Book List 2019

It's due time to post my books list for 2019. I took it easy in 2019 compared to 2018, partially because I was pushing hard to complete the Pioneer Book challenge last year. This year, I was only beholden to the book club, but that only demanded 12 books out of me. Here's the list.

1. Death on the Nile---Agatha Christie
2. A River in Darkness---Masaji Ishikawa
3. Da Vinci Code---Dan Brown
4. The Paper Magician---Charlie Holmberg
5. The Glass Magician---Charlie Holmberg
6. The Master Magician---Charlie Holmberg
7. Educated---Tara Westover
8. Being Mortal---Atul Gawande
9. The Spy Who Came in from the Cold---John de la Carrie
10. The Color of Magic---Terry Prachett
11. The Broken Circle--Enjeela Ahmadi-Miller
12. Factfulness--Hans Rosling
13. Murder on the Links--Agatha Christie
14. The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society--Mary Ann Schaffer
15. Magnus Chase and the Gods of Asgard: the Sword of Summer--Rick Riordan
16. Saints: The Standard of Truth--The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
17. Hidden Figures--Margot Lee Shetterly
18. The Art of War--Sun Tzu
19. Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief--Rick Riordan
20. The Canterville Ghost--Oscar Wilde
21. The Murder of Roger Ackroyd--Agatha Christie
22. The Inimitable Jeeves--PG Wodehouse
23. The Circular Staircase--Mary Roberts Rinehart
24. Behind a Mask--Louisa May Alcott
25. Hillbilly Elegy--JD Vance
26. Mossad--Michael Bar-Zohar and Nissim Mishal
27. Oliver Twist--Charles Dickens
28. A Town Divided by Christmas--Orson Scott Card
29. A Christmas Carol--Charles Dickens
30. The Plastic Magician--Charlie Holmberg
31. The New Testement
32. What If?---Randall Munroe

I guess I'll start with the books I didn't care so much for. At the top of the list was The Color of Magic by Terry Pratchett. I'd certainly heard of Terry Prachett before as a modern author with a good reputation, so I didn't make much fuss when this was proposed as a book club read. Pretty much there was very little redeeming about this book, as far as I'm concerned. I get that it was his first book and that it is meant to be a satire of the fantasy genre, both elements which no doubt contributed to the crappiness, but I still didn't think it was executed well despite the bad premise. The main thing that majorly turned me off was the terrible treatment of women in the book. Basically every female in the book was either literally a whore or was powerful, but completely naked and slavering after the male protagonists. I get that this element was unquestionable part of the satire bit, but I don't think it was even an accurate critique of any fantasy book of quality. Lord of the Rings, for example, doesn't feature that many women, but the ones Tolkien does feature are very admirable and contribute to the overall story in important ways beyond their relationships to the male characters. Admittedly, this is less true for Arwen in the book than it is for Eowyn. Still, the treatment of women is far more respectful and inspirational in Lord of the Rings than what you see in The Color of Magic. I also found the construction of The Color of Magic problematic and the underlying mythos of Discworld was simply ridiculous to me. Most of the other book club members also didn't like it. I've heard that later Prachett books are better, but I'm afraid that I'm now quite unlikely to pick any of those up ever.

The other book I didn't much care for this year was another book club book, but one that I supported selecting. It was Hidden Figures. I really enjoyed the movie version of the book, so I thought I would like reading the book even more, since that is pretty much always the case for me. This book was the one exception. My advice is to do yourself a favor and watch the movie, which is excellent, and skip the book, which is only ok. My main problem with the book was that it felt rather slow and plodding, stripping the story of much of it's drama. Part of that was because there was a lot of unneeded technical info that detracted rather than contributing to the plot, in my opinion. It wasn't a terrible book, but it definitely could have used improvement. I wasn't at all surprised to learn in the epilogue that it was again, the first published book from the author, who wrote it because her father worked at Langley. It made total sense from that angle. I don't blame the author so much as I do the publisher for not doing heavy reworking on it. The story was inspiring, but the writing was very lackluster.

I'll also note that I didn't care for The Da Vinci Code much, though I found reading it more worthwhile than the others. The main problem I had with the book was that the author heavily used real elements in largely fictional ways. At the beginning, I was looking up a lot of the art and organizations mentioned to figure out how much of what was said was true. After doing this very often for the first fourth or so of the book, I learned that generally about 70% of the info about real things in the book was actually fiction, so I decided to basically assume everything said about anything real was false from then on since I couldn't rely on what I was being told and didn't have time to verify everything. I also called some of the big twists of the story way early just because there was a certain predictability about the plot. Otherwise, I thought it was an engaging read. Dan Brown actually seems like a pretty good author, especially when it comes to action sequences. This is probably why the book was such a cultural phenomenon. I also regretted having read it less for that reason. It increased my cultural literacy to some extent and wasn't too painful in the process. So, decent pick, book club!

Now on to the books I most appreciated this year. Two of my favorites were about escapes from awful regimes. I guess this kind of book appeals to me at least in part because it increases my understanding of the world and makes me feel extremely blessed to live in freedom. The first book I read was A River in Darkness. I picked this book up because it was on sale for very cheap on Kindle. It's the story of a Japanese/Korean man's escape from North Korea. He grew up mostly in Japan with his mother's family, but his Korean father pushed to go to North Korea shortly after the Korean war when North Korea was promising a much better life to the many Koreans living in Japan. The Japanese mother eventually agreed, and it turned into a nightmare for the whole family, unsurprisingly. Though many promises were made, anyone with Japanese connections was very looked down upon in Korea, so they were left impoverished and outcast from society very quickly. Eventually, the author married and had several children, but despite doing the most degrading, dangerous work possible to keep his family afloat, eventually several of his children starved to death and the rest of the family was on the verge of doing the same. This impelled the author to escape. He managed to make it back to Japan, but has been unsuccessful in getting the rest of his family out as well, so he is still miserable despite his situation being better. It really was quite a sad tale that illustrated the evils of communism and the tragedy suffered by families who mistakenly trusted in it to some degree or another. It was a depressing read, but an important one.

I enjoyed reading The Broken Circle more simply because it was more hopeful. I picked this up for free on Kindle through one of their promotions. The book starts out describing the author's early life growing up in Kabul, Afghanistan. Her father worked for the the American Embassy and the family lived in comparative affluence with the family often hosting lavish parties for dignitaries. Then, in the late 70's, the Soviet-backed communists took over the government and the family survived in seclusion for a period. The mother and two daughters left to go to India for medical treatment early in this phase. Shortly thereafter, leaving the country was no longer an option. The father was on the government radar quickly, since he worked for the Americans. He decided it was time to leave the country, though he had to send his remaining children out apart from himself for their safety. He gave them plenty of money and arranged for a friend to guide them across the border into Pakistan. Over the next year and a half of travel, they suffered many dangers due to the dangerous terrain and fighting across the countryside. Their faithful guide not only protected them from those dangers, but also from human dangers, like country men who would take refugee children into slavery after offering shelter. At the border, the children were sent across alone to find a hotel where they were to wait to reunite with their father. The guide then disappeared back into Afghanistan to fight with the mujaheddin. The children waited over 6 months, having to severely ration money, before their father finally arrived. Eventually, they were reunited as a family in India before immigrating to the US.

It was interesting comparing these two different stories of escape. Family was a major theme in both narratives. The first story felt increasingly depressing because the family basically had no support at any time, floundering futilely to stay together in an uncaring world until the miserable end. The family in the second story certainly also went through it's trials, but there was a sense of a caring community striving to help them succeed all along the way. A strand of human kindness from strangers ran all the way through the story, helping to reunite the family happily. I feel that there are two major differences that contributed to the different outcomes. The first difference was the social and monetary capital each family enjoyed. It certainly helps to have funds to support an escape, but the social construction of the culture probably matters more. Apparently, Asian cultures have a pretty strict social class structure that is well-nigh impossible to traverse. This isn't so true in Middle Eastern culture, which is invested in extending hospitality to all people, regardless of social standing. This ties into the second major difference, which is religion. Religion is entirely absent from the first narrative, while it permeates the second. Everyone knows that communists are repressive of religion in general, but they've been more successful at that in Asia, where religion often falls more into the category of philosophy, than they were in the Middle East, where religion is entirely woven into the fabric of society. I believe that the adherence to their religion was one of the things that helped the Afghanis to weather communism better. Communist ideas weren't as able to flourish there because Islam inoculated them against it. Of course, recent years have shown that while communism wasn't able to take root in the Middle East, terrorism certainly was able to flourish. That's a whole different issue, however. I think that the takeaway for me was that the community established through a strong religious tradition offers a protection for the weakest and most vulnerable which is lacking in societies outside the Abrahamic tradition. Both these books were very worthwhile and really enriched my understanding of the world.

My favorite book of the year was also an autobiography, which is apparently a genre I like. It was Educated by Tara Westover. I read this one for book club, but actively campaigned for it after recommendations from Dad. It certainly hit much closer to home, being set in Idaho in a Mormon family. That made it more relateable, certainly, since my family is from around the same area, but there were definite differences in the Westover family, which was much more fringe LDS. They were prepper-type people who homeschooled all their kids (sort of), stockpiled guns and such, and don't believe in modern medicine. A good portion of the book was spent on harrowing tales about the complete disregard for safety the family exhibited, leading to one situation after another where the reader is left to wonder how any of these people survived, especially since they just rub some essential oils on life-threatening injuries. It also lead to some abusive relationships in the family that were tolerated in ways that should never be acceptable. No doubt there was some mental illness involved that contributed to some of these problems, but there was also a lot of intelligence in the family too. All the kids that went the more mainstream approach have achieved a lot more than would be expected considering their background. Harder to understand is how Tara all but abandoned her religion over time. I suppose it was just the creeping influence of the world compared to the dysfunctional background she came from. She has brothers who maintained their faith while also going a mainstream path, but everyone has different experiences, of course. It was interesting to learn that my Aunt and Uncle were good friends with the family of Tara's brother, Tyler, who is shown in the best light in the book. They met him while both my uncle and Tyler went to Purdue. It was interesting to have a personal window into the story. It's a gripping book I would definitely recommend reading.

It's been an interesting year of reading all around. I find myself drawn more and more to non-fiction these days than I ever was in the past. I suppose that's partly because I find that non-fiction is a great way to further my own personal education and as I become more settled in myself, escape from reality is less of a draw for me. Still, it's sometimes nice to immerse myself in a well-crafted piece of fiction. That's about it. We'll see how 2020 goes. I hope to read more this year than I did last year.