Last Reading List of 2008

Wrapping up the year...

A Fraction of the Whole, by Steve Toltz. Offbeat fiction following a father and son in Australia, and their bizarre journey through life. To call the father eccentric would be doing him a favor, since he's basically nuts, and the son spends his life trying to compensate. Their lives inevitably revolve around bad uncle Terry, as famous a folk-hero criminal as Ned Kelley. The story was unpredictable in a John Irving kind of way. I swung multiple times between stages of being entertained and wanting to throw the book across the room because it was too silly. In the end, worth sticking through, though.

The Indian Clerk, by David Leavitt. I picked this historical fiction up thinking it would focus on the famous out-of-nowhere Indian mathematician, Ramanujan, who came to Cambridge to publish and (literally) perish. Instead it centers more around fellow mathematician G.H. Hardy and his complex relationship with Ramanujan. Altogether an engaging story fleshing out many real-life characters at Cambridge around the time of World War I, including John Maynard Keynes (you might have heard of him in the midst of our global economic meltdown). There are just enough mathematical nuggets to keep the story glued together, since it's hard to appreciate the motivations without understanding why proving Reimann's hypothesis is compelling to someone. Good book.

The Risk Pool, by Richard Russo. I'd read Empire Falls and enjoyed it, but Mom recommended this one. I have to admit, it was better than Empire Falls and will likely end up higher in my list than Bridge of Sighs, which I'm reading now. The book is the story of a loser but loving father (always in the high-risk pool for insurance, thus the title), his likeable son, and an unstable but loving mother. They cope with life in a small town in upstate New York as the son has to rely more on the hapless father to raise him while his mother suffers a breakdown. One wonders what Russo's upbringing was like. He seems like a slightly more upbeat version of Pat Conroy, but from upstate New York.

The Song Before It Is Sung, by Justin Cartwright. This historical fiction revolves around a conspirator in the attempted assassination of Hitler, Axel von Gottberg. The main character is a modern-day grad student of von Gottberg's closest friend, an Oxford professor who dies and leaves his papers to the student. He relentlessly tracks down the details of their relationship, pretty much wrecking his own relationships in the process. As you might expect, the whole thing is a bit ambiguous in its judgements, leaving judgement as an exercise for the reader as you uncover the motivations and conflicts of the characters.

Night Train to Lisbon, by Pascal Mercier. A timid Swiss teacher has an epiphany when he briefly meets a Portugese woman attempting to commit suicide while he's on his way to work. The encounter leads him to pick up a Portugese book of essays in a used book store, and he connects so strongly with the author's words that it launches him into a voyage of self-discovery in the author's home town of Lisbon. He traces down the friends of the author and their roles in his life and in the Portugese resistance under Salazar. Even he seems mystified by his obsession, but he discovers the limitations he's placed on his own life along the way. A bit too overly introspective for my taste, but overall I enjoyed the book.

The White Tiger, by Aravind Adiga. A fictional biographical story of the journey of a poor Indian boy from lowest servant to cynical entrepreneur. There's no Horatio Alger story here, though, as we walk through every corruption and prejudice in modern day India to discover that the best way to beat 'em is to join 'em. Still, you can't help but root for the main character, whose attitude and sense of humor is engaging as he climbs the ladder and claws his way to the top.

Slam, by Nick Hornby. This is the worst book of Hornby's I've read, and it feels like the later ones are on a downward path. The main character is a teenage Tony Hawk fan who gets his girlfriend pregnant and then has flash-forward type of out-of-body experiences (seemingly powered by his Tony Hawk poster) of the future life that results from it. Sadly, after reading so many good things by him, it will take me a while to recover enough from this book to pick up another one by Nick Hornby.

The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court, by Jeffrey Toobin. I think this was the most interesting book of the set I reviewed this time around. It's the fascinating non-fiction inside story of the Supreme Court, primarily concentrated on the Rhenquist court. I was thinking it would have more history in it, but the personal stories and the view into how these nine individuals get their work done and relate to one another while deciding issues that affect all of us was terrific. Highly recommended.

Crashing Through, by Robert Kurson. After the terrific Shadow Divers, how could I resist another non-fiction book by Robert Kurson. This book tells the story of Mike May, who was blinded at age 3 in a backyard chemical explosion, and how he discovered after more than forty years he could recover his sight through surgery. What seems like a no-brainer of a decision was fraught with medical risk, and (although he did not know at the time) a very poor track record when it comes to how a blind person reacts to and deals with sight. It was a very interesting journey and worth reading. As in Shadow Divers, Kurson mixes in some education with the people-story, although I felt I was reading a powerpoint presentation converted to text at times.