So what are you reading these days?

Here's the last two I've finished -- very different books on widely disparate subjects, but both absorbing reading.

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon: this book kept showing up on everyone's reading list a few years ago, and at Christmastime Julie lent me her copy, so I no longer had an excuse to procrastinate. It's the story of Sammy Clay, a Jewish kid from Brooklyn, and his cousin Joe Kavalier, spirited out of Prague to escape the Nazis. Together Sammy (the writer) and Joe (the artist) come up with The Escapist, a new comic book hero with Houdini-like powers who fights against Hitler and the Axis. The book also chronicles Sammy's struggle -- which is not one of self-discovery as much as it is an attempt to conceal aspects of his being even from himself -- and Joe's continuing frustration as he fights the grinding machinery of bureaucracy to get the rest of his family out of occupied Prague. It's funny, well-written, symbolically rich, has some occasional squeamish moments and a few places where willing suspension of disbelief wavered for me, but overall is well worth the time.

Outliers: The Story of Success by Malcolm Gladwell: I haven't yet read Gladwell's other books, The Tipping Point and Blink, which have also garnered a great deal of critical praise. At least one chapter of this book might have been an outtake from The Tipping Point, which surmises that little things sometimes make a big difference. In that sense his work sometimes harkens back to James Burke and the Connections television series. But Gladwell has a number of other points to make in Outliers, namely that success is not wholly a question of hard work, pluck, and individual achievement. In fact, he makes a pretty convincing argument that the people who are most successful got there partly because of some arbitrary factors beyond their control, partly because they were willing to practice long hours, because they were prepared to recognize and take advantage of opportunities, and in large part because of their support structure -- the family or community that backed them, quizzed them in matters of social interaction, and otherwise provided them with the foundation they needed to achieve. This may sound horribly pessimistic, but it isn't. It's not always clear what form a successful support structure will take, for instance.

Gladwell writes well and engagingly, and it's clear he was trained as a journalist. He doesn't always lay out his arguments in the most structured way, and sometimes he doesn't follow through by thinking out the full implications of his theories or considering his chosen studies in a larger context. But he has written a book that's guaranteed to get its readers thinking about success, and about ways to improve our society so that it doesn't thwart or hobble potential.

What have you read recently? And what's on your list to read this year?