Books I've read so far this year...

[nekosensei]

1. The human Christ: the search for the historical Jesus by Charlotte Allen.
2. Lisey's Story by Stephen King
3. Orientalism by Edward Said
4. I Know This Much Is True by Wally Lamb
5. The curious incident of the dog in the night-time by Mark Haddon
6. Good Omens by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett
7. Language death: The Life Cycle of a Scottish Gaelic Dialect by Nancy C. Dorian
8. Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand
9. The Inferno by Dante Alighieri. Tranlated by Robert Pinsky.
10. Snow Flower and the Secret Fan by Lisa See
11. The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson
12. Fray by Joss Whedon
13. Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie
14. The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood
15. Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azar Nafisi
16. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J.K. Rowling
17. The Bone People by Keri Hulme
18. The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho
19. The No.1 Ladies' Detective Agency by Alexander McCall Smith
20. Ceremony by Leslie Marmon Silko
21. The Doll's House, Dream Country, and Season of Mists by Neil Gaiman
22. Dreams of My Father by Barack Obama
23. The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
24. A Game of You and Fables & Reflections by Neil Gaiman
25. Brief Lives, Worlds' End, The Kindly Ones, and The Wake by Neil Gaiman
26. Into the Forest by Jean Hegland
27. Endless Nights by Neil Gaiman
28. The Tale of Genji by Lady Murasaki
29. Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister by Gregory Maguire

30. The Color of Water: A Black Man's Tribute to His White Mother by James McBride -- I picked this one up at a garage sale, believe it or not, because it sounded interesting. As the title suggests, the author-- a journalist and a musician-- describes the somewhat unusal life of his mother. Although McBride has a white mother, the author and his many brothers and sisters grew up black in a black neighborhood. McBride does not discover until college (when he needs to know his mom's maiden name for an application) that his white mother was Orthodox Jewish. In fact, his mother told her children very little about her childhood and heritage. She would respond to their questions with, "Mind your own business." While researching his book, McBride learns that his mother was the daughter of a Jewish rabbi and his crippled wife. He learns of the difficult life his grandmother must have had with an unloving husband and prejudice from family members and others because of her disabilities. McBride also discovered that his mother fled this life, moved to New York City, fell in love with a black preacher, became a Christian, and then married him. Because she married outside of her faith and married a black man to boot, her family ostracized her and even sat shiva for her, which is what Jewish people do in order to mourn their dead. Because of the pain caused by her former life, she stopped talking about her family and buried her memories in the past.

Overall, I thought the book was a pretty good read. I particularly liked the way the book was organized: McBride writes about his childhood and that of his mother in alternating chapters. This was also a very quick read, which ended up taking much longer than usual because of some *glower* health issues on my part...