I'd love to hear your thoughts on any of these books or recommendations on other books I might want to take a look at.  Happy reading.

Since I've pretty much ignored my "books that didn't make it" to this list page, I decided I'm going to start doing short mentions of books I started but did not finish and not assign them a rating.

Finally, a note about my rating system.
   

The Birthday Present by Barbara Vine ** 1/2 (out of ****) In this mystery/thriller Ruth Rendell (actual name) of a birthday present gone horribly wrong and a British MP's attempts to avoid the eventual comeuppance for an unintended death.  The book was reasonably entertaining for the MP's attempts to barely stay one step ahead of ruin and for the unreliable narrator who tells part of the tale, but I kept questioning whether it was worth it to continue reading.  In the end, I decided I'd have been better off just stopping the first time I questioned myself. 

Black Tower by Louis Bayard ****  Historical fiction exactly as it is meant to be done.   The titular tower refers to the prison of France's Louis XVII, a young boy who was imprisoned in awful conditions and died young in the 1790's following the overthrow of his father Louis XVI at the start of the French Revolution.  The main part of the story takes place 20 years later in very uncertain times after the Monarchy has been restored.  An absolutely compelling police inspector, Ledocq (the inspiration for Javert) is on the case of a murder which may or may not be related to Louis XVI.  I did not know much about this really interesting period of French history, which Bayard captures wonderfully, but mostly this was an absolutely captivating mystery full of rich characters.  I really look forward to reading Bayard's other works of historical fiction. 

Killing Rommel by Stephen Pressfield [unfinished]  I had high hopes for this based-on-reality tale of a plot to assassinate German general extraordinaire, Field Marshall Erwin Rommel, aka, the Desert Fox.  (Rommel actually was quite an interesting guy-- one of my first papers in college was about his role in the plot to assassinate Hitler).  Anyway, I found the first 50 pages or so utterly boring and did not care much for the author's style, so I didn't see any reason to continue reading despite the enticing subject matter. 

God of War by Marisa Silver **** An absolutely terrific novel.   This is a coming of age tale, narrated by 12-year old Ares Ramirez living near California's Salton Sea in 1978.  Ares dropped his now 6-year old brother, Malcolm, on his head when he was a baby and is convinced that he is thus responsible for his little brother's strange and bizarre behavior.  Actually, Malcolm has autism, but nobody in super-rural 1978 California has a clue about this.  Meanwhile, Ares' mom does not exactly present the most stable living conditions for the family.  The novel was beautifully written, poignant, and thought-provoking-- probably my favorite since The Road. 

Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortensen ** 1/2  Book club book #3 and the one that brought our book club down-- we never met to discuss it.  Much to my dismay as I would have not read this but for the book club.  Tells the rather story of Greg Mortensen's attempts to build schools all over very rural and remote Pakistan  and then Afghanistan.  (Alas, the bad guys build Madrassas much faster).  Some pretty exciting parts and certainly an inspirational story,  but I would've been much happier with this as a nice long Atlantic or New Yorker article.  At over 300 pages it was bloated with minutiae. 

Moving Mars by Greg Bear [unfinished] I was hoping this book would be a good choice for the "Political Science Fiction" course I swear I'm going to teach some day (I actually came really close to offering it in Spring 2010.  Maybe Fall 2011).  Anyway, this story of political dealings between a colonized Mars and the mother-planet Earth just left me completely flat.  I gave it over 200 pages I so wanted to like this book, but alas, no emotional engagement with the characters in a novel means an unfishined novel. 

Gates of Injustice: The Crisis in America's Prisons by Alan Eisner *** You may not be surprised to learn that America's prisons are awful places.  I know, these are criminals and they deserve punishment and all that, but do we really believe that repeated rape is appropriate punishment for crime in this country?  Do we believe that ordinary prisoners should be put in extreme isolation Supermax units just because we have over-capacity in these?  Even though these conditions would challenge the sanity of the most sane person?  Do we really want prisons to be warehouses for America's mentally ill?  Eisner does an excellent job documenting all these problems and more in an engaging and quite readable tone.  Depressing, but important subject and a pretty good read.

Render unto Caesar: Serving the Nation by Living our Catholic Beliefs in Political Life by Charles Chaput ** 1/2  Not a book I would have chosen to read on my own, but it was a gift from my Godfather and it was short.  Chaput is a pretty conservative Archbishop of Denver, i.e., not my spiritual role model, but he generally makes a good case for how Catholics should live out their beliefs in the political world.  Not surprisingly, I was not persuaded by his case that pro-choice Catholics should be denied communion.  Sadly, I'm behind on my reviews by several months and somewhat amazed at how little I remember from this book, which does not recommend it particularly well (or my memory, I suppose).

Yes: 50 Scientifically Proven Ways to be Persuasive by Noah Goldstein, Steven Martin, and Robert Cialdini ***  Influence by Cialdini remains perhaps the favorite book I read as an undergraduate and one that, more than about any other, still affects my thinking today.  Thus, I was quite eager to see what new stuff Cialdini had to add 15 years since I last read this.  Plenty of interesting findings from social psychology.  My favorite being the still amazingly effective influence of wanting to be like others.   Put a sign in a hotel room encouraging guests to not have their sheets changed in order to save the environment, and there's a reasonable amount of compliance.  Put a sign in the room telling them everybody else is forgoing the sheet changes and compliance goes through the roof.  The only downside of the book is that it was written as a "pop" business book, rather than psychology book.   I think it would've been a lot better if it was just written by Cialdini without the business school guys. 

Thread of Grace by Mary Doria Russell [unfinished]  I loved Russell's two science fiction books, especially The Sparrow (the first book I ever reviewed here).  But after giving this book about the efforts of Italians to protect Jews during the Holocaust, I remained entirely unengaged.  I really wanted to like this book, but it left me totally flat.

The Alchemist by Paulo Coehlo *1/2  I would have never finished this poorly, yet pretentiously written bit of new-age drivel were it not the selection of my book club (unofficial title: "5 middle-aged women and Steve").  A shepherd boy goes on a quest to learn the secret of alchemy and instead learns the secret of life: "stay true to your dreams."  Perhaps this is inspiring for the middle school set, but myself and the adults I read it with were not impressed. 

Misquoting Jesus by Bart Ehrman ***  Renowned UNC-Chapel Hill biblical scholar Ehrman explains how we can basically have very little confidence in the words of the bible as they exist today.  He marshals compelling evidence for the fact that scribes throughout history have wrought considerable changes, both unintentional and intended, on the text of the bible.  It is pretty hard to make the case that the bible is the inerrant word of God, when we can only guess at what those words were when first written down in the 1st and 2nd century AD.  He also nicely explains the analytic techniques by which modern biblical scholars do their best to discover the original text.  I found the basic premises quite interesting, and though this is a relatively short book, like many other works of non-fiction, I would have been sated with the long magazine article version. 

The Hour I First Believed by Wally Lamb *** I came to this novel with great anticipation as I absolutely loved Wally Lamb's previous novel, I Know this Much is True.  I do think this book is first-rate, but it does pale in comparison to its predecessor.  It tells the tale of a married couple, a teacher, Caelum, and his wife, Maureen, a school nurse, who both work at Columbine high school.  While Caelum is out of town, Maureen is in the school library on that fateful day.  Over the subsequent 700+ pages we seee the ripple effect of the violence at Columbine reach out to destroy more lives in unexpected ways.  The story was emotionally engaging and thought-provoking, but too bloated.  It would have made a much more powerful 400-500 page novel. 

The Hunger Games by Suzanna Clark  ***   Young adult novel set in a dystopian future in which the central government of a reconstituted America forces teenagers from the remaining "districts" to compete in a multi-day reality television show to the death.  How can you resist that premise?  The tale is narrated by one of the competitors, a teenage girl from Appalachia and is well-paced and plotted without being condescending to a younger audience.  Clearly not a true "adult" book, but a damn fun read. 

The Paradox of Choice: Why More is Less by Barry Schwarz ***  Like much of the good books that take interesting social science, especially social psychology, this book was full of fascinating experiments that show how irrational human decision making can be.  In this case, give us too many choices, and our likelihood of making a poor choice or simply refusing to choose goes way up.  However, unlike books by, say, Gladwell, this one seems pitched at a less educated audience and suffers for it.  At times, took on too much of a self-help air, "you can make better choices!"  Glad I read it-- interesting and fun to read-- but I cannot help thinking it would have been better in the hands of a more talented author. 

How Fiction Works by James Wood ** 1/2  As someone who clearly really enjoys good fiction but has never had a class on it beyond 12th grade, I thought that this book would really increase my understanding (and hopefully, enjoyment) of good literature.  It did, but only a bit.  I was definitely looking forward to reading the book after this really interesting review in Slate, but I felt like that article, plus another review or two I read really got me 80% of the value of the book.  I really enjoyed learning about the "free indirect" narrative style and I also really enjoyed Wood's take on realism, but I would have been much happier just reading a New Yorker article on the subject, or something of similar length. 

A Spectacle of Corruption by David Liss *** 1/2 Liss returns to the wonderfully fully-realized 18th century England that was the setting of his terrific A Conspiracy of Paper.  Here again, Jewish former boxer turned "thieftaker" (bounty hunter/private investigator), Benjamin Weaver provides an engrossing first-person narration.  This time, the story is political as Weaver struggles to understand why he was set-up to be executed for a murder and how all this fits into an attempted restoration of the Catholic King, James II.  What Liss did to bring the burgeoning stock market alive in Conspiracy of Paper he does here with the complexities of 18th Century English politics.  And, as always there is a densely-plotted mystery that gradually comes together.  A worthy follow-up to A Conspiracy of Paper, and a terrific book in its own right. 

Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell ****  This book, in which Malcolm Gladwell argues for the importance of context and external factors in explaining individual success may be my favorite Gladwell book yet-- which is saying something.  In a society which overvalues the heroic individual, Gladwell's work serves as a necessary corrective.  I think Bill Gates is my favorite individual.  Of course he is a brilliant, talented, and highly-motivated individual, that's a given, but that doesn't mean that fate didn't conspire for him to take advantage of unique opportunities.  Gates was born at just the right time to take advantage of the emerging computer world and was lucky enough to go to one of the few high schools in the country where he would have the opportunity to practice computer programming.  Of course, stories like this are very interesting, but ultimately predictable in a book about success.  What makes Gladwell unique is how he sees the connections in how switching from Korean to English in the cockpit was able to dramatically increase the safety of Korean commercial airliners and weave this into the overall story.  As always, Gladwell's books are as riveting as the latest thriller on the best-seller list and change the way you see the world while you are flying through the pages. 

Child 44 by Tom Rob Smith ****  This is historical fiction at its best, completely transporting the reader to the early1950's Stalinst Soviet Union.  A serial killer is on the loose, but the government refuses to recognize that such a thing could be happening in the Utopian Socialist worker's paradise.  Thus, when MGB (precursor of the KGB) agent Leo Demidov decides to pursue this as a serial killer case, he himself becomes an enemy of the state.  What Smith does so wonderfully is recreate an all-encompassing paranoia where even husband and wives or parents and children don't know who will rat them out to the MGB and who they can trust. The serial killer narrative was generally taut and well-told, if a little conventional at times, but this book is both a page-turner and a work of fiction that lets you really learn about another time and place by completely immersing you in it.    

Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do by Tom Vanderbilt **** I absolutely loved this book.  Vanderbilt basically takes all sorts of interesting findings from the science of traffic and presents them in an engaging an highly readable manner.  Examples include: why it is actually bad for everyone to merge early; why flat, straight roads can actually be dangerous; the real reason talking on the cell phone is dangerous (it has nothing to do with your hands)  and many more.  I really liked that this book is just as much sociology and psychology as it traffic engineering.  Our cars become a psychological extension of us and there is a unique psychology and sociology to driving that I had never really thought about but makes so much sense (e.g., you lose the ability for eye contact over 20 mph).  Anyway, if you drive, chances are you will find this a compelling and fascinating read.

A note about my rating system