On the non-fiction front, I enjoyed the exuberant homage to evolutionary biology, “The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution,” by Richard Dawkins.

I’ve been recently reading Losing Mum and Pup which is quite surprisingly one of the better books I’ve read in awhile. The book could have been amazing dreary but it wasn’t at all thanks to Buckley’s wonderful sense of humor and surprisingly insightful perspective.

Anyone interested in jazz especially the bebop era needs to read the new Thelonious Monk biography. A great history of the period.

Written shortly after 9/11, “The Faith Club” (by R. Idilby, S. Oliver and P. Warner) prompted me to begin an in-depth exploration of faith and culture. On my journey, I discovered “Dangerous Words: Talking about God in an age of Fundamentalism” by Gary Eberle. Both of these book were fascinating and inspiring.

Colson Whitehead’s “Sag Harbor” is a great Fiction.

I enjoyed “One Thousand White Women” (speculative historic fiction?) and Rebecca Goldstein’s “Mazel” — lyrically written, hard to put down.

Andrew Bacevich’s Limits of Power is a honest look at the US political system and military. He has a very unique point of view on the matter as a BU professor, Vietnam vet, and son of a fallen US soldier. His previous book, New American Militarism is also a fantastic read.

In Non-fiction I really enjoyed the book “Shadow Of The Sword” by Jeremiah Workman. A harrowing tale of war and how even when a soldier leaves the battle field, the battle field doesn’t always leave the soldier. I have already purchased this book for a friend of mine for a Christmas gift.

‘Bite The Hand That Feeds You’ is a wonderful 2009 nonfiction collection of journalistic essays by an Englishman who might be considered Alistair Cooke’s alter-ego, Henry Fairlee. He complained eloquently and insightfully about the inadequacies of American political ideologies and philosophies through the 50′s, 60′s, 70′s, and 80′s, and his comments and prognostications seem prescient in 2009.

Ahmed Rashid’s writings on the Afghanistan/Pakistan region are impressively knowledgeable and lucid– the first hour of ‘On Point’ reminds me to check out his 2009 book, ‘Descent Into Chaos.’

Nonfiction — Temple Grandin’s ‘Animals Make Us Human’ is a marvelous read. As she did in ‘Animals in Translation’ and in ‘Thinking in Pictures’, Grandin gives the reader something new to think about on every page. She is a synthesizer from many scientific fields, drawing her insights both from her scholarship and from her experience as a person with autism. With co-author Catherine Johnson, she is able to set up the rare but maddening situation in which you’ve been dog-earing pages to share with others, and realize you are dog-earing each page. Drat. Incapable of sentimentality, she is gifted to ‘get’ animals as they are, and her observations from wide reading and experience are fascinating even to people who are not particularly interested in animal behavior. Just a sure-fire read and gift.

I fell in love with, and was bewitched by, the character Flavia in the fiction piece The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by Alan Bradley. Its a murder mystery solved by a young precocious girl who is in love with the wonders of chemistry. Anyone who loves a good mystery should read this book.

Carol Besse’s mention of Muriel Barbery’s Elegance of the Hedgehog is welcome but she treated it so lightly I wonder if she savored it as it should be. This award-winning book is more that a delightful story of a concierge in an upscale Parisian building and her encounters with a 13-year old resident and a Japanese newcomer in the building. Much more. Barbery is a philosophy teacher who captures in this magnificent book the depth of family relations, the meaning of art, the sense of beauty, and the confronting of mortality. She does so with humor but it is a mistake to stay at the level of good story-telling. Its richness is in capturing so many essential feature of the human condition. This book, which has been made into a movie, ranks among the very best fiction I have read in the last decade.

1959 by Fred Kaplan

R.L. Salvatore

please check out this guy or comment on, the dark elf series are great along with the stories and spin offs from this still going to date.

Up front , a disclaimer. I am the father of the author I’m recommending. (He’s still a good author.)

Graziano, Michael S. A. – is a prof. of neutoscience at P:rinceton. He has written books in science and his research is well known and important i9n his field. He is also a novelist, with, I think, 4 or 5 novels thus far.

For something different, check out his brief novels “Love Song of Monkey,” and “Divine Farce.”
Both are extraordinarily creative, unusual, even bizarre. He puts people into these surreal situations
and examines their behavior, feelings, and motivations. Kafkaesque in nature. Stimulating, different, and great reads.

Your Country Needs You, by Thelma Robinson. Part one chronicles the history of the US Cadet Nurses of WWII; part two presents personal stories of several former Cadets and excerpts from the Cadet Nurse Corps News. This book by Robinson, a former Cadet Nurse,author and historian is her third and most comprehensive account of this forgotten Corps of 179,000 young women: It is a must read for all living Cadet Nurses and/or their families and all Americans. Many archival pictures are featured plus a treasure trove of references. It’s nursing and women’s history for all. They too are members of The Greatest Generation!

Union Park Press (disclaimer: I work for them and wanted to spread the word to fellow WBUR listeners!), is a small start up press in Boston with beautiful, historical, cultural, and non-fiction books dedicated to Boston and New England. Anyone looking for New England holiday gifts should check out Discovering the Boston Harbor Islands: A Guide to the City’s Hidden Shores (June 2008) and The Die-Hard Sports Fan’s Guide to Boston: A Spectator’s Handbook (June 2009) by Christopher Klein. (Can learn more about them on http://www.unionparkpress.com).

Although, probably not the best nonfiction book of 2009, one that bears our interest is “The Day the World Ended at Little Bighorn.” Written by James Marshall, it reconstructs the demise of the Lakota[Sioux} Nation from this battle, a victory for the Lakota and Northern Cheyenne, to the present. Yet, it portrays the Lakota in a positive light as they have taken inspiration from their past to enable them to deal with the problems of the present and the future. We have not yet done enough for the people whose land we have stolen over the past 400 years.

–a “great story” and a beautifully written biography about one of the great Italian writers in the post-year wars. This book will change the perceptions of anyone who reads it….and will lead back to the great fictional masterpieces he wrote.

Bitter Spring: A Life of Ignazio Silone by Stanislao G. Pugliese.

A boy born in a poverty-stricken rural region is orphaned at an early age and is motivated by the wish to help the poor. He reacts against corruption and refuses to accep the necessity for the harsh lives that are the bitter results of corrupt institutions, political parties, etc. His growth into being one of the most influential writers of his times is a story in itself. –with many lessons for our times.

Quotes: “A man who thinks with his own mind and remains uncorrupted is a free man.”

Anything from Europa Editions, but especially:
The Most Beautiful Book in the World
by Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt,

I really enjoyed both John Irving’s new book “Last Night in Twisted River” and also “Olive Kitteredge”

For recent non-fiction I enjoyed “How To Break a Terrorist” by Matthew Alexander, about using “brains not braun” to find Zarqawi in Iraq, and “Methland” by Nick Reding.

Lorrie Moore’s A Gate to the Stairs. Everything I have read since has just seemed mediocre.

Sheila–

On the show, a listener asked for Tom’s favorite nonfiction book of the year.

Tom loved Ted Kooser’s memoir “Lights on a Ground of Darkness: An Evocation of a Place and Time.”

Kooser is a Pulitzer Prize-winning poet and former U.S. poet laureate. He was a guest on the show in September. You can listen to his conversation with Tom here:

http://www.onpointradio.org/2009/09/poet-ted-kooser

Thanks for listening.