Another year, another post about all I read. I fear the total number of books is even smaller than last year. Here they are:
January
Humble Servant, Spiritual Giant: The Story of Harold B. Lee - Blaine Yorgason
The Old Testament - Various
Wintersmith - Terry Pratchett
Zachary Taylor: Soldier, Planter, Statesman of the Old South - K. Jack Bauer
February
Night Watch - Terry Pratchett
Lengthen Your Stride: The Presidency of Spencer W. Kimball - Edward Kimball
March
Thud! - Terry Pratchett
Plain English for Lawyers - Richard Wydick
Millard Fillmore: Biography of a President - Robert Rayback
Snuff - Terry Pratchett
April
The Book of Mormon - Various
Ezra Taft Benson: A Biography - Sheri Dew
The Twelve - Justin Cronin
May
The New Testament - Various
Franklin Pierce: Young Hickory of the Granite Hills - Roy Nichols
June
William Shakespeare's Star Wars: Verily, A New Hope - John Doescher
The Speed of Trust - Stephen M.R. Covey
Howard W. Hunter - Eleanor Knowles
The System: The Glory and Scandal of Big Time College Football - Jeff Benedict and Armen Ketayian
July
James Buchanan and the American Empire - Frederick Binder
The Lincoln Hypothesis - Timothy Ballard
August
Legal Writing in Plain English - Bryan Garner
September
Go Forward with Faith: The Biography of Gordon B. Hinckley - Sheri Dew
Under the Burning Moon - Holly Millward
A Comedy of Errors - William Shakespeare
October
The Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
November
The Book of Mormon - Various
Change-Friendly Leadership - Rodger Duncan
December
Writing with Style - John Trimble
Lincoln - David Donald
Ender in Exile - Orson Scott Card
The Book of Mormon - Various
This was a disappointing year, in total. That makes 32 books read in 2014, the fewest that I have read in a calendar year since I started keeping track. Not too thrilled with that. I'm not sure that I can identify a particular reason, but I hope to do better. I am shamed by Jessica who tripled me up this year, reading more than 100 books! Truly a feat. I suppose I did have a very busy summer putting in flower beds and such, but still. Really want to hit the 50 mark one of these years, and 32 is not close. But enough whining.
My top three this year were probably The Twelve, The System, and Lincoln. Cronin continued his impressive story in The Twelve, which I enjoyed as much as I liked The Passage. I am very impatient for the third book in the series to be released. The System was a book I had a hard time putting down. It was excellent, filled with interesting stories both horrible and happy in college football. Lincoln deserves its reputation as the finest single volume biography of Abraham Lincoln. Very well done. Ender in Exile was just barely outside my favorites. Good, for sure, but not Card's finest, in my view. He is a truly great writer, though. You'll notice, too, a Millward in there! My Sister-in-Law Holly's first book, which she admirably finished this past year. My other Sister-in-Law Misti did the cover art. Very impressive achievements, there, although the book isn't really for my demographic.
Kamie gave me the Star Wars/Shakespeare crossover book, which I found thoroughly amusing. Probably not a book for everyone, certainly, but I thought it was well wrought and fun.
I added a number of books that I like to re-read occasionally for work purposes this year. I am considering making them annual re-reads, but we'll see. Also a couple of organizational behavior books which I pretty much categorically despised.
Brenda was kind enough to give me The Lincoln Hypothesis, which I had expressed some interest in reading. Some of Ballard's ideas I agree with; others I think are very poorly supported, and I don't think it is very well written. I do wish that he would write a book about his clandestine work for the U.S. Government, though, if he hasn't, because those portions of his book were by far the most compelling. He should leave historiography to professional historians.
Anyway, those are about all my assessment thoughts for this year. I am nearly done with my LDS President biography project, and I think I'm going to start a bit more re-reading as a replacement. I re-read The Count of Monte Cristo kind of on a whim, and I can't believe how much I'd forgotten my love for that book. So I think my first foray in that regard will be Tolkien's works in 2015.
Well, it's probably even less interesting than year's past, but that's what I've got to say this time around.
You may be even better than a best friend if you made it this far in 2015. :-)
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3 comments:
Yours looked a lot heavier than mine, so you can count those as two if you want. :)
No, books are books. I think that your complete domination is justified.
I haven't read that Lincoln biography yet. It's on my list. And The System was one of my favorites last year, too.
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