Since I'm known as a man of letters, I'm kicking Best Of Week off with 2008's best books (a.k.a. Pretty Much Every Non-Magazine/Internet Bunch Of Words That I Read Last Year):
The best:
Blue Like Jazz: Nonreligious Thoughts on Christian Spirituality by Donald Miller: I just really, really liked this memoir, which details Miller's journey back to God after losing his faith. It's written in a very conversational tone, which makes it seem like he's talking directly to you. While I don't quite always agree with him (mainly, his politics), I found this book to be both enlightening AND enjoyable.
The rest (listed alphabetically):
Dead Sea by Brian Keene
An Inconvenient Book: Real Solutions to the World's Biggest Problems by Glenn Beck
Into Hot Air: Mounting Mount Everest by Chris Elliott
My Custom Van: And 50 Other Mind-Blowing Essays that Will Blow Your Mind All Over Your Face by Michael Ian Black
The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway
Rock On: An Office Power Ballad by Dan Kennedy
Soon I Will Be Invincible by Austin Grossman
Things I've Learned From Women Who've Dumped Me edited by Ben Karlin
A Year at the Movies: One Man's Filmgoing Odyssey by Kevin Murphy
Unfinished reading, so look for these on 2009's list (hopefully):
Our Dumb World: The Onion's Atlas of the Planet Earth, 73rd Edition* by the Onion
When You Are Engulfed in Flames by David Sedaris
Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis
Tobacco: A Cultural History of How an Exotic Plant Seduced Civilization by Iain Gately
Note: This list contains only a handful of books published in 2008 because: a) I rarely buy books right when they are released; b) I have a HUGE reading pile; and c) I'm a pretty slow reader. But the above is what I read - and dug - this past year. Deal with it.
*Hilarious book, but I make only so many trips to the john in a given year.
7 comments:
really liked blj too, though i thought it was overrated compared to his next memoir, Looking for God Knows What, which is one of my all-time favorite books. however, am hoping that the blue... movie comes out soon; everything i hear about it makes me excited.
think the hemingway was actually titled Old Maid and the Sea.
I've got that book, too. It's on my ever-growing reading pile. As for the BLJ movie, I haven't heard any updates in a long time (granted, I haven't really looked). I wonder what's going on with it.
And you're thinking of the popular children's card game that was inspired by that work.
pfft, books!
Nice list. Nothing better than a good book. You might also like Girls With Non-French Accents by Brian Ward..little hard to find though.
Wrong. Denise Milani is better than a good book.
SBN1 - Man, I laughed for the longest time when I clicked that link. That shirt is almost worth getting. If only it was a bit cheaper.
Denae - The title intrigues me. I'll have to seek that out.
last i heard they had trouble finding funding for it - largely b/c of this economy thingy.
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