The Decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio

The Decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Took me nearly 4 months to get through it because it is so long. It's a good quarantine read as the main characters are themselves in a bit of a quarantine bubble. There are a hundred stories of varying quality, but some of them were cheerful and bawdy. The tenth day of stories was a bit of a bummer though as things got even more misogynistic and cruel towards the end, especially with the husband that tortured the wife for years and is presented as wise for doing so.

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Grant by Ron Chernow

Grant by Ron Chernow
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I am so excited I finished this book! I felt like I experienced every minute of Grant’s 63 years.

I read this because Ta-Nehisi Coates suggested it in an article in The Atlantic and I spent the first half of the book wondering why. The first half of this large tome is Grant’s early life and what felt like the entire Civil War. Have you figured out that I am not a Civil War enthusiast?

I found the second half of the book about Reconstruction and the Grant presidency infinitely more readable. I breezed through that informative section only to be slowed down a bit by Chernow’s protracted coverage of Grant’s post-presidency, death, and burial. Mark Twain improved the end quite a bit.

I think Chernow let Grant off too easily on his bungling of Black Rock, but otherwise a very detailed and probably balanced look at Grant.

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A History of Western Philosophy by Bertrand Russell

A History of Western Philosophy by Bertrand Russell
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I thought I would feel smarter than I do when I finished this book. Nonetheless an interesting review of the classical philosophers. I don't think it would have killed him to throw in at least one woman, at a minimum with reference to western feminist philosophy, especially considering he included some not terribly deep political philosophers (who weren't necessarily concerned with consciousness or the cosmos but only political realities). I know this suggestion makes me sound like a millennial, but I assure you I'm not.

Bertrand correctly predicted that science would take over a lot of the inquiries on reality- as it has in consciousness and the cosmos, though he wasn't correct that, as in theoretical physics, it would never be based in thought experiments. I wish someone wrote a summary of philosophers and their central ideas picking up where Russell left off.

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Holy Bible: New International Version

Holy Bible: New International Version by Anonymous


I started at the beginning of the year and it took about an hour a day for 8 months. Sometimes I'd skip a few days, but then sometimes I would do 2 hours to make up for falling behind. The Old Testament is much longer obviously and I think I made it feel even longer by reading The New Testament's Gospels, The Old Testament, and then the rest of the New Testament. I spent 6 of the 8 months on the Old Testament and only 2 months on the New Testament.

A few thoughts on the Old Testament, it's very long, and I think there's a lot of merit in the Jewish tradition of focusing on the first five books (the Torah). Genesis and Exodus are particularly interesting. [Repeat from my Tanakh review:] Much of the rest of the Old Testament is wars and God getting angry for his worshippers breaking rules, especially marrying those of other religions. A few notable exceptions: Song of Songs is very romantic, Jonah is the stuff of great adventure books, and the locusts are as scary as a Steven King novel.

As for the New Testament, the Gospels are really interesting, in particular, the Gospel of Matthew. Not to be outdone by the locusts in the Old Testament, Revelation is some scary stuff.

Since I finished the Bible in less than a year, I'm going to try to read nonfiction books about the Bible for the rest of the year.


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Ulysses by James Joyce

Ulysses by James Joyce
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I'm finished!!!! Oh, happy day!!! Done! Done!

Can't say I enjoyed this work of genius, though the ending was lovely, exhilarating, and terribly sad all at the same time.

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My Life by Bill Clinton

My Life by Bill Clinton
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I feel like I should throw myself a party for finally reading this book- in its entirety- after owning it since July of 2004. Over 12 years!

This is a very in-depth autobiography/ memoir of Bill Clinton's life from birth to 2001. At first, I was frustrated that it appeared to mention everyone he ever met and every policy he ever implemented. As I gave in to the detailed nature of the book though I began to appreciate the opportunity of seeing a president's entire story. It was also a good opportunity to relive the important events of 1992-2000 when I was mostly too young to fully appreciate them.

I went to the book signing on July 7, 2004:



You had to go twice, the first time for a bracelet and the second time for the signing. This is me and my friend Julie in 2004 with our copy and our bracelets for the signing.



My copy :



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Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson

Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Meh. Maybe I would have liked it better if it weren't so unrewardingly long. In a strange way, it reminds me of Gravity's Rainbow, if GR were readable and even a tiny but enjoyable- which it is not.

I enjoyed the fun little math sketches in the book and the characters were good. The plot veered between boring and stressful with only small sections in the beginning and middle that I really enjoyed. I'm sad I didn't like it more. I see a lot of enthusiasm for the book in the other reviews and I want to share in that. I loved Anathem, and I'm not giving up on Stephenson. I might need to try for a shorter Stephenson novel next time though.

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Consider Phlebas by Iain M. Banks

Consider Phlebas by Iain M. Banks
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I like the world-building in this book. I like the conflict between the two alien groups, and I like that we're sort of supposed to root for the other team, not the hero of the story's side (I think, I did).

What I didn't love was that this is one of those adventure stories that just goes from one thing to the next without there really being great believable reasons for it. At a minimum there isn't a great reason for the author to spend so much time on the obstacles to the main challenge, in this case entering Schar's World and retrieving the Mind.

I really wanted to like this book because I inherited a whole bunch of Culture Wars books from my dad, and now I'm less excited to read through them, but I will give it at least one more try with book #2.

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The Fabric of the Cosmos by Brian Greene

The Fabric of the Cosmos: Space, Time, and the Texture of Reality by Brian Greene
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This is my new favorite physics book. It's hard gaging these books because I always bring what I read in a previous physics-for-the-common-man tome to the next, but this one reviewed some concepts I already had some familiarity with in a clear comprehensible way and also introduced me to new concepts. It was also fun. Yes, really. The craziness of time-space being a location or the specifics of how time travel might be possible are a lot of fun.

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