Favorite Books of 2008

Hi all,

My favorite fiction book of 2008, was the last one I completed in 2008 - Imperium. It was well written, with an engaging voice about a subject I knew very little about. Yes, I knew Cicero was a great orator but that was all I knew. The voice, pacing and subject matter kept me engaged from beginning to end and kept me wanting more.

My favorite non-fiction book of 2008 was 1812 The War That Forged a Nation. Again, it was a book written about a subject matter that I knew the gist of, but not in depth. The author kept the novel engaging, setting up battles and important moments as scenes in a good novel.

(See my earlier posts on reviews for both books.)

For 2009, I've already completed two novels: Watchmen and World War Z.

Watchmen is a graphic novel - meaning comic book style - and has a movie coming out in a month. I'm not sure how they're going to make a two hour movie out of it, unless they cut out loads of back story. And some of it can be trimmed. Also, some of the material is pretty horrific, so I imagine they'll have to tone down some scenes. But I was glad I finished the book. It wrapped up very nicely, and the characters were all done very well.

World War Z is a zombie novel. I say this because in general I do not like zombie movies or books. What attracted me to the novel - aside from my brother's insistence that I give it a try - was that it took place after the "zombie wars" and discussed specific countries responses to the zombies, how they spread and people's moral failings. It said a lot about people and society in general. I enjoyed it.

Here's to reading many great books in 2009!

Imperium

I just finished the historical novel, Imperium, by Robert Harris. It is the story of Cicero's rise to his first consulship, also known as Imperium, in 63 B.C. as told by his secretary Tiro. The novel is a fascinating read about Cicero's rise to power in the political hotbed that was Rome.

I normally need to see swords drawn and armies clashing to find a historical novel engaging, but through Harris' descriptive powers and being able to bring characters to life on the page, he was able to show just how exciting and lethal words and oratory could be.

One only has to look at our recent elections to see how effective an extremely good speaker can be in mobilizing the populace.

I highly recommend this book.

My only lament is that I wanted to see how the next twenty years of Cicero's life played out.

Needless to say I read about it on Wikipedia before I wrote this blog.

I really hope Harris will write a sequel to the rest of Cicero's amazing life.