Monday, January 05, 2009

Best of 2008: books



Since I'm known as a man of letters, I'm kicking Best Of Week off with 2008's best books (a.k.a. Pretty Much Every Non-Magazine/Internet Bunch Of Words That I Read Last Year):

The best:
Blue Like Jazz: Nonreligious Thoughts on Christian Spirituality by Donald Miller: I just really, really liked this memoir, which details Miller's journey back to God after losing his faith. It's written in a very conversational tone, which makes it seem like he's talking directly to you. While I don't quite always agree with him (mainly, his politics), I found this book to be both enlightening AND enjoyable.

The rest (listed alphabetically):
Dead Sea by Brian Keene
An Inconvenient Book: Real Solutions to the World's Biggest Problems by Glenn Beck
Into Hot Air: Mounting Mount Everest by Chris Elliott
My Custom Van: And 50 Other Mind-Blowing Essays that Will Blow Your Mind All Over Your Face by Michael Ian Black
The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway
Rock On: An Office Power Ballad by Dan Kennedy
Soon I Will Be Invincible by Austin Grossman
Things I've Learned From Women Who've Dumped Me edited by Ben Karlin
A Year at the Movies: One Man's Filmgoing Odyssey by Kevin Murphy

Unfinished reading, so look for these on 2009's list (hopefully):
Our Dumb World: The Onion's Atlas of the Planet Earth, 73rd Edition* by the Onion
When You Are Engulfed in Flames by David Sedaris
Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis
Tobacco: A Cultural History of How an Exotic Plant Seduced Civilization by Iain Gately

Note: This list contains only a handful of books published in 2008 because: a) I rarely buy books right when they are released; b) I have a HUGE reading pile; and c) I'm a pretty slow reader. But the above is what I read - and dug - this past year. Deal with it.

*Hilarious book, but I make only so many trips to the john in a given year.

7 comments:

jasdye said...

really liked blj too, though i thought it was overrated compared to his next memoir, Looking for God Knows What, which is one of my all-time favorite books. however, am hoping that the blue... movie comes out soon; everything i hear about it makes me excited.

think the hemingway was actually titled Old Maid and the Sea.

Micah said...

I've got that book, too. It's on my ever-growing reading pile. As for the BLJ movie, I haven't heard any updates in a long time (granted, I haven't really looked). I wonder what's going on with it.

And you're thinking of the popular children's card game that was inspired by that work.

SBN1 said...

pfft, books!

Denae said...

Nice list. Nothing better than a good book. You might also like Girls With Non-French Accents by Brian Ward..little hard to find though.

SBN1 said...

Wrong. Denise Milani is better than a good book.

Micah said...

SBN1 - Man, I laughed for the longest time when I clicked that link. That shirt is almost worth getting. If only it was a bit cheaper.

Denae - The title intrigues me. I'll have to seek that out.

jasdye said...

last i heard they had trouble finding funding for it - largely b/c of this economy thingy.