Recently Mentioned Books

6. Why This World: A Biography of Clarice Lispector , by Benjamin Moser.  I loved this book.  She's an interesting writer with a fascinating biography, plus the book doubles as a history of Brazil and a history of Judaism in 20th century South America.  This is one of the sleeper books of the year.  Here is Wikipedia on Clarice Lispector , with a good entry.  This is one of the sleeper books of the year.

5. Gordon S. Wood, Empire of Liberty: A History of the Early Republic, 1789-1815 .  Is "magisterial" simply a fancy word for "boring"?  Since I won't read past p.100 in this book, I guess I'll never find out.

4. Stitches , by David Small.  By now I've concluded that I'm not good at reading graphic novels, except for the Sandman series for some reason.  This much-heralded story of a sick child, mistreated by his parents, struck me as professionally done but pointless.

3. The Soul of the Age: A Biography of the Mind of William Shakespeare , by Jonathan Bate.  This book offers plenty of good information but it didn't bring Shakespeare to life for me.  Should I prefer the less reliable yet more Shakespearean Stephen Greenblatt book?

2. In Other Rooms, Other Wonders , by Daniyal Mueenuddin.  The Indo-Pak quaint narrative tale is an overexplored genre these days, but still I enjoyed this very much.  It is "full of life," while sidestepping the cliches of other books that are described as such.  Or were all those cliches enjoyable in the first place?  Recommended, surprisingly.

1. The American Civil War , by John Keegan.  Maybe I was prejudiced by the early reviews , but I didn't think there was much substance here.  Like all of Keegan's work it is very well-written but if you have basic knowledge about the events it doesn't hold your interest.

10. Pops: A Life of Louis Armstrong , by Terry Teachout.

9. Liaquat Ahamed, Lords of Finance: The Bankers Who Broke the World .

8. By Greg Grandin, Fordlandia: The Rise and Fall of Henry Ford's Forgotten Jungle City .

5. Columbine , by David Cullen.

4. Gordon Wood, Empire of Liberty: A History of the Early Republic .

3. David Grann, The Lost City of Z: A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon .

2. Cheever: A Life , by Blake Bailey.

1. Richard Holmes, The Age of Wonder: How the Romantic Generation Discovered the Beauty and Terror of Science .

4. I still am not convinced that we have avoided a new version of "the vertigo years," based on a fundamental discombobulation of economic expectations.  This is probably just historical coincidence, but the Great Depression did come last to China.

Correction : If you search inside the book , you will see that she is referring to the Scrabble strategies of her grandparents, not her own Scrabble strategies .  They are the ones who cannot be trusted with U.S. foreign policy and it can also be said that she misses this chance to condemn their weak gaming strategies.

4. Magma bleg: is there anything to these jokers ?  Please let me know.

That is from Hampton Sides's quite interesting Blood and Thunder: The Epic Story of Kit Carson and the Conquest of the American West .  From the specialized academic literature, here is an entire study of the mother-in-law taboo (JSTOR) ; I'm not sure any of the offered hypotheses or explanations are persuasive.  It seems the taboo lasted well through the twentieth century.  Here is another discussion , under the more general heading of Navajo taboos:

My favorite classical recording this year was Alexandre Tharaud playing Satie for piano .

A very good gift book is Eric Siblin's new The Cello Suites: J.S. Bach, Pablo Casals, and the Search for a Baroque Masterpiece .  It signals the sophistication of both the giver and receiver and yet it is short and entertaining enough to actually read.  Package it with the recent Queyras recording of the Suites , if need be.

A very good gift book is Eric Siblin's new The Cello Suites: J.S. Bach, Pablo Casals, and the Search for a Baroque Masterpiece .  It signals the sophistication of both the giver and receiver and yet it is short and entertaining enough to actually read.  Package it with the recent Queyras recording of the Suites , if need be.

3. Orhan Pamuk, The Museum of Innocence , read it slowly in small bits.

2. Via Arnold Kling (do read his new book ), Presidential cabinets: prior private sector experience .

3. Better Living Through Economics , edited by John J. Siegfried.  It covers emissions trading, the EITC, trade liberalization, welfare reform, the spectrum auction, airline deregulation, antitrust, the volunteer military, and Alvin Roth algorithms for deferred acceptance.  The contributions are uniformly excellent and written by top economists.

I won't have time to read through the novel ( the new Alice Munro is out , for one thing) but I thought the premise was an intriguing one.  The Amazon reader reviews are favorable.