I received “Born Standing Up” by Steve Martin for Christmas, and for anyone of my generation it’s a must-read. It’s Steve’s memoir of his early days as a performer, right up to the time where he quit standup comedy to concentrate on films. It’s a surprisingly frank, funny and self-revelatory book from someone who you normally think of as keeping his “real” personality very close to the vest. I picked it up Christmas Day and could not put it down.

For non-fiction, Al Gore’s Assault On Reason was phenomenal. Also, I really adored “Eat Pray Love” by Elizabeth Gilbert. Read that one twice.

I’m reading mostly fiction these days. It’s been a long time since I read a book I absolutely adored, the kind of book that really hangs with you for a while.

I read a classic last January, “A Tree Grows In Brooklyn.” I really loved that one. I guess most folks read that in high school but I never did. Loved it.

I’ll have to think if there’s anything else I read last year that was really phenomenal. I read a lot, but a lot of stuff is just so-so. I just finished “The Golden Compass” and I actually thought it was kind of boring.

I just finished reading The Yiddish Policeman’s Union, which is unquestionably my new book of 2007. It’s reminding me of (early) James Joyce or Nabokov — just an explosion of language and ideas, modernist rather than post-modern, and a pretty good noir policier set in an imaginary society. I don’t know how much people who are completely ignorant of Yiddish culture will get from it — they’ll miss a lot of the jokes, for sure, but I think the language and imagination would carry them along anyway. That’s a lifetime great book, for me.

pick up fellow mcb blogger sam davidson’s “New Day Revolution” (www.newdayrevolution.com).

for me “How Not to Speak of God” by Peter Rollins was an excellent read. for a small book it was packed with thoughts and took a whole lot longer to finish than i had thought.

erin read “the Road” which i picked up as a suggestion. she liked it, rolled through it in a week or two. was confused by it and wasn’t exactly sure what was so wonderful about it.

I found “The Road” terribly depressing. It didn’t help that I was reading it during that whole “wouldn’t it be cool if we bombed the crap out of Iran” period a couple months back.

Beautifully written, though.

The Road
God Is Not Great
I Am America (And So Can You!)
Historic Photos of Nashville
Gonzo: The Life of Hunter S. Thompson

I’m with John. “Born Standing Up” by Steve Martin.

I read both Hood and Scarlet by Stephen Lawhead (parts 1 and 2 of his Robin Hood trilogy) and enjoyed them - they were a new look at the Robin Hood legend that’s not the typical Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., fare.

Assault on Reason also had me from the foreward on. I heard Steve Martin interviewed about his book and he (natch) was fabulous and fascinating.

[…] unknown wrote an interesting post today onHere’s a quick excerptThe Blogstar lists his top 5 books of 2007. The latest issue of EW also lists Stephen King’s top 10 books for 2007, but I can’t link to it yet because it doesn’t seem to be live on the web. What about you? What were the best books you … […]

OK I think my favorite book of the year was “Loving Frank” by Nancy Horan, about Frank Lloyd Wright’s affair with Mamah Borthwick Cheney. It was non-fiction but written in the novel style, so you felt like you were reading fiction. It was a fascinating and tragic story.

It just so happened that I was reading this book when we were in Chicago, so we visited a few of the Wright homes in the Chicago area and that really made the book come alive.

I hightly recommend it; it was both educational and engrossing.

I have a paperback copy of The Memory Keeper’s Daughter free to anyone who wants it. I bought it last week at Target as an “escape” from the holiday obligations. I read it in two days (easy read). Personally, I didn’t really like the book that much but I didn’t hate it either. But if you’ve been thinking of reading it…

I find Christopher Hitchens (God is not Great) too acerbic in tone to really want to read his arguments. If one is looking for an atheist to read, try Richard Dawkins “The God Delusion”. It is not written in “angry atheist” like the Hitchens book.

Life is So Good by George Dawson (biography).

I posted a list of what I read last year over at Facebook. Anything I rated B or higher I’d recommend.

Finally read Atlas Shrugged.
Wish I’d have read it 10 years earlier.