Wow. This book scared the beejesus out of me. It takes a worse case scenario – a woman with amnesia who wakes every morning with no memory of her current or past life – and makes it worse. The woman, Christine, starts keeping a very detailed journal. Every night she write in the journal, and every day she reads the journal from beginning to end. She starts to remember things. And she realizes that her caregiver is not telling her the truth. The ending of the book is spectacular. Highly recommended…unless you’re an amnesiac.

360 pages
4.5/5

This book was pretty funny in spots. I think Sarah Palin’s biography might be funnier.

2.5/5
288 pages

When I started reading The Art of the Heist by Myles J. Connor, I was super excited (and a bit dismayed) when he started talking about robbing the Isabella Gardner Museum in Boston. I *loved* visiting both the Isabella Gardner Museum & the Museum of Fine Arts on our recent trip to Boston, and gah, it takes a real creep to steal art from places people love. Although the story of how Myles & company stole a Rembrandt from the MFA was super ballsy – they basically just paid admission, walked straight to the painting, took it off the wall and walked away with it in hand.The book was an okay read – a little dreary in parts and with far more detail about bank robberies and murders than I would have liked…but hey, a life of crime isn’t just going to include the victimless crimes, I guess.

304 pages
2.5/5

In The Garden Of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler’s Berlin is a work of nonfiction by Erik Larson, detailing the life of William Dodd and his family during Dodd’s tenure as the US Ambassador to Germany. Dodd was a professorof history, whose area of interest was the southern United States. He became ambassador because no one else would take the job, and FDR was desperate to fill the position before Congress recessed. Not the best credentials for a US ambassador, but probably not the worst either. Even though Dodd was an Ambassador, he never really fit in with the elites. His family was also interesting – his daughter Martha ended up falling in love with a Soviet spy – which caused many problems for them both. The author claims that everything written in quotes is a direct quotation – from a letter, memoir, or conversation – and I really appreciated reading the story of Hitler gaining power through the eyes of American outsiders.

464 pages
3.5/5

It took me forever to finish this book. (The book is 688 pages, so I don’t feel too badly about it). The book is a very detailed story of two twin brothers born to a nun (a nun!) in Ethiopia. The nun dies in childbirth and their father, a highly esteemed surgeon, runs away. The two boys are raised by the hospital staff, and come of age as Ethiopia survives a bloody coup. I enjoyed the last part (part four) of this book more than any of the others. A part of me wishes the book would have been shorter. The other part of me wonders if the last part would have been so marvelously riveting if the first parts had been abridged.

688 pages
3.5/5

The subtitle of this book is “my adventures as the world’s most wanted hacker” – and adventures is an apt description of Kevin Mitnick’s life. It’s actually a hilarious account of his hacking activities, which were curiosity-driven and not meant to be exploitative. He was (probably still is) a master at social engineering; that is, cold calling someone & pretending he is someone he’s not to get information he’s not supposed to have (usernames, passwords, server names, dialup numbers). When he starts evading the FBI – that’s even more hilarious. It’s not a very technical book…non-geeks won’t have trouble reading it. I’m still working my way through the coded bits at the beginning of each chapter. A puzzle *and* an entertaining book? Awesome.

432 pages
4.5/5

Outliers: The Story of Success is another one of those straightforward “why didn’t I think of that” books. The premise of the book is that success is something that can be cultivated, but that circumstances surrounding a person can influence “success” a great deal. For instance, if you want your son to be a successful hockey player, you should try to have them born in January, February or March. That gives them a slight advantage physically when they are playing junior league hockey – a kid born in January will be bigger and faster than a kid born in December, but they will play on the same team. That slight advantage will turn into a larger advantage as the kid grows up – obviously the kid has to have talent, but if he does have talent, being bigger than other kids his age is a definite advantage. Gladwell also talks about the 10,000 Hour Rule – basically, it takes ten thousand hours to master a skill. Professional musicians? They practice their asses off, so by the time they reach college they have amassed more practice time than their peers. Same thing with athletes and technology gurus.

This book is an easy read because it is filled with interesting stories of people’s lives. And also plane crashes.

3.5/5
309 pages

P.S. I have been a reading fiend lately. We’re on week 38 of the year, so I’m only 18 books behind. The race is on!