My 2009 in Books

By , on January 1st, 2010

So in comparison to last year’s list, this one comes up a little short. It’s a tad disappointing, but also has something to do with a busier work and social life, which I suppose is a plus.

Once again I’ll provide the full run down of books, along with one favourite from each section (with the usual disclaimer that this is, of course, IMHO, and that these are not books published in the last year, but rather within the anachronistic JK reading time line):

Novel: The Hours, by Michael Cunningham

Non-Fiction: One Perfect Day: The Selling of the American Wedding, by Rebecca Mead

YA/Children’s: His Dark Materials Trilogy, by Philip Pullman

Now with those special mentions aside, here’s the full parade, with links to the reviews where applicable.

Novels:

Adamson, Gil, The Outlander
Atwood, Margaret, The Year of the Flood
Comeau, Joey, Overqualified
Coupland, Douglas, The Gum Thief
Cunningham, Michael, The Hours

Davies, Robertson, The Fifth Business
Dickner, Nicolas, Nikolski
Echilin, Kim, The Disappeared
Findley, Timothy The Wars
Francis, Brian, Fruit
Frazier, Charles, Cold Mountain

Galloway, Stephen, The Cellist of Sarajevo

Gowdy, Barbara, We So Seldom Look on Love
Gulland, Sandra, Mistress of the Sun

Hay, Sheridan, The Secret of Lost Things
Humphreys, Helen, The Frozen Thames
Itani, Frances, Deafening
Irving, John, Until I Find You
Jones, Lloyd, Master Pip
Krauss, Nicole, The History of Love

Lawson, [...]

Filed under: JK's Reviews, Newsy | Tags: , , , , | 2 comments

To e, or not to e?

By , on March 18th, 2009

We’re talking about readers, not ravers, here of course.  Here’s the down-low: my stepdad won a Sony ebook reader (a Sony Reader PRS 550 to be precise) at a conference, and passed it on to me, saying I could use it or sell it. That was a month ago, and I still haven’t decided.

I thought I was going to ebay the heck out of it (where it could fetch around $200), but I’ve been procrastinating, and ebook stares sadly at me from my coffee table. I should say that I’m not a hater – I’ve used both the Sony and the Kindle (v. 1.0) before. I certainly preferred the Kindle, on which I read about half of Stephen Colbert’s I Am America (and So Can You!) before having to return it (Reading this book was an interesting choice, for upon getting the print copy from the library, I discovered that Colbert’s “asides” were actually meant to be read alongside the  text, but the Kindle couldn’t handle this kind of format. Consequently, the nature of those interjections was changed). But that said, as the readers were easier to prop up than a book it was convenient in bed, and you can’t [...]

Filed under: Bookish Technology | Tags: , , | Leave a comment

A History of Reading, by Alberto Manguel

By , on October 3rd, 2008

As a lover of both history and reading, I was excited to read this book. I’d also already read Manguel’s The Library at Night, and highly enjoyed it. To me, Manguel himself is a stunning ideal – eloquent, erudite, fluent in four languages, and most importantly, incredibly passionate about books. In the first few pages of A History of Reading, you know you’ve found a kindred spirit:

We all read ourselves and the world around us in order to glimpse what and where we are. We read to understand, or to begin to understand. We cannot do but read. Reading, almost as much as breathing, is our essential function.

There could not be a more perfect guide for a tour through reading, books and the world of the word.  Manguel approaches this gargantuan topic thematically, rather than chronologically, eschewing hierarchy and an illusory linear narrative. This is not “The” history, but “A” history – just a few of the possible stories about storytelling.  For this is not a history of statistics and trends, but rather of people — of other impassioned book lovers in history. Over ten years of research went into the making of the book, and one always has the [...]

Related Posts with Thumbnails
Filed under: JK's Reviews | Tags: , , , | Leave a comment