Sometime in 2003 -- I just finished reading David Mitchell’s Number9Dream.  It’s by an Englishman living in Hiroshima, and the main character lives in Tokyo.  It exactly and precisely captures the  flavor of living in Tokyo. It’s fiction for sure though and quite enjoyable.  Not sure yet if it is a regular novel, a science fiction story, a mystery, or what, but it is the perfect book for a Tokyo expat. Also good for the Tokyo expat is December 6 by Martin Cruz Smith.

I recently noticed I had no female authors on my list until my most recent update -- Amy Tan. I am not sure why that is, except that many of my favorite topics -- science, history -- aren’t well stocked with female authors. I do have a number of female authors on my bedside table but then there are a lot of books on my bedside table. Something to look at -- I may be missing out here. Is there a list of Good Books By Women for Men? 

Oct 2003 -- I added another woman author, Ann Patchett, and her novel Bel Canto. What I enjoyed most about this beautiful book was the descriptions of music and how it moves the various characters. It very much described the feelings that I have experienced. Transcendent is probably an overused 50 cent word but it fits the spirit of this book. 

I thought I had read all of John Steinbeck except Of Mice and Men, until I picked up a copy of East of Eden. What a terrific book. As an adult, I think it’s much more meaningful than it would have been had I read it as a young person.

And believe it or not, I am reading War and Peace for the first time. And I am reading it on my Palm Pilot! Sure beats carrying around that huge book. I didn’t think it would be good but with my new Palm Zire 71 it’s actually quite practical. Plus, I can read it standing in the subway or waiting in a line. 

Late in 2003 -- I just read the Da Vinci Game, which is quite popular on the best seller lists right now.  It’s actually a terrible book with intriguing ideas in it about early Christianity, art, and the Templars. So, I can’t recommend Dan Brown under any other circumstances, but I want to follow up on some of the ideas he has within. 

January 2004 -- Just finished Vernon God Little, which won the Booker Prize last year. I can hardly put it on my best books list above because it is, well, rather profane in several ways. But in other ways it is a spot-on social satire and even a spiritual book. It has a protagonist that gets under your skin in a good way, and for sure it is funny. Definitely worth a read if you can tolerate the controversial parts.

Also I just finished Of Mice and Men, which I thought I hadn’t read before but now I am thinking I had read it. It’s a good read because John Steinbeck is a terrifically gifted author, but it is not in the same league as East of Eden or The Grapes of Wrath.

I am also enjoying The Man in the High Castle by Philip K. Dick. I lost my copy though so I am going to get it at the library (I hope) and finish it soon. Update: I did. It’s good, though it ended with more of a whimper than a bang.

May 2004: Amitav Ghosh’s The Glass Palace is a family saga over a century of events in Burma, Malaysia, and India. Since I have been traveling to those places recently (well, not Burma), it was timely and enjoyable. Highly recommended as a good read and a book with insight into Asia.

July 2004: The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time, by Mark Haddon, is a terrific book. Told from the point of view of a young man who is a highly introspective autistic person, it’s a family story, a mystery, and a book with great psychological insight.

July 2004: Finished Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain. Please remind me never to be a professional cook! Cooking at home, no problem. Eating out, I am good with that also. The chapter on his trip to Tokyo is particularly good from an expat perspective.

November 2004: I do read a lot more than this but I forget to write things down. How about Billy Badass and the Rose of Turkestan, but William Sanders? Small press Native American science fiction, a good read. Why is it, though, that SF stories often seem to have contrived endings?

May 2005: Good book about Bobby Fischer and Boris Spassky and their chess match in Reykjavik in 1972. The title is Bobby Fischer Goes to War, and it is by David Edmonds. I remember the match from my youth and it was nostalgic to read about it again, particularly when we know more about what has happened to Bobby Fischer since.

June 2005: Still forgetting things, but I recently added The Jane Austen Book Club by Karen Joy Fowler. This was the day before visiting Winchester Cathedral where Jane Austen is buried. It was enjoyable and definitely better than expected. I haven’t yet read any actual Jane Austen though -- a bit weird.

June 2005: Finished Down and Out in Paris and London by George Orwell. Ostensibly a novel, it is based on the author’s real life experiences being poor, primarily his experiences as a plounger in Paris and a tramp in England. Orwell has a talent for the snapshot descriptions of the people he came across in his travels. 

August 2005: Read Cormac McCarthy’s new book, No Country for Old Men. For me this is like reading Hemingway while he was still alive and on the best seller list. I could hardly put the book down. The surface plot is about a drug deal gone bad in south Texas, and a person who takes the money -- $2.4M in cash -- and tries to outrun both the law and the outlaw. The book includes musings from the local sherrif which capture the ambiguity of good and bad, right and wrong in the world today. I think this will become a classic. There is a hefty serving of violence which makes it difficult to read at times, but that’s part of the reflection of the world today. A carefully constructed novel which rewards a thoughtful reader in many ways.

June 2007: Wow, I have not updated this for a long time. Right now I am reading several terrific books; the challenge is to figure out how to juggle them all! Suite Francaise is probably going to make my “top books” list; it’s a phenomenally wonderful book, right out of the blue of course as the author was unknown until this manuscript was discovered. Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell is a great read, sort of Jane Austen meets Harry Potter, with a cast of characters and 800 pages, it just keeps going and is a lot of fun. I Am a Strange Loop is Douglas Hofstadter’s latest book, a very readable treatise on how people think. This is an unbelievably readable book for such a deep philosophical and difficult topic, but that is what Doug Hofstadter is good at. I also have Scott McCloud’s book on Making Comics in process; not that I intend to be a comic writer, but he is so good at the analysis of how comics really get created, it’s not just a kids’ art form for sure and Scott explains it all in a very engaging manner.  How diverse can one get? I must have set a record with these four books for sure.