54. Nine Lives: In Search of the Sacred In Modern India by William Dalrymple.
As the blurb goes: "Historian-travel writer Dalrymple (The Last Mughal) knows his Asian subcontinent, having moved to New Delhi in 1989. The engine of Indian economic development is bringing rapid change, and Dalrymple spotlights changes and constancies brought about in India's dizzyingly diverse religious practices. The titular nine lives are those of a variety of religious adherents: a Jain nun, a sacred dancer, a Sufi mystic, a Tantric practitioner, among others. His subjects, for the most part, do their own show-and-tell in explaining their religious paths, which differ but share the passionate devotion (bhakti) that characterizes popular religion in India. Dalrymple has a good eye, a better ear, and the humility to get out of the way of his subjects." Well worth reading. Very different to my Western, Christian viewpoint. And yet the search for the sacred seems to be a universal human quest.
55. Vampire Taxonomy by Meredith Woerner. How do you tell your fanged freaks from your vampires-with-a-soul? Read this and you'll know. Fun light reading, good for some laughs.
56. The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo57. The Girl Who Played With Fire 58. The Girl Who Kicked The Hornet's Nest all by Stieg Larsson.
Good thrillers about Lisbeth Salander, computer hacker and Mikael Blomqvist, journalist. If you haven't read them already, I don't want to give away any of the plots. Let's just say that they had me on the edge of my chair.
59. The Devil's Alphabet by Daryl Gregory.
Ten years ago, Paxton Martin left his hometown of Switchcreek, Tennessee after a plague. Many died, and others were changed into eleven-foot tall argos, parthenogenetic betas, and grossly obese charlies. Paxton is there to attend a funeral of an old friend, but he gets caught up in the residual weirdness. Better than I'm making it sound.
60. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot.
Henrietta Lacks, a poor black woman, died over fifty years ago of advanced cervical cancer. The cells taken from that cancer, now called HeLa cells, have been one of the most successful cell cultures of all time, and incredibly important in research. Skloot goes into the ethics of tissue donation, what was expected then and what's expected now, and brings up some troubling questions, all set against the background of Henrietta Lacks' family and what became of them.
61. The Red Door by Charles Todd.
An Inspector Ian Rutledge mystery. The inspector suffered from severe shell shock during WWI. Now the war is over, but Ian still hears the voice of Hamish, one of the men who died under his command. Long ago, he's made a pact with himself - he hears Hamish's voice, that's OK, but if he ever
sees Hamish, he's going to kill himself. He has to investigate a murder. Well plotted, excellent characterization, good description. The entire series is recommended.
62. Life Ascending: The Ten Great Inventions of Evolution by Nick Lane.
What were the great biological inventions that led to life on Earth as we know it?
Not surprisingly, each of the 10—the origin of life, the creation of DNA, photosynthesis, the evolution of complex cells, sex, movement, sight, warm bloodedness, consciousness and death—is intricate, its origins swirling in significant controversy. Drawing on cutting-edge science, Lane does a masterful job of explaining the science of each, distinguishing what is fairly conclusively known and what is currently reasonable conjecture.
Thought-provoking and interesting.
63. An Irish Country Doctor and
64. An Irish Country Village by Patrick Taylor. An OK read, but James Herriot did it better.
65. The System of the World by Neal Stephenson. Isaac Newton, Gottfried Leibniz, and other characters clash in the era 1660-1714. Audacious, world-spanning, and rewarding if you can get through Stephenson's weighty trilogy (the first two are
Quicksilver and
The Confusion.) I've been reading Stephenson ever since his
Snow Crash, back in 1991, predicted the Internet and much of today's computer stuff. Plus, how can you not like a book where the main character is called Hiro Protagonist?
66. Lover Mine by J.R. Ward. Smut, smut, and more smut. Plus a decent plot to hang the smut episodes on. Warning: sex scenes are so hot there is risk of spontaneous human combustion.
67. Your Hate Mail Will Be Graded by John Scalzi. Just what it says. Scalzi writes a blog - he writes every day, he says, to keep his proficiency up. It's like doing scales for a pianist. His blog is at Whatever.scalzi.com, and it's worth a look. The book is ten years of some of the best posts from the blog, and is great fun. Scalzi is also known for taping bacon to his cat and then photographing her.
