Author: Jason

Book Review: On the Road

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The American masterpiece that is often credited with launching Kerouac’s career.  A book that most people like and others love.  I just didn’t care for the book at all.  That may make me wrong, but my blog, so my opinion.  I listened to this fiction classic of a young man’s hitchhiking journey across America.  Maybe if I would have read the print book things would have been different.  It just seemed to be a rambling work floating from one place to another with no idea of what was happening or where it was heading.  That just didn’t appeal to me.

Meet the 4 year-old that has read more books than you

This little girls is now reading college level texts and her mother reached out to the library of congress to help her find new books.  When they heard about her they asked her to come spend the day.  What a nice story.  Read the whole ting from the Washington Post.

Book Review: The Sense of an Ending

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This was my first Julian Barnes novel.  I’ve never read any of his work and I can’t tell you how I came by this book.  Probably a blog recommendation or something, but I’m glad I read it.

I read this book in a day and was just sucked into the story.  A man who thinks he has left his past life behind him is pulled back into it again.  It was a good read and one of the few books that I read in 2016 that was from an author in another country, so yea me for boarding my reading.  It has several awards:

  • Man Booker Prize (2011)
  • Warwick Prize for Writing Nominee for Longlist (2013)
  • Costa Book Award  Nominee for Novel (2011)
  • Europe Literatuurprijs (2012)

Book Review: A Man Without a Country

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This was an extremely entertaining book.  Kurt Vonnegut is a talented author!  This is one of the few books I gave a 5/5 rating to in 2016.  The man is brilliant and witty.  I breezed through this 146-page book in very little time.  It was a pleasure to read and when I had to put it down I looked forward to picking it up again at my first opportunity.  I recommend getting started with his works as soon as you can, and this particular novel is definitely worth your time.  Give it a chance I think you will be happy you did.

Book Review: The Bridge of San Luis Rey

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This book caught me by surprise.  It was not at all what I was expecting and I enjoyed it despite myself.  Many users of Goodreads categorize this Thorton Wilder novel as a Classic.  I think my criteria for a classic may be higher than most and I’m not sure I would include this, but it was a great book.  It won the Pulitzer in 1928.  As I said, I enjoyed this book and I didn’t think it was going to be a page-turner, but I did burn through it.  The fact that it was only 138 pages definitely helped in that aspect.

Book Review: The Opposite of Loneliness: Essays and Stories

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This is a very hard review as the author’s story is so very heart-wrenching.  Marina Keegan was an extremely bright young woman with a great future in writing ahead of her and her life was cut short.  The book is a collection of short stories. It was the Goodreads Choice Award for Nonfiction in 2014 and a Waterstones Book of the year nominee in the same year.  The book is good.  It is well written.  I think Ms. Keegan had a very promising future as an author.  I enjoyed all the short stories, but in my humble opinion it was not more than a 3/5 star book.

Book Review: The Old Man and the Sea

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Who would have thought that a book about a man gone fishing would be so interesting?  I found myself completely sucked in with the Hemingway’s writing.   Of course, this is what is expected for a writer of his caliber.  I mean the guy won the Nobel prize in literature!  I knew the name before I had read any of his work and I knew that his writings are considered classics.  I flew through this short story with only 132 pages.  Now that I have had an introduction to Hemingway’s work, I can’t wait to read more.

Book Review: The Pluto Files: The Rise and Fall of America’s Favorite Planet

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Several years ago I was at a conference where Neil deGrasse Tyson presented.  I was very impressed with his grasp of the all this science stuff and the way he was able to speak at a high level and not lose all these non-experts in the crowd.  The Pluto Files: The Rise and Fall of America’s Favorite Planet is his story of how Pluto lost its title of Planet.  He, as you may know, was very involved in that development.  The book is well written but goes a little long in some chapters.  This book could have been pared down a bit to make it read a bit faster.  This could have been a long article in a science publication.  That would have been a better fit then trying to stretch it out with a bunch of filler.  At 176 pages, it would have been fine with 100 or so.

Book Review: The Pearl

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In 1947 the Salinas Valley native, John Steinbeck wrote The Pearl.  This short (97 page) story is written in a time far ago in a little village.  Some young people file a very fine pearl and it changes their lives.  On the whole, I found the prose wonderfully written.  That is after all that I have come to expect from this epic writer.  Reviewing this is hard since I like the writing but the story was so sad, it would not be a book that I would want to read again.  Since I had recently read The Red Pony which had some sad stories in it too, maybe that is a good comparison.  I think I liked the Red Pony overall better.  Maybe because it was longer, maybe because it wasn’t as sad.  Either way, this book is worth a read if you haven’t read it before.  But “mentally prepare” yourself.

2016 Wrap-Up

Books of 2016 Infographic
Books of 2016 Infographic

Time for my yearly post about all the books I read in 2016.  I did not meet my goal of reading 100 books last year.  I didn’t even come close.  I only read 66 as you can see in the above image.  Work got busy and I also enrolled and completed two certificate classes in data science from University California, Irvine.

What you won’t see in the infographic below is that I borrowed 43 books from my local library.  If I had bought them on Amazon, I would have paid $561.30.  That savings is worth your free library card, and a bunch of hold fees!

My local libraries saved me $561.30 in 2016!