This is a list of books that I have read since I started keeping track (March 2005) along with any commentary I feel like providing. It is mostly to augment my own memory, but I would be more that willing to answer questions regarding any of these books.

• "Everything is Illuminated," Jonathan Safran Foer
• "The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay," Michael Chabon Just a fantastic book.
• "The Coming of the Third Reich," Richard J. Evans A well-written history book describing the Nazis' rise to power in Germany. It begins at the reunification of Germany in the 1800s and ends in 1933 right as the Nazis' control of the country seems to be total.
• "Fermat's Enigma: The Epic Quest to Solve the World's Greatest Mathematical Problem," Simon Singh Interesting popular book about Fermat's last theorem and the quest to prove it.
• "Keep off the Grass," Karan Bajaj Meh...
• "The White Tiger," Aravind Adiga I really enjoyed this book! It had a real sense of humor, even though it was pretty dark and cynical. So far this is the best book I have read by an Indian author and about India.
• "Into Thin Air," Jon Krakauer A pretty amazing story. Krakauer's writing is pretty engaging, this being the second book of his that I have read.
• "Twenty-First-Century Jet: The Making and Marketing of the Boeing 777," Karl Sabbagh While it was interesting to see a lot of the nitty-gritty details of plane design and manufacture, this book ultimately did not hold my interest very well.
• "Where Men Win Glory: The Odyssey of Pat Tillman," Jon Krakauer I did a review of this book on my blog.
• "Highest Duty: My Search for What Really Matters," Chesley B. Sullenberger with Jeffrey Zaslow This is the autobiography of Sully Sullenberger, the USAir pilot who successfully ditched flight 1549 in the Hudson River after both engines were destroyed in a bird strike. It's clear that Sully is not an author and the biography parts dragged on a bit. The story of the incident and the events that followed, though, were quite interesting and worth it for me.
• "Logicomix: An Epic Search for Truth," Apostolos Doxiadis and Christos H. Papadimitriou I got this graphic novel from Rand for Christmas 2009. It was great, and I was extremely happy and surprised to learn that something like it even existed. The book is about logician Bertrand Russel and the search for the foundations of mathematics which occurred during the early part of the 20th century (and late 19th century). While I knew only a little about Betrand Russel (mostly his paradox) that was okay, as the book was a great introduction to the history of formal logic and that which would eventually become the basis for a lot of computer science, programming languages and type theory. Recommended for anyone in C.S., and even for those outside who are just curious!
• "Goodbye to Berlin," Christopher Isherwood I bought this in Berlin. Good book. It was the source (indirectly) for the musical Caberet.
• "The Google Story: Inside the Hottest Business, Media and Technology Success of Our Time," David A. Vise and Mark Malseed Seems like every single book I read has a subtitle... Or maybe that's just every non-fiction book? Anyway, The Google Story is kind of like the history of Google, right? And in that respect, this book does exactly what it sets out to do. In Some ways, the book takes a sort of, Google Fanboy approach, by which I mean that just about everything Google does is lauded and just about everything others do in response or to disparage Google is mocked. That's not entirely true though. Some amount of time is spent discussing privacy issues and the various lawsuits that have been filed against the GOOG. Most interestingly, the one filed by Overture, who held a patent for a ad-selling services that is very similar to Google's AdWords auction. Um, but more importantly annoying, after the initial few chapters, each chapter just seemed to contain a bunch of information about Google smashed together. There was not always a consistent theme that I could find. Overall, still reasonably entertaining.
• "The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable," Nassim Nicholas Taleb Another book from the author of Fooled by Randomness, which I read a while ago. Many of the points he makes are the same, but in a more refined form.
• "Appetite for Self-Destruction: The Spectacular Crash of the Record Industry in the Digital Age," Steve Knopper A pretty good, and short, book about the record industry. I have to say there are a lot of names in this book. A lot of managers, record executives, and industry analysts. After a while it's a little hard to remember them all. Still, an enjoyable book if you really want the technical details.
• "A Prayer for Owen Meany," John Irving Yet another John Irving book in the summertime, and this one may be my last. A Prayer for Owen Meany is about a boy named Owen who is very small and very strange and communicates with God. (The movie Simon Birch is apparently loosely based on this book.) Overall I think this was a good book, and I would recommend it. However, I am starting to realize that all of Irvings books share very similar themes, and I guess I am getting a little bored, hence this book potentially being my last. I have now read four of his books, and in each one several of the following themses have been present:
  • Vienna
  • New Hamshire
  • Incest
  • Marital Infidelity
  • Prostitutes
  • Hyper-Sexualized Female Characters
  • Pets
  • Stuffed Animals (As in taxidermy)
  • Death of One or More Parents
  • Rape
  It's not that these are bad themes or anything like that, but to have them repeat in so many novels seems a bit strange to me, and more importantly, they get old after a while.
• "How to Win a Cosmic War: God, Globalization, and the End of the War on Terror," Reza Aslan I was very excited about this book because of an interview with the author that I saw on The Daily Show. He seemed very reasonable and level-headed. I did not enjoy the book nearly as much, unfortunately. I still agree with the basic thesis, but found that is was mostly only discussed in the final chapter and the Epilogue. Most of the book itself seemed to be a wandering discussion of various social and religious groups. It also annoyed me in one technical way by not using any mark to indicate which text had associated end-notes. Yes, there were end-notes, sourcing many of the points made by the author, but because there was no way to tell which sentences did and did not have sources, I had a hard time telling when the author was related and established fact and when he was merely asserting.
• "Rounding the Mark," Andrea Camilleri I started reading this book because I thought it took place in Genoa. It does not. Genoa is briefly mentioned in the beginning, in the context of a particularly violent G8 summit, which was held there. Otherwise the story takes place in Sicily. It's your standard mystery story, and it's pretty forgettable. It would have been a quick read except that I never really got interested in the plot so I put off finishing it for a long time.
• "Fashionable Nonsense: Postmodern Intellectuals' Abuse of Science," Alan Sokal and Jean Bricmont
• "Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets," Nassim Nicholas Taleb Actually, I read this book in college, but it was before I started counting so I didn't get credit for it. So I read it again. The author comes across as pretty pompus, but it still a pretty good book.
• "Against the Gods: The Remarkable Story of Risk," Peter L. Bernstein
• "The Smartest Guys in the Room: The Amazing Rise and Scandalous Fall of Enron," Bethany McLean and Peter Elkind
• "Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln," Doris Kearns Goodwin Another huge history book that I received for Christmas, but it was also another great one. Team of rivals tells the story, primarily through primary sources such as personal correspondence, of Abe Lincoln and his political career, with a special focus on the other members of his cabinet. Abraham Lincoln is a larger-than-life figure in American history, so it can be hard to take seriously claims of his preeminence. This book, however, is a mostly believable claim of just that. Abe comes across as a great politician and a good man. He wasn't the first person to decide that slavery was wrong, and he may not have been color-blind in the modern sense of the term, but once he made up his mind about slavery he did not waver.
• "American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House," Jon Meachum A pretty interesting book about the life of Jackson told through the correspondence of him and his close associates. Definitely worth reading.
• "The Gospel of Food," Barry Glassner
• "God of the Door," Rob Dalby
• "The Soul of a New Machine," Tracy Kidder
• "Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs," Chuck Klosterman While this book is not without its laughs, nor its share of honest, and accurate observations, for the most part it feels trite and pessimistic. Maybe that's too strong. How about, "I liked a lot of it, but don't necessarily agree with most of its philosophical assertions."
• "The Yiddish Policemen's Union," Michael Chabon I loved this book! I would recommend it to just about anyone. Not only does it have neat, alternative-history aspects, and a great detective plot, but it's actually very funny and extremely well-written. Let's not even mention the great cover!
• "The Right Stuff," Tom Wolfe
• "Moneyball," Michael Lewis
• "No Country for Old Men," Cormac McCarthy
• "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?," Philip K. Dick
• "White Noise," Don DeLillo For the most part, I really liked this book. It's full of a sarcasm that is not too abrasive, and doesn't get on your nerves. It's well written, and the plot, which centers around a chemical leak, is pretty exciting. I did see the climax coming (and it needs a little work) but otherwise, this is the sort of book I like.
• "I Love You Beth Cooper," Larry Doyle While the plot of this movie seems very formulaic, it is executed quite well and ultimately led to a book I had trouble putting down. During his speech as valedictorian, Dennis (super-nerd/valedictorian) tells Beth Cooper (head cheerleader/super hot) that he has loved her since the seventh grade. The book reads like many graduation comedy movies from the 80s up to today, but does so in a rather self-aware manner. It manages to be really funny at some points, and the characters themselves aren't quite as predictable as the plot would suggest. Turns out they're actually making this book into a movie as we speak.
• "Dreaming in Code", Scott Rosenberg Dreaming in Code is the story of the development of "Chandler," a personal information management tool. This could be the best book about the development of software written for people who don't develop software, but it's still got it's problems. There are things I liked about this book. It ultimately passed one important litmus test: This will be the first book I give my dad so that he can ultimately come to a better understanding of what it is I do. (Whilte my dad is smart, and has a technical mind, but knows little about software.) This book describes the open-source movement, programming languages, and the strange fact that what we really do as software developers is to create abstractions. It describes why the development of software is so often so difficult, and I think is to be commended for this. On the other hand, the book takes goes off on several long tangents that I think are both unnecessary and will be difficult for non-technical readers to understand, which is really too bad. There is a long discussion about static vs. dynamic typing in languages, important to me but not to the book. Other tangents take entire chapters. Finally, there is a depressing lack of closure, which while a part of the development process, could have been avoided by simply waiting a few years longer to release the book. Overall, a good book. We'll see what my dad says.
• "A Death in Vienna," Frank Tallis Part two in my, 'reading books about Vienna because I am going to Vienna' series.
• "A Nervous Splendor: Vienna 1888-1889," Frederic Morton This was one of the most engaging books on history that I have read in a while. It is written in the style of a novel and is primarily centered around Rudolph, the crown prince of the Austrian empire and his part in a double-suicide. Other notable characters, such as Freud, Klimt and Brueckner, show up, and we get to see their lives before they had yet acheived fame.
• "Ambitious Brew: The Story of American Beer," Maureen Ogle
• "Show Stopper!: The Breakneck Race to Create Windows NT and the Next Generation at Microsoft," G. Pascal Zachary A little bit outdated, but an interesting read nonetheless. This book takes us through the creation of Windows NT, and focuses primarily on David Cutler, the ex-Digital dude who was in charge of the project. He was pretty much a hard-ass, and expected a lot out of his people, sometimes to the point of being completely unreasonable. Most interestingly, he completely did not care about security, and treated it as an afterthought. While the author did not draw too much attention to this point, I feel like if this book had been written more recently with all of Windows' security vulnerabilities, a bigger deal would have been made of this point. I'd like to see a book like this about the creation of Vista, which I hear was equally painful.
• "Managing Ignatius: The Lunacy of Lucky Dogs and Life in New Orleans," Jerry Strahan
• "A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius," David Eggers
• "The Golden Compass," Philip Pullman
• "Sirens of Titan," Kurt Vonnegut Good book. My second book club book.
• "Baudolino," Umberto Eco I am actually reading this book along with the book club of which I am a member. This is a good thing, because I truly enjoyed this book, but it's in particular genre that I never in all my life would have picked up on my own. It's all about the guy Baudolino who lives in the 1100s and is telling the story of his life to Niketas. Or maybe he's telling the story of his life. He might be making the whole thing up, since we know him to be a world-class liar. Two details about this book that I loved: The characters are constantly getting into realistic-sounding arguments about science and the Christian faith (e.g., can a vaccum actually exist). Also, every time we cut back to Baudolino and his telling of the story to Master Niketas, Niketas is always engaged in some over-the-top feast, which he finds to be most inferrior to the sumptious meals to which he is accustomed. Okay, there are lots of other good parts too, so go ahead and check it out.
• "Off Magazine Street," Ronald Everett Capps Since I kind of am willing to read any book about New Orleans, and because I actually live off Magazine street (at least when I'm in New Orleans), I thought I'd give this one a try. It was a really quick read, and enjoyable, but it's really more about atmosphere and attitude than, say, plot. I mean basically nothing happens the whole time, and there is nothing that I would call a true climax, but still I'm glad I read it. There's an indie movie, too, with John Travolta and Scarlet Johansen, so I'll probably check that out.
• "The Bonfire of the Vanities," Tom Wolfe Okay, I'll admit it. I really liked this book. It wasn't nearly as stuffy as I thought it would be, based on my original impression. Tom Wolfe has a style that is very much in line with other slingers of pop fiction. It was a very easy book to read. (I seem to say that a lot, don't I?) My sole complaint would be the rediculous size and weight of the hard-cover version. Why can't all books be paperback?
• "The Great Indian Middle Class," Pavan K. Varma Absolutely ruthless in its denouncement of the ethical state of the Indian middle class, his main hypothesis is that the middle (and elite) class needs to become more invested in the concerns of the large Indian underclass population before this population makes its needs heard.
• "The Grapes of Wrath," John Steinbeck Nels, you ask, are you reading this for your high school summer reading list? No silly. In fact, I never actually read "The Grapes of Wrath" before, and decided that now was as good a time as any to read it. I wasn't dissapointed. I loved this book in fact. It was extremely well written and for some reason (maybe this exposes an ignorance on my part) it seemed somewhat relevent during my travels in India. Or at least I felt that the poverty and hardship experienced by the Joad family was not just some quaint relic of an earlier time. Man, though, that ending sure is sad...
• "The Hotel New Hampshire," John Irving It's summer time, so it must be time to read a John Irving book. I didn't like this one nearly as much as "The World According to Garp," or "The Cider House Rules," but it still had its moments. For some reason, having something to do with the narrator's tone, the entire second half of the book sounded like a denoument. It felt like I was at the end of book for practically all the time I was reading it!
• "One Night @ The Call Center," Chetan Bhagat Didn't really enjoy this one too much. I have to say, I haven't read a book in a long time where I felt so unsympathetic to the characters. I really couldn't have cared less whether things ended up good or bad for them.
• "All the King's Men," Robert Penn Warren An overall fantastic book. I wrote a real review of this book that I was going to post, but I think I'd rather just keep it short; this story is extremely well written. While it claims to be a book about politics, it really is a book about one's own past. It's pretty dense though, so even as good as it was, I was glad it was over by the end.
• "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas", Hunter S. Thompson
• "Freakonomics", Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner This book was fine, although it reminded me a lot of "The Culture of Fear," a book that I enjoyed much more.
• "The Wind Up Bird Chronicle," Haruki Murakami Summer seems to be the only chance I ever get to read for fun. That's okay, as I usually more than make up for the rest of the year. Let's see what we can scrounge up in the summer of 2007. Anyway, this book was recommended to me by Randolph. It's modern Japanese book translated into English, which is a little unusual for me. I normally try to avoid modern foreign books, and wait until the hands of time have wrung out the best and brightest, deeming them worthy of proper translation. Well if anything had been lost in this translation, I would be surprised. The language itself is heavy and poetic. The story itself is a little hard to describe, except that it's a tale of dissapearance and the supernatural in modern day Japan. However there are many characters and plot elements in the book that are tied back to WWII era Manchuria which at the time was controlled by the Japanese. And while I feel like a bit of a weakling saying this, my main problem with the entire story was a feeling of constrantly being in the dark, even after I had finished it. It is certainly a page-turner, but I was left unsatisfied and looking for more of an explaination behind the logic of the supernatual events. Actually, I normally really hate it when authors of screenwriters feel the need to drill in the explaination at the end of the story ("don't you get it, he was a ghost the entire time!") but here's one time when I honestly wouldn't have minded.
• "Virtual Light," William Gibson You see I don't like science fiction, but the works of William Gibson (in particular his Bridge Trilogy) are growing on me. This book, just like "All Tomorrow's Parties," takes place in a future LA and SanFran. This was actually the first of the trilogy, and maybe that's why it doesn't so much end as run out of pages. Sort of like this review!
• "Black Hole," Charles Burns This was a neat book given to me by Rand. It is a comic book/graphic novel that takes place in the 1970s about a strange disease that is affecting a lot of teenagers. It sort of follows some different characters who contract the disease as they become outcasts as a result.
• "The Devil in the White City," Erik Larson Read in preparation of my visit to Chicago, this was an interesting book about the 1893 World's Fair in Chicago and a serial killer who was committing his crimes in Chicago at around the same time. This story includes a lot of information on the architecture of Chicago and the history of the fair as well as the historical context in which the fair opened.
• "The Great Gatsby," F. Scott Fitzgerald No, this is not a joke. Not much has changed since high school. This is still a great book. It seemed even more relevent for this phase of my life than it ever did when I first read it.
• "The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time," Mark Haddon Strangely, this book read much like The Last Samaurai, mostly because of the style and language used by the narrators in each book. Both are intelligent but naive in the same sort of way. Overall, though, I enjoyed this one a lot.
• "It's a Good Life, If You Don't Weaken," Seth
• "High Fidelity," Nick Hornby
• "Running with Scissors," Augusten Burroughs
• "The Last Samurai," Helen Dewitt This book took me forever to work my through, partially because it was somewhat long (maybe 550 pages) but mostly because I just wasn't giving it my full attention. It would be wrong to say that it wasn't an engaging book as much as I wasn't personally engaged. This story is essentially divided into two parts, the first describing the education of the main character, and the second describing his quest, and I can say that I did end up thouroughly enjoying this second half. Briefly, and cryptically so as not to give too much away, the story describes Ludo, a young prodigy, and his single and sometimes eccentric mother Sibylla.
• "The Mysteries of Pittsburgh," Michael Chabon Since I enjoy reading books about places that I have been to or are currently living in, I figured it was about time I read a book about Pittsburgh. This book was recommended to me by a friend. Michael Chabon is the same guy that wrote the book "Wonderboys" which I did not read but did see the movie. That one also took place in Pittsburgh. Anyway, Mysteries is the story of a recent college graduate and his summer after graduation. It has many of the same themes as "Less Than Zero" but with fewer drugs. It also has some action, which certainly surprised me. But in the end it wasn't enough. I did enjoy reading about the neighborhoods around me, Squirrel Hill, Hill District, Craig Street and the Cloud Factory, but I never really cared that much about the characters of the story. The main character's life takes some interesting turns, but I guess I just didn't really buy it. Maybe it's just my mood right now, but I have enough of this "The Stranger" style detachment from life. I need to read about people who are living it up, and not letting a single moment pass by. So that's what I think, for what it's worth. I'll probably change my mind later...
• "All Tomorrow's Parties," William Gibson
• "The Day of the Jackal," Frederick Forsyth
• "Bringing Down the House," Ben Mezrich
• "The Call of the Mall," Paco Underhill
• "The Cider House Rules," John Irving "Dress Your Family Up in Corduroy and Denim," David Sedaris
• "Prime," Poppy Z. Brite
• "Pompeii," Robert Harris
• "A Confederacy of Dunces," John Kennedy Toole So good. Currently my favorite book ever.
• "Da Vinci Code," Dan Brown Wouldn't recommend it...
• "Angels and Demons," Dan Brown Still wouldn't recommend it...
• "Planet Simpson," Chris Turner A neat look at different elements of the Simpsons and how they reflect and relate to our own culture. It has a lot of references so you may not enjoy it if you're not a fan of the Simpsons. Also, it gets a little repetitive and is kind of a slow read.
• "A Nation of Rebels," Joseph Heath and Andrew Potter An amazing and interesting read. Another one that went by very quickly.
• "The Beach," Alex Garland Good book. Quick read. And it's better that the movie too, a movie which I sort of enjoyed.
• "Billions and Billions," Carl Sagan This is definitely a pop-science book, but it's the first of his that of read so they may all be this way. It's actually mostly about the environment, global warming, etc. It's a good read for people (like me) who don't know too much about those topics except for the poor explanations given in popular discourse. It was also written at the very end of Sagan's life, so there's a whole part at the end where he talks about his disease and his hospital experiences. Overall a pretty good book. If you don't like it, you won't be reading it for very long. I read it on a plane flight from LA to Atlanta.