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What Have You Read This Year?
You’ve all read at least one book this year. I know you have, since Ricochetti are famously literate — not the many-leatherbound-books type (though I have more than my fair share of those). I really enjoy learning what other people read; it’s an eyes-into-the-soul kind of feeling, and I always learn of a few more books to add to my list. So please, post your list of the books you’ve read in 2015!
Add commentary as you wish or not. If you feel extra generous, include Amazon links so we can add your recommendations to our own lists.
To assure the apprehensive that all types of books are accepted here, I will kick this off with my own list:
- Allan Bloom, Closing of the American Mind
- Pat Kirwin, Take Your Eye Off the Ball
- Several dialogues of Plato
- Michael Sacasas, The Tourist and the Pilgrim
- Charles Murray, American Exceptionalism
- Bart Scott, Ears of Steel: The Real Man’s Guide to Walt Disney World
- Be Our Guest
- Frederick Ferre, Philosophy of Technology
- Ira Stoll, Samuel Adams: A Life
- David Berlinski, The Devil’s Delusion
- Cory Doctorow, Information Doesn’t Want to be Free
Welcome aboard, John Seymore!
I admire your taste in books and authors.
Seawriter
Gee, thanks!
When I am one of them, of course I do.
Seawriter
Hi Pony, Warriors of the Storm is due to come out January 19th.
Welcome to the party!
Favorites
Audible Books
Kindle
Just finished: You’re Going to be Dead One Day (a love story), by David Horowitz
I spent much of my reading time this year re-reading, a tried and true balm for any ailment.
Re-reads:
Alexandre Dumas, The Count of Monte Cristo
Willa Cather, My Antonia
Dorothy Sayers, Gaudy Night
Jane Austen, Persuasion
Herman Wouk, The Winds of War and War and Remembrance
New Reads:
Theodore Dalrymple, The Wilder Shores of Marx
Sean Parnell, The Self-Pay Patient
Malcolm Gladwell, Outliers
Pearl Buck, Portrait of a Marriage
Colin Dexter, Last Bus to Woodstock, Last Seen Wearing, and The Silent World of Nicholas Quinn
With the Kids:
Louisa May Alcott, Little Women (part 1)
E. Nesbit, Five Children and It and The Phoenix and the Carpet
Mark Twain, Tom Sawyer
Lloyd Alexander, The Book of Three
Frederick James Gould, The Children’s Plutarch: Tales of the Greeks and Tales of the Romans
Charles Dickens, Oliver Twist
****************
I am impressed and inspired by the lists of everyone else. Thanks for the recommendations!
Forgotten Fifteenth: The Daring Airmen Who Crippled Hitler’s War Machine Hardcover by Barrett Tillman (about half way)
Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001 by Steve Coll (Only finished half & I had to return it. Hoping to pick it up again later.)
The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History by John M. Barr (I really enjoyed this.)
And the Good News Is…: Lessons and Advice from the Bright Side by Dana Perino
41: A Portrait of My Father Hardcover by George W. Bush
American Wife: A Memoir of Love, War, Faith, and Renewal by Taya Kyle
Nemesis: An FBI Thriller by Catherine Coulter
Devoted in Death and Obsession in Death by J. D. Robb
Speaking in Bones by Kathy Reichs
Gathering Prey by John Sandford
Pioneer Girl: the Annotated Autobiography by Laura Ingalls Wilder (Am loving it!)
Read with my daughter…
The Hunger Games Trilogy by Suzanne Collins (I read these to preview them. Otherwise I would not have finished them.)
Fablehaven: The Complete Series by Brandon Mull (We listen to the audio books in the car.)
Tom Sawyer
Alice in Wonderland
Harry Potter (series) by J.K. Rowling
The Sign of the Beaver by Elizabeth George Speare
I’ll add to this when my brain unfreezes. :)
The most enjoyable reading I did in 2015 was the Expanse series by James S. A. Corey (the pseudonym for two writers from Albuquerque). There are five books in the series, Leviathan Wakes, Caliban’s War, Abaddon’s Gate, Cibola Burn, and Nemesis Games. Space opera at its best. The hard science explanations are few and far between, but the drama is superb. The writing is well above the average and the characters, especially the crew of the Rocinante (is that not a great name for a battle frigate?), are finely drawn.
I’m re-reading the Tiffany Aching books from Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series. Supposedly written for the YA market, they’re plenty satisfying for this old coot.
Re-reading the Edith Grossman Don Quixote. I also re-read Austen’s Pride and Prejudice and Emma and Twain’s Huck Finn. All are simply sublime.
C. S. Lewis wrote: “Naturally, since I myself am a writer, I do not wish the ordinary reader to read no modern books. But if he must read only the new or only the old, I would advise him to read the old.” Modern mankind should put “the controversies of the moment in their proper perspective.” This, he wrote, “can be acquired only from the old books. It is a good rule, after reading a new book, never to allow yourself another new one till you have read an old in between.”
This is good advice.
I love that book. I’ve long been a Shute fan, and recently finished Trustee. A great story about a humble man doing his duty. A Town Like Alice is another of Shute’s great novels. It was made into a superb mini-series (Masterpiece Theatre, I think) 25-30 years ago. Set in Malaya in WWII and Australia after the war, it too is the story of a good man doing good.
The Sorrows of Young Werther, a novel by Johan Wolfgang von Goethe.
Not God’s Type: A Rational Academic Finds a Radical Faith, a non-fiction memoir by Holly Ordway.
Orthodoxy, a non-fiction book of philosophy by G. K. Chesterton.
Vol 2 of Les Misérables, “Cosette,” a novel by Victor Hugo.
Dare We Hope that All Men be Saved? With a Short Discourse on Hell, a non-fiction work of theology by Hans Urs von Balthasar.
Maggie: A Girl of the Streets, a novella by Stephen Crane.
Crime and Punishment, a novel by Fyodor Dostoevsky.
No More Parades, the 2nd novel of the Parade’s End Tetralogy by Ford Madox Ford.
Death in the Afternoon: Meditations on the Last Seven Words of Jesus from the Cross, a non-fiction work of theology by Richard john Neuhas.
Mostly excellent reads (the Stephan Crane was the only dud), but Crime and Punishment was the highlight. That’s one of the greatest novels ever written.
Indeed.
Loved these two! Particularly The Phoenix and the Carpet. The Phoenix is so perfectly self-absorbed. I particularly enjoyed the chapter where he’s taken to the fire insurance company that the Phoenix believes is some sort of temple created in his honor.
The third book is not as good, but these first two are excellent. Nesbit was a wonderfully subversive moralist.
You may be interested in Edward Eager’s series of books that intentionally mimic Nesbit. We enjoyed all of them although the two based around the Wishing Well are not as good.
Thanks for the reminder, I’ve got this on my kindle and need to get to it.
Second installment now that I’m home.
Re-reads:
Barchester Towers (Trollope) (English ecclesiastical life has never been so funny)
My Antonia (Cather) (on my list as one of the great American novels)
Political Books:
America in Retreat (Bret Stephens) (the disaster that is Obama’s foreign policy)
The Great Terror (Robert Conquest) (if you ever thought there was anything redeeming about the Soviets, reach this–Conquest died in 2015)
The Gulag Archipelago (Solzhenitsyn) (ditto, but up close and very personal–perhaps the greatest memoir ever written)
Ally (Michael Oren) (former Israeli ambassador to the US describes the back-stabbing Obama relationship with Israel)
Shame (Shelby Steele) (wonderful, insightful book)
Thanks for the suggestion!
We love E. Nesbit. The girls have read some of her other books, such as The Enchanted Castle and The Railway Children, on their own, and have enjoyed those, too. She is challenging and funny, and as you point out, thought-provoking even for adults.
That book hurt. I recommend the sequel, if only to get a better resolution for the protagonist.
Flannery O’Conner is interesting to see here.
Two I can think of that had me thinking were:
“The Twilight of Authority” by Robert Nisbet
“The Dictator’s Handbook” by Bruce Bueno de Misquita & Alistar Smith
David’s book has a good amount of basic technical analysis that is then applied to the Ichimoku technique. I highly recommend it, but it is becoming hard to find. Try Harriman House.
Jeremy’s 2nd edition is THE book on Point and Figure and great for entry level. I recommend ordering the paper version as it is a challenge jumping around all the charts, etc. in ebook format.
PM me if you have specific questions. I read a ton of finance and trading books and happy to share suggestions.
Did I mention Margaret MacMillan’s The War That Ended Peace? Late in the book she tries to make connections with modern events which is annoying. It snaps you out of the book and into reality and the comparisons are weak. But it is a small flaw in a very good book.
And there are similarities to modern times so you should read it.
I’ll add my witness to Casey’s recommendation. Superb history, with a bit too much analysis. MacMillan is a Canadian historian, if I remember correctly.
Sword of Honour Trilogy – Evelyn Waugh
A Handful of Dust – Evelyn Waugh
Under the Dome – Stephen King
The Hydrogen Sonata – Ian M Banks
Into Thin Air – Jon Krakauer
If you haven’t already…..
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie–Muriel Spark
Listen to it on audible. It’s read magnificently. Then read it.
The Tempest
First read it. Then watch it.