false 147 256 255 true 5739906 read 1 true 3997525 currently-reading 0 true 3997524 to-read 55 false 4054289 mystery 48 false 4054340 novel 24 false 4054358 science 16 false 4054414 short-stories 16 false 4054298 fantasy 16 false 4054294 thriller 16 false 4054288 science-fiction 15 false 4054295 economics 15 false 4054346 history 14 false 4054317 buddhism 12 false 4054334 photography 9 false 4054327 psychology 8 false 4054364 math 6 false 4054369 sociology 5 false 4054390 travel 5 false 4054318 humor 4 false 4054524 design 2 false 4054465 food 2 false 4054405 western 1 false 4054341 graffiti http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/80129414 The Daughter of Time (Paperback) by Josephine Tey
bookshelves: currently-reading, mystery
]]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/80128407 to: The Outfit: A Parker Novel (Paperback) by Richard Stark
bookshelves: mystery
Another solid roman noir from Donald Westlake writing as Richard Stark. In this one, Parker and his gang of thieves take revenge on the mob. There's a back-story here (it'd be useful to read "The Hunter", the first book of the Parker series,) but that's not required. Long story short, the mob tried to kill Parker, and he's decided to make them pay. Most of the book is a fun series of chapters detailing various heists— Westlake is at his best describing the detailed mechanics of robberies (and sometimes murders.) There's never any doubt that Parker is going to win (after all, this is only book 3 in a series of 20+), but the pleasure is in finding out how he does it. ]]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/79356463 to: In Our Time (Paperback) by Ernest Hemingway
bookshelves: short-stories
"In Our Time" is an excellent introduction to Hemingway's short stories. He wrote this book in his middle 20s, and it's just amazing how fully formed his style was at such a young age. The Nick Adams stories in particular have that indelible Hemingway mark— most are simple stories about hunting or fishing or hanging out with his friends or father, but somehow they capture something universal, wise, and tragic. The other works in the book, about some of the things he saw during the first World War and in Paris just after, prefigure the topics of his great novels. All in all, a very satisfying read for such a short book. ]]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/79196136 to: A Brief Tour of Human Consciousness: From Impostor Poodles to Purple Numbers (Paperback) by V.S. Ramachandran
bookshelves: science
This short collection of essays came out of Ramachandran's BBC Reith Lectures, and they have the breezy, conversational tone of a popular science presentation. That's well and good if you've read Rama's previous book, Phantoms in the Brain, which contains a lot of the detail he leaves out here. With that done, I enjoyed his speculations into some new areas, particularly on the neurological basis of art and the relationship between synesthesia and human language. But this is definitely a companion book, and one that's really only 110 pages long. It's padded with 60 pages of end-notes (some interesting), glossary, and several pages of acknowledgments.

Also, one can't help but get the feeling that Ramachandran is a little too pleased with himself through the entire thing— at one point he actually quotes himself in one of the chapter heads.
]]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/78909470 to: The Forever War (Paperback) by Joe Haldeman
bookshelves: science-fiction
I read somewhere that "The Forever War" is one of the top two SF treatments of war (the other being Starship Troopers.) I found it to be a relatively interesting, quick read, but far from a great novel. For starters, Haldeman is really at his best only when describing battle scenes— he's pretty weak on dialogue, and his narration is at times jarringly bad. The complexities of the hard science here also went a little bit over my head— I couldn't quite understand all of the business about "time dilation" and its effect on the novel's chronology.

But as a personal reaction to the horror of the Vietnam War, and as an interesting exercise is predicting the future based on the insanity of the early 1970s (logically, everyone ends up smoking a lot of weed and going gay), the book is worth a read. ]]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/78274795 to: The Book of Imaginary Beings (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition) by Jorge Luis Borges
bookshelves: fantasy, short-stories
"The Book of Imaginary Beings" is a slim little volume in which Borges indulges a number of his interests: enumeration, imaginary realities, and the cultural and linguistic history of Europe and Asia. He's at his best when he's describing certain particularly Borgesian animals: the minotaur in his labyrinth, the creatures who live on the other side of mirrors, the fish on whose back rests the entire world. But those are only a few of the 100+ passages here. In the others, he describes many variations on the same themes: fantasy animals which are made from combinations of parts from real animals (like the Sphinx, part human, part lion), or ones which are much larger or smaller than their counterparts in our world. So while this is essential reading for the Borges completist, if you haven't read the Collected Fictions and Non-Fictions, I'd read those first. ]]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/77919937 to: A Coffin for Dimitrios (Paperback) by Eric Ambler
bookshelves: mystery
"A Coffin for Dimitrios" is a solid meditation on the nature of evil disguised as a detective novel. Ambler is an excellent writer- very close in style to Graham Greene or John Le Carre, with the same taste for exotic locales and finely-wrought characters. The book also gives a good flavor of the political and social chaos in Europe between the wars- you can imagine the kinds of people who benefited from that sort of instability. ]]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/77689960 to: The Laughing Policeman (Martin Beck #4) by Maj Sjöwall
bookshelves: mystery
A friend recommended the Martin Beck series to me after I mentioned that I had enjoyed Steig Larsson's Millenium trilogy, which is also set in Sweden. It was great advice- "The Laughing Policeman" is an excellent, fast-paced police procedural, that perfectly captures the existential misery of a dark, wet winter in Stockholm in the late 1960s. ]]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/77382467 to: The Invention of Morel (New York Review Books Classics) by Adolfo Bioy Casares
bookshelves: novel, science-fiction
Casares was ones of Borges' closest friends and students, so it's not surprising that there are many Borgesian themes in this short, disturbing novella. In some ways it's amazing that Casares packed so much in to what at first appears to be a simple story about a man washed up on a spooky island. But the intellectual ground covered here is immense: Eternal Return as a model of time, the nature of consciousness, Simulacras and artificial reality, not to mention an exceedingly well drawn case of doomed love.

Bonus: fans of Lost will enjoy this book for special reasons: JJ Abrams has clearly read it, and incorporated a number of its ideas and themes into the show's plot. ]]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/74946133 to: The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets' Nest (Millennium, #3) by Stieg Larsson
bookshelves: mystery
"Hornet's Nest" is a very satisfying conclusion to the Millennium series. Unlike the other novels, it's structured as a procedural, not a mystery. You pretty much know who the good guys and bad guys are going in— the only question is who is going to win and how. And as usual, Larsson is at his best structuring labyrinthine plots; I can't think of a single loose end that he left untied. Excellent! ]]>