2007 in Review

2007 brought a mixed bag for books. Some good, some mediocre, some bad.

10 Best of 2007

10. Chindi - by Jack McDevitt
9. American Born Chinese - Gene Luen Yang
8. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - J.K. Rowling
7. Hearts in Atlantis - Steven King
6. The City of Ember - Jeanne DePrau
5. Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norell- Suzannah Clarke
4. Making Comics- Scott McCloud
3. A Whole New Mind - Daniel Pink
2. The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam
1. The Crystal Cave - Mary Stewart

10 Worst of 2007


10. His Magesty's Dragon - Naomi Novik
9. The Regulators - Stephen King
8. The Riddlemaster of Hed - Patricia A. McKillip
7. Flight 3 - Various
6. The Prophet of Yonwood - Jeanne Du Prau
5. Stardust - Neil Gaiman
4. Demo - By: Brian Wood and Becky Cloonan
3. Running With Scissors - Augusten Burroughs
2. Mediated - Thomas De Zengotita
1. Starship Titanic - Terry Jones (immitating Douglas Adams)

Happy New Year all!


*note - Jack McDevitt's Engines of God was not included in the top 10 list because it was re-read.

62. Start Late Finish Rich

By: David Bach

Kim and I have decided that one of our goals for 2008 is to put some of our financial ducks in order, and so we used a christmas gift certificate to Borders to get a bunch of financial advice books. This is the first one that I read, and it has some pretty solid advice. A lot of it is obvious advice that is said in a very creative way, but more importantly, a very specific way. For example, he discusses something that we all know, that spending money on little things you don't need adds up. However, he shows you exactly how this works (he calls it the latte factor based on the following example which i took from his website):

$5 per day (the average cost of a latte and a muffin) x 7 days = $35 per week

$35/week = $150/month

$150 per month invested at a rate of 10% annual return =

1 year = $1,885
2 years = $3,967
5 years =$11,616
10 years = $30,727
15 years = $62,171
30 years = $339,073
40 years = $948,611

And the point isn't of course if you don't drink coffee you can make a cool million, but rather if you look at your expenditures and figure out a way to cut out $5 a day, it will add up in the long run. The 'latte factor' is one of the strategies that Bach uses to explain how to save- he also talks about a diversified portfolio, and offers very specific actions and steps to take (which is perfect for us, since its not something we have a great deal of knowledge about).

61. The War of Art

by: Steven Pressfield

This little book is about the reasons we avoid doing anything truly creative. Although it often reads like a motivational manual to 'building a better you' it does make some interesting points about avoidance- specifically, how even productive endeavors can sometimes serve as ways of resisting getting down to the creative work that can be intimidating. Its a pretty interesting read (in parts) when you recognize the excuses that you make to not paint/draw/write/compose music etc. Too tired, too busy, have to cook, writing blogposts on books you've read...

Although the book is short, its not short enough that it didn't cross my mind that after i got the point of the book, finishing it was just another form of resistance...

60. Hard Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World

By: Haruki Murakami

I started this book at the very end of last year (see Print is Dead 2006), but found it a little slow compared to Murakami's other books that I've read (Kafka on the Shore and The Wind Up Bird Chronicles). However, I picked this up again for the plane ride home, and found an enjoyable read. Note, below may contain *SPOILERS*, but its not really the kind of book you read for the shocking revelations.

HBW & EotW is the story- or rather, two parallel stories, of a guy whose brain has has been partially sectioned off resulting in him living in the real world and a fantasy world at once. In the real world, he has the odd job of using his own mind to code and filter information. In his fantasy world, he is a dream-reader who abandons his shadow in order to release dreams from the skulls of unicorns.

The story, like the connections between his two worlds, is obscure but interesting. This book doesn't hold up quite as well to the epic struggle of a man searching for his cat that Murakami pulled off in Wind up Bird, nor does it hold the mystery of a boy running away from home as does Kafka on the Shore. Perhaps this one just tries to be a little too different?

It is important to note that the main character has lost his cat in this novel as well. That brings the total number of cats lost in Murakami books that I've read to 3. One in each, so far.

59. Interworld

By: Neil Gaiman and Michael Reeves

Although Stardust was nearly bad enough to put me off reading anymore Gaiman for a while, Interworld looked interesting, so I plunged back into his bizarre and unique worlds.

Interworld is the story of Joey, a boy who gets lost easily. Or rather, its the story of many Joeys, from parallel earths who realize that they are joined by their common ability to "Walk" or cross through dimensions. The universe that Gaiman creates in this book is explained as an arc- along this arc are various dimensions of parallel earths. On one extreme end of the arc is a fully technological, robotic and logic driven world called 'the Binary'. On the other end is "The HEX" a world based in magic. Our earth (or Joey's earth, which from all indications is ours as well) is located somewhere in the middle, leaning a little more towards the Binary. However, both the binary and Hex are locked in an eternal battle for control of all the parallel earths, and the walkers (the variations of Joey) are the only force that stands between balance and the forces of the techno or magic overlords.

Overall, Interworld is an enjoyable read, (and gives a funny little hat-tip to the FSM) although it races through the plot a little quickly- its one of those books that jumps from event to event without meditating on consequence or significance of events for too long. The afterword describes the intent of the book, which was originally concieved as a television series. That would explain the event-driven focus, but it doesn't explain how Neil Gaiman, who should have learned through the disasterous television adaptation of Neverwhere, the appalling movie adaptation of Stardust and the near-apocalypicly bad adaptation of The Sandman that when he writes a book - he should write the book. Mirrormask which was conceived and executed as a movie (with Dave McKean) was brilliant.

Not every story needs to be told in multiple mediums. Some cross well, some don't. Interworld, to be honest, I can't see as a very good series (who'd want to watch a cast of all the same actor play 10 different roles? even eddie murphy can't pull that off forever!), but a book that reads like a series- well, could have been better. It was a good effort, anyway.

58. Chindi

By: Jack McDevitt

The three books of the Academy series so far, match, if you will, the Indiana Jones trilogy. The first one is an excellent mix of archeology and action. The second is all about the action with some hat tip to bogus archeology to get the story going, and the third basically picks up where the first one left off, thematically.

Picture that in Space with a female lead, and basically, that's where we are by the end of the third book, Chindi.

Other than that, Chindi is a little hard to describe without giving too much away. The Chindi itself is the most interesting mystery of the book, so any description of it would be a spoiler I don't want to reveal.

Chindi opens in a rescue mission, and the first hundred pages are so are more reminiscent of the inferior second novel than the excellent first. However, once the mystery is developed, Chindi matches, and in some cases even outpaces Engines of God for a creative and exciting look at space-age archeology.

It begins when a construceted signal is discovered coming from a supernova. The investigation of this impossible scenario begins what essentially becomes an archeological scavenger hunt across the galaxy, with each peice making the mystery more complex.

Aside from the weak begining, my only other criticism is one scene which usualy bugs me in movies, and haven't often come across it in books: You *CANNOT* even for one second, survive in space. Its a freaking vacuum! I don't care how quickly you can get into your spacesuit.

Other than that, fantastic book, looking forward to picking up the fourth book Omega while we're here in the states.

57. Douglas Adams' Starship Titanic

By: Terry Jones

Starship Titanic was Douglas Adam's last puzzle-based video game (after Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy and Bureaucracy. Although Adams didn't write this one, when I found it on our school library shelf, I figured it would hopefully be one more enjoyable read in the Adams universe that I thought I had already thouroughly explored. Moreover, I'd figure a book by Monty Python's Terry Jones based on an idea by Douglas Adams would be a hit.

...and I couldn't have been more wrong.

Starship Titanic, is, simply put, exceedingly stupid. The fact that it reads like a walk-through of the video game isn't even the worst thing about it (although its close)- the worst thing about it is that it reads like someone who is not Douglas Adams trying to write a Douglas Adams book. Which is, obviously, exactly what it is. When I was in working on the literary magazine back in high school we had this kid who would try and submit stories that were basically just Monty Python skits that were poorly transcribed. This book has the same sort of feeling. Jones takes Adams' ideas and tries on every page to make a Douglas Adams sounding observations in Douglas Adams seeming situations.

This was by far, the worst book I've read in a long time, in fact, I can't think of anything off hand that was worse.