Book List - 2011

New Year's Eve and time for another book list. Here's to a wonderful 2012:

Recommended


Top Three Favorites

A Clash of Kings George RR Martin A Drifting Life Yoshiro Tatsumi A Game of Thrones George RR Martin A Million Mile in a Thousand Years Donald Miller A Visit From the Goon Squad Jennifer Egan Anathem Neal Stephenson Atmospheric Disturbances Rivka Galchen Batman Cacophony Kevin Smith Black Hole Charles Burns Blue Like Jazz Donald Miller Brooklyn Colm Toibin Consent to Kill Vince Flynn Consider the Lobster David Foster Wallace Creature Tech Doug Tennapel Curious Incident of the Dog at Nighttime Mark Haddon Divergent Veronica Roth East of Eden John Steinbeck Fatal Alliance Sean Williams Good Punishment? James Samuel Logan Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows JK Rowling Hey…Wait Jason High Fidelity Nick Hornby How to Be Good Nick Hornby I Kill Giants Joe Kelley Infinite Jest David Foster Wallace Into the Wild Jon Krakauer Isaac's Storm Erik Larson Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell Susann Clarke Legion of the Lost Jaime Salazar Lenin for Beginners A & Z Letter to a Christian Nation Sam Harris Life of Pi Yann Martel Love Wins Rob Bell Marvel:1602 Neil Gaiman Marx for Beginners Rius Misquoting Jesus Bart Ehrman Moving Pictures Kathryn Immonen Never Let Me Go Kazuo Ishiguro Neverwhere Neil Gaiman Nocturnes Kazuo Ishiguro Outliers Malcolm Gladwell Pillars of the Earth Ken Follett Planetary 1-4 Warren Ellis Sandman, Volumes 4,5,7 Neil Gaiman Shh… Jason Sonic Boom John Alderman Start Something That Matters Blake Mycoskie Sweet Tooth Jeff Lemire The Art of Prayer and Volkswagen Maintenance Donald Miller The Diary of a Country Priest George Bernanos The Help Kathryn Stockett The Last Musketeer Jason The Nobody Jeff Lemire The Remains of the Day Kazuo Ishiguro The Sparrow Mary Doria Russell The Sun Also Rises Ernest Hemingway The Swan Thieves Elizabeth Kostova The Tiger's Wife Tea Obrecht The Unwritten Mike Carye The White Tiger Aravind Adiga Then We Came to the End Joshua Ferris Trotsky for Beginners Tariq Ali & Phil Evans Watership Down Richard Adams What is Left the Daughter Howard Norman What Jesus Meant Gary Wills

“A house without books is like a room without windows.” *

I'm really beginning to dislike this unit. In Venus many guards had at least a little bit of empathy and common sense but I haven't seen much of wither here in Dayton. Today I went to the mailroom where I had three books denied to me. TO understand my frustration better (although having books denied for any reason is frustrating) allow me to give a little bit of background.

I had heard that while I am in the education program I am not allowed to receive books, so when I got here my mother called the unit to ask if I could receive books or not. The answer was yes, I would receive them. She ordered the books that day but they arrived the day I started the program. Somehow that day was different than the day before and the books were denied.

When I went to the mailroom I was given paperwork to sign and when I started to ask questions, the lady snatched the paperwork form my hand and said I would have to leave. I have been blessed with an enormous amount of patience so, even after being treated so rudely, I calmly asked to talk to the mailroom supervisor. I explained the situation to her but she was adamant that I could not get the books just because I had started the program. I told her that I could get the same books in the library if they were on the shelf. Her to that was that she doesn't think we should be allowed to use the library, either. Really? What kind of crazy rehab doesn't allow you to educate yourself?

The books I will be sending home - at a cost of $4.46 postage and $1.27 for the jumbo envelope - were as innocuous as they come: Quantum (about the the history of quantum physics), Innovator's DNA (about what makes entrepreneurs successful), and Luminarium (a sci-fi novel.) I was told the only books I could receive are religious texts and textbooks. I feel like a blanket denial on everything else is just plain wrong. I worked as a librarian in Venus because I believe education changes people for the better. If you feel the same way, let me know by leaving a comment on my blog or, if you want to do something more active, write the TDCJ Programs Director:

Madeline Ortiz
Director, Rehabilitation Programs Division
PO Box 99
Huntsville, TX 77342-0099

* Horace Mann

LENIN - AND OTHERS - FOR BEGINNERS

During lockdown last month I read a graphic novel called A Drifting Life that is a history of post-war Japanese culture and comics, as well as a kind of autobiography of its author, Yoshihiro Tatsumi. When I mentioned the book to my parents, my dad asked, "Oh, is it like Lenin for Beginners?" I'd never heard of it, so he explained that it was a comic he read in college that was a biography of Lenin and his place in the Russian revolution.

Yesterday I received a pass to the mailroom that stated I had a package waiting for me. When I went to find out what came in, I saw that it was a copy of Lenin for Beginners with a companion, Trotsky for Beginners. Interesting. Even better was that they were both original editions from the late 1970s. It's wild to me that books sympathetic to communism were in wide circulation while the old War was far from over.

Today I received two more Cold War-era comics from the same series: Marx for Beginners and Nuclear Power for Beginners. My cellmate joked with me that my dad was trying to turn me into a communist. Far from it, I thnk he was trying to expose me to some cool history in an engaging way. I can't wait to dig in.

Discovering Harry Potter all over again

Last weekend my friends and Betsy came to visit me. We often spend much of our time together talking about books and movies, and, of course, the media has been abuzz about a significant juncture of the two - the final Harry Potter movie.

I started reading Harry Potter in sixth grade and loved it. I was so excited when my seventh grade English teacher told us we would be reading the first book in class. The books captured my imagination and I was right there in Diagon Alley or eluding Fitch with Harry, Ron and Hermione. Unfortunately, the release of the books was too slow for me to maintain interest and Goblet of Fire, the fourth book of seven, was the last I read for years.

Five years ago I tool a college-level British literature course from a teacher who was wild about Harry Potter, so much so that she assigned book six, The Half-Blood Prince, for our modern literature book. I was ambivalent at first but quickly got right back into the story. After devouring book six, I went back and read book five to see what I had missed. This time I was seeing the amazing craft and bigger themes that J.K. Rowling had included - references to history, mythology, classic literature.. My mind was blown.

The last book, Deathly Hallows, was still to new at the time for our prison library to have a copy and I didn't know anyone who had it, so I had to stop again. When I arrived here the library had a copy, but I was always finding other things to read. I promised my self I would get to it eventually.

Sandy and Betsy both mentioned their excitement about the movie release. When Betsy heard that I hadn't read the last book, she said in her choir teacher voice, "Whatever you're reading right now, put it down and read book seven. You have to." I did as I was told.

I finished the book today and the first thing I did was sit down and write a letter of gratitude to Betsy for waking my senses. Deathly Hallows is a perfect culmination of events from the first six books. I've been talking to my friend, Lee, about it all week - the layering and significance of little bits, parallels to Scripture.

Now I want to go back and read them all again... and maybe I won't put it off so long this time.

2010 Books Read

People often ask me what I'm reading these days, so I have compiled my annual list of books read over the last year. An asterisk * indicates a recommended book and a # indicates fave of the year. Here goes:

1. Pawn of Prophecy, David Eddings
2. Film Club, David Gilmer
3. Once a Runner, John L. Parker Jr. *
   
4. Best Short Stories of Jack London
5. New Glass Architecture, Brent Richards
   
6. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Ken Kesey
7. The Theory of Everything, Steven Hawking
8. Ella Minnow Pea, Mark Dunn
9. Halo: the Fail of Reach, Eric Nyland
10. The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, Jean-Dominique Bauby
11. The Siege, Ismail Kadare *
12. Dreaming Up America, Russell Banks
13. The Historian, Elizabeth Kostova *
14. Five People You Meet in Heaven, Mitch Albom
15. The Girl Who Played With Fire, Stieg Larsson
16. Carl Haffner's Love of the Draw, Thomas Glavinic
17. Mistborn, Brandon Sanderson *
    
18. Philosophy of Andy Warhol, Andy Warhol
19. The Flanders Panel, Arturo Perez-Reverte
20. The Host, Stephanie Meyer
21. Angel Tracks in the Himalayas, Gary Shepherd
22. Halting State, Charles Stross
23. Empire, Orson Scott Card
24. Wild at Heart, John Eldredge
25. Green, Ted Dekker
26. I Am American (And So Can You), Stephen Colbert
27. The Driver, Alex Roy
28. Snow Crash, Neal Stephenson *
29. Girl With Curious Hair, David Foster Wallace *
30. Elegance of the Hedgehog, Muriel Barbery * #
31. Nudge, Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein
32. Unlikely Disciple, Kevin Roose *
33. Usagi Yojimbo (various volumes), Stan Sakai
34. Cryptonomicon, Neal Stephenson *
35. Fables (various volumes), Bill Willingham
36. Give Me Liberty, Frank Miller
37. Born to Run, Christopher McDougal *
38. Boomsday, Christopher Buckley
39. Return of the Dark Knight, Frank Miller
40. Batman:Year One, Frank Miller
41. The Learners, Chip Kidd
    
42. Lowboy, John Wray
43. Sandman, Vol 1, Neil Gaiman
44. A Friendly Game, Joe Pimienta
45. Sex God, Rob Bell
46. The Other, David Guterson
47. The Infernal City, Greg Keyes
48. The Marquis, Guy Davis
49. Eifelheim, Michael Flynn *
50. The Queen's Gambit, Walter Tevis
51. The World According to Garp, John Irving
52. The Prodigal God, Tim Keller
53. Ghost World, Dan Clowes
54. Maus, Art Speigelman
55. Reading Comics, Douglas Wolk
56. Searching for God Knows What, Donald Miller * #
57. Y: The Last Man (various volumes), Brian K Vaughn *
58. Rural Studio: Sam Mockabee and an Architecture of Decency, Andrea Oppenheimer Dean and Timothy Hursley
    

Tares and Wheat *

Many a good truth has been upheld by wicked men for their own purposes. And good men have caused much wickedness in their zealotry."

"The Armleder."

Dietrich hesitated. "That was one such case. There were good men among them." He fell silent thinking of the fishwife and her boy in the Frieburg market.

"There was a leader among the Armleder," Joachim said slowly, "called 'Angelus' "

Dietrich was a long time silent, "that man is dead now," he said at last. "But through him I learned a terrible truth: that heresy is truth in extremis. The proper object of the eye is light, but too much light blinds the eye."

"So, you would compromise with the wicked, as the Convectuals do?"

"Jesus said the weeds would grow with the wheat until the Judgment," Dietrich answered," so one finds both good men and bad in the Church. By our fruits we will be known, not by what name we have called ourselves. I have come to believe that there is more grace in becoming wheat than there is in pulling weeds."

"So might a weed say, had it speech," said Joachim. "You split hairs."

"Better to split hairs than the heads beneath them."


~ Michael Flynn, Eifelheim


*Matthew 13:24-30

My new friend at Simon and Schuster

More great news to pass on! Another big shipment of donated books arrived, this one larger than before.

Last week, I sent a thank you letter to the person who sent the first box of 35 books. It's the least I could do after such an awesome gift. Well, today we received another box from Simon and Schuster. We opened it up and found 60 books inside!

Their subjects are all over the place, a huge variety. They even tossed in a few signed copies of a few titles, one of which is "Jarhead" by Andrew Strosser. How crazy is that?! This relationship with Simon and Schuster has been a huge unexpected blessing.

My mom also traded in a bunch of Bible commentaries (of which we have lots already) to get more desirable books from Half Price Bookstore. I didn't count them all, but it was enough to fill up two good-sized boxes. Thank you to her and to my friends in Dallas who provided the currency for bartering.

Fun reading stuff

I had an exciting package come in the mail today! Four graphic novels, on loan from Booksfree.com (a Netflix-for-books service) arrived in two separate envelopes. This service was given to me by my folks as an early birthday gift - one month early, to be exact. Just like Netflix, you set up a queue of books online. Booksfree uses the queue to send books as they are available and as many as are allowed on your plan.

I don't read books - real books - fast enough right now to make good use of a subscription. Work, rec, and church activities eat my time up faster than Pacman can eat those little balls! However, I love to read comics and can blaze through a graphic novel faster than proper books. Enter Booksfree.

Before I asked to get the Booksfree subscription, my mom scoped out the site, along with some other book rental sites, for titles and writers that I'm interested in. Booksfree happened to have nearly all of the items I asked about. So, it was Booksfree that won out. My mom used my list of titles to start a queue.

At the top of the queue: old school samurai rabbit Usagi Yojimbo. The first three collections of comics arrived today along with a collection of comic stories called "Fables", which is an offshoot of a running series. When I finish with them, I slide the books into the prepaid plastic envelopes that came with them and ship them out. Pretty cool, huh? Then I sit back and wait for the next batch to come in. That's one thing I've become very good at over the past few years - waiting.

I'm excited to catch up on some stories and artists that I've missed either form negligence while I was out or inability since I've been in prison. There's some really good stuff out there.

One Unhappy Customer

"Are you ready to leave?'

In the library I was shelving books. The question came from my boss and was directed at a guy standing by the check out table.

"No, I'm not ready to leave. I'm waiting to check out these books.

"You can holler at either one of us when you get ready," said my co-worker, who was also shelving and rearranging books.

"No," the guy said as he turned with a scowl, "One of y'all needs to be behind this table all the time to work."

Hearing voices escalating, I moved to the table to hurry this guy out the door before things got crazy.

"Man, we have work outside that table, too," retorted my co-worker, getting louder.

"You'll check out my books first."

"STOP!" exclaimed my boss. "STOP IT GUYS. NOW!"

"Shut up your worker's smart mouth first," mumbled the angry customer under his breath.

I quickly and calmly checked out the books and showed the guy out the door, hoping that he and my co-worker would not cross paths soon. For the first time in a while the library was dead silent.

Different kind of library

The library here has one amenity that no other prison library I've seen has - inter-library loan. I'm surprised any libraries at all would lend books to a prison, but we have an agreement with the local high school library, which doubles as a community library.

I used the Tex-share program when I was going to community college to visit the nearby university for research materials. Just like that community college, our prison library has weak selection of books. The agreement we have with the local library effectively quadruples our collection, quite a boon for a reader like me with different tastes than the usual guys.

I gave the system a try this week. When I asked my boss to check on the availability of a few books, only one of the five was in the local library's collection. My coworker had better luck with a few books targeted for young adult readers. Apparently they still favor high-school reading over sci-fi and non-fiction for an older audience. The book I got is on the bestseller's list anyway, so it wasn't a surprise to find that they had it. I guess other guys will gain more from the inter-library loan agreement than I will. It's just cool that it's in place.

"Finish it and come back!"

Out of the many donated books we have received over the past couple weeks, there are a few that I haven't read that look pretty interesting. Unfortunately, I just started a fairly long book, so I won't be able to try the new stuff for a while. What I've done is promote them to friends to take on the test drive so they can let me know whether the books are worth the read. No one took my "suggestions" until my friend, Lelan, agreed to read one for me a few days ago.

Today Lelan dropped by the library while we were empty. "Why did you suggest this book to me?" he asked. "It's not a good one at all."

"I didn't so much recommend it," I said, "I thought I wanted to read it myself, but wanted to hear how someone else liked it. Why is it so bad? What's going on?"

Now Lelan is a former theater teacher, thus his dramatic side comes out with ease. He launched into a fascinating retelling of the story of the odd book, leaving me and my boss enraptured. When he took a break, we asked questions to pull out more details, told with thespian flair. Lelan's bookmark was placed midway between the two covers of the volume., so we didn't get to hear the whole story. Full of anticipation, my boss cried. "I want to know what happens! Finish it and come back!"

I felt bad for passing Lelan a bad read but it was really fun to hear his version of the story. I can't wait to hear the conclusion either.

Book sleuth

This was the last day (hopefully) that I did the book cart without Ereman. I've had to leave the morning church service two weeks in a row now because of the book cart, and I'm hoping not to need to do it again. I thought I was finished before lunch but was proven wrong later in the day.

The afternoon was filled with a pleasant visit from the younger of my two friends. This was the first time I had a visit with Betsy on her own and, just like before, it was like hanging out with an old friend.

On the way out of the visit, I was told that an officer at another dorm was looking for me. Hmmm, that's strange, I thought. Why would a guard from the other side of the unit want to see me? When I arrived at the dorm the officer showed me a spine tag from one of the book cart books.

"Can you find out which book this is so I can look for it? It seems like someone is trying to steal from the book cart."

Oh yeah, I can find out which book it is. I work hard to make a quality book cart for the guys and someone wants to steal from it. I got back into the library and looked up the number of the book in our paperwork. I even found the name of the guy who checked out the book to make sure he knew someone was trying to make off with his book and get him into trouble. Only a few minutes later I returned to the officer with the info I had dug up. It felt kind of like a detective mission. I don't know if the book was found yet but at least I did what I could, considering the circumstances. I really don't like people who ruin a good thing for others, especially when I put effort into making the good thing better.

New Books!

The library was closed today because our boss called in sick, which meant that we peons had to drag the book cart around the whole unit. I don't so much dislike the act of rolling around as the endless "This stuff is all trash", "Did you bring any good books this time?" and "When you gonna put more [favorite author] on the cart?" The book cart is populated by beat-up donations and books we take off the shelf because we have too many copies, so it usually doesn't have much quality stuff on it. Ereman and I have worked hard at reorganizing the cart and adding some better books. Unfortunately, it is still the very ugly duckling in a not-so-beautiful library.

Such was my attitude, weary of the cutting comments, when Ereman and I turned in the cart. We both wish we had more to offer. Our tired selves went into the education department to let the principal know we had finished.

It was to our great joy and surprise to find the principal sitting at the table in the break room pulling books out of a box that held many more. I recognized some of the covers and exclaimed, "Wow, I didn't think she brought that many!"

Last week I asked my mom to bring up some books out of my personal library at home to donate to the library here. When I saw her this weekend in visitation, she said she had brought those books and a few that she had quickly gathered out of her and my dad's collection. "Okay," I'm thinking, " twelve books or so is going to
be a great addition."Well, this box I'm seeing in the break room has at least twenty books, probably more than double what I expected. Awesome!

"Looks like you two have some work to do this afternoon," the principal said with a big smile. We spent the rest of the day prepping these "new" books for the shelf in a much better mood than earlier today. And my mom said she had more books to pull together; those are in addition to books that another friend said she wants to donate. Maybe this library will receive a complete makeover. It sure could use it.

For the love of reading

For those of you who are curious, here is my reading list from 2009. The books are arranged in chronological order of my reading them with one star for recommended reading and two stars for my three favorites:

1. Kingless Land - Ed Greenwood
2. On the Road - Jack Kerouac *
3. The Jesus Way - Eugene Peterson
4. Truefaced - Bill Thrall, Bruce McNicol, John Lynch
5. Ex-Con for Christ - Dan Dugan
6. Watchman - Alan Moore *
7. Cat's Cradle - Kurt Vonnegut
8. Don't Waste Your Life - John Piper
9. Walking With God - John Eldredge *
10. Othello - William Shakespeare
11. Midsummer Night's Dream -- William Shakespeare
12. Dr. Faustus - Christopher Marlowe
13. The Idiot - Fyodor Dostoevsky *
14. Darkness Visible - William Golding
15. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince *
16. Pygmalion - George Bernard Shaw
17. ABC of Architecture - James O'Gorman
18. Architecture - Jonathan Glancey
19. Architecture: A World History - Daniel Borden
20. Building - Mario Salvadori
21. Gulag Archipelago - Alexandr Solzhenitsyn **
22. The Dharma Bums - Jack Kerouac *
23. The Housekeeper and the Professor - Yoko Ogawa **
24. Architecture - Sinclair Gauldie *
25. Architecture as Art - Stanley Abercrombie
26. Shortcomings - Adrian Tomine
27. V For Vendetta - Alan Moore
28. Experiencing Architecture - Steen Eiler Rasmussen *
29. Real Christianity - William Wilberforce
30. Atlas Shrugged - Ayn Rand *
31. Black - Ted Dekker
32. Red - Ted Dekker
33. White - Ted Dekker
34. Same Kind of Different As Me - Ron Hall and Denver Moore *
35. Alvar Aalto - Nicholas Rey *
36. Godric - Frederick Buechner *
37. Turn of the Screw - Henry James
38. The Kite Runner - Khaled Hasseini *
39. A Thousand Splendid Suns _ Khaled Hasseini
40. The Road - Cormac McCarthy
41. Shadow's End - Sherri S. tepper
42. The Walking Road - Robert Kirkman
43. The Postman - David Brin *
44. Jedi Search - Kevin J. Anderson
45. Secrets in the Dark - Frederick Buechner **



"How many a man has dated a new era in his life from the reading of a book." ~Henry David Thoreau, Walden