, introducing atomic theory and showing how it is behind everyday phenomena such as cooling by evaporation. Frequent asides illustrate principles and add flair to the lectures: Cavendish's famous experiment which weighed the Earth, and the indirect discovery of Neptune by mathematicians studying the orbits of nearer planets. Even quantum behavior in the last chapter is presented simply, making this a very readable review of introductory physics.

"What Do You Care What Other People Think?"   by Richard P. Feynman, 248 pages Steve Gadd   21 March 2006 Early anecdotes, some travel stories, and the Challenger investigation.

The Hot Zone   by Richard Preston, 422 pages Steve Gadd   17 November 2002 Remember the Ebola scare? A mysterious new breed of virus -- deadlier than AIDS, possibly as contagious as influenza -- has been ravaging towns in central Africa. Then one day it appears in a group of lab monkeys just outside Washington, D.C. The gripping story reads like science fiction, but hits close to home. The "monkey house" was less than two miles from my house.

The Making of the Atomic Bomb   by Richard Rhodes, 928 pages Steve Gadd   29 July 2006 With its epic sweep and extensive quotes from the characters involved, this sweeping history is not only fascinating for the technical details but also for the human drama. Side stories added color: the sabotage of a Norwegian heavy water plant, the parallel research into atomic secrets in Germany, Russia, and Japan, and the clash of personalities on the Manhattan Project. Fittingly awarded with the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, and the National Book Critics Circle Award.

Dark Sun: The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb   by Richard Rhodes, 588 pages Steve Gadd   28 December 2008

Learned Pigs & Fireproof Women   by Ricky Jay, 313 pages Steve Gadd   23 November 2003 Ricky Jay, an accomplished sleight-of-hand artist and card thrower, describes in fascinating detail a variety of sideshow attractions and show business oddities. Arthur Lloyd carried thousands of cards and documents in his pockets and could present any document an audience member requested instantly. Performers with every variety of missing limbs entertained with their musical and acrobatic skills. Others ate stones and poisons, baked themselves in ovens, or dove from great heights into shallow pools. The book ends with the story of Joseph Pujol, a fartiste known as Le Pétomane whose act consisted of breaking wind with the sound of animals or musical numbers.

Job: A Comedy of Justice   by Robert A. Heinlein, 439 pages Steve Gadd   17 October 2000 A fanciful novel by the sci-fi veteran based on the wormhole motif. Thanks to Ayda for the loan.

The Bridges of Madison County   by Robert James Waller, 171 pages Steve Gadd   02 March 1997

The Osterman Weekend   by Robert Ludlum, 336 pages Steve Gadd   05 April 2006 A weak early effort by the author of the Bourne trilogy.

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance   by Robert M. Pirsig, 418 pages Steve Gadd   06 July 1998 Hard to summarize; definitely worth a look.

The Raft   by Robert Trumbull, 128 pages Steve Gadd   02 February 1996

U2: The Rolling Stone Files   by Rolling Stone editors, 323 pages Steve Gadd   09 May 1998

The Soccer War   by Ryszard Kapuscinski, 234 pages Steve Gadd   10 September 2000 Great travel writing and war reportage. Kapuscinski went where few foreigners dared, into the tumult of Africa and into Central America. The title refers to a full-scale conflict between El Salvador and Honduras sparked by a World Cup qualifying match.

The Perfect Storm   by Sebastian Junger, 301 pages Steve Gadd   04 April 2000 The reader follows the last days of a fishing boat doomed to vanish in the North Atlantic's "storm of the century."

Fire   by Sebastian Junger, 250 pages Steve Gadd   26 July 2003 A collection of excellent journalism from war zones and mountain wildfires, including eyewitness reporting on the blood diamonds of Sierra Leone, the fall of the Taliban, and the last harpoon whaler in the world. Perhaps the most interesting chapter was "Dispatches From a Dead War" in Cyprus, where the UN has its longest-lasting peacekeeping campaign. Like so many other hotspots in the world, the history and deep enmity suggest that the two sides will not come to agreement anytime soon. But in 25 years since the UN intervened, only 16 people were killed along the Green Line dividing the island, despite its being the world's most militarized country after North and South Korea.

The Wisdom of the Body   by Sherwin B. Nuland, 369 pages Steve Gadd   16 May 1999 Not quite as interesting as his How We Die (this book was retitled How We Live, appropriately), the general surgeon takes the reader on a tour of the amazing systems of the body.

Silence   by Shusaku Endo, 201 pages Steve Gadd   01 March 1997

The Professor and the Madman   by Simon Winchester, 242 pages Steve Gadd   11 February 2002 Dr. William C. Minor, a mentally unstable American army doctor, murdered a London man in a fit of paranoia. Confined to an institution for most of the rest of his life, he became one of the most prolific contributors to the Oxford English Dictionary.

Krakatoa   by Simon Winchester, 390 pages Steve Gadd   29 December 2004 The eruption/explosion of this volcanic island is well known as the loudest sound in recorded history, heard thousands of miles away. Winchester tells the interesting tale of colonization in the Dutch East Indies, throws in a lesson in plate tectonics, and then gives an account of the 1883 disaster that became the first international news story carried by undersea telegraph cable. Published last year, the book ominously predicted that Krakatoa would "play it tricks on the world once again, and before very much longer."

A Crack in the Edge of the World   by Simon Winchester, 417 pages Steve Gadd   19 June 2009 The story of San Francisco's destruction during the 1906 earthquake and fire, along with a helpful overview of plate tectonics.

The Man who Loved China   by Simon Winchester, 352 pages Steve Gadd   13 August 2009 [audio]

Paris in the Fifties   by Stanley Karnow, 337 pages Steve Gadd   07 September 1999 An enjoyable collection of essays by a Time journalist.

Adrift   by Steven Callahan, 234 pages Steve Gadd   24 January 1996

Adrift   by Steven Callahan, 344 pages Steve Gadd   27 June 1997

Adrift   by Steven Callahan, 344 pages Steve Gadd   10 April 2000 The ever rereadable first person account of 76 days spent floating across the Pacific in a rubber life raft.

Adrift   by Steven Callahan, 344 pages Steve Gadd   22 September 2004 I read this book every few years and get a new appreciation for such things as fresh water, food, and a warm bed. This survivor's resourcefulness and determination are always impressive, and his precise drawings are a nice touch.

Adrift   by Steven Callahan, 344 pages Steve Gadd   18 April 2007 Day 14: I sit a thousand miles away from any companionship, money, or luxury, yet I have a feeling of wealth. Fifteen pounds of raw fish dangle from clotheslines that I've rigged in one half of the raft. I call it the butcher shop. The solar sill is beginning to glisten with condensation, coins tossed to this beggar by the aristocratic sun. It is not much, but the implications of my meager cache are great. Slowly I am evolving a home out of this rubber, string, and steel.

Freakonomics   by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner , 242 pages Steve Gadd   05 August 2006 A themeless collection of essays seeking to explore the statistics behind the drop in crime in the '90s, the effects of parental behavior and a child's name on future success, and the comparative risk of having a swimming pool or a gun. The most interesting section was the report from a student who spent years with Chicago crack dealers, finding their business model similar to that of McDonalds.

The Language Instinct   by Steven Pinker, 430 pages Steve Gadd   13 May 1997

Words and Rules   by Steven Pinker, 287 pages Steve Gadd   27 November 2000 This study in linguistics, focusing on regular and irregular verbs, is a bit more tedious than The Language Instinct, but still has some rewarding insights.

The Language Instinct   by Steven Pinker, 430 pages Steve Gadd   10 May 2009 Pinker makes the case for an innate ability to use language, pointing out that human languages have more similarities than differences, and a child's skill at learning to speak demonstrates that there is more than simple imitation at work.

Irrationality   by Stuart Sutherland, 238 pages Steve Gadd   16 July 2007 This book tries to inventory a variety of ways in which people make bad decisions, such as sitting through a bad movie because the tickets were expensive (the sunk costs error), favoring evidence that confirms one's beliefs and discounting contrary evidence, and fundamental misunderstanding of statistics. Sutherland himself seems to be less than rigorous in his presentation at times, ignoring the rational behavior in a study, or citing the "availability error" as the reason for just about everything.

Donde te lleve el corazón   by Susanna Tamaro, 139 pages Steve Gadd   15 September 2001 A series of sentimental letters from a widow to her estranged granddaughter.

The Piano Shop on the Left Bank   by Thad Carhart, 271 pages Steve Gadd   09 January 2002 An American writer in Paris enters a circle of friends who share a common interest in the piano. Thanks Tony for the gift.

The Downsizing of America   by The New York Times, 236 pages Steve Gadd   14 November 2002 As much as I enjoy the newspaper, this "Special Report" left me wanting. It was little more than a touchy-feely portrait of folks who have been adversely affected by America's modern layoff culture. The authors mention economists who describe layoffs as part of an efficient economic system, but do nothing to develop or refute that view. By now most of us can probably look in the mirror to see the face of the layoff economy, leaving no need for this book.

The Imitation of Christ   by Thomas À Kempis, 217 pages Steve Gadd   06 December 1999 A classic meditation on devotion and the ascetic life -- How To Be a Monk.

The Return of the Native   by Thomas Hardy, 468 pages Steve Gadd   22 July 2002 Eustacia Vye, a beautiful, cultured woman, dreams of the passionate lover who will take her away from the desolate landscape of Egdon Heath. But her poetic longing is no match for the cruelness of fate. Bonfires, burial mounds, secret meetings under the eclipsed moon, Eustacia standing on a barrow at twilight, scanning the horizon with her grandfather's spyglass -- memorable images of this gothic tragedy.

The Return of the Native   by Thomas Hardy, 468 pages Steve Gadd   27 October 2009

Car Talk   by Tom and Ray Magliozzi, 206 pages Steve Gadd   17 January 1998 Paper version of the radio program. Just as enjoyable, and with plenty of helpful information about buying and keeping a car. "The cheapskate pays the most!"

Still Life With Woodpecker   by Tom Robbins, 277 pages Steve Gadd   28 January 1996

The Turk   by Tom Standage, 247 pages Steve Gadd   30 January 2004 In 1770, Wolfgang von Kempelen produced a life-size mechanical man capable of beating all comers at chess. Even in an age when clockwork marvels were drawing crowds throughout Europe, the Turk (named for its oriental costume) created a huge sensation. Managed by one showman after another, the automaton toured Europe and America, beating Napoleon, Benjamin Franklin, Edgar Allan Poe, Charles Babbage, and most of the greatest chess players of the day, while pamphleteers and journalists debated the secret of its mechanism. A great read.

Takedown   by Tsutomu Shimomura, 494 pages Steve Gadd   01 June 2003 The computer security expert who tracked down notorious hacker Kevin Mitnick really milks his 15 minutes with this tell-all. It's too long by half, with constant updates on the author's irrelevant love life and an overlong autobiography at the beginning. The insider's view of computer crime and security tactics is interesting, but not enough to redeem the clumsy prose. It appears that the New York Times reporter/ghost writer practically transcribed the recorded interviews of the parts of the story he didn't witness.

The Island of the Day Before   by Umberto Eco, 513 pages Steve Gadd   01 February 1997

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

Nobel Prize Reader   by various, 576 pages Steve Gadd   12 November 1998 Short story collection by Nobel winners.

The Best of Granta Travel   by various, 408 pages Steve Gadd   20 October 2002 Paul Theroux's homage to the New York City subway, Salman Rushdie eats the "eggs of love" in Nicaragua, Nicholas Shakespeare searches for the reclusive leader of the Shining Path in Peru, Ryszard Kapuscinski helps carry a dead miner home for burial in Poland. A bit heavier fare than most travel writing I've read, so I learned some things as well as hearing about some good adventures.

Nikolai Gogol   by Vladimir Nabokov, 162 pages Steve Gadd   20 February 1998 Somehow you feel you learn more about Nabokov than his subject.

Lolita   by Vladimir Nabokov, 0 pages Steve Gadd   19 August 2008 Odd that I would have qualms about picking up this book, while happily reading novels about murder and war. I suppose I feared the book was well-known for its subject rather than its quality. Thanks to Tony for pointing out that Nabokov, to say the very least, knows how to turn a phrase. He turns them so well in this polyglot ballet of words that the reader forgets to despise the wretched narrator. Audio version read lovingly by Jeremy Irons.

Journey Through Genius: The Great Theorems of Mathamatics   by William Dunham, 286 pages Steve Gadd   26 February 2005 The maths may not be for everyone, but if you have ever appreciated the beauty of Euclid's ingenious proof of the infinitude of primes, a survey of mathematical history can be very rewarding. This book focuses on twelve theorems, much in the way an art history showcases great masterpieces presented with historical context. The theorems and proofs are selected both for their significance and their accessibility. Beginning with the ancient Greeks, the author describes the groundbreaking work of Hippocrates, Euclid, and Archimedes, whose derivations of volumes and surface areas would not be expanded upon until the arrival of the calculus two thousand years later. The ancient texts were tended in Alexandria and Baghdad for centuries, eventually sparking a resurgence of European development during the Renaissance. Here Newton makes his grand entrance, setting science on a new course with his development of the binomial theorem, the calculus, a theory of colors, and his famous work in gravitation. All this, incredibly, occurred during two years of intense work at Cambridge. Laplace would later describe Newton as "the greatest genius that ever existed, and the most fortunate, for we cannot find more than once a system of the world to establish." Many other famous mathematicians made their mark in the coming years, including Fermat, whose famous Last Theorem was but one of many he posited without proof, most of which were later proved (and some disproved) by the prolific Euler. Dunham does not omit the back story, describing the bitter rivalries and quirky personalities that add human color to science. Johann Bolyai was one of several co-discovers of non-Euclidean geometry, despite having been implored by his father that "You must not attempt this approach to parallels. I know this way to its very end. I have traversed this bottomless night, which extinguished all light and joy of my life.... I entreat you, leave the science of parallels alone."

Neuromancer   by William Gibson, 271 pages Steve Gadd   28 November 1995

Burning Chrome   by William Gibson, 191 pages Steve Gadd   10 June 1997

Idoru   by William Gibson, 383 pages Steve Gadd   23 May 1998 The inventor of cyberpunk finally goes to Japan.

Virtual Light   by William Gibson, 352 pages Steve Gadd   06 January 1999 A favorite from the inventor of the cyber-thriller.

All Tomorrow's Parties   by William Gibson, 277 pages Steve Gadd   11 January 2003 Gibson still has the ability to create vivid portrait of the near-future, though he relies on a couple of images a bit much (dirty ice, tires on wet pavement). He has recycled the best characters from earlier novels: Rent-a-cop Rydell, his bike-messenger girlfriend, and Fontaine, who embodies the eBay wristwatch habit Gibson wrote about for Wired. The story is good enough, but the ending is kind of flat and left me with the feeling that Gibson is still coasting on Neuromancer fame. I guess that explains why I got the book for a dollar from the library with a "Removed From Circulation: Low Demand" stamp.

Count Zero   by William Gibson, 246 pages Steve Gadd   19 May 2006 When it comes to creating vibrant images of a near-future dystopia, Gibson has few peers. Plotting is another matter. I found this sequel to Neuromancer frequently putdownable, and it even had a Villain Speech toward the end.

The Outlaw Sea   by William Langewiesche, 239 pages Steve Gadd   19 February 2007 A great collection of Atlantic articles on modern piracy, oceangoing disasters, and shipbreaking.

Expelled From Eden   by William T. Vollmann, 383 pages Steve Gadd   06 February 2007 This "reader" includes selections from Vollmann's epic works of fiction as well as reportage from the urban underworld and various down-and-out places around the world. Thanks to Raully for suggesting this author.

Life of Pi   by Yann Martel, 336 pages Steve Gadd   29 January 2007 I had the rare pleasure of diving into this book without knowing anything about it, without even glancing at the back cover, though the front cover art was a bit of a spoiler. While survivor stories are among my favorites, the fact that this one was fictional made it less compelling, the magical bits coming off more as implausible than dreamily fantastic.

Sarajevo: A War Journal   by Zlatko Dizdarevic, 200 pages Steve Gadd   07 January 1996