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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
And I totally didn’t pad my list with books I’ve read to my two-year old this year.
As an amateur author who’s self published twelve novels on Amazon with a Goodreads page, most of my reading time has become writing time.
The novels I published this year are Unholy Gathering ( the sixth in my urban paranormal series with a vampire vigilante protagonist), The Merchant, the Janissary and the Corsair (a historical epic concerning the struggle for the control of the Mediterranean Sea in the 16th Century), and Welles Lang’s Magic Box (a sci-fi horror about a possible future of popular entertainment).
I have three noirs to publish (one I’ve submitted for an Edgar {it probably won’t make it}) and a political thriller. Those four are beyond first drafts and I’m concurrently writing two more (a sci-fi and a murder mystery).
Now we get to my reading list.
This year I read or finished:
The Knights of Saint John by Augusta Drane
Two Kinds of Truth by Michael Connelly
House of Spies by Daniel Silva
The Late Show by Michael Connelly
Paradise Valley by C.J. Box
Vicious Circle by C.J. Box
Her Master, His Slave by Toni Mariani
Stalking the Angel by Robert Crais
Beau Geste by Percival Christopher Wren
Voodoo River by Robert Crais
The Force by Don Winslow
A Darkness More Than Night by Michael Connelly
The Black Ice by Michael Connelly
The Black Echo by Michael Connelly
Sunset Express by Robert Crais
Indigo Slam by Robert Crais
Free Fall by Robert Crais
L.A. Requiem by Robert Crais
The Last Detective by Robert Crais
The Forgotten Man by Robert Crais
The Poet by Michael Connelly
The Scarecrow by Michael Connelly
Tarzan of the Apes by Edgar Rice Burroughs
The Return of Tarzan by Edgar Rice Burroughs
The Beasts of Tarzan by Edgar Rice Burroughs
The Son of Tarzan by Edgar Rice Burroughs
Tarzana and the Jewels of Opar by Edgar Rice Burroughs
Jungle Tales of Tarzan by Edgar Rice Burroughs
Tarzan the Untamed by Edgar Rice Burroughs
The Whimsical Life of Iris Shuester by Emily Hodson
Tarzan the Terrible by Edgar Rice Burroughs
Tarzan and the Golden Lion by Edgar Rice Burroughs
Tarzan and the Ant Men by Edgar Rice Burroughs
My reading list continues to overflow. Thanks for the posting reminding me of what I did last year and what I hope to accomplish next year. All the best!
Sincerely,
Randall Moore
Gary Robbins
You might like to try Alex Berenson’s novels. They’re current, political, fighting Islamic terrorists and the protagonist is an American who converted to Islam.
They’re quite good.
The John Wells or Ed Maddux series?
Fun, aren’t they? And I think the first novel should be on any list of classic American literature. There’s a lot more going on with it than just a pulpy jungle adventure. I’m on Tarzan the Untamed right now, and planning to continue forward. I did skip over Jungle Tales of Tarzan, it being a bunch of short stories about Tarzan’s youth, and I wasn’t really interested in revisiting that era.
My Goodreads list of books read in 2017. I’ve read 22 books so far (I might end up with 23 if I finish Doom of the Dragon by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman this weekend). Only two books were fiction, which is pretty much normal for me. Only two books were Kindle versions, all the rest were physical books. For those who don’t want to click on the link, my books of 2017 were:
Paint Locker Magic: A History of Naval Aviation Markings and Artwork by William Tate (my least liked book of 2017)
The Maps of the Wilderness: An Atlas of the Wilderness Campaign, Including All Cavalry Operations, May 2-6, 1864 by Bradley M. Gottfried
Let Me Tell You about Jasper…: How My Best Friend Became America’s Dog by Dana Perino
The Korean War by Max Hastings
On Wave and Wing: The 100 Year Quest to Perfect the Aircraft Carrier by Barrett Tillman
Never Call Me a Hero: A Legendary American Dive-Bomber Pilot Remembers the Battle of Midway by N. Jack “Dusty” Kleiss, Timothy Orr, Laura Orr (one of my two favorites of 2017)
Three Hearts and Three Lions by Poul Anderson
USS Lawrence vs HMS Detroit: The War of 1812 on the Great Lakes by Mark Lardas, Paul Wright (Illustrations)
USS Yorktown: From Design and Construction to the Battles of Coral Sea and Midway by David Doyle
Patton Versus the Panzers: The Battle of Arracourt, September 1944 by Steven Zaloga
Basic Economics: A Common Sense Guide to the Economy by Thomas Sowell
Bradley vs BMP: Desert Storm 1991 (Duel #75) by Mike Guardia, Johnny Shumate (Illustrations)
Bazooka vs Panzer: Battle of the Bulge 1944 (Duel #77) by Steven J. Zaloga, Alan Gilliland (Illustrations), Johnny Shumate (Illustrations)
Panzer IV vs Sherman: France 1944 (Duel #70) by Steven J. Zaloga, Richard Chasemore (Illustrations)
Panzer III vs Somua S 35: Belgium 1940 (Duel #63) by Steven J. Zaloga
Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010 by Charles Murray (my most disappointing book of 2017 – my expectations were too high, I guess)
The Well-Dressed Hobo: The Many Wondrous Adventures of a Man Who Loves Trains by Rush Loving Jr.
Twelve Twenty-Five: The Life and Times of a Steam Locomotive by Kevin P. Keefe (my other favorite book of 2017)
The Great Good Thing: A Secular Jew Comes to Faith in Christ by Andrew Klavan
For the Glory of the Empire (Star Fleet Journal Book 1) by Stephen V. Cole, Loren Knight, Scott Moellmer, John Sickels
US Navy Ships vs Kamikazes 1944-45 (Duel #76) by Mark Stille, Jim Laurier (Illustrations), Gareth Hector (Illustrations)
Playing at the World: A History of Simulating Wars, People, and Fantastic Adventure from Chess to Role-Playing Games by Jon Peterson (by far my longest book of 2017)
The Eagle has Landed by Jack Higgins
Operation Mincemeat: How a Dead Man and a Bizarre Plan Fooled the Nazis and Assured an Allied Victory by Ben Macintyre
Werewolf Cop by Andrew Klavan
Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar by Simon Sebag Montefiore
Some Tame Gazelle by Barbara Pym
Scotland: The Story of a Nation by Magnus Magnusson
Dambusters: A Landmark Oral History by Max Arthur
How the Scots Invented the Modern World by Arthur Herman and Fearn Cutler de Vicq
Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky, tr. by David McDuff
A Certain Justice by P.D. James
A Man Called Intrepid by William Stevenson
(These are just the ones I noted on Goodreads. I’ll have to keep better records for this feature next year.)
The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People – Stephen R Covey
Covey’s concept of weekly planning to roles and goals alone makes this a worthy read.
How to Read a Book – Mortimer Adler
Honestly, a bit of a slog, but a (possible) requirement before tackling the Great Books of the Western World series.
Wheelock’s Latin (6th Edition) – Frederic M. Wheelock and Richard A. LaFleur
90% completed. A reread, but an in depth, very thorough reread. The first of two of my personal requirements before tackling the Great Books of the Western World series.
The Hero with a Thousand Faces – Joseph Campbell
50% completed. The second of two of my personal requirements. A study into comparative religion/myth aimed at illustrating the monomyth cycle. At only 50% in, I cannot recommend this book highly enough. It’s already in the top 2 books I have ever read. It might eventually get to #1.
John Wells
They’re really wonderful. I love it that Tarzan teaches himself to read English but learns to speak French first, wears Western clothes and drives a car. Burroughs wry observations about civilization are spot on. He prefers the law of the jungle to the backstabbing and deceit of civilization.
I also love that in the second book he’s swinging around on lamp-posts in Paris, smoking cigarettes, drinking absinthe, beating up Russians, dueling with pistols, before eventually becoming a spy in sub-Saharan Africa. Tarzan is essentially James Bond.
Tarzan’s enemies start with other apes and then cannibals and progress to Russians, Arabs, Swedes and Germans and any other petty tin-pot dictator who fancies himself a god. So much more story than any movie ever came close to. Weissmuller became the template for the public’s understanding of this iconic character. Burroughs was smart enough to not buck the trend. He bought a rancho in the San Fernando Valley with his earnings and named it Tarzana. Burroughs may be long gone but the name still remains.
Weissmuller’s yodel became iconic, but in truth Tarzan’s cry was of a bull-ape roaring his bone-chilling victory cry, announcing to the rest of the jungle that he is its king.
One of my favorite scenes from the first book is when Tarzan rescues Jane from a forest fire. That’s all I’ll say because I don’t want to ruin it for anyone who’s seen these posts and is interested in reading the novel. It brought tears to my eyes.
Embodied in Tarzan, you can also see the very progress of civilization itself. At first, he lives by the law of the jungle — kill or be killed — then slowly he learns a written language, gradually rises above his bestial origins, and finally embraces a code of honor that values selflessness, demonstrated in his final act in the first book.
Sure, in later books it’s pretty pulpy, and the contrivances and coincidences are eye-rolling. Yet it all works because Burroughs embraces these things with relish.
The Day of the Jackal
The Sheltering Sky
Northern Europe in the Early Modern Period
Ngaio Marsh: A Life in Crime
Scotland: A New History
Buddenbrooks
Hillbilly Elegy
John Quincy Adams
Borderland: A History of Ukraine
The Scarlet Pimpernel
The Western Canon
In the American Grain
A Hymnal (WFB)
Christ Stopped at Eboli
Blue of Noon
Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
I Will Be Called John
Bleak House
The Pursuit of the Millennium
Dunstan Thompson
Waiting for Snow in Havana
The Haunting of Hill House
The Officers’ Ward
Murder Underground
Howards End is on the Landing
The Edwardians
The Last Tycoon
The Bridge Over The Drina
The World My Wilderness
Darkness Visible
The Massacre at Glencoe
Aspects of the Novel
The Struggle for Europe
The Cornish Coast Murder
Zuleika Dobson
The Human Factor
Six Against The Yard
Witness
A Town Like Alice
The Razor’s Edge
The Monogram Murders
We
The Amateur Cracksman
Thérèse
A Bend in the River
Verdict of Twelve
The Closing of the American Mind
Dracula
The Sleepwalkers
The War of the World
I, An Actor
And It’s Goodnight From Him
Solitude
Notes from the Underground
The Origins of the Second World War
The Captive Mind
Alexander the Great and the Hellenic Age
Irish Impressions (GKC)
Take Two at Bedtime
The Girls of Slender Means
Reunion
Unfinished Portrait
Disraeli (Blake)
West With The Night
Peter Abelard
Hitler: A Study in Tyranny
Appointment in Samarra
Under the Net
A Book of Escapes
The Glass-Bead Game
The Case for Israel
The Four Men
Love in the Western World
The Birds of the Air
Seaward
(Authors on request. I’m also following the Modern Library Top 100 lists).
I should LOVE recommendations of books that will help me to counter the Corbynist and postmodern (-religion, -gender) trends with which I’m confronted right now.
From The Return of Tarzan.
“But he did think of D’Arnot, and a grin of amusement showed his strong white teeth as he pictured the immaculate Frenchman’s expression could he by some means see Tarzan as he was that minute. Poor Paul, who had prided himself on having eradicated from his friend the last traces of wild savagery. “How quickly have I fallen!” thought Tarzan; but in his heart he did not consider it a fall—rather, he pitied the poor creatures of Paris, penned up like prisoners in their silly clothes, and watched by policemen all their poor lives, that they might do nothing that was not entirely artificial and tiresome.”
I’m reading the Allen Furst novels.
I have been keeping a list. An * means I had already started it before this year. I’ve taken an interesting turn into 19th century sources, and the old west.
#11 was about Shackleton. Amazing story. #3 and #6 are pretty short. Poor Richard even took me 3 weeks to read, off and on. It was just the proverbs. #7 was a collection of newspaper columns which I started a couple years ago, checked out again this year, and still returned it unfinished when I decided I would read the rest on the old newspaper site I am on, which I did. Really cute little stories about Joe Turp and his wife. The above audiobooks are on Youtube.
One day left. I am in so many things and have recently reorganized my books and have decided finishing everything I have started is top priority. I think tomorrow I will finish this nice publication of the Ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead, which as silly as it sounds, will have an * by it.
Well, we have one in common: Zinsser.
Also, Kingdom of Speech; The Savior Generals; The Crisis of Islam; The Saint Meets His Match; With My Own Eyes (Bo Giertz); Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone; Authentic Christianity (Gene Veith); Politics: A Very Short Introduction (Minogue); Trump vs the Media; Secondhand Time; True Crime (Klavan); Blood Meridian; And Be A Villian (Stout); Gnostic America (Burfeind); Ruhlman’s Twenty; Unbroken; others.
The Shackleton story is amazing, but you should try this one too:
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/20897517-in-the-kingdom-of-ice
I didn’t bother with the Book of the Dead, but just under the wire I have finished
Re: comment # 73
“I should LOVE recommendations of books that will help me to counter the Corbynist and postmodern (-religion, -gender) trends with which I’m confronted right now.”
Nick,
If you didn’t already, read Miami Blues, by Charles Willeford. What that crime story deliberately and slyly says about our awareness, or lack of awareness, of the world beyond this one, and about gender, sex and love, is profound; and hits you like an aftershock.
In the comment section of an Amazon book review of the novel (the one written by Dave Wilde, posted on August 28th, 2017, entitled: Absolutely Tremendous Work) I wrote about my impression of the novel’s character Susan. (Am mentioning this because my comment there explains why I think what I’m saying to you about this book.)
I wish everyone on Ricochet would read this novel and call attention to it.
This is a special post, and want to read through each comment this coming week on books I might add myself for 2018 – I have to tell you, as silly as it sounds, I am finishing The Chimes by Charles Dickens as the Christmas holidays end. It’s been on my shelf – never read it – and it is very moving. I did a post on it. It sets the tone for the year in many ways. Hard to believe it was written in 1852, as some of life’s lessons are timeless.
Lining up for the new year to be read:
Black Coffee by Agatha Christie (a gift from my sister)
@claire ‘s new book – can’t wait – I know she may be stressed, not having published a new book for some time. I don’t care if it disses Trump, or has a chapter on pink elephants, I am going to love it – hope we see it soon!
Whoa! This is incredible list!
I just got the 5 books which are parts of 3 series recommended by my fellow Ricochetti.
I didn’t read a lot of books this year. So, sue me. I did re-read something I read first in 1982, and that is Earthly Powers by Anthony Burgess. It is a remarkable book, but reading it in 2017 is a completely different experience from reading it in 1982.
It was for me a year of re-reading, another being a collection of short stories by Paul Bowles. I still don’t know what to make of that collection. No one who has read it can forget Pages From Cold Point.