quick hits

i liked joel's recent approach of book review; 1 or 2 lines that give me all the info i need.  i'm going to try the same (for lack of time), hopefully to almost as good a result:

• Three Cups of Deceit (Jon Krakauer):  this is Jon Krakauer's exposé of Greg Mortenson's book Three Cups of Tea, which if you don't know about, no point in reading this. For the most part, i was absolutely sucked in by Mortenson's accounts of his time in Pakistan, thought of him as a great man and fully supported his initiatives.  Krakauer's book has certainly changed my opinion of this man...  quite considerably, in fact.  i do still think great work is being done, though.  anyway, if you've read Three Cups of Tea, this is a must read.
• Town House (Tish Cohen):  this was one of those mcsweeny's books i found for $.99 cents in the kindle store.  it's clear why it was that price.  only made it half way through before giving up.
• Kapitoil (Teddy Wayne):  i don't know whether it's because i can relate to the characters in it or what, but i absolutely loved this book.  it's about a man from Quatar who comes to the US to work on some Y2K fixes for a huge financial firm.  He ends up creating a program that automatically trades oil futures based on news trends to a great profit.  The story was laugh out loud funny at points, sort of like a funny version of the Reluctant Fundamentalist by Moshin Hamid (also a great book, on a more serious note).  best book i've read in a while, purely entertaining and quite interesting in it's (ok, pretty well known) social commentary.
• Ten-Thousand Saints (Eleanor Henderson):  Joel pointed this book out, and because of how i grew up and the things i was associated with, this sounded spot on for a novel i'd really get into.  much like the highly lauded Welcome to the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan, this book fell well short of my expectations.  i liked both books, don't get me wrong; but i don't understand the incredible high praise they got.  10,000 saints, for example, seemed like a cheap, plastic imitation of a childhood i grew up living and breathing...  something so raw that i yearned to see it captured in print.  alas...  

next 3 books i'm reading are 86'd, by Dan Fante (John Fante's son), Everything is Going to be Great, by Rachel Shukert and The Art of Fielding, a baseball novel by Chad Harbach.