FICTION
1. WATER FOR ELEPHANTS
by Sara Gruen
Algonquin
A young man and an elephant save a Depression-era circus.
2. MIDDLESEX
by Jeffrey Eugenides
Picador
An epic story about three generations of Greek-Americans told by a hermaphrodite.
3. THE KITE RUNNER
by Khaled Hosseini
Riverhead
An Afghan-American returns to Kabul to learn how a childhood friend has fared under the Taliban.
4. THE MEMORY KEEPER'S DAUGHTER
by Kim Edwards
Penguin
A doctor's decision to secretly send his newborn daughter, who has Down syndrome, to an institution haunts everyone involved.
5. THE EMPEROR'S CHILDREN
by Claire Messud
Vintage
Privileged 30-somethings try to make their way in literary New York just before Sept. 11.
6. THE ALCHEMIST
by Paulo Coelho
HarperSanFrancisco
A tale about the lessons a Spanish shepherd boy learns during his travels to Egypt in search of treasure.
7. SNOW FLOWER AND THE SECRET FAN
by Lisa See
Random House
The lives of two women in 19th-century China.
8. THE ROAD
by Cormac McCarthy
Vintage
A father and son travel in post-apocalypse America.
9. SUITE FRANCAISE
by Irene Nemirovsky
Vintage
Two novellas, which came to light more than 50 years after the author's death at Auschwitz, about life in France under the Nazis.
10. DEAR JOHN
by Nicholas Sparks
Warner
An unlikely romance between a soldier and an idealistic young woman is tested in the aftermath of Sept. 11.
11. MY SISTER'S KEEPER
by Jodi Picoult
Washington Square
A girl sues her parents after learning they want her to donate a kidney to her sibling.
12. THE BOLEYN INHERITANCE
by Philippa Gregory
Touchstone
Politics and treachery in the court of Henry VIII.
NONFICTION
1. EAT, PRAY, LOVE
by Elizabeth Gilbert
Penguin Books
A writer's yearlong journey in search of self takes her to Italy, India and Indonesia.
2. INTO THE WILD
by Jon Krakauer
Anchor
How a young man's obsession with the wilderness had a tragic end.
3. 90 MINUTES IN HEAVEN
by Don Piper with Cecil Murphey
Revell
A minister on the otherworldly experience he had after an accident.
4. THE GLASS CASTLE
by Jeannette Walls
Scribner
The author recalls a bizarre childhood during which she and her siblings were constantly moved from one bleak place to another.
5. THREE CUPS OF TEA
by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin
Penguin Books
A former climber builds schools in Pakistan and Afghanistan.
6. THE WORLD IS FLAT
by Thomas Friedman
Picador
An updated edition of a columnist's analysis of 21st-century economics and foreign policy.
7. THE OMNIVORE'S DILEMMA
by Michael Pollan
Penguin
Tracking dinner from the soil to the plate, a journalist juggles appetite and conscience.
8. BLINK
by Malcolm Gladwell
Back Bay/Little Brown
The author of The Tipping Point explores the importance of instinct to the workings of the mind.
9. THE TIPPING POINT
by Malcolm Gladwell
Back Bay/Little, Brown
A journalist's study of social epidemics, otherwise known as fads.
10. THE LOOMING TOWER
by Lawrence Wright
Vintage
The road to Sept. 11 as seen through the lives of terrorist planners and the FBI counterterrorism chief who died in the attacks.
11. THE FEMALE BRAIN
by Louann Brizendine
Broadway
A look at the biology behind women's thoughts and behavior.
12. CHOSEN BY A HORSE
by Susan Richards
Harcourt
The author recounts rescuing a broken-down horse, which in turn helped rescue her.
It is barely 10am and the queue outside Onigiri Bongo already stretches around the block. Some of the 30 or so early-bird diners sit on stools, sipping green tea and poring over laminated menus. Further back it is standing-room only. “It’s always like this,” says Yumiko Ukon, who has run this modest rice ball shop and restaurant in the Otsuka neighbourhood of Tokyo for almost half a century. “But we never run out of rice,” she adds, seated in her office near a wall clock in the shape of a rice ball with a bite taken out. Bongo, opened in 1960 by
Common sense is not that common: a recent study from the University of Pennsylvania concludes the concept is “somewhat illusory.” Researchers collected statements from various sources that had been described as “common sense” and put them to test subjects. The mixed bag of results suggested there was “little evidence that more than a small fraction of beliefs is common to more than a small fraction of people.” It’s no surprise that there are few universally shared notions of what stands to reason. People took a horse worming drug to cure COVID! They think low-traffic neighborhoods are a communist plot and call
Over the years, whole libraries of pro-People’s Republic of China (PRC) texts have been issued by commentators on “the Taiwan problem,” or the PRC’s desire to annex Taiwan. These documents have a number of features in common. They isolate Taiwan from other areas and issues of PRC expansion. They blame Taiwan’s rhetoric or behavior for PRC actions, particularly pro-Taiwan leadership and behavior. They present the brutal authoritarian state across the Taiwan Strait as conciliatory and rational. Even their historical frames are PRC propaganda. All of this, and more, colors the latest “analysis” and recommendations from the International Crisis Group, “The Widening
Sept. 30 to Oct. 6 Chang Hsing-hsien (張星賢) had reached a breaking point after a lifetime of discrimination under Japanese rule. The talented track athlete had just been turned down for Team Japan to compete at the 1930 Far Eastern Championship Games despite a stellar performance at the tryouts. Instead, he found himself working long hours at Taiwan’s Railway Department for less pay than the Japanese employees, leaving him with little time and money to train. “My fighting spirit finally exploded,” Chang writes in his memoir, My Life in Sports (我的體育生活). “I vowed then to defeat all the Japanese in Taiwan
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