Tim ‘Gonzo’ Gordon

It seems to me that I put a lot of pages in my book-reading log in ‘08. Here are just the best of the best of the fiction or non-business books I read last year:

Kurt Vonnegut – Armageddon in Retrospective
Published posthumously, it’s been somewhat chided for being too personal or perhaps not so pointed. As a Vonnegut fan, I zipped through it and loved every bit. Acerbic as ever to the end.

Armageddon in Retrospect

Nam Le – The Boat
Take a deep breath before you jump into this collection of short fiction pieces. Nam Le is a young man; born in Vietnam and raised in Australia. The vision and power of his writing will stick with you long after you pass the book on to another reader, which you surely will.

The Boat

Martin Cruz Smith books
Gorky Park (1981)
Polar Star (1989)
Red Square (1992)
Havana Bay (1999)
Wolves Eat Dogs (2004)
Stalin’s Ghost (2007)

Having been a fan of the two original Arkady Renko novels, “Gorky Park” and “Polar Star”, I was surprised to learn early in ‘08 that there were not 1, or 2, or 3, but FOUR novels featuring the same ruffled, dogged Russian detective that I hadn’t heard about. Strange, I know. How I missed them I don’t know, but they’re all page-turners, extraordinarily plotted and written.

Hard to pick a favorite, but both Havana Bay and Wolves Eat Dogs stand out in my mind. In Havana Bay, Renko is in Cuba to identify the body of an old friend Pribula and recovering from the accidental death of his wife. In Wolves Eat Dogs Arkady is trolling the ‘dead zone’ of the Chernoblyl disaster, investigating the apparent suicide of one of the most powerful men in Russia. I kept waiting for my fingers to start glowing.

Red Square: A Novel (Mortalis.)

Wolves Eat Dogs (Arkady Renko Novels)

Stalin’s Ghost: An Arkady Renko Novel

Havana Bay: A Novel (Mortalis.)

Rose

Haruki Murakami – Kafka on the Shore
This breathless, spacey and ultimately satisfying novel was introduced to me by Roger Steffens. It follows 15-year old runaway Kafka as he searches for his missing sister and mother, and is filled with mysticism, magic, surreal experiences and a back-and-forth narrative that ultimately meet up on a mostly metaphysical plane. Yeah, I know, thought what the hell, too? But it’s beautiful, eerie and in some ways transcendent.

Kafka on the Shore

Jon Krakauer – Into the Wild
The book that inspired the Sean Penn directed movie, which follows Christopher McCandless on his adventures after leaving college and heading cross-country. He ended up in Alaska where he ultimately died at the age of 24. Vividly reported, the book is an expansion on a 9,000 word article Krakauer wrote for Outside magazine in 1993.