"The will of Zeus was moving toward its end. If ever I roofed a shrine to please your heart,...now bring my prayer to pass...your arrows for my tears!" [The Iliad, Book I., Homer, translated by Robert Fagles.]
Nonfiction Books Read During 2011
Retreating through the past year, I must say it's been a bitch of a year personally, financially, and occupationally, but what a grand time as far as books go! I've had a Great Reading Year, and beg your indulgence for allowing me to share it with you. First I will tackle the nonfiction, and then in a subsequent post, I’ll do the fiction.
In January, there was Orhan Pamuk’s The Naïve and the Sentimental Novelist, and Home Town by Tracy Kidder. Pamuk’s book was his collected lectures at Harvard, pieces of which I’ve excerpted here on this blog; and Kidder’s book was a heartwarming, charming story of a small town in Massachusetts told from the point of view of a policeman. My uncle, Joseph Zipoli, was an admired and respected cop of some notoriety in my home town of Meriden, Connecticut. I could surely see many of the plights and aggravations of small-town law enforcement mirrored in the pages of Kidder’s book and in the coffee-bruised sunken eyes of my uncle, and the toll it took on him and his family.
In February, it was the hilarious travel adventures recounted in Pico Iyer’s Video Night in Kathmandu. This book, like Iyer’s others, is so filled with the comic moments and alien-dark bizarre life of our fellow earthlings, that I could not put the book down. My favorite chapter was on Hong Kong.
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| Steven Rinella |
Operation Mincemeat: How a Dead Man and a Bizarre Plan Fooled the Nazis and Assured an Allied Victory, is more than an expansion of The Man Who Never Was; it is a brilliant exciting fact-filled and humorous account of that whole affair. If you study WW2, you must read this book. Gladwell’s Tipping Point took me places that I was unprepared for; understanding how society moves and breathes, and telling it in such a fascinating way, anthropology never had it so good.
In May, my man Thomas Cahill thrilled me with Mysteries of the Middle Ages: The Rise of Feminism, Science, and Art from the Cults of Catholic Europe. The Amazon.com blurb says it all: “On visits to the great cities of Europe—monumental Rome; the intellectually explosive Paris of Peter Abelard and Thomas Aquinas; the hotbed of scientific study that was Oxford; and the incomparable Florence of Dante and Giotto—Cahill brilliantly captures the spirit of experimentation, the colorful pageantry, and the passionate pursuit of knowledge that built the foundations for the modern world.”
June 2011 found me returning to Malcolm Gladwell with Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking. “Blink reveals that great decision makers aren't those who process the most information or spend the most time deliberating, but those who have perfected the art of "thin-slicing"-filtering the very few factors that matter from an overwhelming number of variables.” So they say.
I also read Mark Kurlansky’s Cod: A Biography of the Fish that Changed World, and indeed it did. Excellent book. And it has taken me 55 years to get over my dislike of fishy fish, like cod, and now I love it.
Musicophilia by Oliver Sacks and Packing for Mars by Mary Roach kept me busy in July. Musicophila was especially poignant for me since most mornings I wake up with amazingly stupid songs in my head and wonder if I’ve been abducted during the night and aliens played 1970s radio the whole time they were probing me. Mary Roach’s book was funny, informative, and scary since she deals with the romantic aspirations of astronauts and uptight NASA officials.
In August it was Bill Bryson’s At Home: A Short History of Private Life. I couldn’t believe how he wove what he did into a well-written, remarkable history of each and every room in your house. I love Bill Bryson. You can’t go wrong with any of his books. 
Outliers, by Malcolm Gladwell brought me into September. This is what you’re getting into with his book: “Outliers: The Story of Success examines the factors that contribute to high levels of success. ...[Gladwell] examines the causes of why the majority of Canadian ice hockey players are born in the first few months of the calendar year, how Microsoft cofounder Bill Gates achieved his extreme wealth, and how two people with exceptional intelligence end up with such vastly different fortunes.” We’re dealing with the "10,000-Hour Rule" and it is captivating reading.
The Outlaw Sea by William Langewiesche was an eye-opening account of how little we know about how devastating the Sea can be, from pirates, to storms, to oil tankers falling apart, to well almost everything. I think I’ll take a plane.
Hometowns, edited by the late John Preston, introduced October 2011. In this book are collected essays by gay American authors who talk about growing up in their hometowns. At times it was quite an emotional read, but I found that the overall affirmation was one of finding one’s niche in the world, and often in the most unlikely places. I also read Douglas Waller’s Wild Bill Donovan: The Spymaster Who Created the OSS and Modern American Espionage.
It was a good book, I liked Donovan more than I thought I would, even though he was often an unlikeable fellow. One can’t deny his bravery or his belief in raising intelligence in the U.S. to an art form without the bigoted and infected mindset of people like J. Edgar Hoover, who is all over this book, insidious, backstabbing, lying.
In November it was Inside the KGB by Vladimir Kuzichkin, a former KGB officer (the name is a pseudonym). Probably some of the most boring writing I’ve ever come across in espionage-related texts; however, the insights he provides into the workings of the Soviet Communist Party and its legion of operatives are unbelievable: the fact that the USSR lasted as long as it did is a miracle: Corruption, stupidity, incompetence, drunkenness, permeated the KGB and GRU to the point of absurdity.
December it was My Life in France by Julia Child; it is a lovely audio book; however, I would “read” it during my lunch hour, before I ate, and the constant descriptions of the food she cooked, the recipes, the ecstasy of her restaurant visits literally drove my stomach to exponential hunger pangs.
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| Julia Child |
Also read Barbara Kingsolver’s Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, in which she describes a year of life in western Virginia, and her family’s commitment to completely organic and locally grown foods and livestock. It was amusing and very educational.
Just Kids by Patti Smith was read by my entire household. It is well-written, nostalgic, entertaining, and at times highly self-absorbed, which is for the most part what I thought of her and Robert Mapplethorpe’s photography. It did not detract from their sweetness, nor did it impact my enjoyment of the book.
Last Night I Dreamed of Peace is a posthumous memoir of Dang Thuy Tram, who was a field doctor for the North Vietnamese army, stationed in the central highlands, during 1968-1970. It was quite a heart-breaking account of little more than two years (in journal entries). The hardships and daily suffering that both civilians and soldiers endured while fighting a war of liberation is a moving storythat most people in this county know absolutely nothing about. Sadly enough, I wonder if they will ever want to know. Time does not heal all wounds. Then came Sailing the Wine Dark Sea by Cahill and Falling Off the Map by Pico Iyer. Iyer’s book focused on the Lonely Places on Earth. His reportage of Paraguay and Iceland I read out loud to my friends, as it had me cracking up.
More to follow, the fiction list, probably tomorrow.
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