Books 2008

As of today, I've read 102 books in 2008. I've sorted the books into pretty much the same categories as last year. The mix is about the same -- less fiction than last year (2, down from 6), fewer politics, fewer food, fewer writing and entertainment. More general popular non-fiction stuff. But basically the same. 

Best ten of the year, each one highly recommended: 

1. Traffic: Why We Drive The Way We Do (and What It Says About Us) by Tom Vanderbilt. Sounds boring but absolutely isn't. A discussion of how we behave in traffic, what traffic engineers think about when they're planning roads, why some people are early- mergers, some people are late-mergers, and which is most efficient.... Okay, it still sounds boring. But it's the best book I read all year. If you drive, you should read it. 

2. One in Three: A Son's Journey into the History and Science of Cancer by Adam Wishart. Another one that I guess probably sounds boring. Sorry. But, again, it isn't. Wishart intersperses the story of his father's diagnosis and treatment with the history of cancer and how modern thought about cancer has developed. Perhaps because of my mom's breast cancer, I found it a pretty compelling and affecting read. Even better than that, it was real science written in a comprehensible way without feeling dumbed down. 

3. The Fruit Hunters: A Story of Nature, Adventure, Commerce, and Obsession by Adam Leith Gollner. There are lots more fruit than the ones in the supermarket, and Gollner finds them. Fruit that taste like ice cream, fruit that look like cotton candy, fruit that make your taste buds turn weird. I'd be surprised if movie rights haven't sold, or at least a Food Network TV series. 

4. Free-Range Chickens by Simon Rich. Short humor pieces. Quick read, but Rich is very very good at what he does, comes up with instantly funny premises and then executes succintly and effectively. Not every piece is a winner, but it's a pretty impressive collection. 

5. The Soul of Baseball: A Road Trip Through Buck O'Neil's America by Joe Posnanski. This book is a couple of years old, and I should have read it sooner. I knew nothing about Buck O'Neil going in. No matter. Posnanski, who's a great writer with a great baseball blog, tells a wonderful story. From Booklist, because I'm too lazy to paraphrase: "After spending a few years trying to write a baseball book, sportswriter Posnanski lucked into a story that positively cried out to be told. Buck O'Neil, a Hall of Fame member and Negro League veteran who died last October, was a man who loved the game with a burning passion that never lessened in intensity. During the last year of his life, O'Neil joined Posnanski on a road trip to Kansas City (where Buck played for the Kansas City Monarchs), to New York, and to Minneapolis (for Buck O'Neil Day at the Metronome). Along the way, as O'Neil remembers names and faces from his life on and off the field, we are transported back to a time when baseball was, if not more innocent, at least more like a game and less like a business." 

6. Wordcraft: The Art of Turning Little Words into Big Business by Alex Frankel. Inside the product-naming industry. If you ever wondered how the BlackBerry got its name.... Solid, solid book. 

7. Snoop: What Your Stuff Says About You by Sam Gosling. Why we buy what we buy, and why we like the products we like, but with examples and stories you haven't read before, and aren't in every other book that sounds sort of like this one. 

8. Horizontal Hold: The Making and Breaking of a Network Television Pilot by Daniel Paisner. Should have read this years ago. If you have any interest in the television development process, this book's great. Holds up despite being 15 years old, which I really wasn't expecting. 

9. The Numerati by Stephen Baker. The story of data mining. 

10. Ahead of the Curve: Two Years at Harvard Business School by Philip Delves Broughton. Business school sounds a lot like law school. Good read.

And three more highly recommended books of 2008 (or, in the third case, 2007, but I got to it late) by a friend and two Internet-friends:

Follow the Roar: Tailing Tiger for All 604 Holes of His Most Spectacular Season by Bob Smiley.  All golf fans should already have a copy.

Lawyer Boy: A Case Study on Growing Up by Rick Lax.  All aspiring law students should already have a copy.

 

My Start-Up Life: What a (Very) Young CEO Learned on His Journey Through Silicon Valley by Ben Casnocha.  All aspiring entrepreneurs should already have a copy.

Everything I read in 2008: (each category sorted in rough order of how much I liked the books) 

FICTION (2) 

Who Stole the Funny?: A Novel of Hollywood (Robby Benson) 

A Circle is a Balloon and Compass Both: Stories about Human Love (Ben Greenman) 

POLITICS (2) 

Looking Forward to It: Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the American Electoral Process (Stephen Elliott) 

The Argument: Billionaires, Bloggers, and the Battle to Remake Democratic Politics (Matt Bai) 

HUMOR (3) 

Free-Range Chickens (Simon Rich)* 

I Am America (And So Can You!) (Stephen Colbert) 

BORAT: Touristic Guidings to Minor Nation of U.S. and A. and Touristic Guidings to Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan (Borat Sagdiyev) 

PERSONAL NARRATIVE NON-FICTION (7) 

Ahead of the Curve: Two Years at Harvard Business School (Philip Delves Broughton)* 

Lawyer Boy: A Case Study on Growing Up (Rick Lax) 

My Start-Up Life: What a (Very) Young CEO Learned on His Journey Through Silicon Valley (Ben Casnocha)

Cabin Pressure: One Man's Desperate Attempt to Recapture His Youth as a Camp Counselor (Josh Wolk) 

Camp (Michael Eisner) 

The Last Lecture (Randy Pausch) 

Smile When You're Lying: Confessions of a Rogue Travel Writer (Chuck Thompson) 

POPULAR NON-FICTION (23) 

Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do (and What It Says About Us) (Tom Vanderbilt)* 

Wordcraft: The Art of Turning Little Words into Big Business (Alex Frankel)* 

Snoop: What Your Stuff Says About You (Sam Gosling)* 

The Numerati (Stephen Baker)* 

The Fortune Cookie Chronicles: Adventures in the World of Chinese Food (Jennifer 8. Lee) 

Starbucked: A Double Tall Tale of Caffeine, Commerce, and Culture (Taylor Clark) 

Pitch Perfect: The Quest for Collegiate A Cappella Glory (Mickey Rapkin) 

Buying In: The Secret Dialogue Between What We Buy and Who We Are (Rob Walker) 

Relentless Pursuit: A Year in the Trenches with Teach for America (Donna Foote) 

Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations (Clay Shirky) 

The Science of Fear: Why We Fear the Things We Shouldn't--and Put Ourselves in Greater Danger (Daniel Gardner) 

Everything Is Miscellaneous: The Power of the New Digital Disorder (David Weinberger) 

One Perfect Day: The Selling of the American Wedding (Rebecca Mead) 

Nerds: Who They Are and Why We Need More of Them (David Anderegg) 

American Nerd: The Story of My People (Benjamin Nugent) 

Train Time: Railroads and the Imminent Reshaping of the United States Landscape (John Stilgoe) 

Girls Like Us: Carole King, Joni Mitchell, Carly Simon--And the Journey of a Generation (Sheila Weller) 

The Future of the Internet--And How to Stop It (Jonathan Zittrain) 

Guyland: The Perilous World Where Boys Become Men (Michael Kimmel) 

Stop Whining, Start Living (Dr. Laura Schlesinger) 

The Pirate's Dilemma: How Youth Culture Is Reinventing Capitalism (Matt Mason) 

Shyness: How Normal Behavior Became a Sickness (Christopher Lane) 

How to Be Useful: A Beginner's Guide to Not Hating Work (Megan Hustad) 

ESSAYS (6) 

The Braindead Megaphone (George Saunders) 

Things I've Learned from Women Who've Dumped Me (Ben Karlin, ed.) 

I Feel Bad About My Neck: And Other Thoughts On Being a Woman (Nora Ephron) 

(Not that You Asked): Rants, Exploits, and Obsessions (Steve Almond) 

Altared: Bridezillas, Bewilderment, Big Love, Breakups, and What Women Really Think About Contemporary Weddings 

Against the Machine: Being Human in the Age of the Electronic Mob (Lee Siegel) 

MEDICINE (12) 

One in Three: A Son's Journey into the History and Science of Cancer (Adam Wishart)* 

The Surgeons: Life and Death in a Top Heart Center (Charles R. Morris) 

Intern: A Doctor's Initiation (Sandeep Jauhar) 

My Mother, Your Mother: Embracing "Slow Medicine," the Compassionate Approach to Caring for Your Aging Loved Ones (Dennis McCullogh) 

My Stroke of Insight: A Brain Scientist's Personal Journey (Jill Bolte Taylor) 

Life in the Balance: A Physician's Memoir of Life, Love, and Loss with Parkinson's Disease and Dementia (Thomas Graboys) 

Lopsided: How Having Breast Cancer Can Be Really Distracting (Meredith Norton) 

Head Cases: Stories of Brain Injury and Its Aftermath (Michael Paul Mason) 

The Uncertain Art: Thoughts on a Life in Medicine (Sherwin Nuland) 

Welcome to Your Brain: Why You Lose Your Car Keys but Never Forget How to Drive and Other Puzzles of Everyday Life (Sandra Aamodt) 

Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain (John Ratey) 

Body Signs: From Warning Signs to False Alarms (Joan Liebmann-Smith) 

SOCIAL SCIENCE / ECONOMICS / FACTS (19) 

Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions (Dan Ariely) 

The Drunkard's Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives (Leonard Mlodinow) 

Sway: The Irresistible Pull of Irrational Behavior (Ori Brafman) 

The Logic of Life: The Rational Economics of an Irrational World (Tim Harford) 

Your Money and Your Brain: How the New Science of Neuroeconomics Can Help Make You Rich (Jason Zweig) 

Quirkology: How We Discover the Big Truths in Small Things (Richard Wiseman) 

Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets (Nassim Nicholas Taleb) 

Outliers: The Story of Success (Malcolm Gladwell) 

The Mind of the Market: Compassionate Apes, Competitive Humans, and Other Tales from Evolutionary Economics (Michael Shermer) 

Reality Check (Guy Kawasaki) 

Freedomnomics: Why the Free Market Works and Other Half-Baked Theories Don't (John Lott Jr.) 

Against Happiness: In Praise of Melancholy (Eric G. Wilson) 

Guesstimation: Solving the World's Problems on the Back of a Cocktail Napkin (Lawrence Weinstein) 

One to Nine: The Inner Life of Numbers (Andrew Hodges) 

True Enough: Learning to Live in a Post-Fact Society (Farhad Manjoo) 

Gut Feelings: The Intelligence of the Unconscious (Gerd Gigerenzer) 

The How of Happiness: A Scientific Approach to Getting the Life You Want (Sonja Lyubomirsky) 

Our Underachieving Colleges (Derek Bok) 

What We Believe but Cannot Prove: Today's Leading Thinkers on Science in the Age of Certainty (John Brockman) 

WRITING AND ENTERTAINMENT (9) 

Horizontal Hold: The Making and Breaking of a Network Television Pilot (Daniel Paisner)* 

Reality Show (Howard Kurtz) 

Season Finale: The Unexpected Rise and Fall of the WB and UPN (Susanne Daniels) 

Laughing Matters: On Writing M*A*S*H, Tootsie, Oh, God!, and a Few Other Funny Things (Larry Gelbart) 

The Midnight Disease: The Drive to Write, Writer's Block, and the Creative Brain (Alice Weaver Flaherty) 

Sit, Ubu, Sit: How I went from Brooklyn to Hollywood with the Same Woman, the Same Dog, and a Lot Less Hair (Gary David Goldberg) 

Not Remotely Controlled: Notes on Television (Lee Siegel) 

Good in a Room: How to Sell Yourself (and Your Ideas) and Win Over Any Audience (Stephanie Palmer) 

Breakfast with Sharks (Michael Lent) 

SPORTS (6) 

The Soul of Baseball: A Road Trip Through Buck O'Neil's America (Joe Posnanski)* 

Follow the Roar: Tailing Tiger for All 604 Holes of His Most Spectacular Season (Bob Smiley) 

Baseball Prospectus 2008 

Living on the Black: Two Pitchers, Two Teams, One Season to Remember (John Feinstein) 

Senior Year: A Father, A Son, and High School Baseball (Dan Shaughnessy) 

How Bill James Changed Our View of the Game of Baseball (Rob Neyer) 

FOOD (12) 

The Fruit Hunters: A Story of Nature, Adventure, Commerce, and Obsession (Adam Leith Gollner)* 

The Elements of Cooking: Translating the Chef's Craft for Every Kitchen (Michael Ruhlman) 

The Food Snob's Dictionary: An Essential Lexicon of Gastronomical Knowledge (David Kamp) 

Cook with Jamie: My Guide to Making You a Better Cook (Jamie Oliver) 

The Year of Eating Dangerously: A Global Adventure in Search of Culinary Extremes (Tom Parker Bowles) 

Waiter Rant (The Waiter) 

The Mensch Chef: Or Why Delicious Jewish Food Isn't an Oxymoron (Mitchell Davis) 

Service Included: Four-Star Secrets of an Eavesdropping Waiter (Phoebe Damrosch) 

In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto (Michael Pollan) 

Kitchen Mysteries: Revealing the Science of Cooking (Herve This) 

Roast Chicken and Other Stories (Simon Hopkinson) 

The Oxford Companion to Italian Food (Gillian Riley) 

OTHER (1) 

The New Jewish Wedding, Revised (Anita Diamant)

Comments

[anon]

I'm a little blown away you read over a hundred books but only two novels. You're like the anti-me.

[Ben]

102 books?! unbelievable. how do you do it?

[Stephen Brown]

Yes, why the scarcity of fiction? Is there a particular reason? Care to post about that?

[Sean S]

A post about how you find the time (do you read these books while traveling, etc.) would be really helpful and interesting.

[Ben Casnocha]

Thanks much for including my book here! Flattered. :)