{"id":1729,"date":"2012-01-04T18:14:47","date_gmt":"2012-01-04T18:14:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/journal.electric-rocket.com\/?p=1729"},"modified":"2012-01-04T20:31:02","modified_gmt":"2012-01-04T20:31:02","slug":"2011-book-log-in-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/journal.electric-rocket.com\/?p=1729","title":{"rendered":"2011 Book Log in Review"},"content":{"rendered":"

Books read in 2004: 21<\/a>
\nBooks read in 2005: 28<\/a>
\nBooks read in 2006: 40<\/a>
\nBooks read in 2007: 30<\/a>
\nBooks read in 2008: 41<\/a>
\nBooks read in 2009: 22<\/a>
\nBooks read in 2010: 44<\/a>
\nBooks read in 2011: 28<\/a><\/p>\n

As humans, we are pattern-seeking animals.\u00a0 And one can’t help but notice that my reading tapers off in the odd-numbered years.\u00a0 Why is that?\u00a0 Some sort of biorhythm thing?<\/p>\n

My best guess is that this was the year of Clearing Off The To Be Read Shelf in my bedroom.\u00a0 I told myself I wasn’t going to get any new books until I thinned the herd there a bit. I did a scorched-earth read it or toss it review of the shelf, and those that made the reading cut are below. We’ll not speak of the ones that are now in the Never Going To Read Box now.<\/p>\n

I also tried to read some books on raising unique kids, but, forgive me… they’re just about impossible to get through, and thus aren’t listed below.<\/p>\n

In any event, with new, shiny Kindle in hand, things are looking good for 2012.<\/p>\n

1. Tom Stoppard Plays: 5<\/strong> by Tom Stoppard
\nStoppard is awesome, but the true magic of this collection is Hapgood<\/em>, one of my top 5 favorite plays. And one that never gets produced. At least, not here in Atlanta.<\/p>\n

2. Juliet, Naked<\/strong> by Nick Hornby
\nActually, a young adult novel, and an awesome one at that. A really truthful vision into the life of a teenage boy who gets a girl pregnant. Stacey read it, and was somewhat traumatized by what goes inside a teenage boy’s brain, and has looked nervously at our son ever since.<\/p>\n

3. Time Traveler: A Scientist\u2019s Personal Mission to Make Time Travel a Reality<\/strong> by Dr. Ronald L. Mallett with Bruce Henderson
\nI’ll save you the trouble and go ahead and tell you that he hasn’t invented time travel yet.<\/p>\n

4. The Known World<\/strong> by Edward P. Jones
\nThis one had lingered on the To Be Read Shelf, as I never seem to be in the frame of mind to dive into a book about slavery. But, it’s an extremely well-written fiction about slavery, so I’m glad I pushed myself into taking it on.<\/p>\n

5. Un Lun Dun<\/strong> by China Mieville
\nI totally borrowed this eccentric, fantastical tale of an alternate London from Curt Holman’s daughter, and then read it myself and selfishly never shared it with the intended recipient, my son. I feel some guilt about that. But let that not tarnish your view of the book, which should be very favorable. You should buy it “for your kid” (wink wink).<\/p>\n

6. The Complete Peanuts 1957-1958<\/strong> by Charles M. Schultz
\nI have a more detailed apology on my blog, but I owe a large mea culpa to Charles Schultz for not appreciating that the man was a visionary genius in comics. This tome convinced me of that, as I saw in black and white the bedrock that Calvin and Hobbes<\/em> built its magic on.<\/p>\n

7. Human Anatomy Made Amazingly Easy<\/strong> by Christopher Hart
\n8. Expressive Anatomy for Comics and Narrative: Principles and Practices from the Legendary Cartoonist (Will Eisner Instructional Books)<\/strong> by Will Eisner
\nI don’t ordinarily count drawing books as being “Read”, since I usually just skim them for the good bits. But I unexpectedly read both of these cover to cover, so it seemed appropriate. I enjoyed both quite a bit.<\/p>\n

9. Letters from the Age of Reason<\/strong> by Nora Hague
\nThis was on Stacey’s To Be Read shelf… I don’t know if she ever read it, but it was enormously thick and had a striking cover, so I read it. Another book about slavery! Tricked by the size and glossy cover I was! But, still, a pretty good read.<\/p>\n

10. Songbook<\/strong> by Nick Hornby
\nReading this caught me up on the Hornby oeuvre, except for Fever Pitch<\/em>, which I tried to read, but just… couldn’t. I just don’t, and can’t, care about football (editor’s note: this originally said “cricket”, which goes to show how far I’d pushed this book out of my mind, that I couldn’t properly remember what sport he was writing about). I’m not a music aficionado either, but this book was good nonetheless– a collection of essays that have jumping off points in particular songs.<\/p>\n

11. Tom Stoppard: Plays 4<\/strong> by Tom Stoppard
\nSome more fine Stoppard plays.<\/p>\n

12. The Russian Debutante\u2019s Handbook<\/strong> by Gary Shteyngart
\nIf you like reading about hapless, awkward, Jewish men in extraordinary situations, Shteyngart is your man. He’s a skilled author, and even if you’re not interested in hapless, awkward, Jewish men, you’d probably still like his stuff.<\/p>\n

13. Fifty Dangerous Things (you should let your children do)<\/strong> by Gever Tulley with Julie Spiegler
\nWe’re going to do these things. We still haven’t had the opportunity to do #2 (play in a hailstorm).<\/p>\n

14. Beginning Linux Programming, 4th Edition<\/strong> by Neil Matthew and Richard Stones
\nA darn good overview. One of the few books on programming I’ve been able to tolerate reading cover to cover.<\/p>\n

15. Drawing Dynamic Comics<\/strong> by Andy Smith
\nI seemed to have read a lot of books this year cover-to-cover that I have not historically been able to. What’s that about? Another very fine book on drawing.<\/p>\n

16. Why Things Break: Understanding the World by the Way It Comes Apart<\/strong> by Mark Eberhart
\nI had no idea that the science of fracture had undergone such huge strides in the last 30 years. Fascinating what we know now about the Titanic, the space shuttle, etc.<\/p>\n

17. Quicksilver: Book 1 of the Baroque Cycle<\/strong> by Neal Stephenson
\nRe-read, in preparation for the coming of the new Stephenson. Still one of my top five favorite books.<\/p>\n

18. The Tragedy of Arthur<\/strong> by Arthur Phillips
\nOne of those self-referential, postmodern, faux autobiographies you hear about so much with the kids these days. It’s about a purportedly found lost play of Shakespeare (printed in the back of the book) about King Arthur. Get it? The play’s about King Arthur, and the author’s name is Arthur, and the main character is the author, Arthur? And it’s called the Tragedy of Arthur? Can I say Arthur again without it being too much?<\/p>\n

19. The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Volume 1: Pox Party<\/strong> by M.T. Anderson
\nM.T. Anderson writes great, silly, intermediate reader books (Pals in Peril series). This is darker, altogether more serious. And, again, about slavery. 2011: The year I read about fictional slavery.<\/p>\n

20. The Confusion: Book 2 of the Baroque Cycle<\/strong> by Neal Stephenson
\nRe-read, to kill time waiting for the new Stephenson.<\/p>\n

21. Around the World in Eighty Days<\/strong> by Jules Verne
\nFree, from Gutenberg.org. An fun little book. I thought there was a hot air balloon involved in this story, but there wasn’t.<\/p>\n

22. REAMDE<\/strong> by Neal Stephenson
\nAh, the new Neal Stephenson. A very good novel, but not a very good Stephenson novel.<\/p>\n

23. Middlesex<\/strong> by Jeffrey Euginides
\nA truly excellent book that languished far too long on my To Be Read Shelf. Strong, engrossing writing about three generations of a family.<\/p>\n

24. The Miracle Life of Edgar Mint<\/strong> by Brady Udall
\nUdall wrote The Lonely Polygamist<\/em>, one of the best books I read in 2010. This was on a par with that, about a boy who’s head was run over by a mail truck, and his eventful life that followed.<\/p>\n

25. Speaking with the Angel<\/strong> by Nick Hornby and others
\nA very enjoyable collection of short stories by many authors, all to benefit folks with autism.<\/p>\n

26. Absurdistan<\/strong> by Gary Shteyngart
\nIf you like reading about hapless, awkward, Jewish men, but really prefer that they are also enormously fat, this is the book for you. It takes real writing talent to make me interested in such a protagonist, and Shteyngart does it pretty well.<\/p>\n

27. Eragon<\/strong> by Christopher Paolini
\nOvercome with booklust while buying a pile for my son at the Scholastic book fair, I cast about for something for myself, and landed on this. Pretty good fantasy fare.<\/p>\n

28. The Wee Free Men<\/strong> by Terry Pratchett (a Discworld novel)
\nA young reader novel set in Discworld, which aren’t that terribly different than Pratchett’s regular novels.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Books read in 2004: 21 Books read in 2005: 28 Books read in 2006: 40 Books read in 2007: 30 Books read in 2008: 41 Books read in 2009: 22 Books read in 2010: 44 Books read in 2011: 28 … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[481],"tags":[466,81],"class_list":["post-1729","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-log","tag-book-log-2011","tag-book-log-review"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/journal.electric-rocket.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1729","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/journal.electric-rocket.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/journal.electric-rocket.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journal.electric-rocket.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journal.electric-rocket.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1729"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/journal.electric-rocket.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1729\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1733,"href":"https:\/\/journal.electric-rocket.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1729\/revisions\/1733"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/journal.electric-rocket.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1729"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journal.electric-rocket.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1729"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journal.electric-rocket.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1729"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}