Book Lists & Movie Lists

Latest Reads:

River of Doubt: Theodore Roosevelt's Darkest Journey by Candice Millard (Doubleday, 2005). Candice Millard writes for National Geographic and you can tell.  This is an enjoyable, if dark, read.  Once the trip begins, Millard delves into numerous sidebars and tributaries concerning the geology, anthropology, biology, and zoology of the Amazon basin, without cheating the telling of Roosevelt's story.  It was a long trip, and so is the telling - but it's well-worth the ride.

Annapolis Autumn: Life, Death, and Literature at the U. S. Naval Academy by Bruce E. Fleming (The New Press, 2005).  Bruce Fleming teaches English at the Naval Academy.  His 20 years there have led him to an appreciation for the tension of embracing ambiguity in a culture of clarity and mission.  The paradox results in a peculiar kind of education, surely, and Fleming's book took me back to our time at the Boat School from 1982-1986 (just before Fleming arrived).  I enjoyed his analysis of Classic and Romantic philosophy as a different way to understand the Red/Blue divide, and how we might begin to bridge the ideological gulf in our country.

Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West by Gregory Maguire (HarperCollins, 2004).  The rest of the Oz story and a look at the nature of evil and the power of destiny and family bonds.  My favorite line went something like: "Family is that place where they bind you with guilt until you don't want to get free for the sake of love."

The Truth by Terry Pratchett (HarperCollins, 2001).  My 30th book in the Discworld series.  This one about how the dwarves turned lead into gold by making a printing press, and the birth of the newspaper in Ankh-Morpork.

The March by E.L. Doctorow (Random House, September, 2005).  Another look at a Civil War general and his times that we think we all know.  Here's something to ponder: when Sherman met Johnson in Durham to accept his surrender, his terms were so generous that Grant had to rescind them completely and make more rigorous demands.

That Old Ace in the Hole by Annie Proulx (Simon & Schuster, 2002).  Get ready for a journey into the heart of the Texas panhandle, a place and a people you learn to love by degrees, until the last card falls and you're had.  Proulx also wrote The Shipping News and the short story on which Brokeback Mountain is based.

Sweetwater Creek by Anne Rivers Siddons (HarperCollins, 2005).  Girl comes of age and finds herself in a family that has abandoned her - thanks to an unlikely savior who cannot save herself.  My first Siddons and not a bad read.

Until I Find You by John Irving (Random House, 2005).  How many of us search without knowing exactly what it is we're looking for?  Irving delivers a song of hope, if it gets messy along the way - but then all of Irving's stories I have read get very messy, and follow their own path.  "When you forgive someone who's hurt you, it's like escaping your skin - you're that free, outside yourself, where you can see everything."  You'll have to travel a long way to find what you're looking for here, but it's an unforgettable trip that, like Leon Boellmann's Toccata in the reverberant Oude Kerk, stays with you when it's over. 

The Samurai's Garden by Gail Tsukiyama (St. Martin's Press, 1996).  Soothing tale of the power of love and friendship in spite of the trials of time, disease, and war.  Read it and go to the garden.  Ann Bein put me on to this one and I enjoyed it like a calming massage.

The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho (translated by Alan R. Clarke) (HarperCollins, 1999).  Parable of the journey to find life's destiny, and the necessary pitfalls and detours that do not so much get in the way as they become the reason for the journey itself.  Classic tale about the journey being more important that the destination.

Sore Winners: (And the Rest of Us) in George Bush's America by John Powers (Doubleday, 2004).  Not as shrill as Al Frankin or as funny as Jon Stewart, Powers tries (not necessarily unsuccessfully) to play the objective reporter and comes off more than a little smug.  Yet the picture he paints of an increasingly selfish and brutish America is worth reading.

The Pentegon's New Map: War and Peace in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas P.M. Barnett (Penguin, 2004).  Barnett (U.S. Naval War Coll.) here proposes a clear and comprehensive strategy for the United States based on the distinction between "core" states integrated through the world economy and states in the nonintegrated "gap." (Library Journal).

Blink: The Power Of Thinking Without Thinking by Malcolm Gladwell (Little, Brown, & Company, 2005).  "In Blink, Malcolm Gladwell, a former science and business reporter at The Washington Post who now writes for the New Yorker, offers his account of this sort of seemingly instantaneous judgment."  (Howard Gardner, The Washington Post).

Aloft, by Chang-rae Lee (Riverhead, 2004).  Keep your seatback and tray table in the upright position and enjoy the ride through late middle age.  Worth it for the tennis match scene alone.

Out by Natsuo Kirino (trans. by Stephen Snyder) (Vintage Books, 2005).  Not for the faint of heart - mystery that gets really nasty at the end, when you think you're all nastied out.  Read: Life is hard, then it gets much harder.

Waiting For Snow In Havana: Confessions Of A Cuban Boy by Carlos M. N. Eire (Simon & Schuster, 2003).  "At the start of the nineteen-sixties, an operation called Pedro Pan flew more than fourteen thousand Cuban children out of the country, without their parents, and deposited them in Miami. Eire, now a professor of history and religion at Yale, was one of them."  (New Yorker).

Smashed: Story Of A Drunken Girlhood by Koren Zailickas (Viking, 2005).  "An astonishingly revealing debut chronicles nine years of binge drinking in high school, college, and beyond. Now 23 and sober, the author begins her story of alcohol abuse with her first drink, taken in the summer of 1994 when she was14." (Kirkus)

I always like to look over other reading lists and suggestions.

Follow these links to find lists of Bo's favorites in children's books,  fiction, non-fiction, movies, and professional material.

If you have any suggestions, or comments about any of the books or movies listed here, or if you'd be kind enough to pass along your favorites to us, we'd love to hear them.