Charles Frazier, Cold Mountain
14.5 hours, 2-Jan-00
Inman's journey home from a Civil War hospital is even more captivating in this reading by the author.

Mark Bowden, Black Hawk Down
5 hours abridged, 26-Feb-00
The ill-fated American intervention in Somalia, as seen by both sides on the ground. A gruesome and gripping minute-by-minute account of modern urban warfare. Read it online.

Laura Esquivel, Like Water for Chocolate
7.5 hours, 19-Mar-00
A romantic family epic in the magical-realism style following Tita, who by family tradition is bound to remain single and care for her mother until she dies.

Michael Crichton, Airframe
4 hours abridged, 29-Mar-00
A thriller set amid the political drama of the aircraft industry, sure to become a movie before long.

Douglas Adams, Last Chance To See
218 pp., 30-Mar-00
Yes, that Douglas Adams, travelling with a zoologist to exotic corners of the world looking for the most endangered species. Highly entertaining and not too preachy.

Sebastian Junger, The Perfect Storm
301 pp., 4-Apr-00
The reader follows the last days of a fishing boat doomed to vanish in the North Atlantic's 'storm of the century.'

Gabriel García Márquez, Story of a Shipwrecked Sailor
106 pp., 5-Apr-00
A member of the Colombian navy was swept overboard and drifted for ten days in a life raft. García Márquez, a young reporter at the time, serialized the story.

Steven Callahan, Adrift
344 pp., 10-Apr-00
The ever rereadable first person account of 76 days spent floating across the Pacific in a rubber life raft.

Ernest Hemingway, Winner Take Nothing
162 pp., 23-Apr-00
A small collection of some of Papa's best short works.

Oliver Sacks, Seeing Voices
162 pp., 28-Apr-00
An interesting and very educational look at the community and language of the deaf, including a report on the uprising at Gallaudet University to demand a deaf president.

F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
200 pp., 8-May-00
Another classic we were forced to read in high school, actually quite enjoyable when read at leisure.

Richard Feynman, The Pleasure of Finding Things Out
257 pp., 11-May-00
This collection of essays and lectures includes much material found elsewhere with some additional material.

Leo Tolstoy, The Cossacks
159 pp., 23-May-00
It took a while to find this novelette, but the enjoyable story and touching portrait of these people made it worth the search.

Peter Goodchild, J. Robert Oppenheimer
288 pp., 4-June-00
A long-sought biography of the man behind the atomic bomb project. This book, part of a BBC production, is richly illustrated and very readable.

Freeman Dyson, Imagined Worlds
208 pp., 12-July-00
An imaginative and sensitive scientist looks deep into the future and imagines what might become of the human race. Other essays contrast Napoleonic and Tolstoyan modes of doing science.

Richard Feynman, "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!"
317 pp., 16-June-00
The great anecdotes, adventures, and experiments, always worth another read.

Michael Crichton, Timeline
444 pp., 17-June-00
An imaginative and well-paced take on the time travel theme. The detailled and engrossing scenes of medieval life and combat reflect a good deal of research on the author's part.

Neal Stephenson, Snow Crash
471 pp., 9-Aug-00
Wow. Action-packed, crisply written, and carefully structured, this is a big chunk of sci-fi that makes the real world seem terribly boring every time you reluctantly stop reading.

Cormac McCarthy, All the Pretty Horses
302 pp., 9-Aug-00
In the Hollywood spirit of finding a category to create a superlative, I would name this my favorite contemporary American realist novel. My earlier review is still here with a favorite excerpt.

Cormac McCarthy, The Crossing
426 pp., 9-Aug-00
The introspective and tragic sequel. Another young cowboy experiences the merciless world of unforseen consequences.

Cormac McCarthy, Cities of the Plain
292 pp., 4-Sep-00
Wrapping up the trilogy with hearty portions of bleakness and beauty, with a helping of Borges for dessert.

Ryszard Kapuscinski, The Soccer War
234 pp., 10-Sep-00
Some great travel writing and war reportage. Kapuscinski went where few foreigners dared, into the tumult of African civil wars and coups during the 60s, and later into Central America. The title refers to a full-scale conflict between El Salvador and Honduras that was sparked by a World Cup qualifying match.

Jennifer Toth, The Mole People
256 pp., 20-Sep-00
Seven stories below the streets of New York City, in the extensive disused subway tunnels and abandoned stations, live literally thousands of people down on their luck. Toth tells their stories, risking her own safety to interview and observe life underground. Thanks to Tony for the loan.
Update: Joseph Brennan, who maintains a list of abandoned subway stations in New York City has some serious objections to the material in this book, calling much of it 'fantasy.'

Julian Barnes, A History of the World in 10 1/2 Chapters
307 pp., 3-Oct-00
This is a wonderful book. It reads like a 'best-of' collection of short stories, but they are all more or less directly linked to a central recurring image. The half-chapter is a charming essay on the peculiar inability of love to make us happy. Sort of a Milan Kundera with a self-effacing British sense of humor.

Joe Queenan, Red Lobster, White Trash, and the Blue Lagoon
188 pp., 10-Oct-00
Bored silly with the highbrow culture to which he had become acustomed, this film critic decided to dive head-first into the worst of America's excesses: Cats, Yanni, "Encino Man," Geraldo, and Atlantic City. Little did he expect that his foray into kitch would become an obsession to find the worst art, music, food, and travel experiences possible. His brutally cutting critique of pop culture is highly entertaining, even if you have read a couple Robert Ludlum novels yourself.

Robert A. Heinlein, Job: A Comedy of Justice
439 pp., 17-Oct-00
A fanciful novel by the sci-fi veteran based on the wormhole motif. Thanks to Ayda for the loan.

Anton Chekhov, The Fiancée and Other Stories
232 pp., 21-Sep-00
Some favorite and some more forgettable short stories.

Steven Pinker, Words and Rules
287 pp., 27-Nov-00
This study in linguistics, focusing on regular and irregular verbs, is a bit more tedious than The Language Instinct, but still has some rewarding insights.

Orhan Pamuk, The White Castle
161 pp., 15-Dec-00
A short novel about two lives so intertwined as to become exchanged, it is no substitute for the Kafka or Borges to which it is compared.