Wise Contradictions

Ann Patchett: Bel Canto
Good, speedy read.

Martin Amis: House of Meetings
Deadly serious and downright scary tale of life in a prison camp during Stalin's reign in the Soviet Union.

Ann Patchett: The Magician's Assistant
Great story--wonderful details about the world of magic.

Khaled Hosseini: A Thousand Splendid Suns
Tear jerking portrait of life in Afghanistan. Amazing read.

Ernest J. Gaines: A Lesson Before Dying
Amazing book about a man unfairly tried, convicted and executed in Louisiana in the 1940s. Highly recommended.

Atul Gawande: Better: A Surgeon's Notes on Performance
The ideas he suggests for doctors to get better at their medicine practice and become "positive deviants" are applicable for all of us.

Bill Bryson: A Short History of Nearly Everything
Why is the center of the earth so hot? How did the contenients form? How did we evolve? Meet the people who have begun to unravel the world in which we live and share in Bryson's wonder. Arguably the best science book I've ever read.

Augusten Burroughs: Magical Thinking : True Stories
Laugh out loud funny. The vignettes hang together pretty well as a cohesive whole.

Calvin Trillin: Tepper Isn't Going Out : A Novel
Great slice of life cut from New York City--especially funny if you've ever had to deal with alternate side of the street parking.

Graham Greene: The End of the Affair : (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition) (Penguin Classics Deluxe Editio)

Graham Greene: The Heart of the Matter : (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition) (Penguin Classics Deluxe Editio)

Philip Roth: The Plot Against America (Vintage International)
Frightening imagined alternative history of life in America in the early 20th Century. Instead of FDR, we got Charles Lindbergh, who was cooperating with Nazi Germany. As told through the eponymous narrator, coming of age in Newark, NJ.

Steve Leveen: The Little Guide to Your Well-Read Life

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi: Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience

Howard Rheingold: Smart Mobs: The Next Social Revolution

Richard Yates: Revolutionary Road (Vintage Contemporaries)

Lawrence Lessig: Free Culture: The Nature and Future of Creativity

Daniel Coyle: Lance Armstrong's War : One Man's Battle Against Fate, Fame, Love, Death, Scandal, and a Few Other Rivals on the Road to the Tour de France
Everything you wanted to know about Armstrong's 6th victory in 2004 and more. Great insiders perspective on the rough and tumble world of professional cycling.

Philip Caputo: Acts of Faith
A harrowing portrait of the ambiguous moral choices when people commit acts of violence based on their beliefs.

Lynne Cox: Swimming to Antarctica : Tales of a Long-Distance Swimmer

JONATHAN LETHEM: The Fortress of Solitude : A Novel

Audrey Niffenegger: The Time Traveler's Wife (Harvest Book)
Great read--I love books about time--this one brought past, present and future together in a wonderful way. I thought Niffennegger came up with a splendid analogy for how we experience the world--timetravel. We are our present, past and future all in a single moment.

Timothy D. Wilson: Strangers to Ourselves : Discovering the Adaptive Unconscious

Joel Spolsky: Joel on Software: And on Diverse and Occasionally Related Matters That Will Prove of Interest to Software Developers, Designers, and Managers, and to Those Who, Whether by Good Fortune or Ill Luck, Work with Them in Some Capacity

Philip Weiss: American Taboo : A Murder in the Peace Corps

Kurt Vonnegut: Cat's Cradle

Jonathan Lethem: The Fortress of Solitude

Tim O'Brien: Going After Cacciato

Anthony Burgess: A Clockwork Orange

Ha Jin: Waiting: A Novel

Philip K. Dick: Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

Ernest J. Gaines: A Lesson Before Dying (Oprah's Book Club)