Summer Book Reading List

The end of summer 2006 is nigh, so continuing my streak of un-original post ideas, I present the following list of books I've read this summer:

1) Canadian Professional Engineering and Geoscience: Practice and Ethics by Gordon C. Andrews

2) Law for Professional Engineers, 3rd Edition, by D.L. Marston

3) The Penelopiad, by Margaret Atwood There are two really important reasons I placed these books first on my list.

a) Upon first glance of the titles people think I’m smart
b) I had to read the first two for homework.

The Ethics and Law textbooks were required reading, as I was preparing for the Ontario Professional Engineers Exam. For textbooks, they actually turned out to be pretty good reading. The case studies were riveting, and I actually learned something about law and ethics this summer. As for the third book, I wouldn’t call myself the biggest Atwood fan in the world. Sometimes her books are just too damn “lit’ry”. (That whooshing sound is the loss of any credibility earned at the beginning of this post.) But The Penelopiad is a crafty little tale and an almost perfect way to exercise those brain cells over a long, hot, war-torn summer. It’s tied with The Robber Bride as my favorite Atwood book.

4) The Ultimates Vol. 1 & 2 by Mark Millar, Bryan Hitch & Andrew Currie
5) Maus: I – My Father Bleeds History by Art Spiegelman
6) Y - The Last Man Vol. 1- 3 by Brian K. Vaughan, Pia Guerra & Jose Marzan, Jr.
7) Mail Order Bride by Mark Kalesniko

I was trolling the local libraries in between study sessions this summer and made a happy discovery. Most public libraries now have a section devoted to graphic novels of all kinds. So that’s where I picked up these next four books.

The Ultimates was a really fun read. Marvel Comic’s “Ultimate” Line of books are modern updates on classic superhero origin stories. The Ultimates is Marvel’s update of the Avengers, bringing the team to the new and darker, post-9-11 world. I got on this bandwagon fairly late, but Mark Millar’s writing and Bryan Hitches photo-real art have me hooked.

Maus is Art Spiegelman’s Pulitzer Prize award winning rendition of the Holocaust as recalled by his father, Vladek. In Maus, Spiegelman depicts the Jews as mice, the Poles as pigs and the Germans as cats, resulting in artwork that’s as haunting as the stories themselves. Highly recommended reading.

Y-The Last Man is the story of a mysterious plague that wipes out every animal with a Y-chromosome except for Yorick, an amateur escape artist, and Ampersand, his pet monkey. The graphic novel attempts a realistic look at the tragedy and the comedy in this weird post-apocalyptic world where 99% of the world’s landowners, 97% of commercial airline pilots and 85% of all government representatives have died in a violent explosion of blood and brain matter. My friend, Jenni recommended this book, and my sister in-law, Sarah is also hooked. My wife is hesitant to read it, because she hates comics, and she’s reading this humongoid book, but the writing is too good for her to pass up on this one.

Mail Order Bride. I’ve never heard of it before. I picked this book up on a whim. I’m glad I did. It’s about an ineffectual comic book store owner and his Korean mail order bride, and the merry hell they generate in each other’s lives. It’s a pretty good meditation on racial and sexual politics.

8) The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown

(everybody knows what the damn book looks like)

9) Beyond Band of Brothers: The War Memoirs of Maj. Dick Winters by Dick Winters and Cole C. Kingseed 10) Without You: A Memoir of Love, Loss and the Musical Rent by Anthony Rapp
I purchased these books-on-tape from Audible.com to help entertain me on my long drives between Ontario, New Jersey and Pennsylvania. Now, I can’t be the only one who thought the Da Vinci Code was a piece of crap. It’s a great premise, but it’s a boring book.

Beyond Band of Brothers was very good. It made be cry all the way from Scranton, PA to Binghamton, NY. It’s really sad to think that the few remaining men who fought in Easy Company during World War II are going to be all gone within the next few years.

Without You was really nice at first, especially when it focused on the creation of the Broadway musical Rent, and when the author wrote about dealing with his mother’s illness. But it started to get a bit tedious near the end. But then again, so were the long-ass trips to the States.