[Five-hole]

On my vacation I read:

We The Living - Ayn Rand. This was a pretty good shock to the last vestiges of college-inspired Communism in me. Paints a pretty ugly picture of Leninist Russia.

jPod - Douglas Coupland. Personally I loved it to death but it certainly isn't for everyone.

Anna Karenina - Tolstoy. I got halfway through this a couple of summers ago and stopped since I only read when I'm abroad. Figured I'd start it again and get all the way through. Picked up a great translation from Pevear and Volokhonsky. It's trite to say that you feel you know characters at the end of books ... but with Tolstoy, you don't. They're so vivid yet so deep and nuanced that they still surprise you even after 800 pages. Anyways if you like classics it's such a great book.

Freakonomics - Don't remember the author. I found it very interesting but I discussed it with a friend of mine who knows a bit about it and he denigrated it pretty harshly, which took some of the sheen off. I finished it in the two hours on the plane between Athens and Frankfurt so it's a pretty quick read for the non-fictioners out there.

The Road - Cormac McCarthy. Even more bleak than We The Living. It's a "quick read" as they say because you just cannot put it down. This is a two, three-nighter at most and you'll sacrifice sleep every one of 'em.

As for favorite books, I'd have to go with:

House of Leaves - Mark Danielewski. What a cool book. A complete mindf---.

Sailing to Sarantium - Guy Gavriel Kay. I don't read fantasy much anymore but this book meant a lot to me when I did.