All of the stories you heard were true: Steve Jobs is an asshole. But he’s also a genius, and part of being a genius is knowing how to get what you want. This biography is a little dry at times (and I’m a nerd, so you know it is REALLY dry) – but it is also a gently honest, no-holds-barred type of book that discusses Jobs’ failures as a human being as well as his triumphs and his legacy. A little fanboy-ish but pretty good, overall.
3.5/5
So Kim Jong-il died, and someone on the interwebs posted about this book review on motherjones. The book sounded super intriguing – basically, it’s a memoir of a high school dropout from New Jersey who started a bbq restaurant and somehow got involved in North Korean diplomacy. The book was just as exciting as I expected (a real life spy novel!) with the sort of escapades one might expect (bird hunting with north korean diplomats! being given truth serum by the north koreans! pissing off the fbi!). Really a fun book to read.
4/5
I picked up this book because I’ve been interested in microbiology & infectious diseases for a long time – even before I went to grad school – and I thought it would be interesting. It was interesting, but also terribly disjointed. When I started the book, I thought it was going to be about the anthrax attacks that happened shortly after 9/11. It started out that way, but then started bouncing around through the history & eradication of smallpox before finally ending up talking about the resolution of the anthrax cases. Or, in a case of rather sloppy journalism, the book incorrectly pinpointed Steven Hatfill as the culprit. Hatfill was designated as a “person of interest” by John Ashcroft in August 2002, but charges were never brought against him and the government eventually blamed another scientist, Bruce Ivins for the attacks. (Bruce Ivins killed himself before charges could be filed against him). I’m not sure if there are newer versions of the book that correct this information, but I thought it was pretty weak sauce.
256 pages
2/5
This book is unusually but beautifully written. Instead of telling the story of one Japanese mail-order bride and her journey to America – it tells the story of many women and their individual journeys through WWII America. The book is only 66 pages long, but it takes a while to get through…lots of emotion.
66 pages
4.5/5
Pretty interesting book about the ultra-running phenomenon. It focuses on the Tarahumara Indians, a reclusive tribe located in a desolate set of canyons in Mexico. These people like to run. They run for days at a time (seriously!) and even *like* it. Christopher McDougall spent some time in Mexico, trying to get more information about what makes them tick, and this book is his story.
Now if running were as easy and enjoyable as *reading* about running…I’d be set.
304 pages
3/5
To tell you the truth, I kind of freaked out a little when writing that last book review. I’m only at book 37…and I’m supposed to read 52 books by the end of the year. Yeah, probably not going to happen. Consider this one a desperate attempt at fixing my procrastination problem. (Tell-all memoirs are hunky romance-esque dirty secret.)
So – yeah. Rich people want things but they don’t want to do them, and that’s what concierges are for. Big surprise. 
The book was an easy enough read – a little condescending but also entertaining…just the way I like them.
271 pages
3/5
The Tiger’s Wife is a collection of stories within stories, of myth and folklore and a history that includes both. Natalie, the narrator of the book, is on her way to volunteer at a medical clinic in parts of the rural former Yugoslavia when she gets news of her grandfather’s death. From there the story spins through Natalie’s memory – of going with her grandfather to the zoo to see the tiger, of the copy of ‘The Jungle Book’ he kept in his pocket, of being a teenager during wartime and following her grandfather, by then an old man, through abandoned streets until they finally see an elephant being walked through the streets to the zoo. Natalie asks if there are any other stories “like that”, from before, and he tells her the story of the tiger’s wife. But the story is not just of the tiger’s wife – it is also a story of a deathless man, and of the myths surrounding the small village her grandfather grew up in.
I liked this book alot – I liked the pacing of the stories and the depth of the writing (no speed reading for this one!).
352 pages
4/5
1Q84 (the Q stands for QuestionMark) is typical Murakami. Very lyrical writing (thanks to Jay Rubin – who translated it into English) and a multifaceted underlying story with parallel universes (1984 & 1q84) that are somehow connected. OK – so there were some parts of this book that really creeped me out (hint: basically all of the sex scenes – most of them are awkward and one in particular was super disturbing). The book is a bit on the long side, and the “Little People” are a “Little Annoying”, but man, what an imagination Murakami has. It is a gift I’m glad he shares with the world.
On a purely physical level, the book is gorgeous. It has a very thin ricepaper-like dustcover and super smooth newspaper-like pages. I probably like the book more than I should because of these details.
944 pages
3/5
update: here is a nytimes book review article that is worth reading
Predictably, I loved Anthony Bourdain’s tell-most book about the professional cooking world. The book goes through the formation of Anthony Bourdain’s career – from his first experience of amazing food, through his drug addled coming of age in kitchens up and down the east coast, to culinary school, a string of failed restaurants, and eventually – a lucky break that opened the door to famous kitchen. The book is full of stories about kitchens and restaurants, but is also has some brotherly advice about how to outfit a home kitchen and why you shouldn’t order fish in a restaurant on a Monday or open a restaurant just because your friends love your cooking.
324 pages
4/5
I found this book extraordinarily difficult to read. The summarized plot sounds interesting enough – a family deals with an elderly mom’s disappearance at a korean train station, but I think a lot of the book was lost in translation. Most of the novel was written in the second person, which I had a really hard time following. Ah well.
256 pages
1.5/5