Book Reviews: The Mid-year Round-up

I haven't posted much this month because the vitriol that prompted me to begin this blog site has been largely expelled (for now, the upcoming general campaign and the Shrub's guaranteed incompetence is sure to stir something up between now and the new year).

In the interim, I will grace you with some of the better books I've read these past 6 months. They're in no particular order other than "when read":

1. Takeover, Charlie Savage. The first book of the new year, it's a distressing look at the return of the imperial presidency and the subsequent damage to our democracy.
2. See No Evil, Robert Baer. The inspiration for George Clooney's Syriana. Baer is a former CIA operative and I think he's still too enamored with the "adventure" of covert ops but it is an interesting glimpse at the inept workings of our "intelligence" services.
3. Reading Lolita in Tehran, Azar Nafisi. You'd wish someone in the Bush administration would read this in the hopes that they might reconsider attacking the country.
4. Gentlemen of the Road, Michael Chabon. Reminiscent of Fritz Leiber's Fahfrd/Grey Mouser and it involves the Khazars. Hard to go wrong, and Chabon doesn't.
5. The Basic 8, Daniel Handler. I knew I liked Handler after reading Adverbs but this is his best novel so far.
6. The Age of Lincoln, Orville Burton, and 1858, Bruce Chadwick. I found both books very interesting because they illuminated a period of American history with which I was not very familiar.
7. Discovering God, Rodney Stark. Read the first 2/3s of the book for his insights on religious belief but you can skip that last 1/3, which is a screed about the supposed superiority of Christianity over all other religions. (If interested, you can read my Amazon review here.)
8. Seeing Red, Frank Beddor. The second book in Beddor's reinterpretation of Lewis Carroll is as good as the first; I look forward to the final book.
9. The Day of Battle, Rick Atkinson. Having read this as well as Ronald Spector's In the Ruins of Empire and Mosier's reinterpretations of World Wars 1 and 2, I'm amazed we won either war. Fortunately, neither Germany nor Japan commanded the sheer resources the U.S. did.
10. Weight, Jeannette Winterson. A reinterpretation of the Atlas myth that suggests that many of the "weights" we labor under are created by ourselves.
11. Worshipping the Myths of World War II, Edward Wood, Jr. A cri de coeur from a man who's been through the hell of war, and wants us to understand the dangers of glamourizing such insanity.
12. Night of Knives, Ian Esslemont. Steven Erikson's partner in the world of the Malazan Empire. He's not as compelling or assured an author as Erikson but he shows promise.
13. Matter, Iain Banks. Bank's latest Culture novel. Up there in the top five, though Consider Phlebas and Player of Games remain my favorites.
14. The Blade Itself, Joe Abercrombie. A disturbing fantasy novel. Brutal and realistic, I'm not sure what to think of it yet.

That's it for now.

I'm still contemplating the Lord of the Rings v. LotR (the movie) review; perhaps for June.