2008 Book List

The last day of 2008, and I'm all caught up. Don't hate me - its a curse. Just put the last page in my 2008 photo album, cleaned out my purse and finished off my reading journal. I like goals, and apparently so does George W. Bush, we share another thing in common, he also loves to read. Combining those two items (maybe our only shared traits) you end up with someone who likes to set reading goals. That's me!

In 1998 I started keeping a reading journal. I made up the rules and I strictly follow them. No book can be entered unless it is finished, if you skip a chapter (rarely done) then you must deduct the pages from the total page number. Yearly I get to add up all my pages, total books and get a average number of pages per book. I tend to average about 230 pages per book. I can read whatever I want, children's or scholarly but no books on tape. (If so I could amass an amazing about of books read each year). Being in school of course I don't get to select all the books I have to read, so there tends to be a theme at times.

I am almost finished with my second journal, need to make the decision tonight if I should try to cram 2009 into this journal or purchase a new one. When I finished the first one in 2004, I indexed the journal and broke down the book type into more detail. 196 books in total. The biggest categories were mystery (50), history (43), fiction/novel (40), Sci-Fi (34), Childrens (24), Science/Skeptic (20) and (12) non-fiction. Asimov was the leader in author count (25) followed by Agatha Christie (8). Curious what the end of the next journal will bring. Bet it will be overly full of history books.

So President Bush managed to read 40 books in 2008, 95 was his top count in 2006 (that year I read 31). I finished 2008 with 30 books, so sad the leader of the free world managed to get in 10 more books than I did. Guess that is what happens when someone else is always doing the driving. We both quit watching television so we could consentrate on our reading.

Here they are 2008's entries (in order, starting with January)

A Secret of the Universe: A Story of Love Loss, and the Discovery of an Eternal Truth - Stephen L. Gibson

The Golden Compass - Philip Pullman

The Subtle Knife: His Dark Materials Book II - Philip Pullman

The Amber Spyglass - Philip Pullman

The Prisoner - Thomas Disch

Martha Washington: An American Life - Patricia Brady

Founded Upon the Seas: A History of the Cayman Islands and Their People - Michael Craton

Fahrenheit 451 - Ray Bradbury

Mary Chesnut's Civil War - Mary Chesnut

Letter to a Christian Nation - Sam Harris

Surly Your Joking, Mr. Feynman! Adventures of a Curious Character - Richard Feynman

Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife - Mary Roach

An Anthropologist on Mars - Oliver Sacks

The Trouble with Tom: The Strange Afterlife and Times of Thomas Paine - Paul Collins

The Horse and His Boy - C.S. Lewis

The Voyage of the Dawn Treader - C.S. Lewis

The Silver Chair - C.S. Lewis

The Magician's Nephew - C.S. Lewis

The Last Battle - C.S. Lewis

Philip of Spain - Henry Kamen

From Reliable Sources: An Introduction to Historial Methods - Martha Howell

The Mask of Nostradmus - James Randi

The Blessings of Liberty: A Concise History of the Constitution of the United States - Michael Benedict

Women Aren't Supposted to Fly: The Memoirs of a Female Flight Surgeon - Harriet Hall

A People's History of the Supreme Court: The Men and Women Whose Cases and Decisions have Shaped our Constitution - Peter Irons

Great Tales From English History - Robert Lacey

40 Days and 40 Nights: Darwin, Intelligent Design, God, Oxy Contin, and other Oddities on Trial in Pennsylania - Matthew Chapman

The Sky is Not the Limit: Adventures of an Urban Astrophysicist - Neil DeGrasse Tyson

The Strange Case of William Mumler: Spirit Photographer - Louis Kaplan

Desert Exile: The Uprooting of a Japanese-American Family - Yoshiko Uchida

My libary

Reading over the editoral (by Richard Cohen 12/30/08) about Bush's reading list I noticed the author, Cohen, mentioned that Bush's reading list shows a more complex man than the media portrays. His reading list also reveal's this about him, "they are not the reading of a widely read man, but instead the books of a man who seeks and seesvindication in every page. Bush has always been the captive of fixed ideas. His books just support that." And later Cohen writes, ". . . his books reflect a man who is seeking to learn what he already knows." I wonder what Cohen would say about me, someone he does not know. It is easier to judge someone whose life is an open book (sorry) and fit the analysis to the person, than it is to render judgement on a total stranger.

I know I felt it was time to re-read the Narnia series; also have been told repeatly to read the Pullman books (all children's books). Lots of history books in this list, but only some are required reading, the rest were just interesting to me. Several books on this list I picked up at TAM6 and had autographed, so really wanted to read them.

My stack of unread books seems to grow monthly. The school books for next semester are starting to arrive. When it is time to start the next book I look at my stacks, and the stacks look at me, finally the next book is selected. Best of luck to 2009.