You go to the site and fill in your details. They choose a book randomly and send it to you. You read it, and submit a review. Sometimes the simple ideas are the best ones. Actually, computer book publishers have been doing this for a while. So have film studios. I’m wondering if this is the first time a mainstream publisher has done something like this.

My randomly selected book was In Cold Blood, which I’ve always wanted to read. I’ll be posting a review soon.

I should mention that I’m not sure if this is a UK-only program. If you’re in the States and you register successfully, let me know in the comments.

1. Pick up the nearest book (of at least 123 pages).
2. Open the book to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the next three sentences.

In my case, the closest book was Endless Forms Most Beautiful by Sean B. Carroll. And here’s your three sentences:

For example, even though the seven stripes of some tool kit patterns appear very similar and evenly spaced, each stripe is drawn by a different switch that integrates different combinations of longitudinal inputs. This seemed at first like an awful lot of machinery for making just one pattern. But this stripe-by-stripe construction of striped patterns in the fly embryo was the first clue to the general rule that the whole expression pattern of any tool kit gene is actually the sum of many parts, with individual parts controlled by individual switches.

And there you have it: a turning point in Evo Devo. The book is actually quite a good summary of recent developments in biology. The last chapter is probably one of the best defenses of science and evolution that I’ve read recently.

Below are “106 books of pretension,” compiled from the books most frequently marked unread by Library Thing users.

Books I’ve read are in bold; books I’ve stared but haven’t finished are in italics; books I own but haven’t read are marked with an dagger (†). I was tempted to annotate all the books, but you can probably read about books I love
elsewhere on this blog. So I’ll only annotate (*ahem* make excuses about) the books I haven’t finished or the books I own but haven’t read yet†.

Here is the executive summary for those of you who don’t want to slog through all of the titles:

• Read: 55
• Haven’t finished: 5
• Own, but haven’t read†: 9

And here’s the list:

1. Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell† – Joanne started reading this, but she found it pretty boring. If anyone out there read this and enjoyed it, let me know. If you’re convincing enough, I’ll give it a go.
2. Anna Karenina
3. Crime and Punishment
4. Catch-22
5. One Hundred Years of Solitude
6. Wuthering Heights
7. The Silmarillion – I could never really get into this. I’ve read Lord of the Rings three times, but I’ve never managed to finish this
8. Life of Pi : a novel
9. The Name of the Rose
10. Don Quixote
11. Moby Dick – I got most of the way through this book, then I got to an incredibly vivid description of whale carcasses floating abandoned in the sea. It made me sick to my stomach. I put the book down, and I’ve never picked it up again. This is a book I really need to finish.
12. Ulysses – I started this one summer when I was in University. I had at least two books of annotations, and I was ready for anything. I got close to halfway through, then the fall semester started. I never quite had the time to finish it.
13. Madame Bovary
14. The Odyssey
15. Pride and Prejudice
16. Jane Eyre
17. The Tale of Two Cities
18. The Brothers Karamazov
19. Guns, Germs, and Steel: the fates of human societies† – I bought this a while ago in at the used book stall on the beach in Brighton. I keep coming across references to this and other books by Jared M. Diamond in a number of books I’m readying (usually biology related), so it’s quite likely I’ll actually read this soon.
20. War and Peace
21. Vanity Fair
22. The Time Traveler’s Wife† – Joanne read this and liked it a lot. I think it’s currently on loan to someone. If we ever get it back, I’ll read it.
23. The Iliad
24. Emma
25. The Blind Assassin† – I need to read this. I like Margaret Atwood a lot, but I just haven’t gotten around to reading this one. Actually, this one may be on loan, too. I couldn’t find it on our shelves, but I’m pretty sure it was at one point.
26. The Kite Runner
27. Mrs. Dalloway
28. Great Expectations
29. American Gods
30. A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
31. Atlas Shrugged
32. Reading Lolita in Tehran : a memoir in books
33. Memoirs of a Geisha† – Another one that Joanne has read (twice). She says that it’s a much better book than the movie they made out of it. I’d like to read it to find out if that’s true.
34. Middlesex
35. Quicksilver
36. Wicked : the life and times of the wicked witch of the West
37. The Canterbury tales
38. The Historian : a novel
39. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
40. Love in the Time of Cholera
41. Brave New world
42. The Fountainhead
43. Foucault’s Pendulum
44. Middlemarch
45. Frankenstein
46. The Count of Monte Cristo
47. Dracula
48. A Clockwork Orange
49. Anansi Boys
50. The Once and Future King
51. The Grapes of Wrath
52. The Poisonwood Bible : a novel† – This was in a £1 book bin at Eridge station, which means it’s been sitting unread on my shelf for about three years. The shame.
53. 1984
54. Angels & Demons
55. The Inferno
56. The Satanic Verses† – Of all the Rushdie I’ve read, how have I not read this one? One day, very soon, I’m going to read this.
57. Sense and Sensibility
58. The Picture of Dorian Gray
59. Mansfield Park
60. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
61. To the Lighthouse
62. Tess of the D’Urbervilles
63. Oliver Twist
64. Gulliver’s Travels
65. Les Misérables
66. The Corrections
67. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
68. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
69. Dune
70. The Prince
71. The Sound and the Fury – I may have actually finished this. I was a bit preoccupied at the time. Most of it was read on a plane between the France and the U.S. In any case, I need to reread this.
72. Angela’s Ashes : a memoir
73. The God of Small Things
74. A People’s History of the United States : 1492-present
75. Cryptonomicon
76. Neverwhere
77. A Confederacy of Dunces† – I think we own this, though I couldn’t find it on our shelves. I know Joanne has read it. I guess I should probably read it, but I really don’t want to. I think I just got sick of hearing about it in the early ’90s. In fact, I feel like I’ve read it already. If you’ve read this one, and think I should read it, let me know.
78. A Short History of Nearly Everything
79. Dubliners
80. The Unbearable Lightness of Being
81. Beloved
82. Slaughterhouse-five
83. The Scarlet Letter
84. Eats, Shoots & Leaves
85. The Mists of Avalon
86. Oryx and Crake : a novel
87. Collapse : how societies choose to fail or succeed
88. Cloud Atlas
89. The Confusion
90. Lolita
91. Persuasion
92. Northanger Abbey
93. The Catcher in the Rye
94. On the Road
95. The Hunchback of Notre Dame
96. Freakonomics : a rogue economist explores the hidden side of everything
97. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance : an inquiry into values
98. The Aeneid
99. Watership Down
100. Gravity’s Rainbow† – I picked this up at the gift shop at Herstmonceux Castle. That was almost a year ago. It’s probably time to actually read the book.
101. The Hobbit
102. In Cold Blood : a true account of a multiple murder and its consequences
103. White Teeth
104. Treasure Island
105. David Copperfield
106. The Three Musketeers – Technically, this one is unfinished, but I’m reading it right now.

If you’ve made it this far, you are obviously at least as pretentious as I am, and are hereby tagged. Which of these books have you read? Which didn’t you finished? Which do you own, but have yet to read?

Update: I’ve closed comments on this post due to excessive spam, but if you have something to say, you can always send me a message directly.

Wizard of the Crow, by Ngugi Wa Thiong’o

Probably best described as satirical magical realism, but don’t let that put you off. This is hands down my favourite book of the year. I think I’ve given this as a present to pretty much everyone I know.

Suite Française, by Irène Némirovsky

I haven’t read any of her other books, but Némirovsky was a writer of extraordinary talent. Her characters, her attention to detail and her ability to inhabit a future that she would never know are the reasons that this book is a great work of literature, despite the fact that she was never able to complete the book.

Margherita Dolce Vita, by Stefano Benni

Another one of those books that I keep giving as a present. This is a fantastic tale of what happens when innocence, family and politics collide.

Never Let Me Go, by Kazuo Ishiguro

I’ve written briefly about Never Let Me Go before. What is extraordinary about the book is not so much what is said, but what goes unsaid.

My Uncle Napoleon, by Iraj Pezeshkzad

An Iranian classic, currently banned in Iran. The characters are so well drawn that you are rarely told who is speaking, you simply know by what is said.

So there it is in all its glory. What do you think? What were your favourite books last year?

I’ve now decided that I won’t start any other books until I’ve finished the unfinished books that have been lurking by my bedside for so many months now. So far, I’ve finished one of the unfinished books, The Diversity of Life and I’ve restarted another, Amo, Amas and All That. As for the remaining seven, I’ve created a to-finish bookshelf over at goodreads.

With the exception of The World is Flat, I was enjoying all of these books while I was reading them and I’m looking forward to returning to them. I’m just hoping that the rest of The World is Flat isn’t as badly researched and biased as the chapter on open source software.

Whole Foods Market — where I worked for several years in the nineties — has opened on Kensington High Street. The opening has been well covered in the media, and my friend Valentine dedicated a recent blog post to it.

After reading the news and Valentine’s blog post, I started doing some googling, mostly following up what I had read over Christmas in The Omnivore’s Dilemma by Michael Pollan, which is sharply critical of Whole Foods’ supposed dedication to small local farmers.

What I found was interesting, to say the least. It seems the Pollan and John Mackey have been engaged in a year long dialogue about Pollan’s criticisms. It begins with a letter from Mackey to Pollan to which Pollan responded. They wrote back and forth, and finally Pollan invited Mackey to come to Berkeley and debate the issues. Eventually, he did. The resulting discussion is available as a webcast. The whole exchange is fascinating, and the webcast is quite entertaining at points. If you’ve read the Omnivore’s Dilemma, I recommend reading through their letters and watching the webcast.

Mackey’s response probably falls somewhere between corporate damage limitation and a heartfelt reaction to Pollan’s criticism of his company. Apparently, Whole Foods lost $2 billion in stock market capitalization after the release of The Omnivore’s Dilemma, though certainly not all of this is attributable to the book’s impact.

What I find encouraging about the whole exchange is that a well written, well researched and passionate book can bring about concrete change. While Pollan’s book may not have been able to change U.S. agricultural policy (yet), he has certainly had an impact on Mackey. Whole Foods has introduced a number of programs to encourage local farming, fair trade and compassionate food production. Some of this may well have happened anyway, but Pollan’s book certainly has a lot to do with it.

Whatever the reasons for the new Whole Foods programs, I am impressed by Mackey’s response. It was personal and honest. Whole Foods didn’t issue press releases (that I know of), but engaged in debate. That said, Mackey’s last blog post smacks of a PR exercise. Whereas the letters and the webcast were thoughtful and straigtforward, this blog post — which is an extended quote from Michael Strong — is a saccharine and overwrought piece in honour of the great and glorious John Mackey.

I would still rather buy our produce from Riverford Farm or from a farmer’s market. I think that the new Kensington store is unlikely to appeal to me. From what I’ve read and what I’ve seen of other Whole Foods stores, it is likely to be as overblown as John Mackey’s last blog post. At least I won’t feel as guilty when we’re shopping at Fresh & Wild, assuming Whole Foods decides to keep these smaller stores open.

The next day, I opened the Review of the Saturday Guardian to read Anna Funder’s article on the film. (If you haven’t seen the film, I’d recommend waiting until you have before reading the article.) I was almost expecting an article like this. One that says that the film could never have happened. I expected an article like this to ruin the film for me. It didn’t. Funder recognizes that the film is superb; however, she points out that the events portrayed the film could never have happened. The East German system of surveillance would not have allowed it to happen. A Stasi man would never have give the freedom that Wiesler was given in the film.

I have yet to read Funder’s Stasiland, but it is now on my reading list. I’m appalled by the notion that a totalitarian system could be that complete, that successful. Strangely, I’m also comforted by the fact that the regime used fear to ensure the passivity and acceptance of its citizens. Stay with me here: I’m not a sadist, and I do approve of or condone the methods used in East Germany.

I’ve recently finished Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go. The characters in Never Let Me Go are in a horrific situation. Entirely absent is any notion that this situation could be changed. The characters accept their horrific fate, of which they are fully aware, as destiny. They discuss it amongst themselves. They seek to defer it. In some cases, they even rave against it. But they never consider that they could avoid it, that they could change it. They simply accept that it is why they were created. They are completely human, yet completely oblivious to the possibility of change for the better.

This is what I mean when I say that I’m comforted by the fact that in East Germany, fear was used to keep the population in line. The regime was never able to win the population’s hearts and minds. People wanted a better life, and there were those who fought for it.

Fear tactics are very persuasive, but they are also very obvious. They are an easy way to prevent opposition and to shut down rational debate. Not every one falls for it, though. Not everyone gives in. What frightens me is the idea that human beings can be taught to accept an unacceptable, inhumane situation as normal and natural.

Update For whatever reason, this post was attracting about 90% of the spam on this blog, so I’m closing comments on this post.

Thanks, Mike! There’s a couple on your list I haven’t read yet, though I’ll be doing my best to fix that soon.

At the time that New Media was coming to an abrupt end, Wendy asked for a list of my top ten books. I actually did start putting a list together. I have it here in front of me: 31 books. Joanne and I worked on our lists during a train journey into London to see the Information Design Exhibition at the Design Museum. I have her list too: 26 books. The lists are dated 19 March 2005. A long time coming.

Two years later, and I have an email in my inbox from another friend asking for more or less the same thing. So now it’s time to browse the bookshelves, go over the old list and decide on my 10 favourite books. The list, not surprisingly, is going to be a bit arbitrary. I’m not including books that I read before I was 12 or 13. If you’re curious, my favourite book from my childhood is The Lorax. Dr. Seuss had a huge influence on me: just ask anyone unfortunate enough to have read my childhood poetry.

OK. Here we go:

1. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee – This choice is probably influenced by the fact that Joanne and I recently watched Capote. Then again, maybe not. It’s book #11 on the train list. It gets the top spot because it’s the first book I remember reading that I loved, aside from the Lorax, of course. I can trace my core beliefs back to a handful of books, some of which are on this list. This is one of them.
2. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley – Should I be ashamed that this book made it onto my list rather than 1984? I read them around the same time, probably 1984 actually. Brave New World had much more of an impact. I suppose it seemed more relevant at the time. Of course, I was a 13-year-old kid. 1984 is sitting in my bedside stack of books. Perhaps I should read Brave New World and 1984 side by side again to see what I think now.
   Huxley had an impact for another reason. The Perennial Philosophy sparked my interest in World Religion. My nascent rebellion against seven years of Lutheran School probably had something to do with it, too.
3. Slaughterhouse 5 by Kurt Vonnegut – When I was 18 or 19 years old, Vonnegut was the only author I read. At least that’s how I remember it. If this list were organised according to the impact books had on the way I see the world, Vonnegut would be number two. As you probably know, Vonnegut died recently. So it goes. The day after he died, I reread Slaughterhouse 5. Vonnegut, I realised, isn’t a great stylist. He can tell a fabulous story, though, and he has the remarkable ability to convey what he believes is right. It’s all the more remarkable because he also manages to convey all the absurdity, doubt and uncertainty that most of us experience on a daily basis.
4. The Arabian Nights – I’ve read many a book of folk and fairy tales in my time, but this is still the best. The Brothers Grimm runs a close second. I wouldn’t bother with all 1001 nights, though. From what I remember, several hundred of the nights are padding added in the 18th century. The Haddaway translation is the best.
5. If on a Winter’s Night a Traveller by Italo Calvino – I discovered Calvino via his collection of Italian Folktales and the recommendation of a friend. I quickly fell in love with his work. He’s able to transform his love of learning, words and books into spellbinding fables. Though all of his work is amazing, If on a Winter’s Night a Traveller remains my favourite because the conclusion, while extraordinarily simple, questions the very notion of conclusions.
6. The Bloody Chamber by Angela Carter – Joanne introduced me to Angela Carter. In fact, I basically “stole” Angela Carter from Joanne, and was quickly recommending Carter’s books to everyone who would listen. But her books are amazing. In a world where most of the fairy tales we know are through Disney films, Carter rescued fairy tales — and story telling in general — from saccharine certainty and happy endings. The stories in The Bloody Chamber are dark, well written and enthralling.
7. Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes – Forget that this is a “classic.” Forget that it is the “first European novel.” It is the funniest book that I’ve ever read. OK, it’s really two books. I maintain that the second is the better of the two. In it, Don Quixote sets off again. This time, however, the people he encounters have read what we’ve read and know what we know. They see him coming a mile off, a wannabe knight with his head in his books of chivalry. If you met Don Quixote on the road, what would you do? And you thought reality television was cruel.
8. Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World by Haruki Murakami – I discovered Murakami by accident when I picked up this book from shelves of the Co-op bookstore in Austin. Murakami was completely unexpected. In a different time, with a bit more confidence, his characters would have been tricksters, bridging the gap between humans and the gods. Instead, these are ordinary men, not god-like at all. They are caught between reality and imagination, trying to make sense of it all. In a way, they are Don Quixotes with no Sancho Panza to provide comic relief or guidance. Not nearly as funny, but still fascinating.
   
9. Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell – Several Christmases ago, Mike gave me Ghostwritten. He thought I’d love it. My brother knows me well. Mitchell is now my favourite living author. He is a master craftsman. His stories and characters are perfectly drawn, but it is as a ventriloquist that he truly shines. He can take on the voice of any character. The tone and timbre is so convincing that you’d swear they were standing in front of you, sharing their strange life stories with you. If you do read Cloud Atlas, read If on a Winter’s Night a Traveller first.
10. Margherita Dolce Vita by Stefano Benni – This is a recent find. I want to read more of Benni, though according to Wikipedia, only three of his books have been translated into English. Hopefully this will change. It’s rare to find a book that is simultaneously as imaginative, politically engaged and enjoyable as Margherita Dolce Vita. I bumped a very worthy, but better known, book was bump from this list simply because I think more people should know about this book. So read it, already.

And there it is. There’s a lot that I’ve left out. Now that I’ve finished it, the list as a whole seems to lean heavily in favour of literary fantasy, if there is such a category of fiction. I do read other types of books. Apparently, I don’t enjoy them quite as much, though.

So, what do you think? Are my choices crap? What 10 books would you choose?