The five best books I read in 2007:
- Atwood, Margaret. Oryx and Crake.
- Collier, Paul. The Bottom Billion: Why the Poorest Countries are Failing and What Can Be Done About It.
- Michaels, Anne. Fugitive Pieces.
- Vaillant, John. The Golden Spruce: A True Story of Myth, Madness, and Greed.
- Weisman, Alan . The World Without Us.
I unreservedly recommend them all. The links go to my reviews.
{ 6 comments… read them below or add one }
Death and Taxes
A visual guide to where American federal tax dollars go
Budget of the National Security Agency: US$7.5 billion
Budget of the entire judicial branch: US$6.7 billion
Previous versions: 2005 and 2007.
I rember the overwhelming sensation while reading Fugitive Pieces was a compulsion to lick the pages…literally…her writing was that good.
Lindi,
The writing is certainly beautiful, but the book is also very tragic. I found that I could only get through it a few pages at a time, interspersed with other reading.
It is an odd thing when you combine such beauty with tragedy. Have you seen the film “Fateless”? It is a Hungarian film based on Imre Kertesz’s book by the same title – it is a similarly beautiful film (cinematographically) combined with the most honest account of the Holocuast I have ever seen on film. Highly recommend it. The Hungarian title is Sorstalanság