My
24 Books for 2009 post! 
1) Blood Meridian – Cormac McCarthyA Christmas present, and a brutal way to begin the year. McCarthy has such a visual (and visceral) writing style that I still think of this story in terms of the powerful images in my head rather than words on paper.
2) Breakfast of Champions – Kurt VonnegutThis year also saw my re-introduction to Kurt Vonnegut via Breakfast of Champions. I absolutely could not put this book down and struggled through a couple days of class, whose work I had forgone to read Vonnegut instead. A good introduction to Vonnegut’s philosophy and some of the recurring characters in his other work as well. We are all indeed meat machines.
3) Under Fire – Henri BarbusseEssentially a version of All Quiet on the Western Front told from the French perspective. If you’ve read other WWI narratives, Barbusse’s is really nothing new in terms of the soldier’s perspective, and it’s bit of a slog through some sections, but the overall tone is much more poetic and cerebral than the descriptive realism of All Quiet….
4) Foundation – Isaac AsimovI started the Foundation series assuming I would read farther than the first book, but once again my university library was missing the next installment of the series so I wasn’t able to continue and lost interest as a consequence. Though, thinking about it makes me want to play Mass Effect.
5) To Your Scattered Bodies Go… (Riverworld Book 1) – Phillip FarmerDespite not seeing other Riverworld books on this list, I really got into the characters and the mystery of the Riverworld. My university library was missing a couple books out of the series so I decided not to continue and find myself out of order. =(
6) God Bless You Dr. Kevorkian – VonnegutI wish this had not been my next Vonnegut read. The individual anecdotes themselves are interesting, but I think I could have enjoyed this compilation more if I’d been more familiar with his personality as portrayed in the rest of his bibliography.
7) Cat’s Cradle – Vonnegut
Goddamn, this was better than the last one. Another Vonnegut classic: Bokononism, Ice Nine, and the Cold War.
8 ) Roadside Picnic – Arkady and Boris StrugatskyThe inspiration for Tarkovsky’s STALKER as well as the STALKER video game series. As is most often the case, the book is better than its inspired creations. STALKER fans will find many familiar elements only imagined in their fullest potential, not limited by film or technology.
9) The Missionary Position – Christopher Hitchens
Hitchens slays the sacred cow that is Mother Teresa. Read this only if you want to know and accept the objective truth behind the modern myth. Now you’ll be correcting your family, friends, and co-workers every time she is name dropped in a conversation as a model for morality. I hope you enjoy being an introvert because facts do not treat Mother Teresa’s legacy kindly.
10) One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich – Alexander SolsenitsynMuch like reading a Holocaust memoir, this is depressing and bleak with the few moments of joy being relative to the prisoner’s lot. Sure, an extra piece of bread is a lifesaver when you’re in Siberia. What it lacks in narrative excitement it makes up for in historical importance, ie. This actually happened to hundreds of thousands of people.
11) Letters to a Young Contrarian – HitchensHitchens validates every feeling you’ve had about striving for truth in a sea of willful delusion.
12) Gang Leader for a Day – Sudhir Venkatesh
Recommended by a sociologist friend. A face-palmingly naïve sociology grad student, Sudhir, is gradually accepted into a Chicago street gang where he faces moral dilemmas and tells the story of Chicago’s black underclass.
13) Lies My Teacher Told Me – James LoewenRead this for a second time as part of a history methods class. Still refreshing the second time around. Being in public school classrooms, however, I can tell you that many of the “lies” referred to in Loewen’s book are, for whatever reason, not as prevalent. The textbooks I’ve used and seen recently include many more minority viewpoints and are no longer written from such a Christian, Euro-centric point of view, although most of them are still painfully vague about historical cause-and-effect.
14) How the Scots Invented the Modern World – Arthur HermanAn introduction to the background and accomplishments of the Scottish Enlightenment whose personalities include David Hume, Adam Smith, and Francis Hutcheson. How did such a small country come to so strongly influence Western thought, even in light of the English and French Enlightenments?
15) When You Are Engulfed in Flames – David SedarisSedaris was scheduled to come give a reading in the area and, having read a couple of his earlier books, I picked up his latest to prep myself for the visit. It’s hard for me to distinguish this book and its stories from any others of his, but if you’re looking for something light and fun to read before bed or in between books then I’d really recommend any of Sedaris’s books.
16) Dress Your Children in Corduroy and Denim – SedarisDitto. I can’t recall anything that makes this book stand out from the rest, but I suppose I enjoyed it.
17) God Bless You Mr. Rosewater – VonnegutPossibly my favorite of the Vonnegut books I’ve read so far: Diana Moon Glampers, Eliot Rosewater, Kilgore Trout, not to mention the real reason why Eliot is viewed as insane.
18) Mother Night – VonnegutIt’s difficult to separate the gallows humor and absurdity of some of its characters from the seriousness of the storyline. A man is on trial for being a double-agent during WWII, becoming one of the most profound anti-Semites and propagandists during the war while working for the Allies and landing himself in an Israeli prison. He is asked to recount his story.
19) Cracker Culture – Grady McWhineyA look at how Celtic culture influenced life in the ante-bellum American South. One of the real causes of the Civil War and the cultural divide we see today, he posits, is the tension between the “English” North and the “Celtic” South which carried over from the Old World and grew as each society developed (or not) differently.
20) Animal Farm – George OrwellRead this in preparation for a few lessons on the Russian Revolution. An absolute classic and an amazing teaching tool. Puts the revolution into an understandable context and explains its complexities in the form of often humorous caricatures.
21) Back to the Front – Stephen O’SheaA non-historian re-visits the trenches of WWI, following them from Belgium to Switzerland, recounting the history, historiography, and his own experiences along the way. By far one of my favorite, and possibly one of the best, accounts of WWI, from a very unassuming source.
22) The Power of Myth – Joseph CampbellNot what I was expecting this to be, but being semi-interested in mythology I picked it up from a used bookstore and read it in a day and a half. Some of it is pretentious garbage as Campbell and Moyers trade speculation as to the meaning and goals of life, but overall it is a very interesting survey of what is clearly the mind of a brilliant and learned man.
23) Let the Right One In – John LindvistThe vampire book everyone should be reading. Inspired the widely acclaimed movie of the same name, yet very different from the movie in that as the book progresses we see Eli as less and less human. So many interesting characters to follow, all drawn in very much a believable living, breathing Swedish-suburbia.
24) Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers – Mary RoachRoach is a great author who turns her wit to the secret “lives” of the meat machines we leave behind when our consciousness has vacated. Who knew the dead help us achieve so many of the technologies and medical procedures that we have today? Stiff is both a history lesson and a tale of contemporary scientific and ethical advancements in the treatment of the dead.
Currently Reading:
The Brothers Karamazov – Fyodor Dostoyevsky(the reason why I'm content with stopping at 24 for the year!
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