Morjes!

Welcome to my blog. I write about fitting in, sticking out, and missing the motherland as a serial foreigner.

Books 2011

I'm going to present my 2011 book data a little differently this year. Instead of putting the favorites in with the masses like I did in 2007, 2008, 2009, and 2010, I'm going to give you the (loosely and probably inconsistently) categorized list of everything I read this year and do the favorites along with some fun distinctions in a few days. Here you go!

(An asterisk means I didn't finish the book.)



Books I read with Miriam
*The Last Battle (C.S. Lewis)
The Magician's Nephew (C.S. Lewis)
The Horse and His Boy (C.S. Lewis)
The Silver Chair (C.S. Lewis)
The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (C.S. Lewis)
Prince Caspian (C.S. Lewis)

Young Adult/Juvenile Literature
The Luxe (Anna Godbersen)
Shadow Hills (Anastasia Hopcus)
The Scorch Trials (James Dashner)
The Maze Runner (James Dashner)
I Am the Messenger (Markus Zusak)
Spoiled (Heather Cocks)
City of Fallen Angels (Cassandra Clare)
Divergent (Veronica Roth)
East (Edith Pattou)
Stolen: A Letter to My Captor (Lucy Christopher)
Abandon (Meg Cabot)
Ender's Game (Orson Scott Card)
Crescendo (Becca Fitzpatrick)
Matched (Ally Condie)
The Graveyard Book (Neil Gaiman)
Hush, Hush (Becca Fitzpatrick)
Clockwork Angel (Cassandra Clare)
Delirium (Lauren Oliver)
Mockingjay (Suzanne Collins)
Between Shades of Gray (Ruta Sepetys)

Classics
The Master and Margarita (Mikhail Bulgakov)
The Count of Monte Cristo (Alexandre Dumas)
A Pair of Blue Eyes (Thomas Hardy)
Wuthering Heights (Emily Bronte)

Fiction
Life: An Exploded Diagram (Mal Peet)
The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society (Annie Barrows)
The Weed That Strings the Hangman's Bag (Alan Bradley)
The Help (Kathryn Stockett)
Room (Emma Donoghue)
Crossing to Safety (Wallace Stegner)
Snow Falling on Cedars (David Guterson)
*The Pillars of the Earth (Ken Follett)

Middle East
One Day in September: The Full Story of the 1972 Munich Olympics Massacre and the Israeli Revenge Operation "Wrath of God" (Simon Reeve)
City of Gold: Dubai and the Dream of Capitalism (Jim Krane)
Girls of Riyadh (Rajaa Alsanea)
Baghdad without a Map and Other Misadventures in Arabia (Tony Horwitz)
Son of Hamas: A Gripping Account of Terror, Betrayal, Political Intrigue, and Unthinkable Choices (Mosab Hassan Yousef)
Kill Khalid: The Failed Mossad Assassination Attempt on Hamas Leader Khalid Mishal and Its Unforeseen Consequences (Paul McGeough)
Inheriting Syria: Bashar's Trial by Fire (Flynt Leverett)
Prisoner of Tehran: A Memoir (Marina Nemat)
The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11 (Lawrence Wright)

Biography/Memoir
Mud, Sweat and Tears (Bear Grylls)
Shakespeare: The World as Stage (Bill Bryson)
Come, Tell Me How You Live: An Archaeological Memoir (Agatha Christie)
Known and Unknown (Donald Rumsfeld)
Adrift: Seventy-Six Days Lost at Sea (Steven Callahan)
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks (Rebecca Skloot)
Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption (Laura Hillenbrand)

Historical Non-Fiction
We Die Alone: A WWII Epic of Escape and Endurance (David Howarth)
33 Men: Inside the Miraculous Survival and Dramatic Rescue of the Chilean Miners (Jonathan Franklin)
Hunting Eichmann: How a Band of Survivors and a Young Spy Agency Chased Down the World's Most Notorious Nazi (Neal Bascomb)
*Devil's Gate: Brigham Young and the Great Mormon Handcart Tragedy (David  Roberts)
The Professor and the Madman: A Tale of Murder, Insanity, and the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary (Simon Winchester)

NPR-type Books
Maphead: Charting the Wide, Weird World of Geography Wonks (Ken Jennings)
*Word Freak: Heartbreak, Triumph, Genius, and Obsession in the World of Competitive Scrabble Players (Stefan Fatsis)
The Psychopath Test: A Journey Through the Madness Industry (Jon Ronson)
The Wilder Life: My Adventures in the Lost World of Little House on the Prairie (Wendy McClure)
The Perfect Mile: Three Athletes, One Goal, and Less Than Four Minutes to Achieve It (Neal Bascomb)
The Ends of the Earth: A Journey to the Frontiers of Anarchy (Robert D. Kaplan)
Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers (Mary Roach)
At Home: A Short History of Private Life (Bill Bryson)

Other
Third Culture Kids: Growing Up Among Worlds (David C. Pollock)
What to Eat (Marion Nestle)
Three Cups of Deceit: How Greg Mortenson, Humanitarian Hero, Lost His Way (Jon Krakauer)
Columbine (Dave Cullen)
Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen (Christopher McDougall)

Cultural osmosis

Merry Christmas!