2009 Book List
This year was a pretty good year for reading. I managed to get through 61 books, with only 6 repeats (italicized. Of course, this does not count the several books that I started and did not finish — I will not count those until I actually finish them.
Of note this year, many of these books I checked out from the library or borrowed from friends, so I managed to save a significant amount of money over my usual book reading expenditures. I have marked the borrowed books with an asterisk.
- The Gathering Storm (Wheel of Time, #12; A Memory of Light, #1) - Robert Jordan
- * The Last Colony - John Scalzi
- * The Ghost Brigades - John Scalzi
- * The Millionaire Next Door - Steven D. Levitt and Thomas J. Stanley
- * Under the Dome - Stephen King
- * King Solomon's Mines - H. Rider Haggard
- * Old Man's War (Book 1) - John Scalzi
- * The Salmon of Doubt: Hitchhiking the Galaxy One Last Time - Douglas Adams
- * Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values (P.S.) - Robert M. Pirsig
- * The God Delusion - Richard Dawkins
- * This Immortal - Roger Zelazny
- * Drood - Dan Simmons
- * Batman: The Killing Joke - Alan Moore
- * Physics of the Impossible: A Scientific Exploration of the World of Phasers, Force Fields, Teleportation, and Time Travel - Michio Kaku
- * The Design of Everyday Things - Donald A. Norman
- * I Don't Know What I Want, But I Know It's Not This: A Step-by-Step Guide to Finding Gratifying Work - Julie Jansen
- * Definitely Dead (Sookie Stackhouse, #6) - Charlaine Harris
- * Dead as a Doornail (Sookie Stackhouse, #5) - Charlaine Harris
- * Dead to the World (Sookie Stackhouse, #4) - Charlaine Harris
- * Club Dead (Sookie Stackhouse, #3) - Charlaine Harris
- * Living Dead in Dallas (Sookie Stackhouse, #2) - Charlaine Harris
- * Dead Until Dark (Sookie Stackhouse, #1) - Charlaine Harris
- Debugging by Thinking: A Multidisciplinary Approach (HP Technologies) - Robert Charles Metzger
- How to Win Friends & Influence People - Dale Carnegie
- * Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking When Stakes are High - Kerry Patterson
- How to Read a Book - Mortimer J. Adler
- * Agent to the Stars - John Scalzi
- Software Exorcism: A Handbook for Debugging and Optimizing Legacy Code (Expert's Voice) - Bill Blunden
- The Prince - Niccolo Machiavelli
- Mayflower: A Story of Courage, Community, and War - Nathaniel Philbrick
- Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid - Douglas R. Hofstadter
- Preacher Vol. 1: Gone To Texas - Garth Ennis
- The Double Helix - James D. Watson
- I Am Charlotte Simmons: A Novel - Tom Wolfe
- The Sandman Vol. 01: Preludes and Nocturnes - Neil Gaiman
- Of Saints and Shadows (The Shadow Saga, #1) - Christopher Golden
- Bone Crossed (Mercedes Thompson, #4) - Patricia Briggs
- Iron Kissed (Mercedes Thompson, #3) - Patricia Briggs
- Blood Bound (Mercedes Thompson, #2) - Patricia Briggs
- Moon Called (Mercedes Thompson, #1) - Patricia Briggs
- The Blind Watchmaker - Richard Dawkins
- * Just After Sunset - Stephen King
- * The Breakthrough Company: How Everyday Companies Become Extraordinary Performers - Keith R. Mcfarland
- Code Complete, Second Edition - Steve McConnell
- The Mind Map Book: How to Use Radiant Thinking to Maximize Your Brain's Untapped Potential - Tony Buzan
- 1984 - George Orwell
- Mean Streets - Jim Butcher
- Storm Front (The Dresden Files, #1) - Jim Butcher
- Batman: Year One - Frank Miller
- Pragmatic Thinking and Learning: Refactor Your Wetware - Andy Hunt
- Crisis on Infinite Earths - Marv Wolfman
- The Pragmatic Programmer: From Journeyman to Master - Andrew Hunt
- Turn Coat (The Dresden Files, #11) - Jim Butcher
- Batman: The Dark Knight Returns - Frank Miller
- Upsetting the Balance (Worldwar Series, Volume 3) - Harry Turtledove
- * The Pinball Effect: How Renaissance Water Gardens Made Carburetor Possible - and Other Journeys - James Burke
- * The Conscience of a Liberal - Paul Krugman
- * The Creative Habit: Learn It and Use It for Life - Twyla Tharp
- Welcome to the Jungle (The Dresden Files, Prequel) - Jim Butcher
- Lord of Chaos (Wheel of Time, #6) - Robert Jordan
- Furies of Calderon (Codex Alera, #1) - Jim Butcher
This year, I hope to do more mathematics and computer science reading than I normally do, as well as doing more study on personal finance. I am sure a healthy bit of fiction will fall into my reading list as well.
How to Read a Book
How well do you read books? In "How to Read a Book", Mortimer Adler and Charles van Doren state their belief that most people do not read books beyond a grammar school proficiency level. However, the goal of their book is to increase your skill in reading and, by doing so, enable you to read great books for understanding instead of merely for information. What is the difference between understanding and information? According to Adler and van Doren:
To be informed is to know simply that something is the case. To be enlightened is to know, in addition, what it is all about: why it is the case, what its connections are with other facts, in what respects it is the same, in what respects it is different, and so forth.
Adler and van Doren posit that there are four levels of reading: elementary, inspectional, analytical, and syntopical. Elementary reading is the reading skill that children are taught in grammar school and that gives us the basics of reading for information and pleasure. To be sure, having a high percentage of the population literate in this sense is a great accomplishment. This allows a large portion of the population to gather information from reading books. However, the first level of reading can only take you so far.
Inspectional reading is meant to give you an overview of a book, of both its structure and its contents. Inspectional reading can be thought of as pre-reading a book, in preperation to reading a book analytically. Additionally, inspectional reading plays an important role in helping you determine which books are worth reading analytically; this is helpful in preparing to undertake a syntopic understanding of a subject.
Analytical reading is meant to increase you understanding through a thorough reading of the book. Adler and van Doren state that there are four questions you must ask and, through analytical reading, answer about a book:
- What is the book about as a whole?
- What is being said in detail, and how?
- Is the book true, in whole or in part?
- What of it?
If you can answer these questions about a book, you have done your job as an intelligent reader and increased your understanding by learning what the book had to teach you. Adler and van Doren provide a thorough set of rules that will enable you to learn to read analytically.
Syntopical reading goes a step further than analytical reading; syntopical reading acknowledges that any one book is not likely to contain the complete story and that a survey of several books may be needed to fully understand the subject matter. To that end, Adler and van Doren lay out a process through which you may combine the skills of inspectional and analytical reading to find and understand the relevant books to your chosen subject.
So, what of it? Does "How to Read a Book" accomplish its purpose? I believe that it does. Since reading it, I have begun to actively read the books that I am consuming so that I may come to an understanding with the authors instead of being a passive participant in the conversation.
Learning versus Doing
I like to learn. At any given time, I am generally juggling 3–4 books at once. Most of those 3–4 books are typically non-fiction of some form or another. A lot of those non-fiction books are computer science related, but not all of them. A quick glance at last year's reading list shows books on writing, management, a couple of biographies, networking and presenting, personal finance, and small business. This year's reading list is shaping up much the same. What these lists do not show are all of the books on my to-read pile. I have math books (mainly modern algebra and category theory), biology books (well, mostly things by Richard Dawkins, although The Origin of Species is on there as well), and several histories and biographies (mostly U.S. history and presidents). I like to learn a little bit about a large variety of topics.
My interests are not focused at all. While I am obsessed with computer science and engineering, I have never been able to focus. I flit from topic to topic; one day I am intensely studying the Cray-1, a super-computer from the late 70's, with every intention of writing an emulator for the architecture (yes, just for fun). The next day, I am just as likely to be reading about Database Systems
Case in point: I spent a great deal of time between Thanksgiving and Christmas of last year reading about Ruby on Rails. I had some ideas for a web application that I wanted to write — a project and task tracking application to replace a crufty spreadsheet that I wrote and maintain at work. So, I read a lot, worked on a couple of sample applications in Rails, and have not gotten back to actually working on my project. Well, that is not entirely true. While I have not been actively writing code for the applications, I have been giving it lots of thought and trying to work out what would be the best way to approach it. For all the thought I have put in to it, though, I am still not doing it. Granted, I am doing a lot of other things. I spend a fair amount of time reading, running a Dungeons and Dragons game, watching a bit of TV, just not working on the project that I thought was important to me.
When I finished The Creative Habit
Lord of Chaos
As Geof suggested, I am going to try and post as I read throughout this year. So, after watching the first three painful episodes of Legend of the Seeker, I decided that I needed to read a good fantasy series to purge the garbage that was that attempt at a TV series. My first thought was to just re-read the Sword of Truth series that "inspired" the TV series — the book series was actually pretty good. But, I forgot that I sent those home with my in-laws so that they could give them a shot. So, in a moment of desperation, I turned back to the Wheel of Time.
There were two main reasons for attempting this re-read: first, I have never read any of the books more than once and second, the final book in the series is due to be out at the end of this year or early next year. Lord of Chaos, by Robert Jordan, is the sixth book in the Wheel of Time. After finishing this, I am now around 4,200 pages into the Wheel of Time and am just over half-way through the written books. I am not going to worry about spoiler alerts with this because the book was originally published in 1995. If you have not read the series by now, you will likely have forgotten what I am writing by the time you make it through 3,500 pages to get to this book 
Remembering back, I always thought that this was highlight of the series. So many good things happen. Rand founds his school for the male channelers. Egwene becomes the Amrylin seat. Elayne and Nynaeve are raised to Aes Sedai. We see more happening around the split White Tower with the rebels (the good guys) starting to move towards retaking the Tower. The White Tower, led by the usurper Elaida, takes Rand prisoner. Finally, we have the truly awesome battle to free Rand at Dumai's Wells. So, the plot takes a huge step forward in this book. That is great, since the plot is about to stagnate in the next few books.
Why do I liked Lord of Chaos? There is a lot of driving action bolstered by strong characters that are finally entering into their own in the world. However, as much as I like the Wheel of Time and have enjoyed re-reading the books, 4,200 pages without much of a break makes me tired, so I am going to put my re-read on hold while I read some new-to-me books. Next up, Furies of Calderon by Jim Butcher, the first book in the Codex Alera.
Mmmmm, Books
Well, not to be outdone by Jonathan on the whole reading thing, here is what I read during 2008. Of course, I didn't really keep up with the books and pages like he did. Instead, once he figured out how many pages he read I decided to tally mine up as well. Unfortunately, I only had my memory to work with and since Emily, my memory isn't what it use to be. I won't list all the books I read like Jonathan did, though. Suffice it to say, most of the books I read were romance novels. However, I will list the authors and the names of the series I read. I believe the Dresden books were the only non-romance books I read this year.
Anyway, here's the list, complete with my stats.
- The Dresden Files by Jim Butcher (10 books)
- The Dark Hunter Series by Sherrilyn Kenyon (15 books)
- Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter by Laurell K. Hamilton (1 book)
- Black Jewels by Anne Bishop (7 books)
- Sookie Stackhouse Series by Charlaine Harris (1 book)
- The Black Dagger Brotherhood by J. R. Ward (1 book)
- Guardians of Eternity by Alexandra Ivy (2 books)
- The Shadowdwellers by Jacquelyn Frank (4 books)
- The Hollows by Kim Harrison (1 book)
- Mercy Thompson by Patricia Briggs (1 book)
- Women of the Otherworld by Kelley Armstrong (1 book)
- The Breeds by Lora Leigh (1 book)
- The Midnight Breed by Lara Adrain (4 books)
- The Carpathians Series by Christine Feehan (2 books)
- Psy-Changelings by Nalini Singh (1 book)
- Riley Jensen, Guardian Series (2 books)
- Lords of the Underworld by Gena Showalter (2 books)
- The Twilight Saga by Stephenie Meyers (2 books)
- Alpha and Omega by Patricia Briggs (1 book)
Like I said, it was mostly romance novels. I managed to read 22,953 pages over the course of 2008. This comes to a disappointing average of only 62.71 pages per day. I read a page or more per minute so that's about an hour of reading each day. Of course, I go through phases on the reading. I may read several books in a week for several weeks straight, then take a hiatus on reading for a month or longer. So, in the end, I guess the average isn't all that bad considering I did not really read every day.
After Emily was born, my extracurricular activities have definitely declined. All through the year, I have seen my 'Mommy' friends read, cross stitch, crochet, or the likes. And all year, I have constantly wondered and asked them when they had the time to do so. Reflecting back on all that I have read this year, I now know why I haven't had time to do some of the other things I enjoy. This year will hopefully be about balance. I intend to get back into the cross stitching again; I really miss it. Perhaps I'll make time for the scrapbooking I once started and that is now collecting dust. I guess we'll just have to see where the year takes me.
Of course, the most important goal is to read more than Jonathan. A little competition is healthy...right 