The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien

I enjoyed reading this book again. I find it an easier way to ease into my annual re-reading of Tolkien's Middle Earth materials than The Silmarillion. This time around, I particularly enjoyed seeing it both as a children's book and as a mixture of genres (poetry and prose, adventure and fantasy). I also noticed in particularly the various strategies Gandalf uses to convince others to do as he asks: the reflecting strategies of getting the dwarves invited to Bilbo's for tea and them all to Beorn's for shelter and aid, and the way that he leaves so that Bilbo can assume leadership of the venture (and provide the crucial Arkenstone that allows everyone start talking--and thus be able to unite against the threat of the Goblins and Wargs at the last moment).

Deeply, Desperately by Heather Webber

This book is an easy read, and the mystery in it is not bad, if nothing to write home about. I enjoyed the banter between Lucy and Preston, the reporter, but I found the break-up-the-engagement plot overbearing and tedious. Good for a quick read if you're not planning on working too hard.

The Eye of the World by Robert Jordan

I decided to read this book based on Brandon Sanderson's tweets, and because I've been thinking about reading this series for a while. I'm glad I did. I really liked the way the series split up the role of the young male protagonist into three, so we're not really sure who's going to be the main mover and shaker. I also thought dividing the main group traveling worked well. I enjoyed the references both to the mythos surrounding the King Arthur legend and to Middle Earth. Overall, I'm looking forward to the next book in this series.

Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace

This book is epic, on the scale of something like Moby Dick or War and Peace or Ulysses. Various sub-plots, which involve the Ennet Drug Recovery House and the Enfield Tennis Academy (whose founder, James O. Incandenza, but known to his family as Himself, committed suicide by sticking his head in a microwave oven, after completing an entertainment known as Infinite Jest so compelling that it causes viewers to stop thinking about anything else while they view it), proliferate throughout the book. The version of the near future presented in the book is fun to entangle, bit by bit, so I'll avoid saying too much about the plot. I think it is fair to say that the novel presses on the conjunction of entertainment, pleasure, and communication, and examines how we connect with those around us. It's a bit of a challenge to get all the way through, but it repays the effort put into it.

Tongues of Serpents by Naomi Novik

This book became much more compelling in its final third (as an exploratory party in Australia finds a new method of Chinese shipping after all sorts of trouble). I appreciate that Novik is doing a lot to keep the books from becoming repetitive (Laurence and Temeraire's association with Britain is questioned, for one thing, and the locales keep changing), but because the plot started as a wild goose chase, it was hard to get into it until all the threads came together at the end. I will still read the next book when it comes out, but this series definitely started with its strongest book.

The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration by Isabel Wilkerson

This book tells the story of the Great Migration (the movement of African Americans out of the South to cities in the North and West from about 1915 to 1975) through the lives of three of its participants: Ida Mae Gladney, George Starling, and Robert Pershing Foster. The individual lives were fascinating, the story of the Great Migration definitely needs to be told in a comprehensive way, and it was incredibly clear that Ms. Wilkerson has done incredible research to get the book off the ground. Still, I found the book a bit clunky--there was a lot of back-and-forth between the three stories (which weren't always presented in strict chronological order) and editorial here's-what-was-happening-specifically segments. I also felt that the prose was embroidered a bit (possibly to make the book more appealing to a non-academic audience). In principle, I feel that making history relevant to the widest possible audience is essential. In the case of this book, the prose style at times turned me off. Still, I was impressed by the depth of research and the book's ambitions (which were fulfilled in its contents, even if I wish the form had been more to my liking).

Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino

In this book Marco Polo claims to describe the fantastic cities of Kubla Khan's empire to the Mogul emperor. Instead, it seems that he's always dancing around the memory of Venice, which overshadows these incredible (and constantly changing) cities. I really appreciated the book's work in thinking through what it means to know a city.