The Books I Read in Norway In 2017

One of the great benefits to this trip has been the downtime (and the travel time) for reading, which remains the absolute best way for me to relax.  Below are the books I’ve read this year, organized in convenient-to-talk-about order.

If you’ve read something good, please comment somewhere, as I’m still going and looking for recommendations!

• A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again: Essays and Arguments and Consider the Lobster: And Other Essays by David Foster Wallace.
  My longtime favorite author, to the point that my main compute server at work is named “wallace” (our computer scientist readers will recognize this for the big deal it is).  A master of taking a banal subject and straightforward, hilarious language, and wandering over onto a much bigger and deeper point.  Can’t recommend his writing enough.
• Although of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself: A Road Trip with David Foster Wallace by David Lipsky.
  After the publishing of DFW’s masterwork Infinite Jest, journalist David Lipsky followed him around for a week as he adjusted to his new fame.  The result was too long for the intended magazine feature, but learning about fame from a man actually capable of expressing what it’s like was a good read.
• Norse Mythology by Neil Gaiman.
  A good, if short, retelling.  I’ve always liked mythology, and the violent existences of Norse demigods fit perfectly in the dramatic and stormy fjords around us.
• Behave: The Biology of Humans at our Best and Worst by Robert Sapolsky.
  Sapolsky does a great job of running through the current science about why people behave the way they do, through the lenses of genetics, endocrinology, neurology, psychology, and sociology.  Repeatedly, he comes back to the ways we’re hardwired to think in terms of Us and Them, frequently artificial constructs heavily present in the worst moments of human civilization, whether it be (for example) Hutus and Tutsis, Aryans and Jews, Shia and Sunni, native and immigrant, or Republican and Democrat.  Strongly recommended, it will change how you view human conflict and how you take part.
• The Islamic Enlightment: The Struggle Between Faith and Reason by Christopher de Bellaigue.
  An attempt to argue against a common belief in the backwardness of the Islamic cultures, it was unfortunately too dense to wade all the way through.  Given the mathematicians and scientists that have emerged from this region, this was a disappointment.
• The Home That Was Our Country: A Memoir of Syria by Alia Malek.
  A Syrian-American with a foot in both countries, Malek tells of the culture and people she knew in Damascus as the politics shift.  Also a frank discussion of life under dictatorship.  A good read.
• The Spy Who Came In From the Cold, The Looking Glass War, and Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy by John le Carre.
  They can’t all be “The Islamic Enlightenment.”  Famously good, if thin, spy novels with well-written, believable characters.
• To the Bright Edge of the World by Eowyn Ivey.
  A novel told through the diaries of Alaskan explorers and the families waiting for them at home.  Most amazing is the way Ivey brings to life the culture and beliefs of native people as the books shifts through perspectives and time.  A really amazing, masterfully written book.  Probably my favorite of this list.
• One Day We’ll All Be Dead, and None of This Will Matter by Scaachi Koul.
  I don’t really remember what this was, except I wasn’t very impressed, and didn’t think the author was as funny as she thought she was or needed to be.
• Rogue Heroes: The History of the SAS, Britain’s Secret Special Forces Unit That Sabotaged the Nazis and Changed the Nature of War by Ben Macintyre.
  A well-written history of the birth of the special forces which conduct so much of our current warfare.  Entertaining if not especially meaty.
• The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead.
  This novel has won All The Awards.  The story follows an escaping slave in a world where the Underground Railroad is imagined literally as a series of traintracks tunneled under the south.  I was engrossed throughout and recommend it, but All The Aforementioned Awards had set me up to be a little disappointed.
• Secondhand Time: The Last of the Soviets by Svetlana Alexievich.
  Alexievich writes by conducting interviews and then writing the stories of her subjects in their own words, with no further elaboration, an approach which results in beautifully poignant books and won her a Nobel Prize in Literature.  This book is about the feelings of common Russians as their criminally oppressive but internationally mighty country broke apart and fell to be a second rate power.  If you want to understand the popularity of Putin and the Russian plutocracy, this book will teach you about it, beautifully.
• Grant by Ron Chernow.
  I’ve always enjoyed presidential biographies, and this was a good one.  Chernow’s Grant is a military genius, a good-hearted man, and a well-intentioned policymaker with a crippling lack of political skill.
• Travels With Lisbeth: Three Years on the Road and on the Streets by Lars Eighner.
  Eighner is a talented author who fell into homelessness with his dog Lisbeth and emerged to tell the story.  If you’re curious about the daily lives of the homeless around you, this is as good an insight as you’re likely to get.
• I Was Told to Come Alone: My Journey Behind the Lines of Jihad by Souad Mekhennet.
  Mekhennet is a Moroccan-German reporter who has worked for the New York Times and the Washington Post, as well as several European papers.  Comfortable in the middle east, Mekhennet has earned incredible access throughout ISIS, Al Qaeda, and the less organized offshoots of Islamic radicalism.  Her stories and courage are are unbelievable, and station her as well as anybody to answer the question, “Why do they hate us?”
• Age Of Iron by J. M. Coetzee.
  Coetzee is a Nobel Laureate who writes this diary by a terminally ill woman as she tries to make meaning and atonement and desperately pass on the last of her wisdom in her final weeks in apartheid South Africa.  The writing is beautiful, impressive, and worth all the awards.
• The Power by Naomi Alderman.
  What if, suddenly, women were the more physically powerful gender?  How would the world change?  In this novel, women suddenly develop the ability to electrocute.  The resulting story is not always gracefully written, but it is thoroughly engrossing and provides plenty to think about.
• Leonardo da Vinci by Walter Isaacson.
  I was surprised after reading this to learn that Walter Isaacson was not a professional art critic.  This biography focuses not on the chronological happenings of Leonardo’s life, but instead on why Leonardo is so revered.  What did he do that nobody else has done?  Why do we care about the Mona Lisa?  Why are his drawings of patently impossible flying machines so famous?  A highly educational surprise of a book.
• A Horse Walks Into a Bar: A Novel by David Grossman, translation by Jessica Cohen.
  An aging stand-up comedian loses control of his set, and is drawn into something much rarer.  I’m not sure what else to say to set this up, as I don’t want to ruin it, and don’t know how to describe it anyway.  A completely unique book that delves deep.