2010 Books

For no other reason than for the sake of completeness, here are the books I read in 2010. I will be better about writing here this year, I promise.

• World Without End – January, 2010 – Another great epic from Follett, a worthy sequel to The Pillars of the Earth.
• Great Plains – January, 2010 – This sat on my shelf for a long time because I never really wanted to read it. Turned out to be an enjoyable travelogue.
• A Man on the Moon – January, 2010 – Quite possibly one of the best books I’ve ever read. I’m completely fascinated by the Apollo program.
• Over the Edge of the World: Magellan’s Terrifying Circumnavigation of the Globe – February, 2010 – Interesting, learned quite a bit more about Magellan.
• Nineteen Eighty-Four – February, 2010 – One of my goals for the year was to read more of the Modern Library 100 best novels, and this is one of them. Enjoyed this, good to read for basic cultural literacy.
• Pacific Vortex! – February, 2010 – I wanted to see what Cussler was all about. This was terrible, don’t know if I can read another by him.
• The Grapes of Wrath – March, 2010 – Another Modern Library selection. I loved this, much more than I thought I would. I was amazed at how much Steinbeck could do with such simple language.
• The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time – March, 2010 – This was a unique concept, written from the viewpoint of an autistic child.
• Small Giants: Companies That Choose to Be Great Instead of Big – March, 2010 – Forgettable
• Haroun and the Sea of Stories – March, 2010 – I can see why people really like this book, but it is not my type of fiction.
• Eye of the Needle – April, 2010 – Experimenting with other Follett genres. We liked Pillars of the Earth genre better.
• How I Learned to Cook: Culinary Educations from the World’s Greatest Chefs – April, 2010 – Chef / cooking memoirs are a guilty pleasure of mine. This book was good exposure to a lot of different chefs and inspired me to pick up the Bourdain book.
• Invisible Man – May, 2010 – I could not get into this one. I really didn’t feel smart enough for this.
• Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly – May, 2010 – Loved this book and Bourdain’s style. Will seek out more by him.
• The Heart of the Matter – June, 2010 – Another Modern Library choice. Greene really knows how to pour on the tragedy.
• Brideshead Revisited – June, 2010 – Another Modern Library choice and very enjoyable.
• Home Game: An Accidental Guide to Fatherhood – June, 2010 – Read this in about two hours. Hilarious stuff, really hits close to home.
• The First Three Minutes – June, 2010 – Good look into the beginning of the universe, but very technical stuff, found myself getting lost quite a bit.
• The Shack – July, 2010 – This was complete and total garbage. Looking back, I can’t believe I finished this book.
• All the King’s Men – August, 2010 – I loved some of the language in this, but struggled through parts of it. On the Modern Library list.
• Heart of Darkness – September, 2010 – My first Kindle book (free). A harder read than I expected. I was constantly rereading pages. This may have been a factor of adapting to Kindle reading.
• The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine – September, 2010 – Kindle book. Amazingly well written and researched history of the start of the financial meltdown.
• The Call of the Wild – September, 2010 – Modern library and Kindle book. I may have enjoyed this more as a young boy.
• Treasure Island – September, 2010 – Free Kindle book. Loved all the pirate lingo.
• Crime and Punishment – October, 2010. Another free Kindle book. This was incredibly hard to read and doubt I understood it all.
• Will Rogers: Reflections and Observations – November, 2010 – A collection of writings by my hero. I was surprised at how well his humor has aged over the last 80+ years.
• The Diamond Age – December, 2010 – The last of Stephenson’s earlier works on my “to read” list. He remains one of my favorite authors.
• See No Evil: The True Story of a Ground Soldier in the CIA’s War Against Terrorism – December, 2010 – Very interesting insider view of the CIA.
• Operation Mincemeat: How a Dead Man and a Bizarre Plan Fooled the Nazis and Assured an Allied Victory – December, 2010 – A very entertaining story, but still find it hard to gauge how much impact the plan had on the outcome of WWII.

Tags: books, reading

A List of Books

The list of books I’ve read, from the 1,001 Books You Must Read Before You Die book.  Whew, looks like I’ve got a ways to go before I shuffle off.

• The Plot Against America – Philip Roth
• Cryptonomicon – Neal Stephenson
• Memoirs of a Geisha – Arthur Golden
• American Psycho – Bret Easton Ellis
• The Bonfire of the Vanities – Tom Wolfe
• Love in the Time of Cholera – Gabriel García Márquez
• Contact – Carl Sagan
• Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole
• The World According to Garp – John Irving
• The Shining – Stephen King
• Rabbit Redux – John Updike
• Slaughterhouse-five – Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
• Myra Breckinridge – Gore Vidal
• Cat’s Cradle – Kurt Vonnegut
• The Spy Who Came in from the Cold – John Le Carré
• Catch-22 – Joseph Heller
• To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee
• Rabbit, Run – John Updike
• Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov
• Lord of the Flies – William Golding
• The Catcher in the Rye – J.D. Salinger
• Animal Farm – George Orwell
• Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck
• The Maltese Falcon – Dashiell Hammett
• A Farewell to Arms – Ernest Hemingway
• The Great Gatsby – F. Scott Fitzgerald
• The Trial – Franz Kafka
• Siddhartha – Herman Hesse
• The Hound of the Baskervilles – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
• The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn – Mark Twain
• Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll
• The Scarlet Letter – Nathaniel Hawthorne
• The Pit and the Pendulum – Edgar Allan Poe
• The Fall of the House of Usher – Edgar Allan Poe

Plus a bunch of others that I read in high school but I wasn’t paying much attention, so I’m not counting.

Tags: books, lists, reading

Books I’ve Read

I started this book list in June of 1998, the summer between undergrad and grad school. I guess I was planning on reading a lot of books that summer and started this list to keep track of the ones I read. I’ve read 225 books in 10 years, which is slightly less than 2 books a month. That average has dropped a bit in the past two years as I’ve become more occupied with work, taken on project management classes, and tackled some larger non-fiction books that have taken a month or more to finish.

The List

1. A Pirate Looks at Fifty – June, 1998
2. Charisma
3. Into Thin Air
4. The Size of the World
5. Icefire
6. How to Think Like a Millionaire
7. Under the Big Top
8. The Talbot Odyssey
9. Pecked to Death by Ducks
10. Road Fever
11. You Have More Than You Think
12. The Greatest Salesman in the World
13. The Millionaire Next Door
14. Atlas Shrugged
15. Endurance: Shackleton’s Incredible Voyage
16. Nimitz Class
17. Major in Success
18. The Tenth Justice
19. Bombardiers
20. A Perfect Spy
21. Around the World in 78 Days
22. Arigato
23. Shopping for Buddhas
24. The Perfect Storm
25. The Aluminum Hatch
26. Windfall
27. Red Dragon
28. Detective
29. The Songlines
30. Murder and Spies, Lovers and Lies – July, 1999
31. Dollar Pinching: A Consumer’s Guide to Smart Spending – July, 1999
32. Contact
33. Delirium of the Brave
34. A Man in Full – August, 1999
35. Other People’s Money
36. Buried Child – August, 1999
37. The Profit Zone
38. Value Migration
39. Barbarians at the Gate
40. The Loyalty Effect
41. Notes From a Small Island
42. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone
43. Will Rogers: A Biography
44. Hannibal
45. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
46. Hot Money
47. A Thief of Time
48. The Alchemist
49. The Nudist on the Late Shift
50. The Aquitaine Progression
51. Coyote Waits
52. The Maltese Falcon
53. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
54. Maximum Leadership
55. The New New Thing
56. Timeline
57. The Lost Continent
58. The Soloist
59. Hunting Badger
60. The Millionaire Mind
61. Liar’s Poker
62. American Places
63. High Fidelity – April, 2000
64. Beating the Street
65. Cause of Death
66. Elixir
67. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
68. In a Sunburned Country
69. On the Road
70. Pop Goes the Weasel
71. Out West
72. The Great Gatsby
73. Memoirs of a Geisha
74. Lolita
75. The Gorilla Game
76. Tramp: The Life of Charlie Chaplin
77. The Creative Priority
78. I’m a Stranger Here Myself
79. Breakfast of Champions
80. Certain Prey
81. Hornet’s Nest
82. The Leadership Moment
83. Winter’s Tale
84. Dead Even
85. The Butcher’s Theater
86. A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
87. Desert Solitaire
88. Unnatural Exposure
89. Survival of the Fittest
90. Me Talk Pretty One Day
91. Grunch of Giants – October, 2001
92. U.S.S. Seawolf
93. Blue Highways
94. Used and Rare: Travels in the Book World
95. Into the Wild
96. Eye of the Storm
97. The Rhinemann Exchange
98. Three Dollars
99. The Prize : The Epic Quest for Oil, Money, and Power
100. Hawaii – July, 2002
101. The Art of Travel
102. Fast Food Nation
103. The Bonfire of the Vanities
104. Taking Your Talent to the Web – September, 2002
105. Mr. Obvious
106. A Is for Alibi
107. Track of the Cat
108. Divine Secrets of the Ya–Ya Sisterhood – October, 2002
109. Rabbit, Run
110. The Fountainhead
111. B Is for Burglar
112. Cryptonomicon
113. American Psycho
114. Nick’s Trip
115. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
116. Miles from Nowhere: In Search of the American Frontier
117. Wobegon Boy
118. A Confederacy of Dunces
119. Slaughterhouse Five
120. C is for Corpse
121. Animal Farm
122. A Farewell to Arms
123. The First American
124. Nothing to Declare
125. A Widow for One Year
126. The Double Helix
127. Seabiscuit: An American Legend – August, 2003
128. Twice Shy – August, 2003
129. Holidays in Hell – August, 2003
130. The Lion’s Game – August, 2003
131. Lullaby
132. A Superior Death
133. The Virtues of Aging
134. Direct from Dell
135. The Da Vinci Code – September, 2003
136. Whirlwind
137. My Old Man and the Sea
138. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
139. The World According to Garp
140. A People’s History of the United States
141. Angels & Demons
142. One for the Money
143. Two for the Dough
144. Travels With Charley
145. A Short History of Nearly Everything
146. Blue Latitudes
147. Moneyball
148. The Devil’s Highway
149. What Should I Do With My Life?
150. Quicksilver
151. Getting Things Done
152. The Dante Club – November, 2004
153. Dharma Bums
154. Society of the Mind – January, 2005
155. Manhattan ’45
156. Digital Fortress
157. Tales of the South Pacific
158. The Tipping Point
159. Project Planning, Scheduling, & Control – April, 2005
160. Home Buying for Dummies – May, 2005
161. I See by My Outfit – May, 2005
162. Rich Dad, Poor Dad – May, 2005
163. Den of Thieves
164. The World is Flat – June, 2005
165. States of Mind – August, 2005
166. Eats, Shoots & Leaves – September, 2005
167. Who Moved My Cheese? – September, 2005
168. Shadow Divers – September, 2005
169. The Spy Who Came In from the Cold – September, 2005
170. Deception Point – September, 2005
171. The Continental Op – September, 2005
172. Ill Wind – September, 2005
173. The Majors
174. The Wisdom of Crowds – November, 2005
175. Mutiny on the Bounty – December, 2005
176. Marathon: The Ultimate Training Guide – December, 2005
177. People of Darkness – December, 2005
178. The Dark Wind – December, 2005
179. The Ghostway – January, 2006
180. Mark of the Grizzly – January, 2006
181. A Salty Piece of Land – January, 2006
182. First Marathons
183. The Good Earth – February, 2006
184. A Tourist in the Yucatan – March, 2006
185. The Runner’s Guide to the Meaning of Life – March, 2006
186. How to Lose Friends and Alienate People – March, 2006
187. Rabbit Redux – April, 2006
188. The Devil in the White City – April, 2006
189. The Kite Runner – April, 2006
190. Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking – April, 2006
191. Earned Value Project Management
192. Confessions of an Economic Hitman – June, 2006
193. The Last Juror – June, 2006
194. Following the Equator: A Journey Around the World – July, 2006
195. From Beirut to Jerusalem
196. Silent Partner – September, 2006
197. Snow Crash – September, 2006
198. The Lovely Bones – September, 2006
199. Stormy Weather – October, 2006
200. The Broker – October, 2006
201. Raising the Bar: Integrity and Passion in Life and Business: The Story of Clif Bar & Co.
202. Good to Great – November, 2006
203. T.R.: The Last Romantic
204. Angel Customers & Demon Customers – March, 2007
205. The Wisdom of Teams – April, 2007
206. Snow – May, 2007
207. Heat – May, 2007
208. A Year in the Merde – May, 2007
209. Until I Find You – June, 2007
210. The Intelligent Investor
211. Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell – October, 2007
212. The Omnivore’s Dilemma – November, 2007
213. Love in the Time of Cholera – December, 2007
214. Founding Brothers – December, 2007
215. The Expectant Father – December, 2007
216. Chicago Stories – January, 2008
217. The Plot Against America – January, 2008
218. Double Duty – February, 2008
219. Hanging Woman Creek – February, 2008
220. Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies – March, 2008
221. The Multiple Pregnancy Sourcebook – March, 2008
222. The Trial – March, 2008
223. Manhunt: The 12-Day Chase for Lincoln’s Killer – April, 2008
224. Heller with a Gun – April, 2008
225. Guests of the Ayatollah: The Iran Hostage Crisis – May, 2008
226. Plainsong – May, 2008
227. Nonzero: The Logic of Human Destiny – May, 2008
228. A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge – June, 2008
229. On Becoming Baby Wise – June, 2008
230. PMP Exam Success Series: Certification Exam Manual – June, 2008
231. The Genesis Code – June, 2008
232. Take Me With You – June, 2008
233. Parenting, Inc. – July, 2008
234. A Good Walk Spoiled – July, 2008
235. Zodiac – August, 2008
236. The Terrible Hours – August, 2008
237. Life of Pi – September, 2008
238. Subtle is the Lord: The Science and the Life of Albert Einstein – October, 2008
239. Black Hawk Down – October, 2008
240. Water for Elephants – November, 2008
241. Band of Brothers – November, 2008
242. Swimming to Antarctica – November, 2008
243. Three Cups of Tea – December, 2008
244. Apollo 13: Lost Moon – December, 2008
245. Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America – December, 2008
246. The Pump House Gang – January, 2009
247. Twelve Hours’ Sleep by Twelve Weeks Old – January, 2009
248. Childhood’s End – February, 2009
249. Brave New World – February, 2009
250. Tesla: Man Out of Time – March, 2009
251. A Thousand Splendid Suns – March, 2009
252. Underworld – May, 2009
253. Strong Fathers, Strong Daughters: 10 Secrets Every Father Should Know – June, 2009
254. Bringing Down the House – June, 2009
255. House to House: A Soldier’s Memoir – June, 2009
256. The Pillars of the Earth – July, 2009
257. The Right Stuff – August, 2009
258. The World Without Us – August, 2009
259. The Black Swan – August, 2009
260. The Murder Book – September, 2009
261. John Adams – October, 2009
262. Under the Banner of Heaven – October, 2009
263. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo – November, 2009
264. The Lost Symbol – November, 2009
265. Casino Royale – November, 2009
266. World Without End – January, 2010
267. Great Plains – January, 2010
268. A Man on the Moon – January, 2010
269. Over the Edge of the World: Magellan’s Terrifying Circumnavigation of the Globe – February, 2010
270. Nineteen Eighty-Four – February, 2010
271. Pacific Vortex! – February, 2010
272. The Grapes of Wrath – March, 2010
273. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time – March, 2010
274. Small Giants: Companies That Choose to Be Great Instead of Big – March, 2010
275. Haroun and the Sea of Stories – March, 2010
276. Eye of the Needle – April, 2010
277. How I Learned to Cook: Culinary Educations from the World’s Greatest Chefs – April, 2010
278. Invisible Man – May, 2010
279. Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly – May, 2010
280. The Heart of the Matter – June, 2010
281. Brideshead Revisited – June, 2010
282. Home Game: An Accidental Guide to Fatherhood – June, 2010
283. The First Three Minutes – June, 2010
284. The Shack – July, 2010
285. All the King’s Men – August, 2010
286. Heart of Darkness – September, 2010
287. The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine – September, 2010
288. The Call of the Wild – September, 2010
289. Treasure Island – September, 2010
290. Crime and Punishment – October, 2010
291. Will Rogers: Reflections and Observations – November, 2010
292. The Diamond Age – December, 2010
293. See No Evil: The True Story of a Ground Soldier in the CIA’s War Against Terrorism – December, 2010
294. Operation Mincemeat: How a Dead Man and a Bizarre Plan Fooled the Nazis and Assured an Allied Victory – December, 2010
295. The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court – January, 2011
296. The Life and Times of Thunderbolt Kid: A Memoir – January, 2011
297. Consent to Kill – February, 2011
298. The Hunger Games – February, 2011
299. The Man Who Would Be King – February, 2011
300. The Girl Who Played With Fire – March, 2011
301. The Book of Love – March, 2011
302. The Wild Blue: The Men and Boys Who Flew the B-24s Over Germany 1944-1945 – March, 2011
303. How to Make Love Like a Porn Star: A Cautionary Tale – April, 2011
304. Braniac: Adventures in the Curious, Competitive, Compulsive World of Trivia Buffs – April, 2011
305. Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001 – May, 2011
306. Just Tell Me What to Say: Sensible Tips and Scripts for Perplexed Parents – June, 2011
307. Lone Survivor: The Eyewitness Account of Operation Redwing and the Lost Heros of SEAL Team 10 – June, 2011
308. Brain Rules: 12 Principles for Surviving and Thriving at Work, Home, and School – July, 2011
309. Will Rogers: A Biography – August, 2011
310. Darkness at Noon – September, 2011
311. Neutral Buoyancy: Adventures in a Liquid World – September, 2011
312. The Mountain Between Us – September, 2011
313. The Lords of Finance: The Bankers Who Broke the World – October, 2011
314. The Road – October, 2011
315. Blind Descent: The Quest to Discover the Deepest Place on Earth – November, 2011
316. Thirteen Days: A Memoir of the Cuban Missle Crisis – November, 2011
317. The God Delusion – December, 2011

Tags: books, reading