What was the best book you read this year?

This Town by Mark Leibovich was rather entertaining, although perhaps suffers because it received so much coverage (meaning I had heard most of the best anecdotes before I read it).

Richard Posner's Reflections on Judging, on the other hand, received far too little coverage (minus one press blip re: voter ID cases). It repackages many ideas he has published elsewhere, but still seems like an extraordinarily important book. Recommended for anyone curious about how our legal system works--and how it will need to change in the future.

 

I read quickly, so I can afford to waste a week or two on an average/mediocre book. I read 24 books this year, close to one every two weeks.

But as I get older, I've taught myself how to permanently put down a book that I'm not liking. Case in point, Chabon's "The Yiddish Policeman's Union," which I stopped reading after about 20% on my Kindle last week.

That said, I know my interests and instincts well enough that most of the books I pick turn out to be pretty good.

 

Life is too short to read garbage, members and moderators.
There are too many good books out there to waste one minute on a bad one.
I have a large personal library stocked only with stuff that blows my skirt up.

 

Driving home from over-the-river-and-through-the-woods today, we were in a pack with a trailer with an Alaska sticker and "BESHERT!" stenciled across the back. I so wanted to ask the driver if he was a character who'd jumped out of YPU.

If you know anything about the setting of the book, and that comment doesn't make sense to you, the book may not be for you. I don't agree with those who say women can't write about war and men can't write about childbirth, but YPU is one of those books where it really does help to be Jewish to read it.

 

It helps. I'm Jewish and understood the cultural aspects. But i did find the book to be a bit of a slog. I stuck with it because I loved Kavalier and Klay from the get-go (and really enjoyed his novella, "Gentlemen of the Road" in the interim) and so eagerly anticipated YPU. But it took me about halfway through to get into it and even then i never felt like i couldn't put it down. Chabon is a great storyteller but he has a real tendency to overwrite. And i never connected with the characters in YPU as i did with those in K&K. One thing I love about his books is he always makes a reference to a headstone dealer called "Faleder Monuments" (I saw it near the start of Mysteries of Pittsburgh, again in K&K and again in YPU). There's an actual Faleder Monuments in Pittsburgh, where Chabon lived for a time, and my great-uncle, who I only met once as a kid, was the proprietor. I've always been meaning to contact Chabon himself and ask what it is about the place that inspired him to put a fictional one in all his novels, regardless of the city.

 

Oh, do you have a "large personal library"? I'm impressed.

Tell us more about your PhD, wise one. And, hey, if your students need any more advice, shoot me another PM.

 

You better not be getting fresh with me, Dickie.
Because I'll paddle your ass right here in front of all these nice people.

 

Duly noted, Dr.

 

You're acting irrationally.
This is not the action of a deeeep thinker such as you, Dickie.

 

Serious cool points.

 

buckweaver made the Jews get all territorial.

 

Bill Carter's latest book on Late Night TV.
Double Down by Mark Halperin
A Frozen Hell: The Russo-Finnish Winter War of 1939-1940
Three and Out - John Bacon's book on Rich Rod.

Special Mention:
Assassination: The Brick Chronicles of Attempted Assassinations on 12 US Presidents. (The Lego book). Funniest book I've come across since The Onion's Our Dumb Century.