Reading List: May 2012

You may have noticed that my reading lists have generally been just a list of titles and authors. However, starting with April 2012, I decided to provide a full bibliographic entry for each book.

During the month of May, 2012, the books I was reading included the following.

Caputo, Philip. Acts of Faith. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2005. 669 pages. ISBN 0-375-41166-6. $26.95. Started on 4 June 2011 and completed on 11 June 2012.
I took a big hiatus in the middle of this book, but it is a marvelous, engaging novel about the strife in southern Sudan.

Ford, Richard. Independence Day. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1995. 451 pages. ISBN 0-679-49265-8. $24.00 Started on 3 February and finished on 21 May 2012.
This is a Pulitzer Prize winner, and a fine novel, but I had some trouble liking the protagonist.

Grafton, Sue. V is for Vengeance. 437 pages. ISBN 978-9-399-15786-8. $27.95. Started on 3 May and completed on 6 May 2012.
Easy read hardly says it.

Larson, Erik. The Garden of Beasts. New York: Crown, 2011. xiv + 448 pages. Notes. Bibliography. Photo Credits. Index. ISBN 978-0-307-40884-6. $26.00. Started 18 April and finished 4 May 2012.
The title is a pun on Tiergarten, a neighborhood in Berlin which was once a royal hunting preserve. Fascinating look at the first year of the Nazi regime in Germany through American eyes.

Locke, John. Two Treatises of Government. A Critical Edition with an Introduction and Apparatus Criticus by Peter Laslett. Revised edition. New York and Scarborough, Ont.: New American Library, 1963. A Mentor Book. xiv + 576 pages. Bibliography. Index. $1.95. Started 30 March and finished 6 July 2012.
One of the great books of the Western World, and a must read as an antidote to the nonsense said about the ideas upon which the United States was founded. Yes, "was founded," not "were founded."

Russo, Richard. Mohawk. New York: Vintage Contemporaries, 1986. 418 pages. ISBN 978-0-679-75382-7. $15.00. Started on 3 February and completed on 26 June 2012.
A really terrific first novel from the (future) author of Nobody's Fool and Empire Falls.

Smiley, Jane. Good Faith. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2003. 417 pages. ISBN 0-375-41217-4. $26.00. Started on 18 May and completed on 14 June 2012.
Like Independence Day, a novel about a real estate agent in the Northeastern United States in the 1980s. But not like Independence Day, in that her protagonist is notable for his lack of angst. A very good read.

Zola, Emile. Germinal. Paris: Bookking International, 2993. Phidal pour le Canada, 1995. Original publication 1885. 473 pages. ISBN 2-89393-465-X. Started 1 July 2004 and finished 28 September 2012.
I probably made my life unnecessarily difficult by choosing to read Germinal in French, but it's been an interesting experience.