Reviews

There are two economic effects of a trip such as our round-the-world journey: (1) the value of one’s time drastically decreases and (2) the value of one’s money drastically increases. The results of these effects? We walk everywhere we go and we read. A lot.

Below are the lists of books we’ve read on the trip, divided into ones we’d recommend and ones we wouldn’t. (One caveat: a book is only included if we finished it, therefore all books in these lists were good enough to be read all the way through.) And just for fun we’ve thrown in the movies that we’ve seen on airplane rides as well because we do spend a lot of time in the air.

(Last updated: 7/3/10)

Zhou’s Recommended Books

• Daughter of Fortune by Isabel Allende
• The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery
• The Lace Reader by Brunonia Barry
• The Lost Symbol by Dan Brown
• In Cold Blood by Truman Capote
• Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
• Middlemarch by George Eliot
• Birdsong by Sebastian Faulks
• One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia-Marquez
• The Princess Bride by William Goldman
• Slam by Nick Hornby
• A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini
• The Kiterunner by Khaled Hosseini
• A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving
• Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguru
• A Girl Named Zippy by Haven Kimmel
• Bag of Bones by Stephen King
• Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer
• The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson
• Life of Pi by Yann Martel
• Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann
• The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency by Alexander McCall Smith
• Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout
• Chasing Harry Winston by Lauren Weisberger

Zhou’s Unrecommended Books

• A Place Called Here by Celia Ahern
• The Yacoubian Building by Alaa Al Aswany
• Matter by Iain Banks
• Atlantic Shift by Emily Barr
• Christmas Angel by Jo Beverly
• Farenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
• The Dating Detox by Gemma Burgess
• The Murder at the Vicarage by Agatha Christie
• Other People’s Houses by Susan Rogers Cooper
• The Horse Whisperer by Nicholas Evans
• Crunch Time by Mariah Fredericks
• A Friend Like Henry by Nuala Gardner
• The To-Do List by Mike Gayle
• Lord of the Flies by William Golding
• The Last Family in England by Matt Haig
• Dog Stories by James Herriot
• The Quiet Girl by Peter Hoeg
• Animal Dreams by Barbara Kingsolver
• Velocity by Dean Koontz
• Rumour Has It by Jill Mansell
• Just a Taste by Deidre Martin
• The Songmaster by Di Morrissey
• The Third Person by Steve Mosby
• The Girl Next Door by Elizabeth Noble
• Someone Special by Sheila O’Flanagan
• Hastened to the Grave by Jack Olsen
• The 6th Target by James Patterson
• Degree of Guilt by Richard North Patterson
• Something Borrowed by Martina Reilly
• Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie
• Murder in the Frame by Dave Warner
• Forget Me Not by Isabel Wolff
• Falling Leaves by Adeline Yen Nah
• A Window on the Universe – Oxford Short Stories

Kevin’s Recommended Books
(* denotes favorite book read on the entire trip)

• Angels and Demons by Dan Brown
• The Lost Symbol by Dan Brown
• Prey by Michael Crichton
• The Firm by John Grisham
• High Fidelity by Nick Hornby
• Slam by Nick Hornby
• The Kiterunner by Khaled Hosseini
• Velocity by Dean Koontz
• Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer
• Life of Pi by Yann Martel *

Kevin’s Unrecommended Books

• A Walk in the Woods by Bill Bryson
• Black Sunday by Thomas Harris
• The Bourne Identity by Robert Ludlum
• The Final Judgment by Richard North Patterson
• Four Blind Mice by James Patterson
• Q & A by Vikas Swarup

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Zhou’s Recommended Movies

• Coraline
• Hachiko: A Dog’s Story
• How to Train Your Dragon
• Mao’s Last Dancer
• Monsters, Inc.
• Music and Lyrics

Zhou’s Unrecommended Movies

• Ghosts of Girlfriends Past
• The Soloist
• Sunshine Cleaning
• Up in the Air

Kevin’s Recommended Movies

• Avatar
• The Blind Side
• The Book of Eli
• The Bourne Identity
• Burn After Reading
• The Hangover
• State of Play
• Taking of Pelham 123
• Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen
• Up in the Air

Kevin’s Unrecommended Movies

• The Bounty Hunter
• Dirty Harry
• Funny People
• I Love You Man
• I Love You, Phillip Morris
• The Informant!
• Inglourious Basterds
• Love Happens
• Management
• This is It