I've decided to keep track of what I read each year, especially since I got some good recommendations from
last year's post. This year I didn't do as much leisure reading. I blame my dissertation. Reading and rereading my dissertation made my eyes glaze over sometimes. That, and I really didn't find a good stream of books that I wanted to read. When I starting writing this, I realized that I prefer to read books in a series. Not necessarily because they're better, but because if I like the first book then it's easy to find more good stuff to read.
Earth's Children Series This series is historical anthropology-that is, it's fiction about when Neanderthals and humans both existed in Europe. Pretty cool concept and currently relevant with the new DNA studies finding hybridization between Neanderthals and humans. Overall I really enjoyed the first three books in this series The Clan of the Cave Bear, The Valley of the Horses, and The Mammoth Hunters. I found out about these books because the last book in the series was published recently and
NPR interviewed Jean Auel. I just had to read them after listening to the interview! The books can be long winded but I would just skim the slow parts. There were a few things that also made it hard for me to take seriously, like Auel making the Neanderthals telepathic. I stopped reading in the middle of The Plains of Passage. True to the name, it was a trek across plains so not a lot going on, at least not where I stopped reading But give the first few books a try, they were a nice read, especially if you are interested in prehistory.
Millenium series I read the first two books in this series: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and The Girl Who Played With Fire. I ended up really enjoying both, and actually enjoyed the second book more than the first. I would classify these as mystery. The main character is a very introverted person that happens to be an excellent computer hacker and uses her skills for fact-finding missions. Hmm I think my description does not do the books justice. The first book was really slow to start, it took me 100 pages to get into it. Usually I only give a book about 50 pages to capture my interest, and the first book would have failed in that regard so I'm glad I kept reading. I'm looking forward to reading last book this year-The Girl who Kicked the Hornet's Nest.
In Defense of Food I decided to read this since I really enjoyed the
Botany of Desire and
Animal Vegetable Miracle. I also have gotten much more interested in where our food comes from. I think this is a really interesting and informative, yet easy read about the state of how and what we eat. I have to say that I really like that he's not vegetarian. Although I am vegetarian, I think that much of the food literature published by vegetarians is biased (of course, so are many of the other people promoting specialized diets). Still, Pollan's cover message is "Eat food, not too much, mostly plants." Great advice.
Small Wonders I love Barbara Kingsolver, so it's no surprise that I enjoyed her essays greatly. Her writing style somehow rings true to me. She writes about everything, including politics, food, and whether she should let her daughter have a Barbie doll.
Books I couldn't finish:
Bitten This is the first book of the Women of the Otherworld series, and I had high hopes that this would be a good read to follow the
Twilight and
Sookie Stackhouse books that I enjoyed last year. I think I found the fact that the main character was a werewolf to be too out there, I couldn't relate enough. Probably why I enjoyed the vampire books from a female human perspective but haven't tried a lot of science fiction where it's an entirely different world.
