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What Books Did You Read This Year?
At the end of 2016, I joined GoodReads.com so I could keep track of what I read and what books I needed to get to. I tried to read a mix of classics and modern, serious and silly, fiction and non-fiction.
Here are the 19 books I read in 2017:
1984, George Orwell
Alan Partridge: Nomad, Steve Coogan
The Art of Being Free: How Alexis de Tocqueville Can Save Us from Ourselves, James Poulos
Breakfast of Champions, Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
A Canticle for Leibowitz, Walter M. Miller Jr.
The Enchiridion, Epictetus
The Epic of Gilgamesh
The Good Fortune Handbook: Developing a Stoic Outlook Day by Day, Matthew Van Natta
Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies, Jared Diamond
I Must Say: My Life as a Humble Comedy Legend, Martin Short
The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing, Marie Kondo
A Load of Hooey, Bob Odenkirk
Man’s Search for Meaning, Viktor E. Frankl
The Metamorphosis, Franz Kafka
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, Robert A. Heinlein
The Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde
The Stranger, Albert Camus
Werewolf Cop, Andrew Klavan
On Writing Well: The Classic Guide to Writing Nonfiction, William Zinsser
How about you: What did you read in 2017? And what should I add to my list for 2018?
Published in Literature
I’m reading Kafka now, The Trial.
As for books I finished:
The Kingdom of Speech by Tom Wolfe
Thank You, Jeeves by P. G. Wodehouse
The Seige of Trencher’s Farm by Gordon Williams
Nothing More Than Murder by Jim Thompson
Vampire$ by John Steakley
The Last Battle by Cornelius Ryan
The Amazing Maurice and his Educated Rodents by Terry Pratchet
Riding Rockets by Mike Mullane
Seven Women by Eric Metaxas
Lady Parts by Andrea Martin
The Undoing Project by Michael Lewis
King of Comedy: The Life and Art of Jerry Lewis by Shawn Levy
The Tailor of Panama by John Le Carre
A Truck Full of Money by Tracy Kidder
Nobody Move by Denis Johnson
Sleep No More by P. D. James
The Lotter and Other Stories by Shirley Jackson
Starship Troopers by Robert Heinlein
Camino Island by John Grisham
Turtles All the Way Down by John Green
Time Travel: A History by James Gleik
Good Brother, Bad Brother by James Giblin
The Case of the Half-Wakened Wife by Earl Stanley Gardner
Hollywood Monster by Robert Englund
Five by Endo by Endo
Eat My Martian Dust by Robert Elmer
Bleak House by Charles Dickens
Quick Change by Jay Cronley
How I Made a Hundred Movies… by Roger Corman
No Middle Name by Lee Child
Out of My Mind by Joseph Bayly
A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman
Imperfect: An Improbable Life by Jim Abbott
Well . . .
That is about one-fifth of them, and excludes the books I read researching the books I write (about 20 per book).
Seawriter
Very few, I’m afraid. My reading has taken a major hit these last few years. I need to correct that.
Here, in reverse order (because that is how I list them in my tracking spreadsheet) and minus the audio books, is my 2017 list:
(Bold text indicates those previously read that I felt some need/desire to read again.)
I would highly recommend the Jack London series listed here for your 2018 list. And, much like I would recommend reading all of the Orwell books leading up to Nineteen Eighty-Four, I would read the other two before The Iron Heel.
I started keeping a log this year, after my brothers did last year.
I read 35 books this year, mostly fiction, with some non-fiction mixed in. Read the Harry Potter series for the first time, am just finishing up re-reading the Nelson DeMille John Corey series. Bold are re-reads. Italics are non-fiction.
I would love to read The Moon is a Harsh Mistress and Starship Troopers again for the first time (not sure how the grammar in that sentence works, but hopefully you know what I mean). Those were politically formative books for me, and they’re on my shortlist for reading in 2018. I re-read most of the Heinlein Juveniles in 2015 and 2016, and just noticed that not a single one of those remaining made it onto my log for 2017. I’ll have to correct that next month.
When I read a book, I write down, with a pen, what it was; and from that list, I see that almost every book I’ve read this year I have already described on the Member Feed. One book I did not discuss was by Florence King. I’d selected it because it was small – good for taking on a 3-hour flight. It was written well but did not make me want to read more. She tried to humanize herself by mentioning, twice, that she owned a Baltimore Orioles warmup jacket. This just didn’t work.
I love comparing reading lists. 2017 saw me finally read Longitude and the Part 1 of the Lord of the Rings (don’t yell at me). Other fiction was Exit Lady Marsham by L Auchincloss (different from his other NY novels) and Unknown Sigrid Undset (partial), and various mysteries – working through A Christie, Daly’s Gamadge, and just started N Wolfe. Non-fiction (not as much this year) was Massacre: Life & Death of the Paris Commune; 7 Deadly Virtues; Technopoly; Death of Caesar; First 1000 Years: Global History of Christianity; Impossible State (about N Korea); Arms & Art. I always recommend Boys in the Boat. Based on the Bookmonger I read and enjoyed Agents of Empire and This Gulf of Fire within the last years. Happy 2018 to everyone.
Fiction:
Stiletto
On The Shores of Titan’s Farthest Sea
Devil’s Dictum
What Angels These
True Crime
The Complete Works and Selected Letters of John Keats*
The Big Sleep
Count Magnus and other Ghost Stories
The Name of the Rose
And Then There Were None
Dragon’s Egg
The Mysterious Affair at Styles
Paradise Lost
Non-Fiction:
The Vision of the Anointed*
Hillbilly Elegy
The Great Good Thing
The Quest for Cosmic Justice
A Conflict of Visions
The Kingdom of Speech
Reflections on the Revolution in France
The Conservatarian Manifesto
Cancel Your Own Goddam Subscription
The Abolition of Man
Shattered
Capitalism and Freedom
Radical Chic & Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers
Up From Liberalism
The Federalist Papers*
The Proper Study of Mankind
The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test
On Human Nature
Buckley: The Right Word
Ideas Have Consequences
The Consolation of Philosophy
Tractatus-Logico Philosophicus
Coming Apart
In Defense of Sanity
Titles with asterisks were more than half finished at the start of the year. I have about 90 pages of The Second World Wars to go, so I might finish that before the year is out. Highlights for me were The Name of the Rose, A Conflict of Visions, and The Proper Study of Mankind (an Isaiah Berlin anthology).
Read This year:
Tiger Tracks. – Wolfgang Faust
The Last Panther – Wolfgang Faust
The Man in the High Castle -Philip K Dick
The River War – Winston Churchill
All You Need Is Kill – Hiroshi Sakurazaka
Is God Happy? – Lezak Kolakowski
“The American Empire Should Be Destroyed”: Aleksandr Dugin and the Perils of Immanentized Eschatology – James D. Heiser
An Infamous Army – Georgette Heyer
The Quiet American – Graham Greene
Things to get to in 2018…
The Peripheral – William Gibson
The Lathe of Heaven -Ursula Le Guin
The Wind Up Bird Chronicle – Haruki Murakami
Stonewall – Byron Farwell
Good choice!!!! That’s a highlight for sure.
Henry Fielding, ‘Tom Jones’ and other works. Very good, can’t believe I haven’t gotten to Fielding before.
Margaret Ball, the Harmony series…set in a future society which was designed to be utopian, but turned out otherwise.
Joseph Wurtenbaugh, ‘A Prophet Without Honor,’ an alternate-history story in which Hitler’s Rhineland incursion turns out otherwise.
Ben Horowitz, ‘The Hard Thing About Hard Things,’ advice from a venture capitalist on how to run a startup.
…plus several more. I’m doing a ‘2017 Books’ series at Chicago Boyz; the first two entries are here:
2017 books batch 1
2017 books batch 2
The Draining Lake – Arnaldur Indridason
How To Be a Mermaid – Erin Hayes
Ahsoka – E. K Johnston
The Fifth Element – Jorgen Brekke
Wake of Vultures – Lila Bowen
My First Book of Supervillains
Holy Bible (NASB translation)
The Mud Fairy – Amy Young
Where Have All the Unicorns Gone – Jane Yolen
Queen of the Diamond: The Lizzie Murphy Story – Emily Arnold McCully
Blueberry Girl – Neil Gaiman
The Princess and the Pony – Kate Beaton
Wrestling Demons – Jason Brick
Tao Te Ching – Lao Tzu (trans from Ursual K. Le Quin)
So Much Blue – Percival Everett
The City Stained Red – Sam Sykes
Martians Abroad – Carrie Vaughn
The Clockwork Dynasty – Daniel H. Wilson
True Crime – Andrew Klavan
The Last Policeman – Ben H. Winters
The Dumb Bunnies’ Easter – Sue Denim
Operation Napoleon – Arnaldur Indridason
Pablo Finds a Treasure – Andree Poulin
The Last Superstition – Edward Feser
Insane Consequences – DJ Jaffe
All 7 Harry Potter Novels – JK Rowling
American Gods – Neil Gaiman
The Maze Runner – James Dashner
Shades of Grey – Jasper Fforde
The first few chapters of Welcome to Night Vale by Joseph Fink and Jeffrey Cranor.. couldn’t finish it though.
The Dark Tower I: The Gunslinger – Stephen King
Wild Cards Volume 1 – various
Fahrenheit 451 – Ray Bradbury
The Magician’s Assistant – Ann Patchett
Brave New World – Aldous Huxley
1984 – George Orwell
Reread the Codex Alera series – Jim Butcher
Currently working on The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss and I might have it done by the end of the year.
Interesting. Read it years ago, and it’s always the novel I think of when discussing books with bad endings. I thought the end absolutely negated everything that went before.
Let’s see now…
How to Win Friends and Influence People – Dale Carnegie
Part of How to Fail at Everything and Still Win Big – Scott Adams
How to Hypnotize Anyone – The Rogue Hypnotist
Dead Leaves – Kealean Patrick Burke
Monster Hunter International – Larry Correia
Un [expletive] Yourself – Gary John Bishop
A bunch of rulebooks for the Changeling: The Lost RPG
The Art of Being Free – James Poulos
Baccano! – Ryohgo Narita
The Wasteland – T.S. Elliot
The Atrocity Archives – Charles Stross
The Fragments – Heraclitus
Some short stories from The Imago Sequence – Laird Barron
Wise Blood – Flannery O’Connor
Some short stories from A Good Man is Hard to Find – Flannery O’Connor
Dangerous – Milo Yiannopoulos
100 Things Every Homeowner Must Know
Part of The Glass Key – Dashiell Hammett
Norse Mythology – Neil Gaiman
and I’m also rereading The Lies of Lock Lamora and Jonathan Strange and Mister Norrell as night reading.
Same here. I used to like the podcast, but gradually I found it more twee and grating as time wore on.
@miffedwhitemale and @j.d.snapp, if you liked all the Harry Potter books, you might wish to join Pottermore. You can get “sorted” into your House, at both schools of magic (Hogwarts and Ilvermorny), find out your Patronus, and participate in some fun activities like quizzes.
I have been acquiring all the new illustrated books, in the British editions, and they are excellent. I am currently reading the latest, and my favorite, Prisoner of Azkaban. I found a great source, Book Depository, which offers free shipping to the US, and no sales tax.
I tend to be the stubborn type. Once I start a book I usually press through if at all possible. The only one I can recall closing mid-way through and tossing in the trash can is Bowling Alone (Robert Putnam). One audio book also fits here and if I recall correctly, it was The World Until Yesterday (Jared Diamond). All was good, and interesting, until some line about “Teddy Kennedy bravely visiting the parents of Mary Jo Kopechne…” and additional such manure. At that point I pressed eject and drove straight to the library and dropped that junk in the return chute.
The book started getting too much into the gender spectrum crap for me. Turns out, I don’t want a bunch of new-age political messaging in my books. It was the book selected for a book club I’m in, otherwise, I would never have heard of it. I’m a biiiiig fan of the MHI and Locke Lamora books though! :)
This one was an audio book. I went ahead and started it because I thought it might be a nice collection of dystopian short stories. I got in there and it was a bunch of weird for the sake of being weird. Then they started in on that gender spectrum crap and I was done. I made it 2 hours.
Luckily with Kindle, I can try to reconstruct the list of books I read in 2017. But I may be taking some credit for 2016 books here. * means we read it in my book club. I am the only conservative in my book club, by the way.
Anathem was great. I’m about halfway through Seveneves right now, which is solid but doesn’t rise to the level of Anathem, Cryptonomicon, or Snow Crash.
I am in Slytherin 90% of the time, and Ravenclaw the other 10%. I took the Pottermore test and sure enough, Slytherin.
I have to say I really enjoyed Anathem. I got a third of the way through Cryptonomicon a few years ago but then got distracted and never finished. It’s on my reading list for 2018.
Read a book with a similar problem. On my list is Wake of Vultures. It starts as a sort of urban fantasy though set in the American 19th century west. However, the author spends almost all her time delving into the main characters gender spectrum and sexual preferences crap that the interesting stuff: hunting supernatural critters, gets glossed over. Made a boring read, ruined an interesting concept, and I’ve no plan to read any of the rest of the series.
Sad thing is, some of the spectrum crap could have been integrated into the story more subtlety. The protagonist is an abused and by all intents and purposes enslaved, so a desire to pass herself off as a man makes perfect sense. But the author then grabs her “Gender Spectrum Sledgehammer” and just can’t stop.
Let’s see… I don’t keep a written list of when I read a book, so this list might be incomplete;
The False Promise of Big Government – Patrick Garry
The Lever of Riches – Joel Mokyr
The Righteous Mind – Jonathan Haidt
The Cooperstown Casebook – Jay Jaffe
More Work for Mother – Ruth Schwartz Cowan
The History of Latin America – Marshall C Eakin
Savage Continent – Keith Lowe
How the War Was Won – Phillips Payson O’Brien
A Nation of Steel – Thomas J Misa
Grocery – Michael Ruhlman
A History of Dams – Norman Smith
America’s Assembly Line – David Nye
The Strange Career of Jim Crow – C Vann Woodward
Pursuing Happiness – Stanley Lebergott
Servants – Lucy Lethbridge
The Conquering Tide – Ian W Toll
Have you ever done psycho sudoku? 9×9 grid, no starting numbers, the lines between the squares are all > and < signs to let you know relative values.
Who I am by Pete Townsend
Liberal Fascism by Jonah Goldberg
Washington: A Life by Ron Chernow
Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S Grant
Dereliction of Duty by H R McMaster
Fitness Confidential by Vinnie Tortorich
Based on a True Story: A Memoir by Norm MacDonald
Left of Boom by Doug Laux