OK, here is the only blog post I seem to do these days: the books I read in the past year. I still haven't 100% automated this. Maybe next year.
The count was a tad lower this year, than years past. I spent a lot more time drawing in my sketchbooks this year than I did reading. I managed to do a sketch a day all the way up until October but then lost steam.
It's also late because I tried to finish Europe Central by William T. Vollman before the year ended. But my Kindle says I still had about 10 hours left last night so that didn't happen. Maybe it'll the first post in my next books I read post.
So, here's the list:
- Elvis Sightings by Ricardo Sanchez
- Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout
- Generation Kill by Evan Wright
- The Unnamed by Joshua Ferris
- The Flamethrowers by Rachel Kushner
- A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini
- Catching the Big Fish: Meditation, Consciousness, and Creativity by David Lynch
- And the Mountains Echoed by Khaled Hosseini
- The Circle by Dave Eggers
- MaddAddam (MaddAddam Trilogy, #3) by Margaret Atwood
- Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (Harry Potter, #7) by J.K. Rowling
- Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (Harry Potter, #6) by J.K. Rowling
- Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (Harry Potter, #5) by J.K. Rowling
- Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (Harry Potter #4) by J.K. Rowling
- Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (Harry Potter #3) by J.K. Rowling
- Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (Harry Potter, #2) by J.K. Rowling
- Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (Harry Potter #1) by J.K. Rowling
- Tenth of December by George Saunders
- Sorry Please Thank You: Stories by Charles Yu
- The Year of the Flood (MaddAddam Trilogy, #2) by Margaret Atwood
- The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right by Atul Gawande
I ended up reading parts of the Harry Potter series to my kid (the wife and I alternate reading to him), so I just decided to re-read the whole damned series again this year to get the full package. Good thing too, because it turns out I forgot lots of things when I speed read it the first time through all those yeaers ago. I'm betting that the page count for this year is close to previous years because of those damned door stops masquerading as books.
Highlights of this year were And the Mountains Echoed and MaddAddam. I enjoyed The Circle while I was reading it but a week or so after I had finished, I realized it just left too many things unanswered. Not too sure about recommending that one. But you can't really go wrong with anything by Hosseini or Atwood methinks.