Duane's Reviews and Recommendations: Books, Music, Movies, Shows

• Virginia Woolf, A Haunted House and Other Short Stories [Fiction. I think referring to this book as a collection of short stories is a bit misleading. They are not at all like the short works of Annie Proulx or Flannery O'Conner, for example, which consistently contain an excellent story within a very few pages. Virginia Woolf, when constrained to writing just a few pages, does not really tell stories as much as she delivers detailed impressions of moments in time including the running stream of conciousness that occurs in those moments. This is indeed something Virginia Woolf does better than anyone else. The collection was edited by Virginia's husband Leonard and he indicates in the book's forward that many of the selections were actually unpublished writing exercises. The rest of them had either appeared previously in magazines or had been included in the earlier collection, Monday or Tuesday.]

• Lytton Strachey, Eminent Victorians [Non-fiction.]

• Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird [(5/5) Fiction. It's the classic tale, published in 1960, of racial prejudice in a small Mississippi town. I had never read it before and had only seen the movie with Gregory Peck. It's one of Ellen's favorite books and now I can see why.]
• Neal Stephenson, Seveneves [(4/5) Fiction. A SciFi story about the near-destruction of all life on Earth following some poorly understood event (miniature black hole?) that causes the moon to split apart. At first the many chunks of the moon stay in essentially the same orbit as that taken by the original, unfragmented moon. Scientists model the jostling of the moon fragments over time and conclude that the chunks will begin entering the Earth's atmosphere in greater and greater numbers until the surface of the planet can no longer sustain life of any kind. This is projected to happen within two years. The book lays out the attempts of the human race to quickly design, build and staff a space colony that can be sustained indefinitely. I liked the book but did not think it was on the same level of excellence as most of Neal Stephenson's earlier works.]
• Jane Smiley, Moo [(4.5/5) Fiction. A humorous and charming tale of a mid-western university and some of its students, faculty, administrators, staff and supporters (and, lest I forget, a giant hog named "Earl Butz").]
• Mircea Eliade, Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstacy [(3/5) Non-fiction. I got ahold of this book through inter-library loan from Monmouth University and really just skimmed through most of it. It provides a detailed account of different shamanistic beliefs and practices from around the world. The author compares and contrasts these various beliefs and practices and finds some commonalities that are interesting.]
• Alan Poole, Ospreys: A Natural and Unnatural History [(4/5) Non-fiction. I got ahold of this book through inter-library loan from Bergen County Community College. It's a good textbook on the Osprey (a.k.a. "fish hawk" "sea hawk", "sea eagle") written by one of the world's finest authorities on the subject. I had previously read David Gessner's two books on Ospreys and in both of those Gessner liberally cites this book by Alan Poole. It's chock-full of interesting information about one of my favorite bird species.]
• Philip Glass, Words Without Music [(5/5) Autobiography. I recently read a mini-review of this book in The New Yorker magazine and decided to give it a try. It's an excellent memoir about one of the most gifted, innovative and dedicated contemporary American composers. Glass's life story is incredibly interesting not only in terms of his background, his musical education, the huge cast of talented people he has worked with during his career (everyone from Ravi Shankar to Allen Ginsberg to Martin Scorsese to Steve Reich to Carl Sagan and on and on), but with respect to how focused he was on composing his own kind of music and having that music made available to the public. I had no idea that Glass had spent decades as a blue-collar worker (as a furniture mover, as a plumber and as a New York City cab driver) supporting his actual career as a composer of modern music. My first exposure to Glass's music was at a live performance by the Philip Glass Ensemble at the McCarter Theater in Princeton, New Jersey, November 7, 1984. It was an eye-opening experience for me. I have since listened to quite a lot of his music and have almost always found it to be both provocative and beautiful.]
• Anne Hillerman, Rock with Wings [(4/5) Fiction. A good second novel by Tony Hillerman's daughter, again with the same cast of characters. This time Manuelito and Chee work separately on two seemingly-unrelated cases. Chee has a temporary assignment in Monument Valley while a zombie movie is in production there. I was little unhappy that one of the real evil bad guys in the story ends up being (spoiler alert) someone advocating solar power in the Navajo Nation.]
• Anne Hillerman, Spider Woman's Daughter [(4/5) Fiction. Anne Hillerman is the daughter of the late Tony Hillerman, and she picks up his story lines pretty much where her father had left off. The book is a mystery set in the Navajo Nation featuring Leaphorn, Chee and Manuelito. I've read all of Tony Hillerman's Leaphorn/Chee mysteries and so decided this was worth a try. It's just as good as the original set, with the storyline focusing heavily on female detective Bernie Manuelito. The story begins with Manuelito witnessing the shooting of retired detective Joe Leaphorn. Before he is taken away in the ambulance, she promises him that she will find the shooter.]
• Kurt Vonnegut Jr., The Sirens of Titan [(4/5) Fiction. A humorous sci-fi yarn that I had enjoyed back in my college days. It's almost a cross between Douglas Adams and Alastair Reynolds with a fair amount of religion bashing thrown in. My favorite parts in fact involved "The Church of the Utterly Indifferent God" and some of its tenets.]
• Kurt Vonnegut Jr., Player Piano [(5/5) Fiction. I read most of Kurt Vonnegut's books when an undergraduate in the 1970's and enjoyed them then. I decided to reread a couple of them starting with this one, written in 1952. The story takes place in the United States in the not-too-distant future when automation has replaced most of the working-class jobs and where a giant, monolithic corporation controls much of society. If you have a sufficiently high IQ, you can work for this corporation and, if not, your career choices are either the military or infrastructure maintenance ("Wrecks and Reeks"). Vonnegut has such a great satirical wit. Some of the chapters had me in stitches. His send-ups of chatty barbers, college football coaches and corporate retreats should not be missed. It's amazing to me how many of his concerns for our future society have been anticipated in this book written so many years ago. He does anticipate an information age but of course the computers he imagines are gigantic machines containing millions of vacuum tubes, as opposed to transistors or microelectronics, and with their information stored on old-fashioned paper punch cards.]
• Elmore Leonard, Be Cool [(3.5/5) Fiction. A sequel to Get Shorty with more of the Chili Palmer character. This time Palmer gets involved in the Los Angeles music business and of course encounters a bunch of interesting but not-very-bright criminal types. It's a mildly entertaining read.]
• Mary Hunter Austin, Land of Little Rain [(4/5) Non-fiction. Originally published in 1903, it contains a set of 14 vignettes of life in the desert and hills of south-eastern California. Some of the chapters focus on the flora, fauna, weather and water of the area while others recount some of the fascinating characters and communities that the author has encountered while living and traveling in the area. I enjoyed the book very much though some of the chapters were less interesting to me than others. The edition I found in our local library system was published in 1988 and includes a rather strange and almost half-hearted introduction by Edward Abbey.]
• David Gessner, Return of the Osprey: A Season of Flight and Wonder [(4/5) Non-fiction. This book is a collection of the author's observations of four Osprey nests during a year in Cape Cod. He had written a sequel to this one and I had read that one first. That one covered the Osprey migration southward. This one focuses on the Osprey nesting behavior and on the birth and maturation of the fledglings as they compete for food, learn to fly and learn to fish. It's a very interesting book. We always have many Ospreys in our area here at the Jersey Shore during their nesting season and I enjoy watching them as I kayak through some of our area's wetlands.]
• Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child, Blue Labyrinth [(4/5) Fiction. Another mystery thriller featuring Special Agent Pendergast and his associates Constance, Margo and D'Agosta. Our hero is up against a powerful adversary who is intent on revenge. These Pendergast books are not great literature but they are entertaining.]
• Bruce Sterling, The Caryatids [(3.5/5) Fiction. This is one of the crazier books I've ever read. It's set in the latter half of the 21st century with the population of the Earth having gone through catastrophic wars, drought, famine, disease, and the collapse of all nation-states except China. The main characters are four superhuman female clones, who each have their own issues (think BBC's "Orphan Black" series). The tone of the book is what is most bizarre with its satirical tongue-in-cheek gallows humor concerning how royally screwed the human race seems to be with its insane dysfunctionality in the face of catastrophy, mostly of its own making.]
• Pearl S. Buck, The Good Earth [(3.5/5) Fiction. Set in rural China prior to the Revolution and World War II, it tells the life story of Wang Lung, a farmer who becomes prosperous through hard work and devotion to the land. He marries, helps to raise a large family and invests any profits he makes into buying more farmland. This is despite a long list of trials and tribulations that include famine, drought, floods, war, an evil uncle, ungrateful sons and falling in lust with younger women.]
• Neal Stephenson, Reamde [(5/5) Fiction. Another great, geek adventure yarn by one of my favorite authors. This one involves Chinese game hackers, Russian gangsters, evil jihadists, American survivalists and a thoroughly engaging set of characters and interwoven storylines. I especially enjoyed the fact that much of the action was set in areas I've been through recently, including Xiamen, China and the mountainous wilderness of British Columbia and Idaho. I couldn't put it down.]
• Maria Dermoût, The Ten Thousand Things [(4/5) Fiction. A series of short stories all loosely connected through their settings on an island in Indonesia. Each story seems to contain some element of the supernatural though these elements are generally subtle and not the primary elements of the story. All of the stories include vivid imagery and interesting characters.]
• Adrienne Rich, The Dream of a Common Language [(4/5) Poetry. A collection of poems mostly dealing with womanhood, some dealing with the love between two women.]
• Jane Smiley, A Thousand Acres [(5/5) Fiction. Excellent book. I was afraid when just a little ways into it that it was going to be too much of a "soap opera" but since it was so well written, I kept reading a little more and then a little more. It evolved into quite an interesting story of a farming family going through some dramatic changes and conflicts. I highly recommend it.]
• Flannery O'Connor, A Good Man is Hard to Find [(4/5) Fiction. Collection of short stories published in 1955. All of the stories are set in the rural southeastern United States in the period following World War II. All provide a fairly cynical view of her characters and their motivations. Her characters are almost always operating in their own self-interest and most of them are often claiming to be good Christians even as they screw over someone else. Some of the stories are darkly humorous but some of them are just dark. They very often deal with the relations between the landed rich and the poor, between the young and the old, and between blacks and whites. Note that there is liberal use of the "n-word" by many of the characters. In every case, the stories are provocative and well written.]
• William Faulkner, As I Lay Dying [(4/5) Fiction. An American classic set in rural Mississippi in the early 1900's, it tells the story of a poor, uneducated farming family as it faces tremendous adversity. The person dying is the mother of the family. A promise that she extracted from her husband was that she would be buried with her own kin in a town across the river and many miles away. After her death, the husband and five children (four males, one female) hitch the mules to the wagon and go about transporting the mother in a coffin made by the eldest son. Much misery befalls them during their journey, most of that self-inflicted. It's a tragic story but also has its darkly humorous moments.]
• Thomas Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-First Century [(4.5/5) Non-fiction. This is not exactly light reading but it is worth the effort to wade through the material. The author presents a great deal of economic data comparing capital and income distributions of several countries over extended periods of time. It's illuminating from historical and political perspectives. The book helped dispel more than one misconception I was carrying, including ones related to the history of growth rates, inflation and public versus private debt in various nations. It also provided a much deeper appreciation of the existing and in fact increasing inequalities in both capital and income within the United States, Europe and certain parts of the rest of the world. It's a lot of information to absorb and I'm likely to have to go back and reread portions of the book at some point.]
• Cheryl Strayed, Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail [(5/5) Non-fiction. I really liked the movie and had read glowing reviews of the book. It is an excellent telling of the author's backpacking trek of over 1100 miles on the PCT through California and Oregon. The most amazing thing to me, as a veteran backpacker, is that before this trip, the author had never backpacked before in her life and, as near as one can tell from the book, had never gathered much information about backpacking beyond reading one trail guide and talking with some salespeople at REI, where she purchased most of her equipment. She made a lot of rookie mistakes (fortunately none of them fatal) but showed incredible strength and determination to complete the outrageous goal she had set for herself. The experience was one of recovery and growth for the author, and I can certainly sympathize with her on that score. Backpacking is good for the soul.]
• Evan Osnos, Age of Ambition: Chasing Fortune, Truth and Faith in the New China [(4.5/5) Non-fiction. A very interesting book on the dramatic economic, social and cultural changes that have taken place in mainland China over the last 20 years or so. The author is a well-respected journalist who has lived in China for a number of years. I think the author presents a nicely balanced coverage of the good and bad parts of the China story and he does so both with facts and with personal observations. The book covers the period up to 2013 and it feels almost like a cliff-hanger at the end. I couldn't help wonder what additional significant changes are in store for China and the Chinese people. Our youngest son is fluent in Mandarin and has been living in Fuzhou, China for over a year teaching English as a second language. I will be very interested to hear what he thinks of the book and whether or not it is consistent with his own observations and experiences.]
• Alastair Reynolds, Terminal World [(4/5) Science Fiction. The setting is a dystopian Earth several millenia in the future. The story involves a fallen angel, a navy of low-tech air-ships, "vorgs" (short for "carnivorous cyborgs"), tectomancers, skull boys, etc. The story is a little complicated but it is certainly entertaining.]
• George Orwell, A Collection of Essays [(4/5) Non-fiction. Prior to this I've only read Orwell's two most famous books (Animal Farm; 1984) and those I'd read a long, long time ago. This collection includes essays on literary criticism (e.g., on the writings of Charles Dickens, Rudyard Kipling and Henry Miller), on English society and culture, and on experiences from Orwell's past that strongly impacted his world view. Included in this latter category are essays on his fighting against Franco's forces during the Spanish Civil War and on his having to shoot a crazed elephant while serving in the British administrative government in India.]
• Louis De Bernières, A Partisan's Daughter [(4/5) Fiction. An unhappily married man meets a younger single woman and immediately falls for her. She invites him over for coffee to her derelict apartment and proceeds to tell him her life story, starting with her childhood as a Yugoslavian partisan's daughter. The man keeps coming back to her place to listen to more of her fascinating and often disturbing stories. As the reader I kept wondering two things: what portion of these stories were fabricated, and; would the man and woman ever "hook-up".]
• Louis De Bernières, Red Dog [(4/5) Non-fiction. A biography of a very special dog who lived in northwestern Australia in the 1970s and who became quite a local legend. The author collected as many stories as he could about Red Dog from many of the people who knew him. These stories were then woven together to create this loving tribute.
• Roger Tory Peterson and James Fisher, Wild America [(3.5/5) Non-fiction. Published in 1955, the two authors are famous naturalists who decided to take a little over two months to tour North America in Peterson's Ford stationwagon. They started in Newfoundland, drove down the east coast of the United States to Florida, drove westward along the Gulf coast through Louisiana into Texas and northern Mexico, then continued to the west coast through New Mexico, Arizona and California, then drove up the west coast to Washington and the Olympic Penninsula. They ended their trip with a series of plane-and-ship voyages to Alaska and some of the Aleutian islands. Most of book's emphasis is on birds but they did take the time to observe and discuss other forms of life as well (e.g., alligators in the Everglades, fur seal colonies in Alaska). This book was mentioned a couple of times in Obmascik's The Big Year and that's what got me interested in reading it. I did add a couple of new locations to my own personal "bucket list" of places to see thanks to this book.]
• David Devorkin and Robert W. Smith, Hubble: Imaging Space and Time [(5/5) Non-fiction. A large "coffee-table" sort of book with hundreds of amazing photos taken from the Hubble Space Telescope (HST). The book also includes a lot of very interesting and informative text covering the history and design of the HST, the processes established for scientists to get research time on the HST, and the techniques used to post-process any data obtained. I've been a huge fan of the HST since its inception and learned quite a bit from this book. Thanks to Ellen for bringing it home from the library.]
• Alastair Reynolds, On the Steel Breeze [(5/5) Science Ficton. Sequel to Blue Remembered Earth (and I think there's supposed to be a third one coming out one of these days). This book begins approximately 200 years after the first and involves another generation of Akinyas. In a strange SciFi twist, the three main characters are identical replicates of one another. Two were cloned from the original (Chiku Akinya), were somehow brought up to the same physical age as the original and were then neurologically modified so that all three were synchronized with identical memories, capabilities and emotions. The synchronization was so perfect that none of them knew which was the original and which were clones. They refer to themselves as "Chiku Green", "Chiku Yellow" and "Chiku Red" and after the "triplication" process, they draw lots to see which one will stay on Planet Earth, which one will accompany a mission to colonize a habitable planet discovered 30+ lights away, and which will attempt to track down their late grandmother's missing spaceship. What's kind of cool about the whole thing is that each of the three Chikus experiences different adventures and learns different facts related to some large mysteries that need to be solved for the colonization mission to succeed. The cool part is that every once in a while one of them is able to send a transmission to one of the others that syncs that other up to all memories the first one has experienced since their last synchronization. Given that the characters become separated by several light years, these memories are usually from several years in the past.]
• Mark Obmascik, The Big Year: A Tale of Man, Nature, and Fowl Obsession [(4/5) Non-fiction. This tells the tale of three birders who in 1998 decided to go for the North American "Big Year" birding record, i.e.- to be the person who has observed and identified the most unique bird species in that calendar year. The territory for this contest covers the continental United States, Canada and Alaska. The story is both humorous and enlightening. I myself am not a birder though I do enjoy being out in nature and have been slowly learning to identify certain bird species that I see while kayaking or backpacking or just walking the dog. I don't have a life list though do sometimes attend meetings of the local Audubon Society. I do have a couple of friends who are serious birders and this book gives me a little more insight into their specific brand of madness.]
• Alastair Reynolds, Blue Remembered Earth [(4.5/5) Science Fiction. Set 150 years into the future, the human race has overcome war, has dealt effectively with global sea-rise and climate change, has established colonies on the Moon and Mars, and is conducting mining operations as far out as the Kuyper belt. The Akinya family controls one of the largest space technology companies and much of their success is attributable to the intelligence and determination of the family's matriarch, Eunice. The story begins with the funeral of Eunice, who has for several years lived in a self-imposed exile in a spacecraft orbiting the Moon. Two of Eunice's adult grandchildren are pulled into a mystery following clues that Eunice evidently has left for them to find. They risk life and limb pursuing the mystery without having any idea where it might lead, or why. It's another good book by one of my favorite SciFi authors.]
• Robert Galbraith (J.K. Rowling), The Silkworm [(4.5/5) Fiction. Murder mystery featuring the same protagonists (Cormoran Strike and Robin Ellacott) as The Cuckoo's Calling. This time Strike is hired to find a missing writer who was in the process of trying to publish a book that offends almost everyone the writer knew. It's another engaging read by Rowling and, once started, I couldn't put it down. And just for the record, I was completely mistaken on the identity of the murderer (oh yes, someone is murdered in the book, rather brutally indeed).]
• David Gessner, Soaring with Fidel: An Osprey Odyssey from Cape Code to Cuba and Beyond [(4/5) Non-fiction. Thanks to Fay for lending me her copy. This is an enjoyable and informative read about the author's adventures as he follows the Ospreys on their migration south for the winter. Gessner meets a lot of interesting characters along the way and learns a great deal about his favorite avian species. I'm pretty fond of Ospreys myself having encountered quite a few of them while kayaking over the last few years here on the mid-Atlantic Coast. I have often wondered what their lives are like for the rest of the year when they're not nesting and raising their fledglings. This book does a good job of satisfying some of that curiousity.]
• Virginia Woolf, The Waves [(5/5) Fiction. I had read much about this book beforehand, about how many consider it to be VW's masterpiece, about how difficult it is to read, and about how it follows an experimental hybrid form falling somewhere between novel, poem and play. The copy I read had an excellent introduction written by Molly Hite and I was very glad to have read that before diving into the book itself. The book deals with the lifespans of six friends, three male and three female, from infanthood through old age. Each character has his/her own fundamental personality that remains relatively constant through life and which determines the kinds of choices they make, their interests, their successes and failures, their resentments, and so on. Their stories are interwoven and are presented using a sort of third-person stream-of-conciousness. I was glad to have read VW's writer's diary as well as one of her biographies since most of the characters derive strongly from people in VW's life (i.e., "Susan" is strongly based on Virginia's sister Vanessa, "Louis" is strongly based on T.S. Eliot, "Bernard" is strongly based on Desmond MacCarthy, etc). I did not find the book difficult to read although it did require serious attention. There were a few passages in the book that I felt were over-the-top in terms of the imagery and convoluted phrasing but overall I think it really is a masterpiece. VW had such an incredible command of the English language that her writing very often sounds more like poetry than prose. Once in a great while she does seem to over indulge. I found the last couple of chapters, in which the characters are older and are looking back on their lives, to be absolutely brilliant.]
• Günter Grass, The Tin Drum (translated into English by Ralph Manheim) [(5/5) Fiction. The book takes place primarily in Danzig (the city now known as Gdansk, Poland) and Dusseldorf, Germany and is written in the first person, though Oskar the main character/narrator often refers to himself in the third person. The book gives us Oskar's bizarre life story from birth through his 30th birthday and is divided into three parts: pre-World War II, World War II, and post-World War II. Oskar narrates the story from a mental institution where he has resided for two years and it is clear throughout the narration that Oskar is quite insane. He also happens to be a dwarf (3' tall in parts 1 and 2 -- growing to 4'1" in part 3) who, among other capabilities, can shatter glass with his voice as well as control people's emotions by drumming on a tin drum. It's a crazy read that is often funny and often disturbing but I really enjoyed it. The only other book I've read by Grass is The Flounder and that one is also pretty crazy but does not hold together nearly as well as this one.]
• Virginia Woolf, Three Guineas [(5/5) Non-fiction. A 144-page essay on the rights of women, focusing primarily on rights to an equal access to education and to equal access to the professions (at equal pay). It's a little more heavy-handed than A Room of One's Own so does not have the same thread of humor running through it as that earlier piece but it is both brilliant and forceful in its appeal. Thanks to Ellen for recommending it and for lending me her copy.]
• Maxim Gorky, Mother [(4/5) Fiction. Maya Angelou, in an autobiography I had recently finished, indicated an interest in Russian authors and that her favorite had been Gorky. I have read several Russian novels at this point and count three by Dostoyevsky as all-time personal favorites (scroll down to see my list of favorite books) but have never read anything by Gorky. I happened to find his book Mother in a used bookstore in Billings, Montana and got it for a very reasonable price. The preface states that, even though this book was written in 1906 prior to the Russian revolution of 1917, it can be considered the first example of "Soviet" literature. Sure enough, the book's protagonists are all Socialists speaking out against the unfair treatment of workers. The story is told through the eyes of the mother of one of these Socialists as she comes to sympathize with the political views of her son and his "comrades". In fact, once her son is arrested and put in prison for his views, she becomes an integral part of the movement in their region. It's an interesting and well written book even though we are all well aware that the actual Soviet revolution did not really achieve the ideals expressed in this book. I'm reminded of lyrics to the Who song, "Won't Get Fooled Again" ("Meet the new boss, same as the old boss!").]
• Bel Kaufman, Up the Down Staircase [(4/5) Fiction. Published in 1964 but just as relevant and entertaining today as it was then. Both humorous and touching, it documents a rookie High School teacher's impressions and experiences in an inner city school. Its format includes chapters of letters between the teacher and some of her friends, inane office memos, contents of her class suggestion box, homework assignments, class essays, etc. Thanks to "Kenny K from Kentucky" for recommending this one to me. I enjoyed it quite a lot.]
• Bill Schneider, Hiking the Absaroka-Beartooth Wilderness (Falcon Guide) [(4/5) Non-Fiction. I picked this up before going on my hiking trip out to Montana and found it to be quite informative and useful. It helped me pick out a couple of tune-up day hikes to do and then was a useful reference for the 7-day Sierra Club outing I took through the Absaroka-Beartooth Wilderness. I may decide to head out there again one of these days and do some more of the trails documented in this book.]
• Maya Angelou, Gather Together in My Name [(5/5) Autobiography. Recounts Ms. Angelou's early adulthood and some of the odd jobs, loves and circumstances she experienced. She holds nothing back and it's an amazing story indeed.]
• James Thurber, My Life and Hard Times [(4/5) Humor. A cute little book of humorous stories from Thurber's childhood and young adulthood. The book was first published in 1933 so the stories all took place about 100 years ago.]
• Josephine Fey, A Shilling for Candles [(4/5) Fiction. A good old-fashioned English murder mystery originally published in 1936. A beautiful movie starlet is found to have drowned off the Dover shore and certain indications suggest that murder was involved (wouldn't be much of murder mystery otherwise). Inspector Grant of Scotland Yard is on the case and he has to deal with all manner of eccentric characters during his investigation.]
• Virginia Woolf, A Writer's Diary [(4/5) Non-fiction. Virginia Woolfe had evidently written 21 volumes worth of a personal diary between 1918 and 1941 (the year she committed suicide). Her husband, Leonard Woolfe, published this highly abriged version of these diaries edited so as to focus primarily on VW's writing. It's a fascinating account that provides more than a few insights into her personality, creative process and attitudes towards writing and literary criticism. The last few years worth of entries also provide another perspective on the horror of the German air attacks on civilian targets in England during World War II.]
• Carlos Ruiz Zafón, The Watcher in the Shadow [(4.5/5) Fiction. It's a well-told young-adult horror story set on the coast of Normandy in 1937. It's a quick read and a real page-turner.]
• Gustav Flaubert, Madame Bovary [(4/5) Fiction. A classic that created a scandal at the time it was written in the mid-19th century. The Madame in question has two fatal flaws: she's easily bored and she's uncommonly beautiful. She grows up on a small farm in the country, tries the convent for a while and decides that's not for her, and finally marries a small country doctor who has been treating her father. She convinces her husband to move to a bigger town but soon grows bored with both him and the town. She begins having affairs and running up large debts. Her husband is of course oblivious to either of these circumstances until they lead to the family's ultimate demise. It's beautifully written (and translated, by Lydia Davis). It's more than just a tale of morality and fallen women. It is also a wonderful satire of how boring and limiting life in a small town can be. I suspect Flaubert had a wicked and dark sense of humor.]
• Neil Gaiman, The Graveyard Book [(4/5) Fiction. A young toddler's family is brutally murdered but he manages to escape the killer and find refuge in a nearby graveyard. The resident ghosts make a pact to protect the young boy and to raise him as their own. The book tells the story of his childhood. It's definitely an entertaining read.]
• Patrick Ness, The Knife of Never Letting Go [(2/5) Fiction. Science fiction for young adults, kind of interesting but I absolutely hated the stupid "cliff-hanger" ending, with nothing resolved and an impossibly dire situation for the two main characters. The expectation is that of course readers will be highly motivated to run out and buy the next in the series. Well, screw that! If the author and/or publisher had been sitting next to me on the train when I finished reading this, I would have strongly considered throwing them overboard.]
• Joshua Ferris, Then We Came to the End [(4/5) Fiction. Humorous, touching and insightful account of white-collar workers in an advertising company undergoing cycles of cost-cutting and down-sizing following the 2008 economic downturn.]
• Scott Turow, Pleading Guilty [(4.5/5) Fiction. Another well written legal mystery with lots of interesting characters and stunning plot twists. Mack Malloy is a mediocre lawyer, ex-cop and recovering alcoholic who works for one of the most prestigious law firms in ficticious Kindle County (which is the setting for most of Turow's novels). One of the firm's lawyers has mysteriously disappeared and evidence suggests that, in the process, he may have stolen $5.6 million from the firm's largest account. The partners of the firm want to keep a lid on that information and request Malloy to track down the errant lawyer and the stolen money before their largest client learns of the theft.]

Douglas Adams, A Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, and the rest of that series (Fiction)
Maya Angelou, Gather Together in My Name (Non-Fiction)
Isaac Asimov, Foundation; Foundation and Empire; Second Foundation (Fiction) 
Dave Barry, Big Trouble (Fiction)
Heinrich Böll, Billiards at Half-Past Nine (Fiction)
Heinrich Böll, Group Portrait with Lady (Fiction)
Bill Bryson, A Short History of Nearly Everything (Non-fiction)
Charles Darwin, The Voyage of the Beagle (Non-fiction)
Louis De Bernières, Birds Without Wings (Fiction)
Louis De Bernières, Corelli's Mandolin (Fiction)
Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Crime and Punishment (Fiction)
Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Notes from the Underground (Fiction)
Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov (Fiction)
Alexander Dumas, The Count of Monte Cristo (Fiction)
Thomas L. Friedman, The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century (Non-Fiction)
Robert Galbraith (J.K.Rowling), A Cuckoo's Calling (Fiction)
James Gleick, The Information: A History, A Theory, A Flood (Non-fiction)
Günter Grass, The Tin Drum (Fiction)
Mark Helprin, A Soldier of the Great War (Fiction)
Mark Helprin, Winter's Tale (Fiction)
Frank Herbert, Dune (Fiction)
Michael Herr, Dispatches (Non-Fiction)
Hermann Hesse, Magister Ludi (The Glass Bead Game) (Fiction)
Barbara Kingsolver, Prodigal Summer (Fiction)
Barbara Kingsolver, The Poisonwood Bible (Fiction)
Stieg Larsson, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, The Girl Who Played with Fire 
    and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets' Nest (Fiction)
Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird (Fiction)
Ursula Le Guin, The Dispossessed (Fiction)
Ursula Le Guin, A Wizard of Earthsea, and the rest of the "Earthsea" series (Fiction)
Jonathan Littman, The Watchman (Non-Fiction)
Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude (Fiction)
George R.R. Martin, The complete A Song of Ice and Fire series which
    includes A Game of Thrones,
    A Clash of Kings, A Storm of Swords, A Feast for Crows and
    A Dance with Dragons 
John McPhee, Annals of the Former World (Non-Fiction)
John McPhee, Coming Into the Country (Non-Fiction)
John McPhee, The Control of Nature (Non-Fiction)
China Miéville, The Scar (Fiction)
Patrick O'Brian, Master and Commander, and the other 19 novels in the 
    "Aubrey-Maturin" series (Fiction)
Flannery O'Conner, Everything That Rises Must Converge (Fiction) 
Marisha Pessl, Special Topics in Calamity Physics (Fiction)
Annie Proulx, The Shipping News (Fiction)
Alistair Reynolds, Chasm City (Fiction)
Tom Robbins, Jitterbug Perfume (Fiction)
J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, and the rest of the 
    "Harry Potter" series (Fiction)
Richard Russo, Bridge of Sighs (Fiction)
Richard Russo, Nobody's Fool (Fiction)
José Saramago, All The Names (Fiction)
José Saramago, Baltasar and Blimunda (Fiction)
José Saramago, Blindness (Fiction)
Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows, The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society (Fiction)  
Nate Silver, The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail -- But Some Don't (Non-Fiction)
Jane Smiley, A Thousand Acres (Fiction)
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The First Circle (Fiction)
Neal Stephenson, Anathem (Fiction)
Neal Stephenson, Cryptonomicon (Fiction)
Neal Stephenson, The Baroque Trilogy (Quicksilver; The Confusion; The System of the World) (Fiction)
Neal Stephenson, Reamde (Fiction)
Cheryl Strayed, Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail (Non-Fiction)
J.R.R. Tolkien, Lord of the Rings Trilogy (Fiction)
Barbara Tuchman, Stillwell and the American Experience in China, 1911-1945 (Non-Fiction)
Barbara Tuchman, The First Salute: A View of the American Revolution (Non-Fiction)
Barbara Tuchman, The Guns of August (Non-Fiction)
Scott Turow, The Laws of Our Fathers (Fiction)
Kurt Vonnegut, Player Piano (Fiction)
Thomas Wolfe, Look Homeward, Angel (Fiction)
Virginia Woolf, A Room of One's Own [Non-Fiction]
Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway [Fiction]
Virginia Woolf, The Waves [Fiction]
Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse [Fiction]
Carlos Ruiz Zafón, The Shadow of the Wind (Fiction)

Allman Brothers Band, "Live at the Fillmore East"
Amos Lee, "Last Days at the Lodge", "Mission Bell"
Ben Folds Five, "The Unauthorized Biography of Reinhold Messner"
Bob Marley, "Legend"
Bonnie Raitt, "Takin' My Time", "Luck of the Draw"
Bruce Hornsby and the Range, "Scenes from the Southside", "A Night on the Town"
Coldplay, "A Rush of Blood to the Head"
Eric Clapton, "From the Cradle"
Foo Fighters, "There is Nothing Left to Lose", "One By One", "The Colour and the Shape",
   "Wasting Light"
Genesis (w/ Peter Gabriel), "Selling England by the Pound", "Nursery Cryme"
Handel, "The Complete Sonatas for Recorder"
Humble Pie, "Smokin'"
Iron and Wine, "The Shepherd's Dog", "Woman King"
Jerry Goodman and Jan Hammer, "Like Children"
Jimi Hendrix, "Electric Ladyland", "Cry of Love", "Band of Gypsies"
Jonny Lang, "Wander This World", "Lie to Me"
Julian Bream, "Concierto de Aranjuez (Rodrigo)"
Led Zeppelin, "#1", "#2", "#3", "#4", "Houses of the Holy", 
   "Physical Graffiti"
Mahavishnu Orchestra, "Birds of Fire"
Mark Isham, "The Beast (Soundtrack)"
Medeski, Randolph et al., "The Word"
Michael McDonald, "motown", "motown 2"
Paul Galbraith, "Plays Haydn"
Paul O'Dette, "Dolcissima et Amorosa (Early Italian Renaissance Lute Music)"
Peter Gabriel, "Passion"
Phish, "Billy Breaths"
Pink Floyd, "Animals", "Dark Side of the Moon", "Wish You Were Here"
Procol Harum, "Home"
Red Hot Chili Peppers, "Stadium Arcadium", "Blood Sugar Sex Magic"
Rolling Stones, "Sticky Fingers", "Let It Bleed"
Sheryl Crow, "c'mon c'mon", "Tuesday Night Music Club", "Wildflower", "Sheryl Crow"
Steeley Dan, "Aja", "Royal Scam", "Gaucho"
Steve Reich, "Music for 18 Musicians"
Stevie Ray Vaughn and Double Trouble, "Greatest Hits"
Stone Temple Pilots, "Core", "Purple"
The Band, "The Band"
The Police, "Outlandos d'Amour", "Zenyatta Mondatta", "Regatta de Blanc", "Synchronicity", 
   "Ghost in the Machine"
Thomas Dolby, "Aliens Ate My Buick"
Tribal Tech, "Face First"
Wilco, "Sky Blue Sky"

Alien
Aliens
Amelie
Apocalypse Now
As Good As It Gets
A Thousand Clowns
Avengers
Blade Runner
Casablanca
City Island
Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog
Frozen River
Garden State
Get Shorty
Guardians of the Galaxy
Harvey
Iron Man
It's Kind of a Funny Story
Julie and Julia
Lawrence of Arabia
Little Miss Sunshine
Lord of the Rings Trilogy
Maltese Falcon
Mars Attacks
Monty Python and the Holy Grail
Mystic River
On the Waterfront
Pulp Fiction
Raiders of the Lost Ark
Raising Arizona
Renaissance
Serenity
Snatch
The 100-Foot Journey
The Big Lebowski
The Fighter
The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
The Incredibles
The King's Speech
To Have and Have Not
Toy Story (1-3)
Wild
Winters Bone
Young Frankenstein

Being Human (BBC version)
Breaking Bad
Broadchurch
Colbert Report
Daily Show
Dark Matter
Fargo
Firefly
Fringe
Game of Thrones
Hell on Wheels
Humans
Justified
Lost
Luther
Malcolm in the Middle
News Hour (PBS)
Northern Exposure
NYPD Blue
Sopranos
The Wire
Third Rock from the Sun