I don’t know if it’s a good thing or a bad thing, but I’m an omnivorous reader. I’ll read about history, physics, math, religion, science, business or technology, and I read gobs of novels. I was reviewing some of the books I’ve really enjoyed, and thought I’d share ten that you may not have read:
- A Peace to End All Peace: The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and the Creation of the Modern Middle East, by David Fromkin. I could not put this down, as it described the arrogance and folly that seeded the current middle eastern crises. It’s a story that’s been told before, but never with the eloquence, erudition, and the telling eye for detail of David Fromkin.
- Ender’s Game, by Orson Scott Card. This, along with perhaps Robert Heinlein’s Stranger in a Strange Land, is Science Fiction 101. Even if you don’t like sci-fi: I defy you not to be mesmerized by this amazing story.
- When the Game Stands Tall: The Story of the De La Salle Spartans and Football’s Longest Winning Streak, by Neil Hayes. A truly remarkable true story of a football coach, Bob Ladoceur, who genuinely cares more about teaching young men than he does about wins and losses. He never… I mean, never… talks about winning or losing. All that happens as he focuses solely on “doing things right” is: his team does not lose a single football game for over 12 years, despite playing one of the toughest schedules in the nation.
- Fermat’s Enigma, by Simon Singh. Singh is an awesome writer about all things science and math, having also written The Code Book (about cryptography) and The Big Bang (about, well, the big bang). This is the story of a quest stretching over hundreds of years to produce a proof for the last theorem of 17th-century French mathematician Pierre de Fermat. It is a better story than you could imagine, full of hard work, sleuthing, and luck. I know you don’t believe me, but this is a great book.
- Misquoting Jesus: The Story of Who Changed the Bible, and Why, by Bart Ehrman. Ehrman is the chairman of the department of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina, and he has written an amazing, accessible book that will teach you a great deal about how our current Bible came to be.
- The Shadow of the Wind, by Carlos Ruiz Zafron. What a novel. A young boy’s bibliophile father introduces him to the single work of an obscure author, Julian Carax. The boy loves the novel so much that he begins to seek out both the author and any other work of his, only to discover that someone is systematically ridding the world of every trace of Carax’s work. But why? A really interesting whodunit ensues.
- The Brothers K, by David James Duncan. Duncan, the author of another great book in The River Why, spins the tale of the Chance family, led by disappointed former minor league baseball player Papa Toe Chance. It is a crazy-quilt of religion, family tension, politics and baseball, and it is wonderful on every page. I read this on a vacation that I hardly remember, as I was so engrossed in the book.
- Moneyball, by Michael Lewis. Well, you might have read this one; a lot of people did. What those people did not know, though, is that they were reading the single best business book I’ve ever read. They thought it was a baseball story. Lewis attempts to answer a single question about the Oakland A’s baseball team: with one of the lowest payrolls in baseball, why are they always so good? The answer applies to all businesses.
- The Lost Painting, by Jonathan Harr. Can a true story about a couple of art historians figuring out the whereabouts of a lost Caravaggio masterpiece actually be incredibly interesting and fun to read? The answer, surpisingly, is yes.
- Pistol: the Life of Pete Maravich, by Mark Kriegel. The all-time leading scorer in college basketball history was beset by demons, not least of which was a coach/father who lived through his son’s exploits. Like The Great Santini, only true.
Got any of your own?
