I might be reading a lot this year (uh, or I might not), so I figured I'd keep track of the books I read and rate them. It seems to be the cool thing to do. Reverse chronological. Ratings are from 0 to 10. Things are novels unless otherwise mentioned. See also 2006, 2005.

• Senor Vivo and the Coca Lord, Louis de Bernieres. This is the second of his novels I've read, and I'm struck by the fact that de Bernieres' writing style is an incredibly good match for the worlds he creates: both are clever and whimsical and matter-of-fact, which is a very good combination. Truly, the man is an excellent writer. The ending of this I thought was maybe not so good, but the writing is amazing and the first two-thirds or so were also amazing plotwise, so he gets a mostly-pass for that. 9.
• Year of Wonders, Geraldine Brooks. A fictionalized account of one woman's experiences during the Bubonic Plague. I have no idea if that sounds remotely interesting, but I generally am not a fan of historical fiction, largely because of the worst book I have ever read, Thomas Pynchon's Mason and Dixon. Fortunately, this is written in 20th-century English, not 17th-century English. And it's written well, and the characters are really quite well painted. A solid novel. 7.
• The New New Thing, Michael Lewis (nonfiction.) An interesting mostly biography of a pioneer who was the idea man behind several technology companies. Lewis is a phenomenal writer, and at this point I might have to go out and read everything he's written. Thumbs up. 8.
• The Sailor who Fell from Grace with the Sea, Yukio Mishima (trans. John Nathan). This book was an interesting experience -- the book is too short! Usually when a book is too short (like my novels) it is revealed with an abrupt and premature ending, but I really liked the ending here and thought it was well-timed and appropriate, etc.. But the book could benefit from more time/pages put into character development; I felt like I could only see a shell of the characters, and that a more fleshed-out picture was easily possible and would be beneficial. I mean, the book is very good, it's well-written and the characters are hardly unrelatable, but somehow I'd like to know more about them; a few more vignettes could go a long way towards tying together their characters. 6.
• The Color of Water, James McBride (memoirs.) This (a touching human interest story) isn't the sort of book I usually read, but circumstances intervened. And it's really good; it's really well-written and quite gripping and worth reading even if you're not the sort of person who reads heartrending, poignant stories of racially charged situations and that sort of thing. 8.
• Spring Snow, Yukio Mishima (trans. Michael Gallagher.) I hadn't read a bad book in a while. This is a bad book. What makes a bad book? The characters are incongruous and scattershot, and their actions don't coalesce into a coherent personality or even a believably incoherent personality. The narration jumps wildly from one character to another; it's third person omniscient, but very ham-handed. Even late in the novel, new characters are given character descriptions which seem like red herrings. Even the individual paragraphs jump from point A to point B seemingly at random. The analogies are often potentially melodramatic, more befitting the floridity of a bad fiction writing contest than anything like a serious novel. It's just bad. I'll give it a 2 which is probably generous.
• Confessions of a Mask, Yukio Mishima (trans. Meredith Weatherby.) I don't know why, but I really like most of the Japanese-translated fiction I've read. This is a pretty good exemplar, I feel; there is something, which I can't quite put my finger on, which is common to all Japanese fiction that I seem to like. Pretty much everything (plot, characters, setting) seems averagely typical of the genre, which I like. No complaints. 7.
• The World is Flat, Thomas Friedman (nonfiction). I actually liked the first 200 pages of this book, which is a discussion of how the world is flat (translation: a level playing field, which allows things like outsourcing) and how it got that way (the astonishingly quick rise of connective technology, i.e. the internet.) The problem with this was that the next 300 pages were basically the same. This is a book you shouldn't feel bad about abandoning 200 pages in -- I suffered so you could do that in good conscience! 6.
• A Beautiful Math, Tom Siegfried (nonfiction). A more mathematical biography of Nash and others, detailing the rise of game theory as a legitimate branch of mathematics and its many uses today. An excellent read and pretty good mathematically. 8.