(Most Of) What I Read in 2019

(“Most” because I forgot to keep track, so this just has the stuff I remembered to put on Goodreads. )

Politics and Civic Interest
The Long Game: How Obama Defied Washington and Redefined America’s Place in the World, Derek Chollet
The Limits of Partnership: U.S.-Russian Relations in the 21st Century, Angela Stent
Our Time Has Come: How India is Making Its Place in the World, Alyssa Ayres
The Conservative Heart, Arthur C. Brooks
The Gatekeepers: How the White House Chiefs of Staff have Defined Every Presidency, Chris Whipple
Walkable City Rules: 101 Steps to Making Better Places, Jeff Speck
Romance of the Rails,  Randall O’Toole
I Must Speak Out: The Best of The Voluntaryist, 1982-1999, ed. Carl Watner
Junkyard Planet, Adam Minter
Rubbish: The Archaeology of Garbage, William Rathje

Science
She Has Her Mother’s Laugh: The Power, Perversions, and  Potential of Heredity, Carl Zimmer
Heavens on Earth: The Scientific Search for the Afterlife, Immortality, and  Utopia, Michael Shermer
The Skeptic’s Guide to the Universe,  Steven Novella et al
The Big Ones: How Natural Disasters Have Shaped Us, Lucy Jones
A Forest in the Clouds, John Fowler
The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs, Stephen Brusatte
What Einstein Told His Cook, Robert Wolke
The Cancer Chronicles, George Johnson
Seven Brief Lessons on Physics, Carlo Revelli
The Evolution of Everything, Matt Ridley
The Hidden Life of Trees, Peter Wohlleben
The Ice at the End of the World, John Gertner
Wonders of the Solar System, Brian Cox

History
The View from the Ground: Experiences of Civil War Soldiers,. ed. Aaron Sheehan-Dean
America’s Forgotten Architecture, the National Trust
Yesterday: Memories of Selma and her People, C.C. Grayson
The Other Side of Selma, R.B. “Dickie” Williams (Re-read — see also 2010 review)
Johnny Reb’s War: Battlefield and Home Front, David Williams
Tip of the Iceberg: My 3,000 Mile Journey Around Alaska, Mark Adams
Images of America: The USS Alabama,  Kent Whitaker
Of Goats and Governors: Alabama Politics , Steve Flowers
The Time Traveler’s Guide to Restoration Britain, Ian Mortimer
American Gun: A History of the US In Ten Firearms, Chris Kyle
To Rule the Waves: How the British Navy Shaped the Modern World, Arthur Herman
An Empire on the Edge: How Britain Came to Fight America, Nick Lane
Dealers of Lightning: XEROX, PARC, and the Dawn of the Computer Age,  Mark Hiltzik
American Detective: Behind the Scenes of Famous Criminal Investigations, Thomas Reppetto
The First Family, Mike Dash
The Hacker Crackdown, Bruce Sterling
Code Girls: The American Codebreakers Who Helped Win WW2, Liza Mundy
Sea Wolves: A History of the Vikings, Lars Brownworth
American Rifle, Alexander Rose
Hamburg: A Place Remembered
The Heritage of Perry County, Alabama
My Disillusionment in Russia, Emma Goldman
The Only Plane in the Sky: An Oral History of 9/11,Garrett Graff

Technology and Society
 In the Plex: How Google Thinks, Works, and Shapes Our Lives, Steven Levy
Everybody Lies: Big Data, New Data, and What the Internet Can Tell Us, Seth Stephens-Davodwitz
LikeWar: The Weaponization of Social Media P.W. Singer and Emerson T. Brooking
How the Internet Happened, from Netscape to the iPhone, Brian McCullough
Alone Together ,Sherry Turkle
India Connected, Rav Agrawal
Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now,  Jaron Lanier
More than Human: Embracing the Promise of Biological Enhancement, Ramez Naam

Religion and Philosophy
Status Anxiety, Alain de Botton
Open Life: The Philosophy of Open Source, Hendrik Ingo
The Way of Men, Jack Donovan
The Catholic Gentleman: Living Authentic Manhood Today, Sam Guzman
My Plain Life: Walking my Belief, Scott Savage
The Lost Gospel of Mary,   Frederica Mathews-Greene

Classics and Literary
Invisible Man, Ralph Ellison
The Whale, or, Moby-Dick, Herman Melville
The Aeneid, trans. Robert Fitzgerald
The Conquest of Gaul,  Julius Caesar
Love Among the Ruins,  Walker Percy
The Moviegoer,  Walker Percy
The Swiss Family Robinson, Johann Wyss
Life on the Mississippi, Mark Twain
The Sun Also Rises, Ernest Hemingway
A Farewell to Arms, Ernest Hemingway
The Grapes of Wrath,  John Steinbeck
Catch-22, Joseph Heller
The Vicar of Wakefield,  Oliver Goldsmith
The Three Musketeers, Alexandre Dumas
The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire: Book One, Edward Gibbon
The Histories, Herodotus
The Education of Henry Adams, Adams
The Federalist Papers,  various
The Jungle, Upton Sinclair
The Hunchback of Notre Dame,  Victor Hugo
A Lesson Before Dying, Ernest Gaines
War and Peace, Leo Tolstoy

 

Societyand Culture
Them: Why We Hate Each Other (and How to Heal),  Ben Sasse
Defending Boyhood, Anthony Esolen
From Here to Eternity: In Search of the Good Death, Caitlin Doughty
Gun Guys: A Road Trip, Dan Baum
Shutting Out the Sun, Michael Zielenziger

Arts and Entertainment
Prepare to Meet Thy Doom: And Other Gaming Stories, David Kushner
Difficult Men: Behind the Scenes of a Creative Revolution, Brett Martin

Health and Wellness
The Case Against Sugar, Gary Taubes
How to Break Up With Your Phone, Catherine Price
Faith Healers, James Randi
Drop Dead Healthy, A J Jacobs
The Courage to Start, John Bingham
Year of No Sugar, Eve Schaub

Sports and Outdoors
Giant Whitetails: A Lifetime of Lessons, Mark Drury
Whitetail Savvy: New Research and Observations about America’s Biggest Game Animal,  Leonard Lee Rue III

Skills and Readiness
How to Be Your own Bodyguard, Nick Hughes
Surviving Aggressive People, Shawn T Smith
The Unthinkable: Who Survives When Disaster Strikes and Why,  Amanda Ripley

Biography
Odd-Egg Editor, Kathryn Tucker Windham
Ghost in the Wires: My Adventures as the World’s Most Wanted Hacker,  Kevin Mitnick
Americanized:  Rebel without a Green Card, Sara Saedi
Lenten Lands: My Childhood with Joy Davidman and C.S. Lewis, Doug Gresham
Mockingbird Songs: My Friendship With Harper Lee, Wayne Flynt
Little Man: Meyer Lansky and the Gangster Life,   Robert Lacey

Mysteries and Thrillers
The Unpleasantness at Baskerville Hall, Chris Hall
The Great Bicycle Race Mystery, Gertrude Chandler Warner
Bicycle Mystery, GCW
Metropolis,  Phillip Karr
Needful Things, Stephen King
Hallowe’en Party, Agatha Christie

General Fiction
Becoming Mrs Lewis, Patti Callahan
Fight Club, Chuck Palahniuk
IRL, Jen Wang and Cory Doctorow
Athena: Grey-Eyed Goddess, George O’Connor
It’s Christmas!, Kathryn Windham Tucker

Science Fiction
Lock In,  John Scalzi
Head On, John Scalzi
Firefly: The Magnificent Nine, James Lovegrove
One Word Kill, Mark Lawrence
Limited Wish, Mark Lawrence
Change Agent, Daniel Suarez
Altered Carbon, Richard Morgan
Kill Decision, Daniel Suarez
Freedom, Daniel Suarez
The Android’s  Dream, John Scalzi

Star Trek and Star Wars
ST: Elusive Salvation, Dayton Ward
ST Enterprise: Tower of Babel, Christopher L Bennett
SW: Queen’s Shadow, E.K. Johnston
ST: Constellations, Marco Palmieri
ST: The Sky’s the Limit, ed. Marco Palmieri
ST: Spock vs Q, Cecelia Fannon
ST:  Live by the Code, Christopher L Bennett

Historical Fiction
Alice and the Assassin, R.J. Koreto
The Scarlet Thief, Paul Fraser Collard
War of the Wolf, Bernard Cornwell
Scarlet, Stephen Lawhead
The Maharajah’s General, Paul Fraser Collard
The Devil’s Assassin,  Paul Fraser Collard
The Lone Warrior, Paul Frasier Collard

About smellincoffee

Citizen, librarian, reader with a boundless wonder for the world and a curiosity about all the beings inside it.
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6 Responses to (Most Of) What I Read in 2019

  1. Marian says:

    The diversity of your reading subjects is always impressive and inspiring. Do you still make your pie charts? It looks like classics took a bigger slice this year. 🙂

  2. Mudpuddle says:

    how was the “Great Bicycle Race Mystery”? impressive list!

  3. Anonymous says:

    Very impressive as always. I still find it fascinating that we appear to have several/many interests in common but come at them from different angles and read often very different books on them. Long may this diversity (with occasional overlaps) continue!

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