I don’t make New Year’s resolutions unless they’re extremely simple to keep. This year I decided to write down every book I read throughout the year; at first I wanted to make a yearly summary, but I soon realized that it would be too much to summarize – a quarterly report seems much more appropriate. ‘Nuff said. This is the list of books I’ve read or listened to so far in 2007. (Yes, listened to. I use my commuting time to listen to audio books; I can’t imagine a time when I didn’t do this, but it’s still less than a year ago that I started. I highly recommend that you try it as well.)

Angels and Demons – Dan Brown

Description: The pretentious part of me feels a bit annoyed at the rest of me, because I thoroughly enjoyed both this book and The DaVinci Code. It’s an extremely basic book: the story is simplistic, the plot twists are way too obvious…but it still has this cozy “let’s see what happens next” feeling. A perfect book to read in the bath, or when lounging about on a lazy Sunday. Also, I do love religious themes despite being an atheist.
Recommended for: Everyone but the arrogant nerd who won’t read populistic literature.

Legacies of Great Economists – The Teaching Company

Description: You’ll see a few more TTC courses in this list, and I have to admit that I’m hooked on this series of audio books. It’s an excellent way to get a semi-college-level insight into various areas. (Semi because it’s relatively thorough, but not as deep as a proper course.) This was my first ever dive into Economics, and I enjoyed it thoroughly. Economic theories were discussed, but the course mostly concerned the persons behind the theories; and the lecturer was full of interesting anecdotes to keep it all enjoyable.
Recommended for: Technical geeks who want to expand their knowledge of Economics.

Rama II – Arthur C Clarke

Description: Very interesting novel, but I’m not certain that it’s an improvement from Rendez-Vous with Rama. Highly entertaining science fiction with believable characters, but just a tad too much drama and not enough science for my taste. And don’t get me started on the mysticism; co-writing this novel might not have been a good idea. (I assume that those parts weren’t Clarke’s.)
Recommended for: Technical geeks who want drama.

Economics – The Teaching Company

Description: A thorough summary of basic Economics and a guide to everything from initial economic concepts to world markets. Yes, I got hooked after I finished the earlier Economics course. This wasn’t quite as gripping, but still very educational. Presented by the same lecturer, Timothy Taylor, as the former course.
Recommended for: Technical geeks who – for some reason – get hooked on Economics.

Garden of Rama – Arthur C Clarke

Description: The third Rama book, and…not the best one. I like the fact that the books aren’t stagnating, but there seems to be just a bit too much speculative sociological mumbo-jumbo in this one compared to – say – Rendez-Vous with Rama. For some reason I just find a sterile spaceship more interesting than a lush social analysis.
Recommended for: People who have read the earlier Rama books, ’cause we want to know how it ends.

I, Robot – Isaac Asimov

Description: I really shouldn’t need to give anyone a description of this novel, but since the movie gave such a half-assed attempt at utilizing the ideas from the book I have to anyway. The movie was a dull action movie featuring Will Smith. The book is a series of short stories about robots, artificial intelligence, their interactions with humans, and logical consequences of all of this. But wait, logical? I’m not so sure about that. All stories feature logical problems of some kind. “How do we determine this?” “How will a robot act in this situation?” and so on. The problem is that it’s all very simplistic, and not all that believable. Granted, it was written 50 years ago, but the scenarios just don’t hold up; the robots act illogically…and so do the people. Still, it is a marvellous piece to read despite that.
Recommended for: Computer geeks who want to read speculations about AI, and anyone else who wants a good sci fi novel.

Wizardry and Wild Romance – Michael Moorcock

Description: Enough with all the sci fi already! Time to move back to my usual genre: fantasy. I decided to read Michael Moorcock’s analytical papers on the subject (collected in this volume); and it was a marvellous read. For a while. Moorcock is an extremely well-read person with a keen mind, but I can’t agree with his conclusions. In my view, fantasy is not as tightly intertwined with Romance as he insinuates; fantasy isn’t a strict renewal of Romantic ideas, and failing to uphold these ideals does not immediately make books badly written fantasy, in my opinion. Maybe I’m just bitter ’cause he constantly talks down on Tolkien, but I do think that Moorcock’s missing The Point(TM) in a lot of Tolkien’s works, and instead compares it with his own idea of what fantasy ought to be.
Recommended for: The scholarly fantasy reader with a fetish for over-analysis.

The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty – Anne Rice

Description: A twisted version of the classic fairy-tale, Sleeping Beauty. Warning: this is not a children’s book. I thought that it would be a suitably erotic grown-up version of the tale, but it turned out to be rather heavy on S&M and dominance instead. Anne Rice is a filthy, filthy woman, just so you know. Despite these positive traits, the story was fairly thin and uninteresting – too much focus was put on colourful descriptions of spankings (pun intended – colourful… ah-hah) and tortures and imaginative sexual acts, and not enough care was put into describing a believable character development for Beauty. I like smut as much as the next person, but I often got the feeling that Ms/Mrs Rice got carried away with this novella, and sat writing one-handed.
Recommended for: Innocent people who find this dive into the forbidden fascinating.

The Science of Discworld III – Terry Pratchett (and two others)

Description: Third time’s the charm, and I love mis-using proverbs. There’s no need to exclaim “third time’s the charm” with this book – all three Science of Discworld books are excellent, whether or not you’re scientifically-minded. This time the Ankh-Morpork wizards examine evolution and intelligent design, and it’s a very enjoyable read. I do think that the science part of the book is a tad too negative about intelligent design, though. Don’t get me wrong – I don’t approve of ID one bit, but this book goes to great lengths to describe why it’s unscientific and invalid; enough that I feel that the authors aren’t being strictly objective anymore. A better approach would – in my view – be to not give it credit by arguing against it so much.
Recommended for: Anyone who doesn’t get bored by popular science.

Starship Titanic – Douglas Adams, Terry Jones

Description: Absolutely delightful book by two of the most brilliant comedy writers. The amusing descriptions and the witty dialog makes this a great read at just about anytime. I get a suspicion that the science fiction theme might put people off from this book. It’s a pity, because this is a very universal book that ought to be read by anyone who wants to lighten up their day.
Recommended for: Everyone except boring humour-less bastards.

Dante’s Divine Comedy – The Teaching Company

Description: This course deals with interpreting and giving background to Dante’s Divine Comedy, and it does a great job at it. I admit that I haven’t read the poem yet, but I don’t think that it’s a negative thing to have listened to this analysis first. First of all, this has given me insight into medieval Italy, and I am also sure to notice things in the poem that I otherwise would have missed. Now I just have to get this thumb out of my rear and read the Divina Comedia sometime.
Recommended for: People with an interest in classical literature – it doesn’t get much more classical than this.

Ancient Near Eastern Mythology – The Teaching Company

Description: I’ve always had a fascination with Mesopotamia and the other Near-Eastern areas – it seems like such important cultures to know more about. And I sure got to know more about ‘em from this course; a bit more than I felt like, in fact. I loved the historical backgrounds, the archeological methods, and the explanation of the different writing systems…but the myths themselves were pretty dull. Mostly there were comparisons between bible tales and ancient Sumerian/Egyptian/[insert other civilization here] myths. I had expected something more interesting. Something more unknown and unexpected.
Recommended for: Hm… Not sure. The ones dying to assimilate more knowledge, or the ones interested in scholarly bible studies.

All in all, I feel that this has been a pretty productive quarter. Twelve books; almost one per week. It’s nothing compared to what one read in high school, but it’s still a fair amount of literature. Unfortunately the next three months will probably not be as impressive – I foresee a shortage of time, as I dive into a new game project.

This entry was posted on Monday, April 2nd, 2007 at 12:33 pm and is filed under Book Reviews, Literature. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.