Coming towards the end of April, we’re a third of the way through the way through the year. What’s the favourite book you’ve read so far in 2009? What about your least favourite? (question courtesy of MizB)
That is a really tough question. I read a lot of fiction and non-fiction books. It is too hard to pick an overall favorite. So, as an added bonus for you the reader, I will pick my favorite of each.
Fiction
The Housekeeper and the Professor by Yoko Ogawa is easily my favorite work of fiction so far. It is so elegantly written and it is a great story about friendship and love. I highly recommend it to you.
Non-Fiction
It is a tough choice, but I have to go with How We Decide by Jonah Lehrer. This is a book about the neuroscience of how we make decisions, which may sound dry and boring. It isn't! Lehrer begins each chapter with the riveting story of a really hard decision someone had to make: the pilot of a plane who cannot control any of the flight surfaces, a Lt. Commander who has just seconds to decide whether to fire on unknown targets threatening the lives of those serving on an aircraft carrier at war, and many more. It is a great book.
Least Favorite
All the Names by Jose Saramago. I know he is a nobel prize winner but I just cannot get into his novels. I abandoned this one earlier this month. It is the second one I have tried by him. I also attempted to read Blindness several years ago, but didn't get that far in that one either.
2 comments:
All the Names is pretty strenuous reading since it drags on and on. Is it more of the story or his style that you cannot stand?
I abandoned All The Names for stylistic reasons. I like when writers vary their sentence structure. Saramago tends to write long sentences with many clauses joined by commas, without much variation. He also does not indicate dialog in any way -- quotation marks, dashes, etc. -- so I find it hard to tell when someone is speaking or thinking.
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