On my shelf
January 4th, 2011
I think I read a lot, ranging from newspapers to blogs to books (magazines, which were once the focus of my working life, don’t figure so much these days). But I have to join the many online commenters who found Aaron Swartz’s year-end list of 2010 reading pretty astounding.
It inspired me to start logging my reading, not for oneupmanship (between family, Berkeleyside, my paying work, my non-profit board and tennis, I don’t think I’ll rival Swartz), but as an aide-mémoire for myself. As the year goes on, I’ll try to record my impressions of the books I read. (My blogging energy is entirely taken up by Berkeleyside, but I don’t want to abandon this site. So it needs a new impetus. Perhaps this is the new mutant form in which Davos Newbies can thrive. I won’t rule out, however, other forays.)
Like many voracious readers, I always seem to have a number of books on the go. At the moment, the number is swollen because of holiday book fever and the ridiculous ease with which you can get a book on Kindle for the iPad. I’m not totally convinced by e-books, but the lower cost and convenience is probably skewing my purchases to that form. Here’s what’s on my “shelf” at the moment, at various stages of completion:
- The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie, Alan Bradley
- Why the West Rules — for Now: The Patterns of History, and What They Reveal About the Future, Ian Morris
- The Wooden World: An Anatomy of the Georgian Navy, N.A.M. Rodger
- Country Driving: A Journey Through China from Farm to Factory, Peter Hessler
- The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice are Undermining Education, Diane Ravitch
- Don Juan, Lord Byron
- The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer, Siddhartha Mukherjee
- The End of the Party: The Rise and Fall of New Labour, Andrew Rawnsley
- The Healing of America: A Global Quest for Better, Cheaper, and Fairer Health Care, T.R. Reid
- How to Live: Or A Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer, Sarah Bakewell
- Our Kind of Traitor: A Novel, John le Carre
- Wolf Hall, Hillary Mantel
January 4th, 2011 at 11:44 pm
Interesting list – I tried a book blog but too hard (!) so now have a twitter a/c just to record what I read and films I watch. Working very well – basically just a list, and who cares that no one follows – just for me.
January 5th, 2011 at 8:01 am
Good idea. I’ll see how this goes.
January 5th, 2011 at 8:31 am
I highly recommend the practice. I’ve been keeping a reading list since ’97. I record title, author, date and genre and a one sentence review. Data collected is of interest only to me, of course, but I enjoy it. There is also a Facebook app “I’m reading” that’s useful, if one likes that sort of thing.
January 5th, 2011 at 1:42 pm
I love to look at lists of what others are reading. But I am consequently reminded of all the things that I am not reading and that if I live to be 300 will never never never have time to read. sigh…….. But I’ll try!
January 5th, 2011 at 8:18 pm
My log goes back to eighth grade (and therefore has some really embarrassing entries).
January 5th, 2011 at 11:10 pm
That’s impressive, even if occasionally embarrassing.
January 7th, 2011 at 11:19 am
Wolf Hall is very much worth your time. I’ve been logging for about a decade now, and have put the annual list up at Fistful for the last three or four.
January 16th, 2011 at 5:31 pm
[...] recently finished two of the books on my shelf at last report, and a third that I picked up on the recommendation of a friend. All were worthwhile, but one was [...]