Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
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
The website griddlers.net has a bunch of those + massive interlocking sudoku puzzles.
I just ordered the book. Thanks for the tip!
For 2018 add “Paris in the Present Tense” by Mark Helprin and “Based on a True Story” by the comedian Norm Macdonald.
I have enjoyed the Brad Thor “Scot Harvath” series and the Vince Flynn “Mitch Rapp” series greatly. Do my fellow Ricochetti have any other suggestions?
Thinner Thighs in Thirty Days.
I just joined Goodreads in August of this year. Maybe I’ll find you, Jon.
Night of Knives: Ian Esslemont
Return of the Crimson Guard: Ian Esslemont
Stonewielder: Ian Esslemont
Orb Scepter Throne: Ian Esslemont
Dark Matter: Blake Crouch
The first four listed are part of the Novels of the Malazan Empire series. I’m reading the 5th book now.
How are Esslemont’s Malazan books? It took me a few books to get into Erickson’s.
And there’s a lot of us Ricochetti on Goodreads.
Noooooo not Harry Potter and the Cursed Child!
You might like Nelson Demille. He’s got several stand-alones, plus the John Corey series (see my reading list early in the comments).
I can only assume you’ve read Tom Clancy. If not, read them in chronological order rather than publication order. There are some stinkers towards the middle when his editors let him get away with stretching a 300-page plot into a 900-page book, but the early stuff (and some of the Jack Ryan-universe books written by others after Clancy died) are great.
Not at all in the same genre, but interesting science fiction is John Scalzi’s Old Mans War series.
Jeffrey Deaver’s Lincoln Rhyme books are good, if formulaic. [well plotted, but once you’ve read a few, you realize that every single plot resolution revolves around somebody who has been misrepresenting their identity. It gets distracting as you’re reading trying to figure out who it is).
That wasn’t great, but I knocked it out in like a day and a half.
I was really impressed with the original series though, much more than I expected to be. I’d seen the first 2 or 3 movies. The books are way better (especially the later books, because they left so much out of the movies), and the whole series really takes a major change in tone after the third book.
I think Erikson is a better writer, but Esslemont’s stories move at a faster rate. They’re more straightforward. Well, as straightforward as a Malazan book can be. Erikson’s writing is more melancholic and sometimes I think Esslemont tries to emulate him. But I still like Esslemont’s style. Night of Knives is very short and can be very chaotic to some readers. Return of the Crimson Guard has some very slow parts especially in the first half, but by the second half, it is spectacular. I think the series really gets going from then on. Books 3 and 4 are great. Esslemont’s books are better are avoiding POVs that are agonizing to read. Maybe it’s just me but there were always POVs in Erikson’s books that I dreaded reading.
I should say I’m a huge fan of this world and never really had much of an issue getting into it.
I agree about some of Erikson’s POVs. There’s a few characters that are just painful to follow. However, the payoff for me was Memories of Ice. That’s about when I got used to the style, the pace, and I didn’t feel like I had to constantly figure out how things worked, and some of the elements that were cooking started to come together.
I ordered the first two books in the series by Nelson Demille and John Scalzi. Thanks for the recommendations.
Scalzi’s politics stink (he’s a big-time conservative-hating lefty), but his writing style reads like he’s the reincarnation of Robert Heinlein.
Hew also did something really interesting in the Old Mans War series, where he wrote two books telling the same story, but from the point of view of two different characters.
A Secret Life by Benjamin Weiser (add to your list)
Wheat Belly by Dr. William Davis
Old School – Life in the Sane Lane by Bill O’Reilly (add to your list)
Station Wagon in Spain by Francis Parkinson Keyes
See No Evil and The Company We Keep by Robert Baer (add both to your list)
The Main Enemy by Milt Bearden and James Risen
Death on the Nile and Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie
The Gathering Storm by Winston Churchill (add to your list)
Eat Pretty by Jolene Hart
The Late Great Planet Earth by Hal Lindsey
A Common Struggle by Patrick Kennedy (add to your list)
Code Girls by Liza Mundy
The Chimes by Charles Dickens (add to your list)
I will say, without embarrassment, that I read all of the Percy Jackson books. Yeah, I know they are for young adults, but I enjoyed them. I’m half-Greek, so it’s my heritage, sorta.
Yes, the tone does change dramatically as you would expect it to. Of course, the books are much better, but I still enjoyed the movies. The first two movies were okay, but I really liked the later ones. I thought the last movie was great and I liked its depiction of the Battle of Hogwarts more than the book’s. It’s probably because Jo isn’t the best at writing battles. I wished it just skipped the damn epilogue.
I guess I’d argue that any book you are still talking about years after you read it is a noteworthy one.
Amazon and Kindle to the rescue. I’m sure I missed some re-reads, since paper books leave no records. Also sure that some of these were recommended here, but I have no records or recollection.
Non-Fiction
The Deplorable Gourmet, The Horde (in progress)
A Disease in the Public Mind, Thomas Fleming
Six Days of War, Michael B. Oren
D Day Through German Eyes, Holger Eckhertz
The Miracle of Dunkirk, Walter Lord
Astoria: John Jacob Astor and Thomas Jefferson’s Lost Pacific Empire, Peter Stark
Vanished Arizona, Martha Summerhayes
Life Annuities, Moshe Milevsky
The Invention of Nature: Alexander von Humboldt’s New World, Andrea Wulf
Antifragile, Nassim Nicolas Taleb
The Edge of the World, Michael Pye
Six Frigates, Ian Toll
Fiction
Shipstar; Bowl of Heaven, Gregory Benford and Larry Niven
1632; 1633, Eric Flint
Prisoner of Limnos; Mira’s Last Dance; Penric’s Mission; Penric’s Fox (Penric and Desdemona Series), Lois McMaster Bujold
The Stars Came Back; The Heretics of St. Possenti, Rolf Nelson
The LawDog Files, D. LawDog & Larry Correia
Assault on Zanzibar; Into Uncharted Seas (Westerly Gales Series), E. C. Williams
Lens of the World; King of the Dead, R. A. MacAvoy
A Throne of Bones; A Sea of Skulls, Vox Day
In Ashes Born, Nathan Lowell
Owner’s Share; Captain’s Share; Double Share; Full Share; Half Share; Quarter Share (Golden Age of the Solar Clipper Series), Nathan Lowell
Forbidden Thoughts, Milo Yiannopoulos et. al.
Fin Gall, Dubh-linn (The Norsemen Saga), James L. Nelson
The Rods and the Axe, Tom Kratman
Fields of Fire, Marko Kloos
The Hydrogen Sonata, Iain Banks
Confederates: A Novel, Thomas Keneally
Canterbury Tales, Geoffrey Chaucer (in process)
Causes of Separation; The Powers of the Earth, TJI Corcoran
Putin Country, by Anne Garrels
Winter is Coming, by Gary Kasparov
Hillbilly Elegy, by J.D. Vance
A Beautiful Question, by Frank Wilczek
Buckley, by Carl T. Bogus
The Man Without a Face, by Masha Gessen
Quantum Man, by Lawrence Krauss
Hitch-22: A Memoir, by Christopher Hitchens
John Quincy Adams: Militant Spirit, by James Traub (in progress)
I re-read Norm MacDonald’s book last month — something I barely ever do. It’s SO good.
I love how well-read the Ricochetti are. What a group!
I’ve heard Helprin’s book is quite good.
Only a partial list, since it’s what I have on the Kindle Fire and handy on the bookshelves:
The Greatest Knight, Thomas Asbridge
We Were Soldiers Once…and Young, Hal Moore
The Miracle of Dunkirk, Walter Lord
Boomerang, Michael Lewis
A whole bunch of Daniel Silva’s Gabriel Allon series
Two Kinds of Truth, Michael Connelly
The Foundation Trilogy, Isaac Asimov (for about the 5th time)
A Divided Spy, Charles Cumming
Beatles ’66, Steve Turner
The Winter Fortress, Neal Bascomb
Our Mutual Friend, Charles Dickens
Jerusalem, Simon Sebag Montefiore
Edit: Now reading Victor Davis Hanson’s The Second World Wars…a Christmas present. Will have to go back and read some of his early histories of the ancient world.
I mostly read to my kids these days, part of our regular evening ritual since they were tots. Now they’re 12 and 14, and I still make a habit of it. Here’s our reading list this year:
The Lord of the Rings Trilogy — By that one guy
Although I’ve read the trilogy several times in the past, reading these aloud to my kids was an amazing experience and gave me a new appreciation of his skills.
A Wrinkle in Time — Madeleine L’Engle
Read this when I was a kid. Didn’t like it. Read it again in my 30s when I was writing a unit study for it. Still didn’t like it. Read it this year to my kids. Still don’t care for this book. Too weird.
The Secret Keepers — Trenton Lee Stewart
Better than his Mysterious Benedict Society novels. Still longer than it needed to be, but much better written.
Who Could That Be At This Hour? — Lemony Snicket
Not sure this is really a book for kids, unless you have kids who are into hard-boiled detective parodies.
The Thief Lord — Cornelia Funke
Not as good as its reputation. But okay.
Wingfeather Tales — Andrew Peterson, et al
Followup to Peterson’s 4-book Wingfeather Saga. A bunch of short stories set in the same universe written by different authors. Mostly very well done, but the last story — The Places Beyond the Maps — which takes up half the book — is simply one of the best things I’ve read this century. A story about a man who fails to save his daughter from invaders, as a result is rejected by his wife, and undergoes a long, painful, transformative journey to a distant mountain to meet with God and demand an answer for his pain. It is stunning and heartbreaking.
Penrod — Booth Tarkington
Penrod and Sam — Booth Tarkington
I can understand why these books are largely forgotten. They are from an era with less enlightened views about race. But . . . they are hilarious. Like the old Our Gang comedies in written form.
The Story of the Treasure Seekers — E. Nesbit
The Wouldbegoods — E. Nesbit
Nesbit is always good for some subversive moral tales. Love it.
Beyond the Deepwoods — Paul Stewart
Kick-off to a long series, which I will now avoid because I didn’t care for this very much.
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix — J.K. Rowling
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince — J.K. Rowling
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows — J.K. Rowling
I did read some pulp adventure fiction and genre fiction for myself
She — H. Rider Haggard
Bizarre, wordy novel of a bizarre lost African tribe and their possibly-immortal ruler: She Who Must Be Obeyed. Might have been more interesting except all She does is talk talk talk talk talk. Still, glad I read it, and if you like the Haggard sort of thing, it’s good. (King Solomon’s Mines is better, though.)
Pellucidar — Edgar Rice Burroughs
Boring. The first book in the series is better.
Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar — Edgar Rice Burroughs
Tarzan gets knocked on the head, loses his memory, and reverts back to savagery. Meanwhile, everyone chases gold and jewels all across the dark continent. Should have been titled “It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad Africa.”
Camber of Culdi — Katherine Kurtz
A reread. Always liked this series
Bernice Summerfield and the Squire’s Crystal — Jacqueline Rayner
Bernice Summerfield and the Glass Prison — Jacqueline Rayner
Poorly written genre fiction, but I’m working my way through the audios, and these two novels contain some important incidents in the continuity of the audio dramas. Since I’m a continuity freak, they were necessary. But I was glad to get them out of the way.
I picked up Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire again after a few years, and got halfway through. I decided to take a break, the Roman Empire (West Side) having declined and fallen. That took months of reading time (mostly on the toilet tbh – I need to take a break from video games on occasion), so my list of finished books is a bit lighter than it might otherwise be.
Education: Assumptions versus History* Thomas Sowell
The Legend of Zelda and Theology* Jonathan Walls, Ed.
Obsidian Alliances* Keith DeCandido et al
Grand Designs* Dave Galanter et al
A Conflict of Visions Thomas Sowell
Mere Christianity C.S. Lewis
Creative Couplings* David Mack et al
Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman! Richard Feynman
The Autobiography of James T. Kirk David Goodman
Cupid and Psyche Apuleius
The Autobiography of Jean-Luc Picard David Goodman
The Reefs of Space Frederik Pohl and Jack Williamson
The Starchild Frederik Pohl and Jack Williamson
I’ll probably finish that last book in “The Starchild” series before the end of the year.
*Collections of articles or short stories. I think short stories are the best way to enjoy Star Trek written works – more like an episode, and less time to screw everything up with multiple red herrings and progtard nonsense.
I’m not much a SF fan…because I found Foundation almost accomplished everything I would have wanted to get from that genre. But I confess I am an SF ignoramus.
Yeah, I read lot of it when I was young (and now I’m old), but that was the first one I remember, maybe in HS or early college.
Miami Blues, by Charles Willeford. (This short, gritty crime novel is also magical and profound.)
A Tale of Two Cities, by Charles Dickens. (I don’t know why it took me until 2017 to finally read it.)
The Friends of Eddie Coyle, by George V. Higgins. (It’s horrible, but very good. Among other things, he gets exactly right the ugliness of the 1970’s.)
Out of the Ashes, by Anthony Esolen. (I enjoyed it. But, for poorly educated grandparents, I wish Professor Esolen would also come up with a reading list of, say, fifteen or twenty of what he considers to be the most essential-to-read of the books he mentions. I have only a few years to do something about my knowledge deficits before I will be a good, or less good, cultural influence on grandchildren in junior high and grade school.)
A Wicked War, by Amy Greenberg. (Don’t bother reading it.)