New Year, Old Books

First and foremost – Happy 2008!　日本語を話す友達へ、明けましておめでとうございます！ Chris and I celebrated in a low key fashion with friends, champagne, and board games. I am happy to report that I am the first winner of Settlers of Catan in the new year. If you’re a fan of Catan and need your fix, head on over to games.asobrain.com and feed your addiction on a free Java-based version called Xplorers. It’s been eating my head for the last week, and I adore it. You can find me playing as Silentseas.

My new years resolution last year was such a success (Read: I actually completed it) that I am continuing the idea with quantifiable goals for the new year. Being back on the health insurance wagon, I’ve been informed that if I make it to the gym 8 times a month, the health insurance will kick back enough money to cover the already smallish cost of my membership and annual locker. This helps me reach the vague goals of “get fit” and “save money” all at once, so I’m down.

I am also continuing my quest to read 26 new books in the year, so if you have recommendations, please let me know. Recommendations from friends last year were mind-rocking, you are all so brilliant with what you read. The goal will be a bit more challenging this year since I don’t have a job where I have huge swaths of time in which to kick back with a novel, but I’m so pleased with the outcome of last year that I’ll find a way to make it work.

Speaking of books from last year, here is the big TOP FIVE of the books I read (which can be found here).

Top 5 Books of 2007:

1. Cloud Atlas (David Mitchell). This was the only book I brought with me to China, outside of the Lonely Planet guidebook. Kat had sent it to me in Japan, but it had been neglected on my desk due to a quasi-vague back cover description and general absent mindedness. I started to read it on the first long train ride from Shanghai to Xi’an, and was inseperable from it by my last few days in Beijing. Let it not be said that I didn’t see and experience China, but when the crowds or smog or strangeness got me down, I had my face in this. Some of the most challenging and rewarding fiction I’ve read in years, Mitchell weaves together a genre-defying story of mystery and humanity that left me fulfilled and crying for more at the same time. An absolute must-read; I would buy this for everyone had I the funds.
2. Slaughterhouse Five (Kurt Vonnegut). I had shamefully never read Vonnegut before, despite my parents both adoring him and everyone else in the world having read him in high school or university. After Vonnegut passed away, Matt sent me one of his favorite snippets from Slaughterhouse Five which so moved me that I went out and picked up the book. The straightforwardness and sad-eyed satire of recounting things gone wrong and things unfixed and things impermanent were moving beyond words.
3. The Shadow of the Wind (Carlos Ruiz Zafon). Credit for this goes to Djana, who gave it to me ages ago, and numerous people (including my mom) who raved about it nonstop. Rave-worthy it is. This is a rich web of mystery woven through the streets and bookshops of Barcelona. If you’ve ever fallen in love with a book, or remember the first book that really hooked you, Daniel’s adventures with the works of Julian Carax are perfect.
4. Blindness (Jose Saramago). Katie tossed this title to me, though she hadn’t actually read it herself. A plague of white blindness rips through an unnamed city in Europe, and those fallen to it early are rounded up into a government quarantine. This book is a gut-wrencher in its unflinching look at the worst and best of humanity. It took my collecting my thoughts and mentally preparing myself before I could sit down and read it some evenings, but it was worth it. Shattering and hands down the most powerful book I read.
5. The Star’s Tennis Balls (Stephen Fry). Out of the heap of wonderful books Nikki tossed me to help with my goal, this was the first one I read on her insistence. I had no idea who Stephen Fry was, though I had seen him in a few films, but fell in love hard with this book. An improbably plot made amazing by detail, superb writing, and Fry’s unmistakable and cunning wit, I don’t think I’ve ever read a book where the author’s unmistakable voice lent itself perfectly to every character in a large cast without overpowering them.

Books I Finally Got Around To in 2007:

1. House of Leaves (Mark Z. Danielewski)
2. The Amber Spyglass (Phillip Pullman)
3. The Kite Runner (Khaled Hosseini)
4.  The Polysyllabic Spree (Nick Hornby)
5. Naked Pictures of Famous People (Jon Stewart)

Thought-provoking Non-Fiction of 2007:

1. The Lonely Planet’s Guide to Experimental Travel (Joel Henry)
2. A Whole New Mind (Daniel Pink)
3. The Audacity of Hope (Barack Obama)
4.  Dogs and Demons: The Fall of Modern Japan (Alex Kerr)
5. What Color Is Your Parachute 2007 (Richard Nelson Bolles)

Book I tried to read at least twice because people kept raving about it and got halfway through and just had to give up because it drove me bonkers so please someone tell me why it’s supposed to be so damn great:

1. Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell (Susanna Clarke)