Books We Love January 2013

So, I started this series in March. Sue me – I mean us. We definitely have the right to go backwards in time and make sure you get caught up to date on the books we loved January 2013! So there. It’s lucky that we keep definite and tight control of every book we read and when we’ve read it. Otherwise this would be a nightmare. Alright, January it is, come back in time with me to see what we were ready 45 days ago.

Books We Love

Why So Many Predictions Fail But Some Don’t by Nate Silver – We do adore books of this ilk.  Blink, Black Swan, Tipping Point, Freakonomics, Super Freakonomics, Drive, Th!nk, Outliers, Sway, How We Decide, Thinking Fast & Slow… shall we go on?  We mean, we LOVE books of this ilk.  So we were excited to see Silver’s new book on the way late last year.  Yes, January is a little late on for us to jump on this band wagon.  Deal with it.  The list of books under our bed(s) and in our closet(s) and on our Kindle(s) has become overwhelming.  If Blink did it for you – we promise that Predictions will do it for you too.

Warm Bodies –  Yes.  This is exactly what it sounds like, which is odd.  Because what it sounds like shouldn’t work.  A zombie romance novel.  Eh?  But the writing actually is pretty funny and very clever.  I picked it up on a lark as one of a new trend of other Zombie/Love story romance post apocalyptic, action, horror, comedy things.  This book definitely defies categorization I tell you what.  But we dig post apocalyptic-ness.  So we rolled with the premise and enjoyed it all the way through to the end.  We can’t speak for the movie – we haven’t seen it.  But the book was way better than we thought it would be.

Ready Player One – All children of the 90’s and the new millennium get a pass on this particular book review.  Don’t even bother – just move along, nothing to see here.  But you kids who grew up with Atari?  Arcade games and QUARTERS?  Remember those?  Molly Ringwald?  Oh baby have we got a book for you.  This is a post apocalyptic distopyian massively multi-player game centered book from the future.  What’s that got to do with the eighties?  EVERYTHING.  Read it and relive your childhood.  Insta-brilliance Donkey Kong style.

 

A Hologram For the King – We were thankful this book turned out well.  Obviously Eggers’ first book “A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius” was one of the best books we have ever read.  But since then?  Uneven.  “You Shall Know Our Velocity”, ok, but we could have written it.  “What is the What” was an amazing story – but it wasn’t Dave’s story, he just reported it.  “Zeitoun” had all kinds of fall out around it.  (Just google it.)  “The Wild Things” was ok – but again, not his.  So we REALLY wanted to like Hologram.  Thankfully we saw the embers fan back into flame with this one.

 

The Orphan Master’s Son – This book made me wonder why America went to Germany in defense of the innocent there, but we aren’t currently invading North Korea?  And this is fiction.  The next book in our list takes this question to a whole new level.  We were blown away by the stories told throughout the Orphan Master’s Son and about the protagonist who was always on the hunt for identity and love in a country that did everything it could to crush him.  This is a must read book even if it did come out early in 2012. 

 

Escape From Camp 14 by Blaine Harden – Ok so this and the next one are both holdovers from last year.  But they were so good – so genre busting that we had to carry them over into this year.  All of a sudden we can’t get enough about North Korea.  Having just visited Seoul for the first time we are intrigued with what just above the border to the north.  And apparently its all kinds of hell going on up there.  This story is about the only known escapee from a North Korean camp and out to the west.  The story he tells are nothing short of shocking.