I love to read! My reading interests are very eclectic but what I really enjoy are books that give new insights into people, places, and things. I don't read much for pure pleasure but I actively seek out books that are both engrossing and insightful. Some fiction fits the bill but most of the time I read non-fiction. I'm interested in a wide range of topics as you'll see below.
Herein I have compiled my Best Books list -- if you have any shared interests or other suggestions I'd love to hear from you. This list has been compiled over the last seven or eight years and reflects mostly recent books -- there are other classic books that belong on the list but I've not listed those here:
- Steven Ambrose, D-Day, Citizen Soldiers, and Undaunted Courage
- Italo Calvino, If on a winter's night a traveler
- Michael Chabon, The Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
- Michael Csikszentmihalyi, Flow
- Louis de Bernieres, Corelli's Mandolin
- Herman Hesse, The Glass Bead Game
- Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian (not for the faint-hearted), and No Country for Old Men (same)
- Edmund Morris, The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt and Theodore Rex
- Ann Patchett, Bel Canto
- Ron Powers, Mark Twain
- Steven Pinker, The Language Instinct
- David Quammen, Song of the Dodo
- Simon Singh, Fermat's Enigma
- John Steinbeck, East of Eden
- Neal Stephenson, Cryptonomicon
- Amy Tan, The Joy Luck Club
- Edward Tufte, The Visual Display of Quantitative Information
- Irene Nemirovsky, Suite Francaise
You can't go wrong with any of these. Blood Meridian is a very grisly book but it's about a very grisly time of history -- the untamed West and the Mexican and Indian wars of that period. McCarthy has a real flair for detail and I'll just leave it at that. Michael Chabon also could have left about 3 pages out of his book and I’d be just as happy, but overall that was a terrific read.
This should be a link to my regular home page but we will see.