In 2012, I set myself the goal of reading 30 books. But then, in June, I started a 1,700 page book, and that was pretty much the end of that. Instead of 30, I ended up with 26 books. That’s still one more book than last year, which is a good thing, but it’s still six books less than 2010, which is not a good thing. I’d like to say I’ll read 30 books in 2013, but with a new baby in the house, I suspect that’ll be difficult. Even so, I’m setting that as my goal: 30 books in 2013.
Here’s the list of books I read in 2012, plus a little blurb of what I thought of it. Enjoy.
- Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah
One of my favorite books from my teenage years, Illusions is semi-new-age philosophy wrapped in a short story about a messiah who is running away from his calling. I read the book with my high-school students as part of our book club, and they loved it just as much as I did when I was their age. - The Digital Divide: Arguments for and Against Facebook, Google, Texting, and the Age of Social Networking
I assigned this collection of essays to one of my college classes. All the students were freshmen, and most of them are outdoorsy/environmentalist, so the essays didn’t exactly speak to them. I had hoped the students would wrestle with their generational reality, but instead, they just argued and reargued and reargued about the ills of technology. I won’t be assigning this one again. - The Ethics of Emerging Media: Information, Social Norms, and New Media Technology
I assigned this collection of essays to another one of my college classes for a course on ethics in media. This was for a class full of upperclassmen, so they were more willing than my freshman to listen to the arguments before reacting to them. Not every essay in this collection was strong, but they all did a good job of sparking conversation in the classroom. - The Conscious Mind: In Search of a Fundamental Theory
At the beginning of last year, I had the privilege to engage in a series of deep conversations about religion and atheism with a former professor of mine. During one of our discussions, he recommended this book to me and I quickly sought it out. Unfortunately, I can’t say I enjoyed it. First, it’s a very difficult book, but I’m a decent reader, so I don’t think that was it. Instead, I think it was that I just couldn’t buy any of the author’s original premises, so as the book went on, he just got further and further from anything I could agree with. On the plus side, it gave me plenty to think about and it steered me to the next book on this list, which I loved. - The Wake of Imagination
This book traced the concept of the imagination throughout history. It’s also a kind of history of art and philosophy. It’s long and sprawling and written well. I highly recommend it to anyone who’s interested in philosophy, art, and history. - The Influencing Machine: Brooke Gladstone on the Media
I read this one as part of a book club I belong to. It’s a graphic “novel” – but of course, it’s not a novel; instead, it’s an historical look at how the modern media works, how it came to be, and what we need to watch out for as educated consumers of media. I definitely recommend this to anyone with even a cursory interest in the history and theory of modern media. - Ghost Pain: Poems
I read this collection of poems with my high-school students. The poet is the poet laureate of Vermont. I wanted to read poetry that would be less abstract for my students, and I figured a poet from their neck of the woods might write something they could relate to. Luckily, I was right. The students did have difficulty with the poems, but after our classroom discussions, they all seemed to agree that the poems were brilliant. - The Princess Bride: S. Morgenstern’s Classic Tale of True Love and High Adventure
Another book I read with my book club. While I’ve seen the movie dozens of times, this was my first reading of the book, and I gotta say, it was even better than the movie — and I love the movie. There’s just so much more depth to the book, plus there’s a whole mythology of where the text came from in the first place. Just a delightful read. - Gilead
This one was strongly recommended to me by one of my friends, and it completely lived up to his recommendation. It’s a quiet book, about a quiet town and a quiet preacher at the end of his quiet life, but there’s just so much heart in it, and so much…reality. A very good book. - Waiting for Godot
I’ve read Beckett’s play a couple times now, but I read it again with my high-school students this year. I had the students read it aloud in the classroom, and that didn’t seem to be doing much for them…so we also watched the classic film version of it, and that’s when they finally realized how funny and yet, how sad it is. - Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot: A Reference Guide
I read this short little guide in preparation for teaching the play for the first time. Some decent historical stuff in there, but nothing Wikipedia can’t tell you. - Drift: The Unmooring of American Military Power
This is Rachel Maddow’s book about how the United States military-industrial complex came to power and how our politicians have elected to use it. A quick read, but insightful. Basically, it’s like reading a long, well-written magazine article. - The Power of Myth
I read this one with my high-school students as well. I wanted to read Cambell’s The Hero with a Thousand Faces, but I thought it would be a bit too deep for my students. The Power of Myth is a nice introduction to Campbell’s thought, structured as it is around an interview with Bill Moyers. The kids loved it. - Evolution: The Triumph of an Idea
I picked this one up because the author, Carl Zimmer, is a regular on Radiolab and I heard an interview he did about the book. I’ve read a lot of books on evolution, but I liked the dude and wanted to see how he is as a writer. Well, he’s a good one. If you have any interest in evolution, this book is a great place to start. - A Dance with Dragons (A Song of Ice & Fire #5)
The fifth book in the series better known as “Game of Thrones” (thanks to HBO), A Dance with Dragons picks up where the fourth book left off. I should probably include the Wikipedia pages for the first four books on this list, because before I started Book #5, I spent about two weeks reminding myself of who the characters were, what they want, and where they are now. I loved the first four books, and this one didn’t disappoint. Now he just better not make me wait another five years before the sixth book comes out. - Catching Fire (The Hunger Games #2) and Mockingjay (The Hunger Games #3)
I didn’t read the first book in this series, but I did see the movie, and my wife said it was faithful enough to the book that I didn’t have to read it. The Hunger Games series were the most popular books of the past couple of years, so it was only a matter of time before I picked them up, and I gotta say, I was glad I finally did. What the author does in the second and third books was nothing short of brilliant. While I was slightly disappointed in the second book, when the main character is forced back into the Hunger Games, it ended up being a necessary step in the longer story. What I thought would be a long story about how a woman can be just as warrior-like as a man became, instead, a long story about how every warrior comes out of battle with mental and spiritual injuries that take decades to heal (if they ever do). Essentially, the books give the reader the story of someone suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, and the fact that every one and their mother is reading these books just makes the author’s accomplishment that much greater. - And Then There Were None
Another book I read with my high-school students. I wanted to end our school year with something a little more “fun” than Beckett and Cambell, so I went with Agatha Christie’s classic. It was just as fun this time around as it had been 20 years ago when I first read it. - The Double Helix: A Personal Account of the Structure of DNA
I think I came across a reference to this one in Evolution: The Triumph of an Idea, something about it being the first science book written for a popular audience, so I decided to give it a read. It’s a decent book, and after reading some of the criticism it received, it’s definitely a momentous one (again, being one of the first science book written for nonscientists), but I can’t say it’s a killer read. Popular science writing has greatly improved over the last 50-odd years. - It’s Even Worse Than It Looks: How the American Constitutional System Collided with the Politics of Extremism
The authors of this book were on The Daily Show; one of them is a Democrat and the other is a Republican, and this is their book about how the Constitution can’t handle the partisanship of today. Basically, another book-length magazine article. Good enough for an airplane ride, which is where I read it. - Atheist Manifesto: The Case Against Christianity, Judaism, and Islam
I’m a rather devout atheist, but this guy’s reading of Christianity, Judaism, and Islam seemed a tad shallow. There’s not much argument in the book; just a lot of assertions. On the other hand, the author provides a decent bibliography of atheist works, and it led me to the next book on this list. - Ecce Homo; or A Critical Enquiry into the History of Jesus Christ; Being a Rational Analysis of the Gospels
Written in 1770, this book by Baron d’Holbach is an historical curiosity at best, being one of the earlier outright atheistic books published (anonymously, of course) in Christianized Europe. While the arguments were, I’m sure, radical for their time, too much work has been done on the historicity of the Bible for d’Holbach’s positions to carry weight. But still, a relatively fun read. - The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
I didn’t “read” this one as much as listen to it during a drive from Vermont to Chicago. But it held my interest the entire way (my wife, on the other hand, tuned it out rather quickly), and it was much, much better than the movie. Of course, at the end of the day, it’s not much more than an entertaining yarn. I think The Hunger Games has more of a theme than this one. - Walden
I read this one in the Fall with my high-school students (while also building a life-size replica of Thoreau’s cabin; yeah, my high-school class rocks). I’d read selections of it before, but this was my first time reading it all the way through. While there are definitely some boring parts, I do suggest reading it all the way through. The experience Thoreau had is much deeper — and much more realistic — than what the more popular selections imply. - James the Brother of Jesus: The Key to Unlocking the Secrets of Early Christianity and the Dead Sea Scrolls
This is the 1,700 page behemoth I started in June and finished in November. It’s drier than my parents’ house in December, and it could have used an editor who would have forced the author to remove the 800 pages worth of repetitive material plus the 200 pages worth of less-than-insightful tangents, and then asked him to rewrite the whole thing in chronological order so that the reader wouldn’t have to reorient himself in space and time every fifth paragraph. But besides that, it’s pretty good. It’ll change your entire understanding of the world that Jesus and the first “Christians” lived in, and what early Christianity actually said about the way we should live our lives. Basically, if you’re not a fundamentalist Jew, then you’re not following the religious views of Jesus; instead, you’ve been suckered into following the Greek-influenced ideas of Paul, whom the earliest Christians (i.e., the apostles) considered the enemy. Good luck with that. - October Light
A beautiful book about an elderly brother and sister in Vermont in the late 60s/early 70s, the former of whom is Vermont to the bone and the latter of whom has “liberal” ideas. As with other books by John Gardner, it plays around with structure and philosophy, but its heart is in the struggle of its characters. A beautiful book.
And that was it for the year. Hopefully next year, this list will include at least four more books.