The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Stieg Larsson
SuperFreakonomics, S. Levitt and S. Dubner
The Lizard Cage, Karen Connelly
The Garneau Block, Todd Babiak
The Girl who Played with Fire, Stieg Larsson
The Girl who Kicked the Hornets’ Nest, Stieg Larson
The Namesake, Jhumpa Lahiri
Eating Animals, Jonathan Safran Foer. This man is an excellent writer. I am in sympathy with him much of the time. I couldn’t help but find it sad, though, that he didn’t eat his grandmother’s chicken soup. I take a great pleasure in the fact that although I became a vegetarian at the age of 12, I decided to make an exception for my grandmother’s chicken soup in my late 20s, just before she died. I think she died in greater peace because of it! I also think of my favorite hippie-friends in northern California who are slightly nutty organic vegans, but when they went traveling in western Africa, and were offered a chicken head stew by the chief of a tribe, they ate it. There is much to be said about social eating, the community formed by eating, that I think he misses (surprising for a Jewy Jew). I think in focusing on the morality of eating animals, he puts us on par with the animals, which I guess, when it comes down to it, I don’t agree with. I am, it turns out, specieist (who knew?). The “you’re eating shit” part of the book was WAY more compelling an argument for me!
St. Urbain’s Horseman, Mordecai Richler
Predictably Irrational, Dan Ariely
The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society, M. A. Shaffer and Anne Barrows
Maps for Lost Lovers, Nadeem Aslam
Madame Bovary, Gustave Flaubert
Total Immersion, Allegra Goodman
The Girls, Lori Lansens
The Outside World, Tova Mirvis
Caucasia, Danzy Senna
Cockeyed, Ryan Knighton
Rather Laugh than Cry, Malka Zipora
Too Much Happiness, Alice Munro
Butterfly Tears, Zoe Roy
Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk, David Sedaris
Sima’s Undergarments for Women, Ilana Stanger-Ross
The Autograph Man, Zadie Smith
The Poor Princess Diaries 