My 2015 Reading Year in Review

2015 was another enjoyable year of reading for me, and with books tracked as usual on Goodreads, here’s a short summary:

Total books read: 62. That’s less than last year, but more than each of the three years before that. Fairly average for me.

Fiction/non-fiction: 36 / 26.

Fiction:

  • Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (Harry Potter #6) (Rowling, J.K.) re-read w/ the kids
  • Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (Harry Potter #7) (Rowling, J.K.) re-read w/ the kids
  • Kristin Lavransdatter (Kristin Lavransdatter, #1-3) (Undset, Sigrid) Epic. Long. Mostly worth it.
  • Station Eleven (Mandel, Emily St. John) excellent
  • Spark (Hawks, John Twelve)
  • Empire (The Chronicles of the Invaders, #2) (Connolly, John)
  • Satin Island (McCarthy, Tom)
  • City of Savages (Kelly, Lee)
  • The Great Zoo of China (Reilly, Matthew)
  • Fall of Giants (The Century Trilogy, #1) (Follett, Ken)
  • Winter of the World (The Century Trilogy #2) (Follett, Ken)
  • Edge of Eternity (The Century Trilogy, #3) (Follett, Ken)
  • No Fortunate Son (Pike Logan, #7) (Taylor, Brad)
  • Mightier Than the Sword (The Clifton Chronicles, #5) (Archer, Jeffrey)
  • Seveneves (Stephenson, Neal)
  • The Goblin Emperor (Addison, Katherine) an unanticipated favorite
  • Tin Men (Golden, Christopher)
  • Iron Wolf (Brown, Dale)
  • Ghost Fleet: A Novel of the Next World War (Singer, P.W.)
  • The Three-Body Problem (Three-Body, #1) (Cixin, Liu)
  • The Dark Forest (Three-Body, #2) (Cixin, Liu) dense but really enjoyable sci-fi
  • The Martian (Weir, Andy) fine but don’t buy all the hype
  • The Name of the Wind (The Kingkiller Chronicle, #1) (Rothfuss, Patrick)
  • Invasion of Privacy (Reich, Christopher)
  • The Water Knife (Bacigalupi, Paolo)
  • The Library at Mount Char (Hawkins, Scott)
  • The Governor’s Wife: A novel (Harvey, Michael)
  • My Struggle: Book 1 (Knausgård, Karl Ove) strangely fascinating
  • Without Remorse (John Clark, #1) (Clancy, Tom) re-read for the first time in 20 years
  • Neverwhere (Gaiman, Neil)
  • Zero World (Hough, Jason M.)
  • Tenacity: A Thriller (Law, J.S.)
  • Dark Corners (Rendell, Ruth)
  • Werewolf Cop (Klavan, Andrew)
  • Saturn Run (Sandford, John)

Non-Fiction:

  • The Origins of Political Order: From Prehuman Times to the French Revolution (Fukuyama, Francis)

  • Alan Turing: The Enigma (Hodges, Andrew)

  • Fields of Blood: Religion and the History of Violence (Armstrong, Karen)

  • Words Without Music: A Memoir (Glass, Philip)

  • The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine (Lewis, Michael)

  • 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus (Mann, Charles C.)

  • Einstein’s Dice and Schrödinger’s Cat: How Two Great Minds Battled Quantum Randomness to Create a Unified Theory of Physics (Halpern, Paul)

  • Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA (Weiner, Tim)

  • Between the World and Me (Coates, Ta-Nehisi) deserves every accolade it gets

  • The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid: A Memoir (Bryson, Bill)

  • Leaders Ought to Know: 11 Ground Rules for Common Sense Leadership (Hooser, Phillip Van)

  • Showdown: Thurgood Marshall and the Supreme Court Nomination That Changed America (Haygood, Will)

  • The Fellowship: The Literary Lives of the Inklings: J.R.R. Tolkien, C. S. Lewis, Owen Barfield, Charles Williams (Zaleski, Philip) a good warts-and-all history of the Inklings.

  • The Court and the World: American Law and the New Global Realities (Breyer, Stephen G.)

  • Pacific: Silicon Chips and Surfboards, Coral Reefs and Atom Bombs, Brutal Dictators, Fading Empires, and the Coming Collision of the World’s Superpowers (Winchester, Simon)

  • The Speechwriter: A Brief Education in Politics (Swaim, Barton)

  • Alexander Hamilton (Chernow, Ron) Because Hamilton, obviously.

  • Free of Charge: Giving and Forgiving in a Culture Stripped of Grace (Volf, Miroslav)

  • Let Your Life Speak: Listening for the Voice of Vocation (Palmer, Parker J.)

  • The Lion’s World: A journey into the heart of Narnia (Williams, Rowan)

  • Secondhand Jesus: Trading Rumors of God for a Firsthand Faith (Packiam, Glenn)

  • Desiring the Kingdom: Worship, Worldview, and Cultural Formation (Smith, James K.A.)

  • Everything Belongs: The Gift of Contemplative Prayer (Rohr, Richard)

  • Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life (Rohr, Richard)

  • The Enneagram: A Christian Perspective (Rohr, Richard)

  • Malestrom: Manhood Swept into the Currents of a Changing World (James, Carolyn Custis)

  • Spiritual Friendship (Hill, Wesley) Worth reading, and then reading again.

Worked on, but didn’t finish yet:

  • Paul and the Faithfulness of God (Wright, N.T.) I’m about half-way through volume one. Slow going.

Miscellaneous thoughts:

  • Won the “buy it for Dad for Christmas” award: Desiring the Kingdom by James K.A. Smith.
  • I’m honestly surprised by how little theology I read this year. Seems like a lot less than previous years. Guess maybe I was ready for a break.
  • Size of my unread book pile at the moment: embarrassingly large. Got 4 new books for Christmas. Added them to the pile. It’s possible that by spring I’ll need to go on another “no books from the library until the pile goes down” pledge. We’ll see.

Do you have any recommendations for 2016 reading?

My 2014 reading in review

Well, with 2014 in the books it’s time for my annual little review of my reading. This was a busy reading year for me - 74 books equals the most I’ve read in a year since I started logging my reading back in 2007.

My fiction/non-fiction split was pretty heavily weighted in the non-fiction direction - 45 non to 29 fiction. That non-fiction was pretty well distributed, too, still a lot of theology, but a good bit of history, biography, and economics. (And economics was more than just Piketty. Go me!)

The full list is on Goodreads but here are some of the highlights:

The Best

The Pastor: A Memoir by Eugene Peterson

This is a beautifully-written memoir by a much beloved pastor and author. Peterson tells stories from his years of ministry, emphasizing the call to a simple, faithful pastoral ministry. (Such a breath of fresh air in the days of celebrity megachurch pastors!) This was the volume I gave away as Christmas gifts this year. Really good.

From Bible Belt to Sunbelt: Plain-Folk Religion, Grassroots Politics, and the Rise of Evangelical Conservatism by Darren Dochuk

A detailed history of the roots of American Evangelicalism, from the Oklahoma radio evangelists of the 1930s, through the migration to Southern California, through the rise of Billy Graham, and all the way to the Moral Majority of Jerry Fallwell. Dochuk’s history is quite readable and fascinating for a guy like me who grew up in evangelicalism but didn’t really know its roots.

The Anglican Way: A Guidebook by Fr. Thomas Mackenzie

I chipped in on the Kickstarter campaign for this book back in 2013, and boy was it ever worth it. Thomas, pastor at Church of the Redeemer in Nashville, wrote an introduction to Anglicanism for those Christians who may not be familiar with the tradition. Fr. Thomas: almost thou persuadest me to become an Anglican.

The Rook: A Novel by Daniel O’Malley

This was my last book of the year, so hopefully I’m not just biased because it’s fresh in my memory. This was a great read, though, if you’re into the sort of supernatural spy mystery/thriller sort of thing. Funny, moves quick, keeps things interesting. Looking forward to the second book in the series sometime next year.

That’s Not All

In addition to those titles I also gave five star ratings to some classics that I re-read (several of the Harry Potter novels, read out loud with the family) or read for the first time (To Kill A Mockingbird was a notable gap in my experience.)

A vast majority of the books I read this year garnered either four or five stars. I hope this is because I did a better job of not wasting my time on books that never captured my interest. The (100 pages - your age) formula has been effective this year. If, 60-ish pages in I’m not engaged and enjoying the read, I’m not going to feel compelled to keep reading it.

Up Next

I still have a pile (though not as sizable as it once was) next to my bed that will keep my reading well into 2015. Most likely I will be reading:

  • Prayer by Tim Keller. (It’s Keller. Duh.)
  • Kristin Lavransdatter by Sigrid Unset. (A historical novel written in the early 1920s by a Norwegian author who won the Nobel Prize for literature. Obscure but highly recommended by those in the know.)
  • Theodore Rex by Edmund Morris. The next volume of his Theodore Roosevelt biography. The last one was excellent.
  • Paul and the Faithfulness of God by N. T. Wright. I got this one for Christmas last year and didn’t get very far. I think I’m ready to give it a go here sometime soon.
  • Lila by Marilynne Robinson. Her follow-up to the excellent Gilead.

Happy 2015, everybody!

Books I read in 2013

Here’s my one year-end post: a little summary of what I read this year. I’m not gonna list ’em all - you can go check out the list on Goodreads if you’re really interested - but I’ll include some highlights.

I finished 57 books this year - about average for me over the past several years - and 27 of them were non-fiction, which is as close to fiction/non-fiction parity as I’ve ever gotten before. My non-fiction was mostly theology this year, which reminds me I need to pick up some more history, biographies, and the like in 2014.

Top Non-Fiction

I really need to write a full review post on Playing God. It was probably my favorite of the year, and the one that I then bought two copies of to give as Christmas gifts. I’m feeling a little bit better about my theological variety, too - it isn’t just all Anglicans on my list this year!

Top Fiction

It feels like a cheat to list Robinson’s book here, since she uses the fictional narrative to drive home a bunch of theological and philosophical points, but hey, it’s good stuff.

The worst I’ve gotten better at just putting books down if they seem like clunkers, so I have just a single one-star reviewed book on my list this year: The Panther by Nelson DeMille. Here’s what I wrote on Goodreads:

Plot is thinner than thin. Hundreds of pages and nothing happens except we get a tour of Yemen and page after page of insufferable narrative. It’s as if Mr DeMille had a quota of smart-ass internal dialog per page that he had to fill. If you cut out half of it, the book would shorten by 20% and still be just as boring.

I’m ashamed I wasted as much time on this one as I did. Avoid.

Plans for 2014 I’m likely to always be a theology, politics, and sci-fi geek, but I really would like to read some more history, some classic literature, and maybe even a little poetry. Hit me up if you have recommendations!

My 2012 reading

Time for my annual roundup of what I read over the past year. While I’m often lousy at cataloging things, this list is easy enough thanks to Goodreads and their nice little iPhone app.

(If you just want to look at the list, go check it out over on Goodreads.)

I read 59 books this year. 36 were fiction, 23 were non-fiction. Most of that non-fiction was theology, with just a couple of biographies / histories thrown in. (I need to read some more history. I don’t read enough of it anymore.)

I rated far more things with five stars this year than I have in previous years. (15 books got 5 stars! That’s more than a quarter of everything I read!) I don’t know whether that means my rating standards are slipping or that my book selection standards are improving, but at least it means I have some good books to recommend.

There are five novels I gave five stars this year:

  • The Fiddler’s Gun by A. S. Peterson - a fun Revolutionary War novel focused on the adventures of a teenage girl. (I’ve got the sequel, The Fiddler’s Green, sitting in my to-read pile… should get it read in 2013 sometime.)
  • The Fault in Our Stars by John Green - a short Young Adult novel focused on two teenagers who are dying of cancer. It’s not as painful as it sounds, but it’s challenging and insightful.
  • Redshirts, by John Scalzi - an odd sort of meta sci-fi romp that otherwise defies comparison
  • The Book of the Dun Cow by Walter Wangerin, Jr. - a fascinating fantasy story which I’m indebted to the Rabbit Room folks for recommending.
  • Gathering String, by Mimi Johnson - a top-notch suspense/mystery novel whose author is a lovely lade I met once at a tweetup in Cedar Rapids.

On the non-fiction side, there were more 5-star books, but a few among those that particularly stood out:

I’m back at the reading for 2013, trying to finish up some Thomas Merton that I started back in December. If you’re so inclined, add me as a friend on Goodreads so we can interact about our reading throughout the year!

My 2011 Reading

The end of the year means it’s time for a summary of my last year’s reading. Thankfully Goodreads keeps it easy for me to track things; I don’t have to remember to do much more than log my books when I’m done with them (on the handy Android app) and at the end of the year I have this nifty list.

By the Numbers I finished 51 books this year, which made it an average year for me. 19 of those were non-fiction, leaving 32 as fiction. (You can see the whole list on Goodreads if you really want to.) As usual, my non-fiction is basically theology, with a little bit of science and history thrown in. The fiction is essentially scifi, fantasy, and legal/political thrillers.

Best fiction I gave 5-star ratings to 3 novels this year that were first-time reads. They were:

  • Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson. This is a futurist masterpiece of a novel that reads really fresh even though it was written back in 2000. Really good stuff.
  • The Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch. A fantasy novel that doesn’t get so lost in the fantasy world that it forgets to have a plot. This is basically your favorite con-man story set in a fascinating fantasy world. I understand that the second book in the series is out now, so I need to get on it.
  • Ready Player One by Ernest Cline. This one has been at the top of a lot of year-end lists, and while it may not deserve that, it was very entertaining. Set in the future, but full of 1980’s nostalgia, this was a fun, engaging read. (Stephen Granade has a good post outlining some ways that Ready Player One could’ve been changed to be a much better novel.)

Best non-fiction

There are two books that deserve mentions here.

The Stinker

There was only one book that I gave just one star to this year, and I won’t even give it the honor of linking to it on Amazon: Abyss by Paul Hagberg. I can do no better than to quote my review from goodreads:

I should’ve known just from the cover and flyleaf that this particular bit if genre fiction was going to be a train wreck. And yet, like a train wreck, once I started I couldn’t look away.

Ridiculous plot premise, unbelievable protagonist (former CIA director turned bodyguard?!?), uninspired prose and underdeveloped characters fill the 400+ pages of this tome. The author seems contractually obligated to describe each female character in terms of breast size, but mishandles the interpersonal scenes so badly that you wonder if he’s actually ever had an interpersonal relationship.

The cover of the book proclaims it to be “A Kirk McGarvey Novel”, leading me to believe that there are more books out there starring this ridiculous character. My advice: avoid them. Avoid this one, too.

So that’s my 2011. Here’s hoping that 2012 finds me reading the best of books new and old. (Leave any recommendations in the comments below!)

2008: A Year of Reading in Review

This the only year-end post I’ll write; just a summary of my book reading list from 2008.

Some quick details:

Total Books Read: 78. This is down a bit from 86 last year.

Fiction: 57. Non-fiction: 21.

That ratio is still weighted a little heavily toward fiction, I think, but when I know how shallow and quick some of those novels were and how long and think some of the non-fiction was… well, it evens out.

Favorite novel of the year: A Prisoner of Birth by Jeffery Archer. This was far and away the best, most enjoyable story I read all year. It’s essentially a modern-day retelling of Alexandre Dumas’ The Count of Monte Cristo. What sold me on it, though, was that there were characters you could really root for. Good guys that were really good. Honorable supporting characters who remained honorable. Such a good story. I should put it on reserve at the library again.

Runner up: The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger.

Favorite non-fiction of the year: This is tough because non-fiction spans such a range of subjects. Some high points, though:

Worst book of the year: How Would Jesus Vote? by the late D. James Kennedy and Jerry Newcombe. I thought my blog review of it was bad until I read Ron’s review. He said, in short:

The book is awful. Simply awful. I can’t stress to you how amazingly awful this book is. Do not buy, read, or borrow this book. I will likely use my copy for kindling in the fireplace this winter.

I love Ron.

OK, that’s enough book wrap-up for this year. I’m contemplating a change in format for book reviews next year, doing a full post on each book and cross-posting them to Amazon to build a little bit of reviewing credibility there. Dunno, it’s just a thought. [No, Geof, I’m not doing it entirely because you changed the format of GNM.]

Next year’s list will still exist in some format. First book on it will be an old one by Stephen Baxter. Almost finished it for 2008, but not quite.

2007 in Books: Chris's Reading in Review

One year ago I decided that my blog was the must useful place to keep my reading list, and that proved to be a good choice. I’ve tried keeping reading lists in the past, but was never consistent in recording. This year, though, I managed to record each book and a couple sentences of synopsis and review. I don’t do much in the way of Top 10 lists, but this seems like one place where I have enough data at hand to make a year-end summary. So here goes.

Total books read: 85. Total fiction: 68. Total non-fiction: 17. Total re-reads: 1.

The one notable series for this year was Harry Potter. I managed to resist the series until this year, but finally decided it was time to give them a try. I was glad I did; they were some very entertaining reads. I started Book 1 on July 11 and finished Book 7 on August 23, and managed to sneak six other books in during that six weeks as well!

A look at my non-fiction stuff betrays my interest in history and science, with a dabbling in music. No real surprises, I guess.

My Top 5 non-fiction reads of the year, in no particular order:

My top 8 fiction reads, again in no particular order (I was going to list 10, but couldn’t find two more that lived up to the standards of these 8):

  • Variable Star - Robert Heinlein & Spider Robinson. The title character goes on a “galactic bender”… yeah, and it’s a great story.
  • Sun of Suns (Virga, Book 1) - Karl Schroeder. Schroeder manages to create a very believable, imaginative world for his story. I’ve got book 2 sitting in my to-read pile right now. Can’t wait.
  • In War Times - Kathleen Ann Goonan. Goonan combines time travel, jazz, and World War II in a way that blows my mind. Easily my favorite non-series book of the year.
  • The Children of Húrin - J. R. R. Tolkien. Tolkien does the classic epic better than anyone else.
  • Magic Street - Orson Scott Card. Card has a gift for storytelling and imagination. This novel weaves some of the plot and ideas of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream into a delightful modern fantasy.
  • Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (Book 7) - J. K. Rowling. I promised myself I’d only include one HP book in this list, and it had to be this one. It caps off the series brilliantly.
  • Overclocked: Stories of the Future Present - Cory Doctorow. Most of the sci-fi short stories I’ve read up to this point have been older; it’s fun to read something written recently - the current-ness of the technology and ideas makes them even more believable and frightening.
  • The Road - Cormac McCarthy. No, I didn’t read this one because Oprah recommended it. Andrew Peterson recommended it, too! :-) Chilling, spare, and yet ultimately hopeful.

Apparently I am a sci-fi nerd. It’s not that all I read is sci-fi… I guess those just stick out the most to me.

I’ll start a new list for 2008 once I finish my first book. Gotta see how my reading preferences change from year to year.