Top 10 . . .

So again, it has been a while. However, this time you'll be happy to know that I have an excuse. My pursuit of an MBA has begun once again (a journey that I hope will end in June) and I caught the bullet in my class selection by getting a prof that likes to assign 3-4 hours of reading per week. But at least he makes up for it by the fact that the topic is of absolutely no interest to me whatsoever (management of information technology). And I have a whole other class to worry about too. Oh well, on this of all days with the Bears in the Super Bowl I cannot complain.

In any case, with the start of the new year I thought it would be a good time to do one of those generic top 10 lists that are so popular with the kids nowadays, but I couldn't think of exactly what topic to use. Considering that my CD and mp3 collection would be largely unaffected if music had stopped being made in 1996 that was out. And although I still do see my fair share of movies this past year I saw just enough to know that I missed a ton of good ones, so that didn't seem right either. So, in the end, I have decided to go a little different way with it and do a list of the top 10 books I read this year. As I was compiling the list of all 25 books that I read over the last approximately 14 months (I'm going back to November 05) I realized that I have actually not read a single bad book. I think that's pretty impressive. I certainly have never seen 25 movies in a row without at least one being bad. I guess, if nothing else, it reinforces my belief that idle time spent watching a movie or tv is probably better spent reading. Or maybe I just got really lucky. In any case, here's the list with a little bit of commentary on each. I should add that these are all just books I read in the past 14 months, not that came out during that span.

#10 - The Places in Between by Rory Stewart
I don't remember how exactly I heard about this book but all I knew going in was that it was about some crazy Scotsman who decided it would be a good idea to walk across Afghanistan a couple months after the US overthrew the Taliban. Everyone (Afghans, Brits, and Americans) tells him he's crazy and that he'll be killed for sure but he does it anyway and although he does come close to dying a number of times (not to mention contracting a nasty case of dissentary) he lives to tell the tale. The result is a truly micro view of a region of the world that usually only gets a macro focus. For the most part he stays pretty politically-neutral, but at some points he does justifiably point out that there are a lot of things about these people and their culture that the West only thinks it understands. After completing his journey and spending a few months at home in Scotland he decided to "take it easy" for a while: he accepted a governorship for a province in Iraq (the book about that, which I also read and enjoyed, is entitled Prince of the Marshes).

#9 - Collapse by Jaret Diamond
Known mainly for his Pulitzer prize-winning book "Guns, Germs, and Steel" this fascinating follow-up looks at 7-8 different civilizations throughout history and tries to pinpoint the reasons why they collapsed, find some common themes, and use those lessons to help us avoid the same fate. Particularly haunting is the portrayal of Easter Island, the most remote island on the planet, whose inhabitants mined their natural resources to complete exhaustion and suffered the consequences. Although with globalization today there is little risk of any individual country befalling the same fate, the true parallel is with the entire Earth itself. For all practical purposes, we truly are alone in the universe and just as no one showed up to save the Easter Islanders, no one's going to show up and save us either if we fail to sustain the resources we need to survive.

#8 - The Stand by Stephen King
The only fiction book to appear here, I finally got around to reading this after being told by many people how good it was. It absolutely lived up to the hype and, although daunting at almost 1300 pages, is truly a book you find yourself flying through. By the time I reached the end, I wished it had gone on for another 500.

#7 - 1776 by David McCullough
This is not the drab history reading most people are familiar with from their high school classes. Historian McCullough gives a really accesible and entertaining perspective on this pivotal year in American history by using first hand accounts (via letters and journal writings) from people in every level of involvement in the war: from George Washington, to the British generals, to the men on the front lines and the people living in the cities where the battles took place. The result is a far more enlightening view of how the war was fought and how truly remarkable it was that a small band of unorganized rebels held their own against the world's most dominant military force. Let's just say that there was more than a little bit of luck involved. The success of some battles literally hinged on the direction of the wind.

#6 - Hyperspace by Michio Kaku
If you've ever wondered how modern science is progressing on answering such questions as resolving quantum mechanics and astrophysics, what the ultimate fate of the universe will be, and how many dimensions there really are, this is the book for you. This book lays things out in the most simplistic terms possible (with very, very little math and equations) and really makes you feel like you understand the concepts, even if you don't know the proofs and numbers behind them. Of course, if that doesn't interest you, then there's absolutely nothing else I could possibly say to make you interested. So I won't bother.

Later this week I'll get to #5 through #1. Time to go sit in an auditing class for 3 hours.