Books of 2008: 11-15

I’ve deleted the cathead Tom Selleck picture, since so many of you have flipped out about it. Onto more book reviews! I need to do these before I’ve completely forgotten what I read in 2008.

11. Design Your Self – Karim Rashid

I’m always interested in life-design books, even though I am heinously cluttered and unorganized. This book caught my eye in the bookstore one day – it is extremely colorful and interestingly designed. Regrettably, I don’t remember much of the actual design advice in the book, and what I do remember I have failed to implement. Rashid recommended always wearing colors, but I tend to wear black at least a few days out of the week. Rashid also said to have few things, and to have things you do have shut away in cupboards. First, HA. I have a ton of things. Second, if I have things that I enjoy, I like to display them to see! My bookshelves are a good example of this – I love seeing my book collection. Despite not following any of the book’s advice to make my life “designed” better (though I have incorporated green into my wardrobe recently), the book was a fun read for a typographic and print design point of view.

12. The Adventures of Johnny Bunko – Daniel Pink

Pink’s book “A Whole New Mind” was in my top 5 last year, and over the summer I was fortunate enough to nab tickets to hear him speak. Poor guy was up against Barack Obama clinching the Democratic Nomination across the river in St Paul on the same night, but the lines to see him were long and crazy, and Chris and I had already paid for our tickets to see Daniel Pink (we did catch Obama on television later that night). The man is an amazing thinker, and hearing him outline some of his processes as well as his ideas was fabulous. That being said, Johnny Bunko wasn’t my favorite book he’s written, though I don’t think I’m the core audience. It’s written in a manga comic style, and looks at a fellow trying to get ahead in his career. I’m pretty content with where I am and what I’m doing now, but I know I don’t want to do it forever, and the Six Bunko Lessons are things everyone should keep in mind when looking at their career path. Every college student (heck, every high school student) would do well to read this before they take their next steps!

13. Shakespeare: The World As Stage – Bill Bryson

I gobble down Bryson’s work like so much candy, and love it. My aunt, knowing this and also having good taste in books, sent me Bryson’s look at Shakespeare’s life as a birthday gift. I definitely enjoyed it, but it certainly didn’t roll my world over. I’ve taken a lot of courses on Shakespeare, and was pretty familiar with his life and Elizabethan England. Bryson’s treatment of the subject matter was brilliantly researched, and told with his trademark witty lilt, making it a fun read. There are obviously more in-depth biographies of the Bard, but this was a well-balanced and easy-to-read introduction for someone looking for background, not a hammer to the face.

14. The Plot Against America – Philip Roth

Is it shameful that I have never read Philip Roth, winner of a chunk of prestigious awards (Pulitzer, PEN/Faulkner, etc.) and one of the most celebrated living authors in America today? Probably, though the amount of 20th century “canon” literature I haven’t read is pretty atrocious, so better late than never. I read most of this surrounding a crazy 36-hour trip to Miami to visit my gal-friends, so there was a lot of airport and airplane time to get absorbed. And absorbed I was. Roth’s alternate history surrounding WWII in America, with Charles Lindbergh as an anti-semetic president, was sinister and chilling. I recognized so many events and people from my history studies, and seeing them cast in very different situations was great. The ending felt a bit rushed and strange for my tastes, but that was the only sour note in an otherwise gripping book.

15. Shipwrecks – Akira Yoshimura

Cousin Karl gave me this book last year upon my return from Japan, and I feel awful about having gotten around to it nearly a year later. However, this book wound up in the top 5 reads for the year, and lived up to all of Karl’s raves (as his recommendations usually do). A poor coastal village in medieval Japan scrapes by through meager fishing, but mostly through making salt drawn out of the ocean. The salt fires, however, are also used to lure unsuspecting merchant boats onto the rocks. The bounty the village takes from the ships is the only way for them to survive, and the coming of Ofune-sama (“great boat god”) is anticipated by everyone. Isaku, the main character, is a young boy in the village, and his perspective lends an interesting lens through which to view the morality and the harshness of the situation. This book was haunting, and its slow but steady pace felt like a deep drum beat, urgent but troubling when it suddenly stops.