Every Love Story is a Ghost Story - DT Max

There must have been a temptation on the author's part to start this story in the middle (the making of Infinite Jest, the part we all want to read) or at the end (the suicide in 2008) but he starts the way most biographies do, at the beginning and this conventional style dominates the book, a rather standard troubled genius pulls it together to make great art and then fizzles out and it all ends tragically. (See: Kurt Cobain)

The revelations here are those that DFW kept hidden - his battles with serious mental illness and addiction, his fragile state and repeated breakdowns. In interviews he gave (most notably in 'Although Of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself') DFW was able to create his own media persona, one stronger and better put together than what he really was. (Also notable are the admissions that he applied his fiction skills to his non-fiction work, making up his own facts and people in order to better suit the story)

The author mixes in some literary criticism, connecting points of DFW's life to his work (another surprise is how much his relationship with his mother played a role in creating Infinite Jest) and the fact that DFW and DeLillo shared a regular correspondence is a truth better than fiction.

Sirens of Titan - Kurt Vonnegut

A master at his best. The day Winston Niles Rumfoord flew his spaceship into a chrono-synclastic infundibulum was a bad day - he was converted into pure energy and only materializes back on Earth every 59 days, only for an hour. But he knows the future and the past, including that an alien on Titan is waiting for a spare part for his  spaceship and that his home planet is manipulating events on Earth in order to deliver that spare part.  An examination of free will, destiny, and the forces that control us.

Telegraph Avenue - Michael Chabon

A work from a master at the height of his powers, channeling Pynchon and mixing Melvin Van Peebles, 1970's kung-fu films and comic books, reaching down to find something deeper, more human, written with prose that makes you want to either never write a sentence again or quit your job, your relationships and all contact with the outside world and sit in a chair in your basement until you figure out how he did it. Two friends - one white, the other black - run a record shop in a neighbourhood that straddles Berkely and Oakland, a strip of land that has seen better days and is now threatened by a local boy made good, a former NFL quarterback who wants to re-vitalize the area by dropping a retail monolith into the middle.  It doesn't quite reach the level of The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, but the level it does reach is worth the read.

NW - Zadie Smith

A love letter to the place you grew up, the kind of love letter that itemizes all of your lover's faults and compares them to your own, but ends with an I love you anyway sentiment. Four people from the NW corner of London, linked together by space and history and secrets. Not as enjoyable as White Teeth, but still very good, even with the different narrative styles.

The Taliban Shuffle - Kim Barker

I know what it's like to get a foreign country under your skin, to have it feel more like home than home does. For Kim Barker that place was Afghanistan - an odd choice, but after being sent there to report after 9/11 she falls for the place. She finds it so hard to leave that when she quits her job after the paper wants to recall her back to Chicago, she stays.
Anyone looking for a serious dissection of the West's role in this region should look elsewhere - this a memoir, but it does offer up some behind-the-scenes of a foreign correspondent in a strange country.

Swamplandia! - Karen Russell

Reading the jacket copy (OK - online copy) of this book turned me off - a story of a family of misfits told from the perspective for a precocious young girl. I relented eventually, though the fact that it was nominated along with The Pale King for the Pulitzer should have warned me off. (I'm a DFW fan, but The Pale King as a notebook that should have been left unpublished)

Swamplandia! starts off strong but gets murkier the more it goes along. Alternating between characters and perspective doesn't help, and there's a hollowness in the characters that echoes in the prose. The first-person accounts from Ava are so over the top with metaphor they are reminiscent of a undergrad creative writing workshop, while the third person chapters told from her brother's point of view skirt the edges of any real emotion.

A Hologram For The King - Dave Eggers

A middle-aged businessman finds himself in debt, in poor health (mental and physical) and in a tent in Saudi Arabia, waiting for the King to arrive so he can demo the hologram technology and win the IT contract for the city the King is building in the middle of the desert. He has a lump on his back that he is sure is going to kill him, and he's not sure how to pay for his daughter's university tuition. He's part of the old world, when the U.S. actually made things, and his life is an analogy of America over the last three decades. Eggers gets better with every book, and this one is his best yet.

Canada - Richard Ford

A series of bad decisions can ruin not only your life but the lives of people around you. Dell Parsons, the narrator in this very sad story, learns this first hand. He traces the first bad decision back to his mother deciding to marry his father, then building in a series until the ultimate bad decision that his father and mother make to rob a bank. He's taken to Canada to live with the brother of his mother's friend, a man that has made a series of bad choices that has left him hiding in a small town in Saskatchewan. Ford writes with the same level of mastery in Independence Day, and though Dell is no Frank Bascome, he's a man coping to his circumstances, most of which are beyond his control.

The Age of Miracles - Karen Thompson Walker

When you're 12, it often feels as if the world is ending, that things are changing beyond your control. For the narrator of this tightly written story, it's true - the world slowly stops rotating, causing days and nights to last longer and people to go crazy. It's an end-of-the-world story without the usual trappings (roaming gangs, mass panic, survival against all odds). The ending had me wanting more, but there it's nicely written, with hardly an extra word.

Interworld - Neil Gaiman and Michael Reaves

Intended originally as a TV script, this story moves quickly, told from the perspective of a regular teenager who discovers that alternate universe versions of himself are engaged in a battle between two warring forces over the fate of the universe. Perhaps a little too colloquial at times, it's nevertheless very entertaining.

Griftopia - Matt Taibbi

 A dark and cynical look into the 2008 financial crisis. Based on a article Taibbi wrote for Rolling Stone about Goldman Sachs back in 2009 that caused a shit storm, the book fleshes out the argument with additional articles on how financial institutions have plundered the U.S., written in a frank style that offers up hilarious analogies.

The Man Who Knew Too Much - GK Chesterton

A look into the dark corners of upper-crust, pre-First World War British society, a place where hypocrisy and murder nestle nicely with tea and a stiff upper limit. The comparisons of the detective to Sherlock Holmes are apt (and perhaps intended) but Horne Fisher's deductions come from knowing what shadows lurk in men's souls and the moral implications weight more heavily on him than the resident of 221B Baker Street.

1Q84 - Haruki Murakami

It builds to a point that never finally comes, ending with a whimper not a bang. Ambitious, yes, but its reach far exceeds its grasp, and the reader is left holding a long story with no satisfying conclusion. Not that you need a satisfying conclusion in all cases, but in this one there are too many loose threads. The three book structure (collected as one for North American readers) does the story no favours - most of the third volume could be (and should have been) cut and there's far too much time spent by the characters sitting around, waiting for something to happen.

Having read Murakami before I expected something bigger (not in word count but in concept) and there are different paths the story could have gone down that would have made it more satisfying. (There's that word again) Even a Sixth Sense switcheroo (as it's known in the literary world) would have been better, but perhaps that was the kind of event Murakami was trying to avoid. If so, he also avoided the chance to make something truly great. Not to bring a crass pop culture reference, but this book reminds too much of the last episode of Lost - starts out strong, creates a layer of suspense, but willingly fails to followup on all of its promise.

Endgame: Bobby Fischer's Remarkable Rise and Fall - Frank Brady

A straight ahead account of the chess prodigy's rise and fall, with the only thing lacking is a peek inside that mad genius brain. The author knew Fischer but never got the chance to speak to him the last years, and the book suffers for it. Still, an entertaining account.

The Imperfectionists - Tom Rachman

A quirky, English-language newspaper in Rome is the spine that connects the stories in this novel, from the past-his-due date stringer who gives up the business to connect with his son to the workaholic editor who runs into an old lover and makes the mistake of asking what he really thinks about her. Good insight into the life of a paper, but the very human stories and all the things left unsaid make this an excellent read.

Hemingway's Boat - Paul Hendrickson

We can all agree that something happened to Hemingway, sometime in the 1930's. It's hard to pin down exactly when and where, but he wasn't the same writer after A Farewell To Arms. He started to believe in his own legend, never a good move, especially when most of it he made up himself. This biography of Hemingway has a revealing letter that perhaps provides some clue as to what wrong - after getting his boat, the Pilar, Hemingway wanted to chuck the writing gig and become a fisherman.
Perhaps he should have. He might have been happier, and we would have been spared the slow descent of a great young writer into a mediocre old one. And, perhaps the people around him would have been happier as well - his wives (second, third and fourth) and his children, especially his youngest son, Gregory, who died in a jail cell in October 2001.

Game Change - John Heilemann and Mark Halperin

Only four years later it's hard to remember what Barack Obama's campaign for President was like. A virtual unknown with an unusual name and a bi-racial identity beat Hilary Clinton to to claim the Democratic nomination, and then goes on to become President. There's no hint in the book of the dark days ahead, but the blow-by-blow account of the campaign is heroin for political junkies. Perhaps our only consolation is that the U.S. didn't end up with President McCain and Vice President Palin.

King John of Canada - Scott Gardiner

Less a novel than a Canadian political science major's fantasy, this novel tells of a wonderful future where peace and prosperity is brought about by Canada having a king. Not just any king, but King John, chosen randomly by a lottery. Lucky for Canada, because King John is smart, wise and able to get Quebec to secede from the Dominion, re-invigorate the Armed Forces and marry a beautiful Norwegian Princess. Told in a diary form by his loyal sidekick, it wastes too much time in the present as he details his exile in the frozen north.

American Pastoral - Philip Roth

About a third in to this book Zuckerman, Roth's alter ego, completely disappears into the life of Swede Levov, a paragon of post-war, post-religion America - born Jewish, he marries an Irish former Miss New Jersey and takes over his father's glove business and makes it more successful. He moves from the city to a rural paradise, complete with cows, stone houses that reek of history and the WASPy descendants of the men who created the country. Everything picture perfect, and a stark contrast to Zuckerman's life, who has no wife, no family. But, of course, nothing is perfect, for the Swede's only daughter joined the anti-Vietnam movement and planted a mailbox bomb in the rustic post office/general store that kills the local doctor who was dropping of his bills.

As a boy Zuckerman idolized the Swede but was always afraid to talk to him, even when Zuckerman came over to get beat at ping pong by the Swede's younger brother. Years later Swede writes Zuckerman a letter, asking if he might be interested in writing a story about his father. They meet for dinner and nothing comes of it, but it's after Zuckerman attends a high school reunion and talks to Swede's brother, now a successful cardiac surgeon in Miami who keeps divorcing and marrying his nurses, does bits of the story comes out. Of course Zuckerman was wrong about the idolized version of the Swede, just as wrong as he is about the fiction one he creates. We're always wrong, according to Roth:

''You get them wrong before you meet them,'' Zuckerman says of ''people'' in general, ''while you're anticipating meeting them; you get them wrong while you're with them; and then you go home to tell somebody else about the meeting and you get them all wrong again.''

Honor Thy Father - Gay Talese

The true story of a son of Mafia Don who finds himself regretting the life he chose as the bodies pile up around him. Instead of the glam and gals of the Movie Mafia, it's doom and gloom, sitting for long hours in a car and wondering if the next shot you hear is for you. New Journalism once shook the foundations of non-fiction, but these we expect our stories to seem as real and as fiction. Instead of a hail of bullets the Mafia Don's son is brought down by a credit card fraud case - an example of truth being stranger than fiction.

Half-Blood Blues - Esi Edugyan

The language saves this novel from the now conventional structure in which the ending is revealed at the beginning and the middle is spent getting back to the beginning. The Nazis are "boots", men are "jacks", women are "janes". Three black jazz musicians (two Americans, one African/German) make it out of Berlin to Paris, where they meet Louis Armstrong. They record the title track, which later becomes the subject of a documentary that brings all three characters back together. We know that the two Americans survive the Nazis, and about a third of the way in we know the German does as well, but getting to the end is worth the price on the ticket.

The Devil In The White City - Erik Larson

In 1893, Chicago held a World's Fair, an event designed to show the world that the United States could match any fair in Europe. Having mostly disappeared from memory, the event held many firsts, including the first Ferris Wheel and the first eight-hour work day contract, and was a focal point for the people who would play an important role in early 20th century history (Teddy Roosevelt and t Arch Duke Ferdinand, to name two)

It was also the backdrop for one of history's most chilling serial killers, H.H. Holmes. Using money he gained from killing people he took out insurance policies on, Holmes built a hotel specifically designed to lure in, trap and kill young women. There's also the unstable young man who believes his tireless (yet unsolicited) campaigning for the mayor guarantees him a cushy job in the government. All the stories build momentum to a conclusion that could only happen in non-fiction.

Flames Across The Border: 1813 - 1814 - Pierre Berton

The War of 1812 is perhaps the best example of the stupidity of war - after two years of killing and maiming, burning and pillaging, the two countries went back to they way things were. A point of contention between Canadians and Americans, or at least for those who care, is the result of this war, with both sides claiming victory. They're right and wrong. If Canada had won, most of Upstate New York would have become part of the British Empire, while if the U.S. had won, Ontario and Quebec would now be a state. (At least Toronto would have a better chance then at getting an NFL team...)

Berton is a master at making history come alive, and his skill at getting inside the heads of the players is magical. It reads like fiction, but for the people involved it was all too real.

Under The Banner of Heaven - Jon Krakauer

The detached journalistic tone serves Krakauer well in this book as he details how Ron and Dan Lafferty, Mormon Fundamentalists, killed their brother's wife and baby daughter after receiving instructions from God to do so. Krakauer avoids calling the brothers crazy, or even hinting at any level of snark, and presents the facts. Connecting the dots between Mormonism beginnings, the splinter groups that developed over disputes regarding polygamy and the events leading up to the night of the killing, Krakauer weaves a masterful tale.

Your Movie Sucks - Roger Ebert

There is an art to writing well about something bad, and Ebert is a master. Inspired by Deuce Bigalow: European Giglo (the only instance that phrase will be ever used) Ebert collects some of his lowest reviews. The collection starts with the aforementioned Rob Schneider movie, which receives special attention as Schneider called out another movie critic, in a letter sent to the media, for his negative review and not having any award credentials. Pulitzer prize-winning Ebert takes it on himself to bash Schneider around the head with his gold coin for the travesty that is the sequel to Deuce Bigalow. The next featured review is for Chaos, a horror movie I've heard of that took Ebert to task for his negative review.

Ebert is willing to change his mind, which he did with Brown Bunny. Seeing it at Cannes he wrote it was worse than watching his own colonoscopy, but after meeting a year later with the director/star and seeing a new cut, he offers a more positive review.

Of course there are some great lines - for Catwoman: The director, whose name is Pitof, was probably issued with two names at birth and would be wise to use the other one on his next project. 

Three Day Road - Joseph Boyden

Two Cree, as close as brothers, go off to fight in the Great War. Both residential school survivors, one is talkative, the other silent. Their hunting skills come in handy in the war, but the war changes them. There is the expected racism and classism that are staples of stories about the First World War, but the two Cree gain respect for their ability to kill. The war story alternates with the story of Nishka, the wild Indian woman who lives in the bush and suffers from visions. When only one of the boys returns from the war, she takes him home, a three day journey in which they both tell their stories. The war details are gory and the ending somewhat predictable, but it's a good read nonetheless.

A Visit From The Goon Squad - Jennifer Egan

Somewhere between a collection of linked short stories and a proper novel, this book details what time does to us (the goon squad). All of the characters are connected in some way, but it doesn't really matter that they are. Each chapter is it's own story, and each one ranges from satire to tragedy, from third to second person, and even a journal in PowerPoint form. It all holds together, a look at loss and aging and how we don't always get to be the person we want to be, we always end up becoming the person we are.

Distrust That Particular Flavor - William Gibson

It's a small surprise that this is his first collection of non-fiction, considering that he, albeit briefly, had the mantle of Chief Prognosticator, back when we thought the future would be delivered to us through VR googles and sensory pads. He explains his discomfort at non-fiction in the introduction, claiming that he wants to spend time writing fiction. Fair enough, and those most of the pieces in this collection slim, there are some excellent insights on Japan, eBay, and Borges. The best part is the author's comments afterwards, placing the piece in some kind of context. The piece on Singapore for Wired caused the magazine to be banned there for a number of years, a fact that I only knew through the comments. My favourite one is about Tokyo, also for Wired, which the author dismisses in the comments (saying that he feels guilty of using most of the good material he gathered on the magazine's dime for his novel Pattern Recognition) but to me conjures about Japan in a way that only those who have been there can fully understand.

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle

What strikes a modern reader of this collection of adventures of the great detective is how many remain unresolved. In The Five Orange Pips, the suspects disappear in a ship sinking. In The Adventure of the Copper Breeches, the resolution is tied up neatly, without much intervention from Holmes. Unlike modern detective tales that are strewn with corpses, most of these cases don't have a body, but instead verge into the merely interesting or slightly perplexing. Still, it's a good read, and has the classic line: "It is an old maxim of mine that when you have excluded the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth."

Feast Day of Fools - James Lee Burke

In this book, the American Southwest is a broken wasteland, where rejects, killers and people with too much history hide out, hoping the past doesn't catch up. Sheriff Holland is a good man trying to make sense of the world around him as the bodies pile up when a former weapons maker for the CIA is kidnapped by former Mexican soldiers who worked for the US government. The man ends up in the care of a mass murderer who prefers to use a Tommy gun to mow his victims down. Part McCarthy, part Faulkner, the violence is punctuated by breathtaking descriptions of the landscape.

The Sisters Brothers - Patrick DeWitt

The Sisters Brothers move through a blood-soaked American West Coast, one shaded by McCarthy, a land where lives are cheap and death is quick. They were hired to kill a man, for reasons unknown, something that doesn't sit well with the younger brother and narrator, Eli, who wants us victims to be at least guilty of something. His older brother, Charlie, doesn't care as long as the money is good. This tenuous grasp of morality is one of Eli's saving graces, as his is bleak sense of humour and his desire to find true love.

Eli's voice is note-perfect and the language is wonderful, reminiscent of True Grit. The story moves, and the casualness of the violence makes it all the more shocking.

The Snakehead - Patrick Radden Keefe

In the pre-dawn darkness of June 6, 1993, a ship named the Golden Venture crashed into the coast near Queens, and 300 illegal Chinese found themselves in The United States. How that ship got there is the central narrative of this well-written, well-researched book. The center of the story is Sister Ping, a Chinese shopkeeper who ran a multi-million dollar business bringing people from the Fujian Province to the US. She has trails all over the world, but it all comes undone after the Golden Venture crash.

Heavy on the facts, and told in a cold, detached journalistic style, the book could have benefited from more of a personal touch, but the power of the narrative pulls the reader along.

Vineland - Thomas Pynchon

It's 1984 in Vineland, a place in Northern California where refugees from the 60's have gone to flee the re-election of Ronald Regan's America. In Vineland television, drugs, rock'n'roll, mysticism, revolution and repression all meet. You can get your karma adjusted or join the ranks of the not quite dead, but you have to look out, because the DEA and the FBI and the state are all after you, for something you might have done or maybe will do.  But even the man has to deal with its own issues, such as budget cuts that leave you in arm's reach from your prey, standing on a ladder hanging from a helicopter when the call comes in. The plot is too complex to summarize, the characters too unique to encapsulate, but its a funny, weird, wonderful book. In a word, it's... Pynchonesque.

No Great Mischief - Alistair MacLeod

A generational family saga, rooted in a rural setting, alternating between the past and the present, nature playing a heavy role, the tension between Anglophones and Francophones,  all the necessary CanCon requirements - I usually stay away from books like this. I was surprised though - it wasn't all that bad. It's the story of the MacDonald's, a large family living on Cape Breton, told by one their sons, a successful orthodontist. The family is trapped in the past - the past of Cape Breton but also of Scotland, and the narrator takes us through the family history, filled with heartache and death. A few of the sentences sink like stones in a pond, but the prose keeps the story  moving along.

Better Living Through Plastic Explosives - Zsuzsi Gartner

There's always been something sinister about Vancouver, something dark and disturbing underneath that sheen of natural beauty and high livability index scores.  Gartner taps into this weirdness in this collection of short stories. Houses disappear, taking people and dreams with them. Civilized, home-owning males takes a few steps back on  the evolutionary chart to deal with a interloper into their suburban enclave. Angels take possession of teens and homeless junkies get publicly funded plastic surgery to boost their self-esteem.

Under the hyper-acute prose, filled with tangled sentences and cultural references, beats a heart. A dark one perhaps, but one that you can identify.

Books I Read 2011

I broke my goal of reading a book a week in 2011 by two, with a total of 54. Here are some of the highlights:


Book I Most Looked Forward To and Was Not Disappointed By: The Pale King - David Foster Wallace

He left us too soon and if you read this book, you'll what I mean by that statement.

Book I Most Looked Forward To and Was Disappointed By: The Marriage Plot - Jeffery Eugendies

It's not a bad book, but it's not as good as Middlesex. Unfair, perhaps,  but once you've been to Italy, you can't eat at The Olive Garden without complaining.

Book I Most Enjoyed: Super Sad Love Story - Gary Shetyngart


In the future, we will be inseparable from our iphones, the Chinese will own everything, political dissent will be drowned out by commercialism and our insecurities, fears and anxieties will make it difficult to maintain relationships.  Sorry, did I say in the future?


Best Book That I Thought I Wouldn't Like But I Did Mostly Because The Author Wrote The Hell Out Of It: Ten Thousand Saints - Eleanor Henderson




Best Book That Should Make Angry Enough To Take Up Arms Against The 1%: The Big Short - Michael Lewis

We got screwed, people, screwed royally, and the worst part is that we paid for the displeasure.

Best Book That Idolizes An Alcoholic: Fear and Loathing At Rolling Stone - Hunter S. Thompson, Edited by Jann Wenner

Best Book That Doesn't Idolize An Alcoholic But Doesn't Really Call Him On His Terrible Behaviour: Raymond Carver: A Writer's Life - Carol Sklenicka

Best Re-Read: The Innocents Abroad - Mark Twain


The first time was almost ten years ago, and it still made me laugh.

Best Book About Zombies: Zone One - Colson Whitehead

There shall be no more discussion on this matter.

Best Book About The End of The World: That Is All - John Hodgman

With an honourable mention to 2030 by Albert Brooks.

Best Discovery of 2011: George Saunders


I knew of him, but I was so impressed after CivilWarLand in Bad Decline that I read Pastoralia.


The Best Chuck Klosterman Book I Read This Year: Sex, Drugs and Cocoa Puffs


For reasons best left unexplained, I read four Klosterman books this year, and my only advice for him is to stick with the music/culture criticism. Unless he wants to write a novel about a Motley Crue cover band based in South Dakota that hunts vampires that dress up like Morrissey.


Book I Should Have Read Years Ago But Didn't But Finally Read This Year Because I Bought A Used Copy For $2.50: A Million Little Pieces - James Frey

I paid $2.00 too much for it.

Best Book About Japan I Read This Year: Flight Paths of the Emperor - Steven Heighton



The full list:


When You Are Engulfed In Flames -  David Sedaris
Slouching Towards Bethlehem - Joan Didion
Border Songs - Jim Lynch
Right As Rain - George Pelecanos
Although Of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself  - David Lipsky
Super Sad True Love Story - Gary Shetyngart
Bad Science - Ben Goldacre
The Innocents Abroad - Mark Twain
The War Against Cliche - Martin Amis
The Unamed - Joshua Ferris
Zombie Spaceship Wasteland - Patton Oswalt
A Writer's Life  - Carol Sklenicka
Where I'm Calling From - Raymond Carver
Roscoe - William Kennedy
CivilWarLand in Bad Decline - George Saunders
F.I.A.S.C.O. - Frank Partnoy
The Culture of Fear - Barry Glassner
King, Queen, Knave - Vladimir Nabokov
Broadsides - Mordecai Richler
Downtown Owl - Chuck Klosterman
Tokyo, My Everst - Gabrielle Bauer
Remainder - Tom McCarthy
King Leary - Paul Quarrington
The Pale King - David Foster Wallace
Esquire's Big Book of Fiction - Adrienne Miller
The Age of Wonder - Richard Holmes
Rubber Balls and Liquor - Gilbert Gotfried
True Grit - Charles Portis
This Cake is For The Party - Sarah Selecky
Among The Truthers - Jonathan Kay
Pastoralia - George Saunders
Lost in Shangri-La - Mitchell Zukoff
2030 - Albert Brooks
The Big Short - Michael Lewis
Flight Paths of The Emperor - Steven Heighton
Embassytown - China Melville
Fear and Loathing - Hunter S Thompson
Ten Thousand Saints - -Eleanor Henderson
Pulse - Julian Barnes
How To Be Good - Nick Hornby
Arguably - Christoper Hitchens
Bang Crunch - Neil Smith
Half Empty - David Rakoff
Killing Yourself to Live - Chuck Klosterman
The Visible Man - Chuck Klosterman
Sex, Drugs and Cocoa Puffs - Chuck Klosterman
Zone One - Colson Whitehead
Boomerang - Michael Lewis
The Marriage Plot - Jeffery Eugenides
Fear and Loathing at Rolling Stone - Hunter S Thompson
That Is All - John Hodgman
A Million Little Pieces - James Frey
God No! - Penn Jillette
Subtle Knife and Amber Spyglass - Phillip Pulman