January Books

These are some titles from last month's New York Times Book Review section and Entertainment Weekly that I might like to read at some point:

Fiction

The Intimates - Ralph Sassone; "Apparently, people didn't look at pictures anymore and ask if they were lifelike. They looked at their lives and compared them to images they'd seen somewhere."

The Lost Books of the Odyssey - Zachary Mason; "Chapters are told from the point of view of Odysseus, Achilles, even Polyphemus the Cyclops; throughout, Mason envisions alternate fates for these characters."

The Lost Gate - Orson Scott Card; "There is a hidden library with only a few dozen books that are written in a secret language which Dan and his cousins are expected to learn. But they are never to speak a word of it with anyone else, or even where anyone else might hear. There are other secrets too, even secrets kept from Dan. And that will lead to disaster."

Marshall McLuhan: You Know Nothing of My Work! - Douglas Coupland; "Takes a pop-culture approach to the man known for the phrase 'the medium is the message,' a deep thinker who ended up popularized almost in spite of himself."

The Radleys - Matt Haig; "The parents know what they are, and have concealed this knowlege from their teenage kids, who, inadvertently abstaining from the blood they don't know they need to drink, suffer from nausea, insomnia, weakness, 'photodermatosis,' and mortifying high school unpopularity. Then one night, attacked by a large ogre of a boy, the daughter discovers her true nature the hard way, precipitating a vampire family crisis."

Nonfiction

Brazil on the Rise: The Story of a Country Transformed - Larry Rohter; "A Times reporter's affectionate account."

The Function of Criticism Today - Alfred Kazin; "Any critic who is any good is going to write out of a profound inner struggle between what has been and what must be, the values he is used to and those which presently exist, between the past and the present out of which the future must be born. This struggle with oneself as well as with the age, out of which something must be written and which therefore can be read - this is my test for a critic."

A Good Talk: The Story and Skill of Conversation - Daniel Menaker; A former executive at Random House, Menaker draws on an array of sources - the dating scene, Socrates, studies on the hormone oxytocin, Barack Obama - in this exploration of how conversation has evolved and how it works."

How I Killed Pluto: And Why It Had It Coming - Mike Brown; "The astronomer behind the discovery that led to Pluto's demotion from planethood discusses his work and his family life."

Public Enemies: Dueling Writers Take On Each Other and the World - Bernard Henri Levy and Michel Houellebecq; "Scorned by the French public and media, the two provocateurs decided to examine all that hatred with this epistolary collection in which they assault each other, the public, and, most often, themselves with an arsenal of bitterly sarcastic bons mots."

December Books

"When you're a young writer, you subtract the birthdates of authors from their publication dates and feel panic or hope. When you're an old writer, you observe the death dates of your favorite writers and you reflect on their works and their lives." (Gail Godwin, The New York Times Book Review, December 12, 2010)

These are some titles from last month's New York Times Book Review section (and Stephen King's year-end list from Entertainment Weekly magazine) that I might like to read at some point:

Fiction

Anathem - Neal Stephenson; "Delights in the language and etymology he has designed for his fictional world . . . and in the 7,000 years of detailed history he has given it."

The Finkler Question - "A mugging prompts a quest for self-discovery in this tale of anti-Semitism, friendship and wisdom; winner of this year's Man Booker prize."

The Imperfectionists - Tom Rachman; "Journalists, long taught to never make themselves the story, now have Tom Rachman do it for them. His alternately acute and poignant debut novel, about the dramatic follies at a Rome-based English-language newspaper, is divided into chapters dedicated to different characters, each as distinct as a newspaper section."

Major Pettigrew's Last Stand - Helen Simonson; "Set in an English village, Simonson's first novel wraps Old World sensibility around a story of multicultural conflict and romance. A retired major - the starchy widower Ernest Pettigrew - is mourning the recent death of his brother and frustrated by his materialistic son. Gradually he's drawn to Mrs. Ali, a shopkeeper of Pakistani descent who shares his love of Kipling but is regarded by village society as a permanent foreigner."

Rich Boy - Sharon Pomerantz; "The ambitious son of working-class Jewish immigrants gains entree into a world of pedigreed wealth and privilege through charm and smarts alone - but will he always be defined by where he came from? A gripping narrative that doubles as a sweeping rumination on the American class system."

Stephen King's Top Five Books of 2010

1. Infinite Jest - David Foster Wallace; "To my mind, there have been two great American novels in the past 50 years. Catch-22 is one; this is the other. For pop culture vultures like me, the central plot is fascinating: The late James O. Incandenza has created an 'entertainment' - Infinite Jest - so irresistible you can't stop watching it. Three dozen terrific characters spin out from this, my favorite being Joelle Van Dyne, a.k.a. the P.G.O.A.T.: Prettiest Girl of All Time. But it all comes back to that lethal film - because for guys like me, irresistible entertainment, lethal or not, is the holy grail."

2. Freedom - Jonathan Franzen; "If you haven't met Walter and Patty Berglund of St. Paul, it's time. Franzen chronicles their ups and down (mostly downs) with a cold mind and a warm heart. Two wedding rings go into the toilet over the course of this novel, but there's a measure of redemption for both of those who do the casting away. I finished uplifted and energized by Franzen's storytelling ability."

3. I'd Know You Anywhere - Laura Lippman; "The best suspense novel of the year. Eliza Benedict has got a nice house and a nice family, and has managed to put the trauma of her life behind her. At least until the serial killer who kidnapped and raped her - but let her live - when she was 15 gets in touch from death row and says he wants to see her."

4. Savages - Don Winslow; "Chon and Ben, the antiheroes at the center of this novel that's every bit as savage as its title, aspire to be kinder, gentler drug dealers, but when the smoke clears, one is tempted to quote Sarah Palin: 'How's that hopey-changey stuff workin' out for ya?' This is Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid on autoload. Winslow's stripped-down prose is a revelation."

5. Last Night in Twisted River - John Irving; "It starts with the accidental killing of a Native American woman (the youngster who brains her with a skillet mistakes her for a bear). Father and son take off, pursued by the relentless Constable Carl for nearly 50 years. There's a lot of Canada here, a lot of cookin', and a lot of gorgeous (and cynical) Americana. Irving's best since Garp.

Nonfiction

Encyclopedia of the Exquisite: An Anecdotal History of Elegant Delights - Jessica Kerwin Jenkins; "This gilded, graceful book is nothing less than a miniature encyclopedia of style, exploring everything from the origins of badminton to the art of origami."

How to Understand Israel in 60 Days or Less - Sarah Glidden; "Vivid dialogue and deceptively simple line drawings that are shaded with delicate watercolors, resulting in a graphic memoir of subtlety and understated wit."

The Imperial Cruise: A Secret History of Empire and War - James Bradley, "whose Flags of Our Fathers recounted how his father helped plant the American flag on Iwo Jima, here contends that William Taft's covert 1905 diplomatic mission to Japan helped set the stage for World War II in the Pacific, the Chinese Communist Revolution and the Korean War. With each port of call, Bradley assesses the effects of American race-based foreign policy calculations in Asia; the brutal counterinsurgency in the Philippines, the forced annexation of Hawaii, the betrayal of promises to protect Korea from Japanese expansionism."

Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void - Mary Roach; "Much more interested in the small steps for man than in the giant leaps for mankind, chronicling all of the niches and pecularities of exploring the outer reaches . . . simultaneously informative and get-strange-looks-on-the-subway hilarious."

Yours Ever: People and Their Letters - Thomas Mallon; "Intended as 'a kind of companion volume to A Book of One's Own,' Mallon's 1984 study of people and their diaries, this exploration of the art of letter-writing embraces old friends - Flaubert, Freud, the Mitfords - and plenty of unknowns."

November Books

These are some titles from last month's New York Times Book Review section that I might like to read at some point:

Fiction

Art and Max - David Wiesner; "Two artists mix methods and media."

The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey - Walter Mosley; "The tale of an aged superhero who performs valiant deeds with the aid of a devoted young sidekick (pointedly named Robyn) may sound like the charming stuff of myth. But Mosley invests his wish-fulfillment fantasy with deeper meaning and higher purpose."

An Object of Beauty - Steve Martin; "The actor's third novel is a dramedy of manners that doubles as an immersion course in the rarefied world of high-end art."

Shadow - Suzy Lee; "More impressive than Lee's cartooning, however, is her understanding of the properties unique to the printed book as storytelling devices."

A Tale Dark & Grimm - Adam Gidwitz; "Hansel and Gretel wander through a succession of lesser-known Grimm tales."

Nonfiction

Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste - Pierre Bourdieu "set out to show the social logic of taste: how admiration for art, appreciation of music, even taste in food, came about for different groups, and how 'superior' taste was not the result of an enchanted superiority in scattered individuals."

Googled: The End of World As We Know It - Ken Auletta; "Depicts the sofware company, created in the mid-1990s by two Stanford graduate students, as a game-changing behemoth that, to the dismay of many media chiefs, has become synonymous with user-friendly efficiency and has the potential to disrupt whole industries."

In Cheap We Trust: The Story of a Misunderstood American Value - Lauren Weber; "Combining personal memoir, social history and political manifesto, Weber guides readers on a history of America's complicated relationship with spending, and explores creative alternatives."

In Fifty Years We'll All Be Chicks - Adam Carolla; "The radio host and comedian assesses modern culture through personal anecdotes."

Shock of Gray: The Aging of the World's Population and How It Pits Young Against Old, Child Against Parent, Worker Against Boss, Company Against Rival, and Nation Against Nation - Ted C. Fishman; "Grew out of the research for Fishman's first book, China, Inc.: How the Rise of the Next Superpower Challenges America and the World, and the two books share a fast pace, global scope and jaw-dropping facts."

October Books

These are some titles from last month's New York Times Book Review section (and various issues of Entertainment Weekly magazine) that I might like to read at some point (plus pictures I took of the Halloween decorations at our local library):

Fiction

But Not For Long - Michelle Wildgen; "Three members of a housing co-op in Madison, Wis., face a sort of apocalypse when gas stations run out of fuel, a prolonged blackout hits and honeybees disappear. Eventually people break out their bikes and begin foraging for mushrooms. The plot sounds didactic, but there is nothing preachy about this novel."

How to Read the Air - Dinaw Mengestu's "own origins inform this novel about an Ethiopian-American tracing the uncertain road once taken by his immigrant parents."

Nemesis - Philip Roth; "In 1944, a New Jersey phys ed teacher unfit for military service wages his own war against a polio outbreak."

The Odious Ogre - Norton Juster and Jules Feiffer; "The legendary team behind The Phantom Tollbooth, join forces again . . . A natural read-aloud."

Spooner - Pete Dexter; "A story about a man's struggle to help his troubled stepson by a novelist who writes about trouble better than most anyone."

Nonfiction

At Home: A Short History of Private Life - Bill Bryson; "Centuries of history dwell in every nook and cranny of your home."

The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2010 - Dave Eggers; "A collection of the year's best writing - tweets, fiction snippets, blogs, letters to the editor, and so on - with an introduction by David Sedaris."

Daniel Patrick Moynihan: A Portrait in Letters of an American Visionary - Steven R. Weisman; "Moynihan's correspondence makes absorbing reading because his grand ideas were always driven by his internal tensions."

Listen to This - Alex Ross; "The New Yorker music critic follows up his best-selling The Rest Is Noise with this indispensable, erudite collection of his magazine essays, which span the aural universe from Schubert to Radiohead."

Third World America: How Our Politicians Are Abandoning the Middle Class and Betraying the American Dream - Arianna Huffington; "The American middle class as an endangered species, from the editor of the Huffington Post Web site."

September Books

These are some titles from last month's New York Times Book Review section and this week's Entertainment Weekly that I might like to read at some point:

Fiction

The Dervish House - Ian McDonald; "Having written novels set in a future Brazil and a future India, McDonald now tackles Istanbul circa 2027 in this ambitious, harrowing, sometimes frustrating science fiction thriller."

Elephant and Piggie series - Mo Willems; "Better than Beckett . . . Elephant and Piggie are the Vladimir and Estragon of Children's Literature."

How to Live Safely in a Science Fiction Universe - Charles Yu "must tread carefully: too much of the world-building, the whimsical invention, the armchair mathematics, the flights of philosophy, these lateral motions of the novel, threaten to destabilize it and leave it incapable of imparting a satisfying narrational truth. Too little of these intricate electron clouds surrounding the nucleus of the book and we wander into the boring hold of sentimentality and banality."

The Maze Runner - James Dashner; "A stone wall imprisons teenagers who live by their wits and remember nothing of their earlier lives."

Zero History - William Gibson; "Several characters from Spook Country return to a viral marketing and coolhunting agency; from the author of Pattern Recognition and Neuromancer."

Nonfiction

It's a Book - Lane Smith; Children's picture book that "doesn't tweet or need recharging."

Justice: What's the Right Thing to Do? - Michael J. Sandel; "A Harvard professor seeks to bring implicit arguments about justice into the open."

Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk - David Sedaris; "Some Sedaris fans felt he had begun to exhaust his store of Homo sapiens-based anecdotes in 2008's When You Are Engulfed in Flames, and Squirrel does seem to free him creatively, while still indulging his singularly skewed worldview."

Through the Language Glass: Why the World Looks Different in Other Languages - Guy Deutscher "who stresses the role of culture in language, treads some amusingly idiosyncratic linguistic bypaths."

A Week at the Airport - Alain de Botton; "One of our most influential essayists and thinkers indulges his somewhat freakish love of airports by spending a week at London's Heathrow."

August Books

"To me, the point of a novel is to take you to a still place. You can multitask with a lot of things, but you can't really multitask reading a book. You're either reading a book or you're not." (Jennifer Schuessler, The New York Times Book Review, August 29, 2010)

These are some titles from last month's New York Times Book Review section that I might like to read at some point:

Fiction

Bad Things Happen - Harry Dolan; "This first novel is full of tricky reversals and dry academic humor, as a killer picks off contributors to a literary mystery magazine to the consternation of its editor."

Far North - Marcel Theroux; "Postapocalyptic road novel will inevitably be compared to that other postapocalyptic road novel Oprah liked, and while Theroux (son of Paul) is not the existential stylist McCarthy is, he is a superior plotter."

Freedom - Jonathan Franzen "cracked open the opaque shell of postmodernism, tweezed out its tangled circuitry and inserted in its place the warm, beating heart of an authentic humanism. His fictional canvas teemed with information - about equity finance, railroad engineering, currency manipulation in Eastern Europe, the neurochemistry of clinical depression. But the data flowed through the arteries of narrative, just as it had done in the novels of Dickens and Tolstoy, Bellow and Mann."

Meeks - Julia Holmes; "In the dystopia of this wry first novel, a hierarchical society forces young bachelors to find brides - or else."

My Hollywood - Mona Simpson; "But the nannies know that one wrong move could land them on a plane back to Manila. Ignoring that specter, they jockey for position like trophy wives, aware at all times of the risk of divorce, rupture, reversal."

The Pages - Murray Bail; "A philosopher and a psychoanalyst travel from Sydney to a remote sheep station to evaluate a manuscript in this novel about different ways of thinking."

Star Island - Carl Hiassen: "A paparazzo attempting to kidnap a drug-addled pop star grabs her stunt double by mistake."

The Surf Guru: Stories - Doug "Dorst's acclaimed debut, Alive in Necropolis, folded sci-fi, horror, and noir elements into a layered coming-of-age story, and a similar mix of lively imagination and love of craft are on display in this excellent collection."

Super Sad True Love Story - Gary Shteyngart; "A tender but doomed love affair in a future America on the verge of collapse." (See also: Can America Survive? - John Hagee; "A pastor sees 10 signs that we are the terminal generation.")

The Thousand Autums of Jacob de Zoet - David Mitchell; "Reinvents himself with each book, and it's thrilling to watch. His novels like Ghostwritten and Cloud Atlas spill over with narrators and language, collecting storylines connected more in spirit than in fact."

Nonfiction

97 Orchard: An Edible History of Five Immigrant Families in One New York Tenement - Jane Ziegelman; "Keeping faith with their native cuisines, the newcomers made a series of counteroffers - sauerkraut, spaghetti, borscht - that changed the national palate forever."

The Big Rewind: A Memoir Brought to You by Pop Culture - Nathan Rabin; "I found my lasting family in the art and junk that has sustained me."

Encounter - Milan Kundera; "Illuminating essays on the arts in the context of a 'post-art' era."

The Glamour of Grammar: A Guide to the Magic and Mystery of Practical English - Ray Peter Clark; "A manual for the 21st century endorses breaking rules that make no sense."

Losing My Cool: How a Father's Love and 15,000 Books Beat Hip-Hop Culture - Thomas Chatterton Williams; "Transformed from a skinny teenager who shoots hoops, gets into bloody brawls and smacks his girlfriend, into a philosophy major and author."

Memoir: A Memoir - Tom Grimes; "His memories are steeped in the writerly process, but the book also encompasses more universal themes: expectation, disappointment, and the need to impress your heroes. What Grimes does, beautifully, is emphasize the communal elements of a solitary profession."

Not For Profit: Why Democracy Needs the Humanities - "Surveying Socrates, Rousseau, Dewey, Rabindranath Tagore and others, she investigates the key insight of progressive pedagogy through the ages."

Origins of the Specious: Myths and Misconceptions of the English Language - Patricia T. O'Connor and Stewart Kellerman; "Take on the 'linguaholics' who rigidly follow meaningless restrictions, like the ones against splitting infinitives or ending sentences with prepositions."

The Self Sufficient-ish Bible: An Eco-Living Guide for the 21st Century - Andy and Dave Hamilton; "Making your own deodorant, baby wipes, dandelion wine, cough syrup and more."

Twain's Feast: Searching for America's Lost Foods in the Footsteps of Samuel Clemens - Andrew Beahrs; "This is a culinary stunt book fixated on the nostalgic list of American foods Twain included in his 1880 travel memoir, A Tramp Abroad.

July Books

"If you're like me, you tend to regard plot summaries as a necessary boredom at best. They're the flyover country between a reviewer's landing strips of judgement, revealing almost nothing about the way a book actually works, almost nothing about why it succeeds or fails. If plot were the crucial measure, there'd be no difference between a story about the fish that got away and Moby Dick. Reading such summaries (or writing them) is usually as beguiling as listening to some addled fan of Lost explain what happened on that botched ruin of a show." (Will Blythe, New York Times Book Review, July 11, 2010)

These are some titles from last month's New York Times Book Review section (and various issues of Entertainment Weekly magazine) that I might like to read at some point:

Fiction

Abby Carnelia's One and Only Magical Power - David Pogue "is the personal-technology columnist for the New York Times. Each week, he contributes a print column, an online column and an online video. His daily blog, Pogue's Posts, is the Times's most popular blog. David is also an Emmy award-winning tech correspondent for CBS News and a frequent guest on NPR's Morning Edition. His trademark comic tech videos appear each Thursday morning on CNBC. With over 3 million books in print, David is one of the world's bestselling how-to authors."

American Music - Jane Mendelsohn; "A series of haunting impressions trace the story of a family, the history of 20th-century America and the evolution of its music."

Citrus County - John Brandon; "With a smart hero somehow mean and bighearted at once, Brandon grippingly hybridizes the crime novel with the novel of rural adolescent longing, even as he subverts the expectations of both."

City Dog, Country Frog - Mo Willems; "What are you doing?" "Waiting for a friend. But you'll do."

‎Dracula's Guest: A Connoisseur's Collection of Victorian Vampire Stories - Michael Sims; "Beginning with the supposedly true accounts that captivated Byron and Shelley, the stories range from Edgar Allan Poe's The Oval Portrait and Sheridan Le Fanu's Carmilla to Guy de Maupassant's The Horla and Mary Elizabeth Braddon's Good Lady Ducayne. Sims also includes a nineteenth-century travel tour of Transylvanian superstitions, and rounds out the collection with Stoker's own Dracula's Guest — a chapter omitted from his landmark novel."

The Frozen Rabbi - Steve Stern; "Starts in a small Polish village, where Rabbi Eliezer is so blissed out during a pond-side meditation that he doesn't notice a storm lifting the waters around him. In one of the effortless liberties the master fabulist Stern takes with reality, the rabbi survives underwater until winter comes and he's encased in ice. This all happens before Page 7, testament to how rapidly this book chews through plot, characters, decades and continents."

Shark Vs. Train - Chris Barton; "Who will win the face-off between two favorite toys: the shark or the train? (A dinosaur must be waiting in the wings.) Lichtenheld's high-energy drawings are the main appeal in a series of contests that could have built to more drama. (The opponents bowl, trick or treat and... make lemonade?) At the end, two boys drop the game and break for lunch.

Still Missing - Chevy Stevens; "Blistering debut follows a kidnap victim from her abduction to her escape - and the even more horrifying nightmare that follows. One moment, realtor Annie O'Sullivan is taking one last client, a quiet, well-spoken man with a nice smile; the next moment she's being marched out to a van at gunpoint, unaware that it's the last time for months that she'll see the sky or breathe open air."

Nonfiction

Being Wrong: Adventures in the Margin of Error - Kathryn Schulz; "Case histories of a Klansman who became an unlikely advocate for civil rights, of a doomsday prophet whose apocalypse wasn't now, of a sexual assault victim whose mistaken testimony jailed an innocent man."

The Disappearing Spoon and Other True Tales of Madness, Love, and the History of the World from the Periodic Table of the Elements - Sam Kean; "The best science writers, like the best science teachers, bring an enthusiasm for the material that infects even those of us who wouldn't usually give a flying photon."

Dreaming in Hindi: Coming Awake in Another Language - Katherine Russell Rich "responded to job setbacks and cancer by travelling to India - not to spend a few months at an ashram, like some people, but to study Hindi seriously. "This book both recounts her experience and presents the research of linguists about what happens in the brain when we learn a new language."

Everything Is Going to Be Great: An Underfunded and Overexposed European Grand Tour - Rachel Shukert; "Scrap your preconceived notions of travel writing. We're not talking The Innocents Abroad here; this irreverent, profane journal of Shukert's college trip comes off like a cross between David Sedaris and Chuck Palahniuk. Nothing escapes her eye - not the cute boys or creepy older guys, not the booze, not even European culture."

Nine Lives: In Search of the Sacred in Modern India - William Dalrymple; "The stupefyingly diverse religious world of the subcontinent, explored through nine remarkable individuals."

The Price of Altruism: George Price and the Search for the Origins of Kindness - Oren Harman; "Covers the entire 150-year history of scientist' researching, debating and bickering about a theoretical problem that lies at the core of behavioral biology, sociology and evolutionary psychology: Why is it that organisms sacrifice themselves for the benefit of others?"

Suck It, Wonder Woman! - Olivia Munn; "The first lady of nerd, and newly minted Daily Show correspondent, has written a book that covers everything from sex to videogames to her undying love of pie."

Talking to Girls About Duran Duran: One Young Man's Quest for True Love and a Cooler Haircut - Rob Sheffield; "The author of 2007's Love Is a Mix Tape reaches back to the '80s in his second collection of music-themed memories."

June Books

"That time has perhaps come. Tired of buying bookshelves and anxious about the economic downturn, my wife recently instituted the First Law of Literary Thermodynamics, otherwise known as the conservation of libraries. No book can come into our household without another book leaving it. I am loath to give up any books. So I've been dipping more and more into my unread stock, which still numbers in the hundreds." (John Feffer, "Essay" in the New York Times Book Review section, June 13, 2010)

These are some titles from last month's New York Times Book Review section that I might like to read at some point:

Fiction

The Magicians - Lev Grossman; "After attending sorcery college, a young man lives the hedonist's life in Manhattan, dealing with crises existential and otherwise."

The November Criminals - Sam Munson; "Both a thoughtful coming-of-age story and an engaging teenage noir. Think of it as an existential murder mystery for the stoner pre-college set."

One Day - David Nicholls; "Checks in year by year on the confused, halting romance of two children of the '80s, she an outspoken lefty, he an apolitical toff."

The Overton Window - Glenn Beck; "A public relations executive and the woman he loves fight to expose a conspiracy to transform America."

So Cold the River - Michael Koryta; "If all good mysteries make ideal summer reading, what does a mystery fan turn to for true escape? How about a supernatural mystery that intensifies the suspense by thickening the atmosphere."

Nonfiction

Extra Lives: Why Video Games Matter - Tom Bissell; "Video games have created what must be the biggest generation gap since rock'n'roll. Sure, a generational rift of sorts emerged when the World Wide Web showed up near the end of the last century, but in the case of the Web, the older cohort admired and tried to emulate the younger crowd, rather than looking down on them with befuddlement or disdain. With games, a more traditional 'get off my lawn' panic has reared its head."

Geek Dad: Awesomely Geeky Projects and Activities for Dads and Kids to Share - Ken Denmead; "Projects to share with children, from electronic origami to home hydroponics."

Mint Condition: How Baseball Cards Became an American Obsession - Dave Jamieson; "Details early tobacco cards, stuffed into packs to keep the cigarettes from crushing; kitschy nonbaseball series like Mars Attacks; and the rest of the history."

Planet Barbecue! - Steven Raichlen; "Blazing grills, exotic seasonings, expert grill masters, renowned restaurants, cool fuels, tools, tips and techniques from all around the world. Plus 600 full-color photographs."

The Seasons on Henry's Farm: A Year of Food and Life on a Sustainable Farm - Terra Brockman; "By far the most informative and earnest of the back-to-the-land memoirs; anyone thinking about farming as a way of life should read it."

May Books

These are some titles from last month's New York Times Book Review section (and Diamond Previews catalog) that I might like to read at some point:

Fiction

Billy Hazelnuts - Tony Millionaire; "Transmutes nursery rhymes and the golem myth into a storybook about Becky, girl scientist, her friend Billy Hazelnuts (who was created from cooking ingredients by tailless mice), and their journey to find the missing moon while battling an evil steam-driven alligator with a seeing-eye skunk."

Elliot Allagash - Simon Rich; "Saturday Night Live writer's first novel (after two humorous collections) is a hit and miss riff on Pygmalion in which genial high school loser Seymour gets a life-changing makeover after meeting Elliot, a fabulously wealthy malcontent who has transferred to Seymour's Manhattan private school. Elliot's lessons on the power of money and the fine art of popularity are given in exchange for chubby Seymour's agreement to do whatever Elliot tells him to do, and, sure enough, Seymour transforms from consummate outsider to a Harvard-bound, straight-A class president."

Four Color Fear: Forgotten Horror Comics of the 1950s - John Benson and Greg Sadowski; "Of the myriad genres comic books ventured into during its golden age, none was as controversial as or came at a greater cost than horror; the public outrage it incited almost destroyed the entire industry. Yet before the watchdog groups and Congress could intercede, horror books were flying off the newsstands."

Theodore Boone: Kid Lawyer - John Grisham; "Theo knows every judge, policeman, court clerk—and a lot about the law. He dreams of being a great trial lawyer, of a life in the courtroom. But Theo finds himself in court much sooner than expected. Because he knows so much—maybe too much—he is suddenly dragged into the middle of a sensational murder trial. A cold-blooded killer is about to go free, and only Theo knows the truth."

Wally Gropius - Tim Hensley; "Wally is the human Dow Jones, the heir to a vast petrochemical conglomerate. When the elder Thaddeus Gropius confronts Wally with the boilerplate plot ultimatum that he must marry 'the saddest girl in the world' or be disinherited, a yarn unravels that is part screwball comedy and part unhinged parable on the lucrativeness of changing your identity."

Nonfiction

Although of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself - David Lipsky; "A few weeks after Infinite Jest was published in February 1996, Rolling Stone magazine sent a reporter to accompany its author, David Foster Wallace."

The Beats: A Graphic History - Harvey Pekar and Ed Piskor; "This comic book treatment is celebratory and not in any way definitive, as it acknowledges."

Land of the Lost Souls: My Life on the Streets - Cadillac Man; "Thomas Wagner, known as Cadillac Man, became homeless in 1994, when he was 44."

Making Haste From Babylon: The Mayflower Pilgrims and Their World, A New History; "An Englishman, had what is perhaps a more alluring idea: to devote himself largely to the prehistory of the men and women who founded the colony. His book roams through archives and repositories in the British Isles."

This Time Together - Carol Burnett; "The comedian describes her rise in show business and the people she's met along the way."

April Books

These are some titles from last month's New York Times Book Review section that I might like to read at some point:

Fiction

A Conspiracy of Kings - Megan Whalen Turner; "Following The Thief, a 1997 Newbery Honor Book, and The King of Attolia, a 2007 Best Book for Young Adults, Turner’s plotting remains deft, and the subtlety with which she balances her characters’ inner and outer worlds will delight both series newcomers and fans, who will be waiting to grab this stand-out, stand-alone adventure, filled with all the expected intrigue and political machinations, from the shelves.

How It Ended: New and Collected Stories - Jay McInerney; "Spans the nearly three decades of McInerney's career, beginning with early stories like "It's Six A.M. Do You Know Where You Are?," which grew into his first novel, Bright Lights, Big City."

Savvy - Ingrid Law; "Mibs is about to turn 13, the age at which supernatural talents are conferred on members of her family." (sounds like the X-Men)

The Solitude of Prime Numbers - Paolo Giordano; "An alienated mathematician and a scarred ex-skier, find refuge together but hurt those who care for them."

Tales for Little Rebels: A Collection of Radical Children's Literature - Julia L. Mickenberg and Philip Nel; "44 texts, mostly from the 20th century and from books aimed at pre-teen readers."

Nonfiction

Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years - Diarmaid MacCulloch; "A professor traces the faith's history through classical philosophy and Jewish tradition, fantastical visions and cold calculations, loving sacrifices and important ambitions."

The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education - Diane Ravitch; "An education historian re-evaluates her support for market-driven accountability in education and defends public schools."

Match Day: One Day and One Dramatic Year in the Lives of Three New Doctors - Brian Eule "follows three young female doctors from the spring of their last year of medical school through the first year of their internships. He is most interested in how the system of training and practice affects doctors' personal lives."

Mount Pleasant: My Journey from Creating a Billion-Dollar Company to Teaching at a Struggling Public High School - Steve Poizner; "A technology entrepreneur spends a year teaching 12th grade . . . and is changed by the experience."

The Way of Herodotus: Travels With the Man Who Invented History - Justin Marozzi; "A journalist and travel writer, follows the footsteps of Herodotus, the 'father of history,' around the Middle East. He moves from Turkey to Iraq to Egypt to Greece, engaging the locals and discussing Herodotus' experience. He concludes, as a Greek hotelier puts it, that all myths have a nucleus of truth."

March Books

These are some titles from last month's New York Times Book Review section that I might like to read at some point:

Fiction

The Addams Family: An Evilution - H. Kevin Miserocchi; "More than 200 cartoons, many previously unpublished, document the history of the ghoulish clan. Chapters are dedicated to individual characters, with descriptions by Addams himself (1912-88)."

The Easter Egg - Jan Brett; "Hoppi, a small but industrious bunny, takes a tour of the woods and sees how other rabbits are preparing fancily decorated eggs in the hopes of being chosen to assist the official Easter Rabbit."

Incarceron - Catherine Fisher; "An infamous prison, where inmates don't believe there is an outside world."

The Infinities - John Banville; "A mathematician's ideas have recast the world, and Greek gods join his family around his deathbed."

Little Bee - Chris Cleave; "Themes of immigration and national identity resonate far and wide. All the buzz has attracted Hollywood, and a movie adaptation with Nicole Kidman is in the works."

The Russian Dreambook of Color and Flight - Gina Ochsner; "Ochsner's first novel links the grim anomie of post-Soviet Russia to the delirium of magic realism."

The Upside-Down World of Gustave Verbeek - "reprints the complete 1903-5 run of a Sunday strip whose every episode could be flipped upside-down to show the second half of its narrative."

Where the Mountain Meets the Moon - Grace Lin; "Traditional folktales embroider a Chinese girl's adventure."

Why the House Is Made of Gingerbread - Ava Leavell Haymon; Poetry

Nonfiction

The Art of Choosing - Sheena Iyengar; "Life is full of choices. How do we make them?"

Chelsea Chelsea Bang Bang - Chelsea Handler; "More humorous personal essays from the comedian."

The Devil and Sherlock Holmes - David Grann; "Life is infinitely stranger than anything which the mind of man could invent."

The History of White People - Nell Irvin Painter; "Free of any geographic or linguistic moorings . . . a race known as 'white.'"

Made for Goodness: And Why This Makes All the Difference - Desmond Tutu & Mpho Tutu; "Nobel Peace Prize-winner gets to the heart of what it means to be human."

The New York Times Practical Guide to Practically Everything, Second Edition: The Essential Companion for Everyday Life - Amy D. Bernstein and Peter W. Bernstein; "This handy guide is a wide-ranging and lively GPS for answering the many bewildering questions we have every day." - Tom Brokaw

The Possessed: Adventures With Russian Books and the People Who Read Them - Elif Batuman;
Sasha: "How are you doing?"
Anton: "Don't even ask."
Sasha: "What's that you're reading?"
Anton: "Dostoyevsky."
Sasha: "That's why you're upset."
Anton: "Thanks for the information."

Voodoo Histories: The Role of the Conspiracy Theory in Shaping Modern History - David Aaronovitch; "The supposed murder of Diana, Princess of Wales; the 'staged' moon landing; the pseudohistory of Christianity unveiled in The Da Vinci Code; and many more."

"Yippee Ki-Yay Moviegoer!" Writings on Bruce Willis, Badass Cinema and Other Important Topics - Vern; "The online commenter is back with essays on everyone from Jean-Claude Van Damme to Ingmar Bergman."

February Books

These are some titles from last month's New York Times Book Review section that I might like to read at some point:

Fiction

Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter - Seth Grahame-Smith; "The eagerly awaited novel by the New York Times bestselling author of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (I recommend Brendan Fraser for the starring role in the inevitable movie adaptation. He can do serious and hokey, but he needs to do more than family-friendly.)

An Exact Replica of a Figment of My Imagination - Elizabeth McCracken; "The happiest story in the world with the saddest ending."

Nonfiction

Angels and Ages: A Short Book About Darwin, Lincoln, and Modern Life - Adam Gopnik; "On Feb. 12, 1809, Charles Darwin and Abraham Lincoln were born within a few hours of each other on either side of the Atlantic."

1989: Bob Dylan Didn't Have This to Sing About - Joshua Clover; "provides astute observations across several genres; his gangsta rap and grunge chapters are particularly good."

January Books

These are some titles from last month's New York Times Book Review section that I might like to read at some point:

Fiction

Generation A - Douglas Coupland; "Not a sequel to but rather a thematic wink at Coupland's first novel, Generation X (1991), about young slackers experiencing postindustial fin de siecle ennui and sitting around telling stories."

The Girl With Glass Feet - Ali Shaw; "In a typical fairy tale, the characters are flat and the description minimal. A princess is a princess; a witch, a witch. Here, characters are complicated, informed by tragic personal circumstances."

The Mystic Arts of Erasing All Signs of Death - Charlie Huston; "A California slacker goes to work as a trauma cleaner, dealing with the blood and gore after someone commits suicide or dies alone in festering filth. Along the way there is a complicated romance and some kind of dead-bod-cleanup range war with a rival company."

Nightlight - The Harvard Lampoon; "Belle Goose falls for Edwart Mullen in this parody of the Stephanie Meyer novel Twilight."

A Reliable Wife - Robert Goodrick; "Complications ensue when a wealthy Wisconsin widower in 1907 advertises for a wife."

Nonfiction

Aspects of the Novel - E.M. Forster; "Here we first learned of 'flat' (quickly sketched in) versus 'round' (fully developed) characters and how every book needs some of both."

Digital Revolutionaries: The Men and Women Who Brought Computing To Life - Steve Lohr; "A guided tour of the history of computers and a celebration of the human ingenuity that ushered in the computer age."

The Marketplace of Ideas - Louis Menard; "Why is it so hard to institute a general education curriculum? Why did the humanities discipline undergo a crisis of legitimation? Why has 'interdisciplinarity' become a magic word? And why do professors all tend to have the same politics?"

Not for Tourists series - Rob Tallia and Jane Pirone; "We've lived in New York for 19 years and we still haven't visited the Statue of Liberty."

Strange Things Happen: A Life with the Police, Polo, and Pygmies - Stewart Copeland; "He was raised in the Middle East, the son of a C.I.A. operative. He was something of a pioneer in the pop exploration of 'world' music, recording with African musicians well before Paul Simon made his Graceland trek."

Happy New Year, Part II

So far I've seen exactly half of the 100 top-grossing movies released in 2009. But did I accomplish of any of my entertainment resolutions listed on my 1/1/09 post? Uh, no, not one of them: "shorter, more personal (blog) posts . . . switching to (digital comic subscriptions) . . . taking my time with just classic (movies) . . . return to Coachella . . . avoiding Showtime series." In my own defense, I have to say that I almost quit blogging a couple times this year, so the few long-winded posts I wrote must be better than no posts at all. Completely giving up new comics beats switching to digital. And while I didn't make it to Coachella, I did go to San Diego Street Scene for the first time. Here are my highlights from 2009, along with my New Year's resolutions for entertainment in 2010:

My Favorite Blog Post I Wrote - my movie review of Taken (5/14/09); second place goes to "My Defintion of Art" (2/2/09) and third place is "My Comics Timeline" (8/12/09)

My Blogging Resolution - include more family-related posts

My Favorite Non-New Release Book I Read for the First Time (for new releases, click on my "Books" label to the right to find lists of books I'd be interested in reading at some, any of which would make great gifts) - The Time-Traveler's Wife, by Audrey Niffenegger (2004; read my 7/20/09 review); second place goes to Education of a Wandering Man, by Louis L'amour (1990) and third place is Marvel Comics' Cloak and Dagger limited series (1983)

My Book-Reading Resolution - to not buy another book (or comic) until I've read all the ones I already own

My Favorite Non-New Release Movie I Saw for the First Time (for new releases, see my "Ten Best" and "Ten Worst" lists below) - Notting Hill (1999); second place goes to The Bird with the Crystal Plumage (1970) and third place is And Then There Were None (1945; read my 2/17/09 review)

My Movie-Watching Resolution - cut back to two per week (my "31 Days of Halloween" movie review marathon almost killed me, but I had to see if I could do it)

My Favorite Non-New Release Songs I Rediscovered (for new releases, see my "Ten Best" list below) - "Mandolin Rain" by Bruce Hornsby (1986); second place goes to "Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain" by Willie Nelson (1975) and third place is "Both Sides, Now" by Joni Mitchell (1969)

My Music-Listening Resolution - familiarizing myself with 20th-century classical composers (I got a Christmas gift to help with this: Alex Ross' book The Rest Is Noise, which has an accompanying website of the same name)

My Favorite TV Show I Continued Following - The Big Bang Theory (Season Two on DVD); second place goes to 30 Rock (Season Three on DVD) and third place is... a tie! Dexter and Weeds (both Season Three on DVD, I went back on my New Year's resolution because Comic-Con made them look so good)

My TV-Viewing Resolution - since I don't have cable or even HDTV, I'm going to switch this entertainment category from last year to physical exercise, as I've set a goal to cut my time running the mile in half

Ten Best New Movies I've Seen So Far from 2009 (in order of personal significance; I still look forward to watching Bandslam, An Education, Moon, The Road and Whip It!)

1. Star Trek - The Dark Knight of this year, in that it had everything: action, comedy, romance, special effects and star power; read my 5/7/09 review

2. Every Little Step - this year's The Curious Case of Benjamin Button for having the most humanity of any release; read my 5/28/09 review

3. District 9 - as with Iron Man, I knew it was going to be more than a genre movie before I ever saw any marketing for it; read my 8/14/09 review

4. It Might Get Loud - this caps off a long line of excellent documentaries from this past decade: Michael Jordan to the Max (2000), Scratch (2001), Spellbound (2002), Winged Migration (2003), Riding Giants (2004), Metal: A Headbanger's Journey (2005), Who The #$&% Is Jackson Pollock? (2006), The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters (2007) and Religulous (2008); no, I'm not including Al Gore, Michael Moore or penguins

5. The Princess and the Frog - I was skeptical when I first saw the trailer, just like I was with Kung Fu Panda, but my wife loves both movies and now so do I; read my 12/11/09 review

6. Zombieland - this year's Gran Torino, for the odd couple factor, oh, and lots of profanity and black comedy; read my 10/3/09 review

7. The Hurt Locker - the Redbelt of this year, in that I missed both movies upon their theatrical releases but I always felt good about them, and both have the most suspense and tension; read my 12/18/09 review

8. Paranormal Activity - as with Let the Right One In, I read the press and knew I had to see it no matter what; yes, I participated in the grassroots bidding for it to be brought to my city; read my 10/23/09 review

9. Fast and Furious - just like with Quantum of Solace, I don't care what none of y'all say

10. The Blind Side - no, I haven't seen it yet but if the trailer can bring me to tears, how bad can the movie be?

Ten Worst New Movies I Actually Saw from 2009 (in order of offensiveness; keep in mind that I kinda liked Ghosts of Girlfriends Past, Terminator: Salvation, Tyler Perry's Madea Goes to Jail, The Last House on the Left and Where the Wild Things Are)

1. Coraline - granted, I didn't like the book it was based on, but I was hoping the movie adaptation was going to improve on things, not worsen them; I hated the look, the sound, the taste, the smell and the feel

2. Sunshine Cleaning - I used to like Amy Adams and Emily Blunt; they're the reasons I watched this depressing, depressing, depressing ripoff of Little Miss Sunshine; now they depress me

3. G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra - I went in with low expectations and they still weren't met; as a fan of the toys, I feel so betrayed by what they did with Cobra Commander, even more than I was about Deadpool on X-Men Origins: Wolverine

4. The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3 - the cheesiest effects and scene transitions; everyone's a bad guy; lame ending

5. Blood: The Last Vampire - despite blood that looked like coffee beans, this live-action remake of the progressive anime started out faithful; then the mythology got progressively cheesier till I considered walking out

6. Halloween II - I hate it on the Spider-Man movie series how they're always breaking one of his eyeholes to show the man under the mask; here they do the same but also try to explain his relationships with his mother, his sister, his shrink, himself, with dogs...; read my 10/29/09 review

7. The Soloist - unfortunately I watched a lot of boring movies this year (Watchmen, The Merry Gentleman, The International, The Brothers Bloom and even the Cannes Film Festival winner, The Class - there, I said it) but this most boring one made me realize that the number of times you reach for the remote control to fast-forward is a form of measurement; read my 8/7/09 review

8. The Proposal - only deserves one star for the beautiful Alaskan wilderness; worse than EVERY other romantic comedy this year: The Accidental Husband, He's Just Not That Into You, Management, New in Town, The Ugly Truth and while I didn't see them, I'm sure it was worse than either Bride Wars or Confessions of a Shopaholic; it settles for an interoffice relationship that requires total suspension of disbelief, random outbursts of singing, raunchy old folks, nude slapstick (plus a fat male stripper) and an unsuccessful final chase scene which delays the inevitable, yet still awkward "proposal"

9. Fanboys - not funny

10. (500) Days of Summer - yes, I gave it four stars but at the same time it REALLY bothers me

Ten Best New Songs I Heard from 2009

1. "Can't Stop Now (feat. Jovi Rockwell and Mr. Vegas)" - Major Lazer (June 16)
2. "Feel.Love.Thinking.Of. (Mexicans with Guns Remix)" - Faunts (March 10)
3. "Feel It All Around" - Washed Out (September 8)
4. "Day In - Day Out (Produced by Cut Chemist)" - Nat "King" Cole (March 10)
5. "Rose of Jericho" - BT (June 30)
6. "Look Into the Heart Now" - Clark (July 13)
7. "Slow Poison" - The Bravery (September 22)
8. "Burial" - Miike Snow (September 22)
9. "Sweet Disposition" - The Temper Trap (September 16)
10. "Kings and Queens" - 30 Seconds to Mars (October 13)

December Books

These are some titles from last month's New York Times Book Review section that I might like to read at some point:

Fiction

Ford County - John Grisham; "Stories set in rural Mississippi."

Pirate Latitudes - Michael Crichton; "In the 17th-century Caribbean, a British pirate attacks a Spanish galleon; this manuscript was found in Crichton's files after his death in 2008."

The Road - Cormac McCarthy; "A father and son travel in post-apocalypse America."

Tales Designed to Thrizzle: Volume One - Michael Kupperman; "A stiff, deadpan drawing style that suggests the textures of woodcuts, clip-art and old Mary Worth strips."

The Toon Treasury of Classic Children's Comics - Art Spiegelman and Françoise Mouly; "A handful of these stories feature familiar names, including Carl Bark's Uncle Scrooge, C.C. Beck's Captain Marvel (in an adventure involving surrealist art) and Walt Kelly's Pogo; many others are long-forgotten wonders, like George Carlson's supremely ridiculous Pie-Face Prince of Old Pretzleburg and Sheldon Mayer's high-whimsical Sugar and Spike."

Nonfiction

The Book of Codes, Understanding the World of Hidden Messages: An Illustrated Guide to Signs, Symbols, Ciphers and Secret Languages - Paul Lunde; "Meant to introduce the reader to many overt and covert codes, it is more sampler (each code is given two pages) than in-depth analysis."

A Dictionary of Modern English Usage - Henry Watson Fowler; "(Reissue of) the classic first edition."

Everything I Need to Know I Learned From a Children’s Book - Anita Silvey; "A delightful nostalgic exercise in which prominent people reflect on the children’s stories that shaped them."

Guinness World Records 2010 - Craig Glenday; "Tallest, fastest, youngest, most."

The Invention of Air: A Story of Science, Faith, Revolution and the Birth of America - Steven Johnson; "A satisfying genre-blending consideration of Joseph Priestley and his fertile ideas."

A New Literary History of America - Greil Marcus and Werner Sollors; "From the first appearance of the word 'America' on a map to Jimi Hendrix's rewrite of the national anthem."

Shakespeare and Modern Culture - Marjorie Garber; "Survey of the uses to which Shakespeare has been put."

The Talented Miss Highsmith: The Secret Life and Serious Art of Patricia Highsmith - Joan Schenkar; "Especially fascinating are Schenkar's extras, such as a reproduction of the list Highsmith made to rank and compare her lovers, and a list of the books on her shelves."

Talking About Detective Fiction - P.D. James; "Unpretentious celebrations of reason and order in our increasingly complex and disorderly world."

Why We Suck - Denis Leary; "Sardonic essays from the actor and comedian."

Poetry

Easy - Marie Ponsot; "We're past get-ready, almost get-set."

The Mind-Body Problem - Katha Pollitt; "Death can't help but look friendly / when all your friends live there / while more and more / each day's like a smoky party / where the music hurts and strangers insist they know you."

November Books

These are some titles from last month's New York Times Book Review section that I might like to read at some point:

Fiction

The Cry of the Sloth: The Mostly Tragic Story of Andrew Whittaker, Being His Collected, Final, and Absolutely Complete Writings - Sam Savage; "offbeat second novel is an epistolary collage: letters, grocery lists, classified ads, press releases, submission guidelines for a literary magazine, rough drafts of novel passages, journal entries, posted warnings from slumlords - all written by the protagonist, Andrew Whittaker, a lethargic failure in nearly everything he turns his hand to."

Dinotrux - Chris Gall; "Millions of years ago, prehistoric trucks roamed the earth. They were huge. They were hungry. But they weren't helpful like they are today. They rumbled, roared and chomped."

The English Major - Jim Harrison; "Is to midlife crisis what The Catcher in the Rye is to adolescence."

Tales from Outer Suburbia - Shaun Tan; "the characters are vivid and original, the plots blend logic and whimsy, and the endings always pay off, if never quite the way you expect."

The Wordy Shipmates - Sarah Vowell; "Juxtaposes serious and stirring excerpts from sermons and poetry with Puritan-themed kitsch to make a point about our understanding of the American past."

Nonfiction

Bright-Sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America - Barbara Ehrenreich; "What started as a 19th-century response to dour Calvinism has, over the years, turned equally oppressive."

Mennonite in a Little Black Dress: A Memoir of Going Home - Rhoda Janzen; "The narrative voice of the person who grew up in an ethnic religious community, escaped it, then looked back with clearsighted objectivity and appreciation."

Superfreakonomics - Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner; "A scholar and a journalist apply economic thinking to everything: the sequel."

What the Dog Saw - Malcolm Gladwell; "A decade of New Yorker essays."

Years of Dust: The Story of the Dust Bowl - Albert Marrin; "Knits together natural science and sociology, news stories, snippets from novels and poems, eyewitness descriptions, journal entries, and the words of hardtime bards like John Steinbeck and Woody Guthrie."

October Books

These are some titles from last month's New York Times Book Review section that I might like to read at some point:

Fiction

The Children's Book - A.S. Byatt; "Set between 1895 and the Somme offensive, Byatt's intricate novel tracks several British households joined by an ardent belief in art and social reform."

The Christmas List - Richard Paul Evans; "A man changes his life after he reads his own obituary and learns what others think of him."

Chronic City - Jonathan Lethem; "Beneath the gaudy makeup of this dancing showgirl of a novel, set in an alternate-reality Manhattan, is the girl next door: a traditional bildungsroman (my word of the month) with a strong moral compass."

Dexter by Design (Book 4) - Jeff Lindsay; "A killer who arranges victims in artful poses challenges the Miami Police Department and its blood spatter analyst, Dexter."

Generosity: An Enhancement - Richard Powers; "An excessively happy central character would seem like a potential handicap in a novel, but Powers manages the difficult feat of making Thassa plausible and even fascinating, in part by refracting her through the others, in part by endowing here with a richly textured biography."

Juliet, Naked - Nick Hornby; "In this novel of obsessive fandom, a reclusive singer-songwriter's new album upends several lives."

Just After Sunset - Stephen King; "Short stories blending fantasy and psychological realism."

Masterpiece Comics - R. Sikoryak; "Dagwood and Blondie are Adam and Eve, Garfield the Cat is Mephistopheles, and Batman is an ax-wielding Raskol in this book of parodies."

The Story of Edgar Sawtelle - David Wroblewski; "A man takes refuge with dogs in the Wisconsin woods after his father's death."

Tricks - Ellen Hopkins; "A novel in verse about five teenagers who become prostitutes."

Nonfiction

Alphabet Juice: The Energies, Gists, and Spirits of Letters, Words, and Combinations Thereof; Their Roots, Bones, Innards, Piths, Pips, and Secret Parts, Tinctures, Tonics, and Essences; ...With Examples of Their Usage Foul and Savory - Roy Blount Jr.; "If everybody's first English teacher were Roy Blount Jr. . . . we would be so deeply in love with words and their magic."

American on Purpose: The Improbable Adventures of an Unlikely Patriot - Craig Ferguson; "The Scottish-born comedian tells his story without jokes getting in the way."

Beg, Borrow, Steal: A Writer's Life - Michael Greenberg; "Incisive essays relaying only-in-New York encounters, by a native son."

Gardens: An Essay on the Human Condition - Robert Pogue Harrison; "A distinctly human need, as opposed to shelter, which is a distinctly animal need."

Graffiti World: Street Art From Five Continents - Nicholas Ganz; "This updated edition of Ganz's 2004 book features over 2,000 photographs of street art by more than 150 artists."

Half Broke Horses: A True-Life Novel - Jeannette Walls; "Assuming her maternal grandmother's voice, the author of The Glass Castle recreates an adrenaline-charged existence on the rough-and-tumble Southwest frontier."

The Interrogative Mood: A Novel? - Padgett Powell; "A courageous and entertaining meditation on the sublime and the trivial, in all-question format."

Manhood for Amateurs: The Pleasures and Regrets of a Husband, Father, and Son - Michael Chabon; "Cumulatively, these essays impart a sad feeling of something irretrievably lost."

The National Parks: America's Best Idea - Dayton Duncan and Ken Burns; "The magnificent, lavishly illustrated companion volume to the major PBS series by Ken Burns, the acclaimed filmmaker behind The Civil War, Jazz, Baseball, and The War."

Rich Dad's Conspiracy of the Rich - Robert T. Kiyosaki; Money lessons gleaned from the financial crisis."

September Books

These are some titles from last month's New York Times Book Review section that I might like to read at some point:

Fiction

The Anthologist - Nicholas Baker; "a novel about poetry that's actually about poetry - and that is also startingly perceptive and ardent, both as a work of fiction and as a representation of the kind of thinking that poetry readers do."

Cat Burglar Black - Richard Sala; "From its cinematic opening - a cliffhanger cutaway of a girl being chased by a wild boar - this noir comic sets up an inviting oddball mystery."

Fear the Worst - Linwood Barclay; "subtle in analyzing teenage attitudes and behavior, and comes up with revelations that would make any parent's hair stand on end."

Her Fearful Symmetry - Audrey Niffenegger; "In this intricate exploration of love, identity and obsession, a woman buried in Highgate Cemetery haunts the London flat she has left to the twin daughters of her own estranged twin."

The Hour I First Believed - Wally Lamb; "A couple flee to a Connecticut farm after the trauma of the Columbine shootings."

Love and Summer - William Trevor; "A delicate sort of drama - there is no corpse in the basement, no bomb lies hidden in any drawer - but even so, a reader will have his heart in his mouth for the last 50 pages. And when that heart settles back down, it will be broken and satisfied."

The Lucky One - Nicholas Sparks; "A Marine returning home sets out to track down the woman whose photo he found in Iraq."

Push - Sapphire; "An abused, illiterate 16-year-old girl living in Harlem meets a teacher who helps her change her life."

The Roar - Emma Clayton; "Another post-nature dystopia in which the waters have risen and civilization is barely hanging on (you have to hope all children's authors aren's prescient). Maybe the best thing about this debut novel is the grim and dank London setting, a walled city built up above the flood, safe from the Animal Plague. Or the Pod Fighter battles above it as a hero and heroine - telepathically connected twins - battle a totalitarian regime. It isn't Ender's Game, but The Roar is exciting, thought-provoking and very hard to put down."

The Thing Around Your Neck - Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie; "Calmly eviscerates the pretensions of Westerners whose interest in Africa masks an acquisitive, self-flattering venality."

Nonfiction

Conversations with Woody Allen: His Films, the Movies, and Moviemaking - Eric Lax; "Over the course of several years, Allen sat for hours of interviews with Lax, the author of a 1991 biography."

Freakonomics - Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner; "A maverick scholar and a journalist apply economic theory to everything from cheating sumo wrestlers to the falling crime rate."

How Fiction Works - James Wood; "He is most interested in judging fiction's success and in understanding what makes great fiction great. His models are Dostoyevsky, Chekhov, James and Flaubert, and his own writing is inviting and lucid."

In the President's Secret Service - Ronald Kessler; "Agents and the presidents they protect."

Miss Conduct's Mind over Manners: Master the Slippery Rules of Modern Ethics and Etiquette - Robin Abrahams

No Impact Man: The Adventures of a Guilty Liberal Who Attempts to Save the Planet and the Discoveries He Makes About Himself and Our Way of Life in the Process - Colin Beavan

Nurtureshock: New Thinking About Children - Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman; "A report on recent research that challenges the conventional wisdom about child-rearing."

The Pattern in the Carpet: A Personal History with Jigsaws - Margaret Drabble; "There is, I think, something decadent about flaunting our mortality that way; about saying, by implication, look at me, I believe I have so much time on earth that I'm going to spend the next hour doing the acrostic in the Sunday Times Magazine. But what would be the point of a pleasure that wasn't a little bit decadent?"

Strength in What Remains - Tracy Kidder; "Shows what can be done when you find a guy who's inconspicuous and say tell me your story."

Wicked Plants: The Weed that Killed Lincoln's Mother and Other Atrocities - Amy Stewart; "An A to Z of plants that kill, maim, intoxicate and otherwise offend."

Baby Boomers and Books

The most exciting feature in this week's New York Times Book Review was not a book, but the back page ad for the NEW Jitterbug cell phone ("It doesn't play music, take pictures, or surf the internet"). You see, I didn't get a cell phone until a couple of years ago, and even then, I felt it was too soon. I used to tell people that I wouldn't get one until I needed it for work because what's the point? People always responded that they couldn't survive without their cell phones. They've seemingly replaced wristwatches for telling the time, address books for keeping contact lists, disposable cameras for snapshots, music players for tuning fellow travellers out, and texting has replaced e-mail/instant messaging for most purposes except Skype. I ask again - what's the point? Call me a Luddite but I'm down with the old people who've survived 70+ years without cell phones and see bells and whistles as burdens. The best part on the Jitterbug ad was the slogan on the bottom, "for Boomers and Beyond," and the line at the top: "Bigger, brighter screen. Large, backlit numbers." I guess I'm not alone in being unable to distinguish all the little icons on my cell phone screen. Am I the last of my generation not to want GPS over using a road atlas or an iPhone to watch movie trailers over seeing them at the theater?

Fiction

That Old Cape Magic - Richard Russo; "From the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Empire Falls (which I've read) and Bridge of Sighs, the story of a marriage, and of all the other ties that bind, from parents and in-laws to children and the promises of youth."

The Signal - Ron Carlson; "A Wyoming couple make a final wilderness excursion . . . which is both an elegy to a broken marriage and a heart-stopping thriller."

Nonfiction

Back To the Garden: The Story of Woodstock - Pete Fornatale; "Focuses a little more on the music, with back stories about many of the bands and analysis of who stopped the show (Sly Stone, Joe Cocker) and who underachieved (Janis Joplin, the Grateful Dead)."

The Philosophical Baby: What Children's Minds Tell Us About Truth, Love, and the Meaning of Life - Alison Gopnik; "Surprising claim about the importance of children to philosophy is not that they ask the same questions as grown-up professors . . . but that thinking about children can somehow provide the answers the professors are looking for."

Graphic Novels and Economics

When I was getting my copy of The Eternal Smile (also featured in The New York Times Book Review) signed at Comic-Con, the author of that graphic novel was listing other recent graphic novels he liked, and he said he was most looking forward to Asterios Polyp (see below). I'm not really interested in reading the two nonfiction titles listed below, but I thought my wife, who's an online couponizer, would find them interesting.

Fiction

Asterios Polyp - David Mazzucchelli; "adorably dislikable, an egocentric, condescending, irritable "paper architect" and academic who sees everything in terms of dualities."

The Surrogates: Volume 1 - Robert Venditti and Brett Weldele; "The fusing of virtual reality and cybernetics has ushered in the era of the personal surrogate, android substitutes that let users interact with the world without ever leaving their homes (the Bruce Willis movie adaptation comes out September 25)."

Nonfiction

Cheap: The High Cost of Discount Culture - Ellen Ruppel Shell; "On social, environmental and even economic levels, discount stores aren't really bargains."

Free: The Future of a Radical Price - Chris Anderson; "How businesses can profit by giving things away."