Books, Second Half

[stoutfellow]

I think I can safely say that I'm not going to finish reading any more books this year. The final tally is 112, which is surprisingly high - my totals the last two years were 76 and 84 respectively. Also surprising is the nonfiction total - 30, double last year's count. Admittedly, quite a bit of the nonfiction was fairly lightweight, but even so....

The full second-half reckoning is under the cut. (The first half is here.)

Fiction
SF/F (42): Terry Pratchett, Pyramids*, Making Money; Lois McMaster Bujold, Legacy, The Spirit Ring*; Jonathan Stroud, The Amulet of Samarkand; Sylvia Kelso, Everran's Bane; Greg Bear, Queen of Angels*; Edward Louis, Odysseus on the Rhine; Jane Lindskold, Through Wolf's Eyes*, Wolf's Head, Wolf's Heart, The Dragon of Despair; J. K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows; Jim Butcher, Storm Front; Naomi Novik, His Majesty's Dragon; Keith Laumer, Retief in the Ruins; Eric Flint, 1812: The Rivers of War; Sharon Lee and Steve Miller, Crystal Soldier; James Schmitz, The Witches of Karres*; L. Frank Baum, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz; Andre Norton, Gods and Androids, Janus; Jasper Fforde, Something Rotten; Michael Bishop, No Enemy But Time; Vernor Vinge, Rainbow's End, Tatja Grimm's World; H. G. Wells, The Invisible Man; Diana Wynne Jones, Howl's Moving Castle; Scott Lynch, The Lies of Locke Lamora; C. S. Friedman, In Conquest Born, Black Sun Rising, When True Night Falls; Laura Underwood, The Hounds of Ardagh; Selina Rosen (ed.), Bubbas of the Apocalypse; Neil Gaiman, Anansi Boys; Elizabeth Moon, The Deed of Paksenarrion; Gene Wolfe, The Knight*, The Wizard; Robert Heinlein, The Green Hills of Earth*; Eric Frank Russell, Major Ingredients; R. A. Lafferty, Not to Mention Camels; Peter Beagle, The Line Between; Paul Park, A Princess of Roumania.

Historical (4): Laura Joh Rowland, Assassin's Touch, Red Chrysanthemum; Barbara Hambly, Fever Season; George Macdonald Fraser, Flashman's Lady

Mystery (2): Janet Evanovich, Three to Get Deadly, Four to Score.

Other (3): Bill Watterson, There's Treasure Everywhere*; "Nanny Ogg", Nanny Ogg's Cookbook; Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird.

Nonfiction
Natural Sciences (3): Jared Diamond, The Third Chimpanzee; Rudolf Raff, The Shape of Life; Victor Szebehely, Adventures in Celestial Mechanics.

Social Sciences (7): Peter Spufford, Power and Profit; Howe & Strauss, Generations; Nicholas Ostler, Empires of the Word; Carl Bache, The Study of Aspect, Tense and Action; Dorothy Lewis, Guilty by Reason of Insanity; Robert O. Paxton, The Anatomy of Fascism; James Surowiecki, The Wisdom of Crowds.

History (3): Lucie Aubrac, Outwitting the Gestapo; Stanley Wolpert, A New History of India; Robert B. Edgerton, The Fall of the Asante Empire.

Other (3): Simon Winchester, The Crack in the Edge of the World, The Professor and the Madman; Robert Alter, The World of Biblical Literature.

As usual, asterisks indicate rereads.


I may make a "best of 2007" post later - "of 2007" meaning books that I read this year.

Comments

[al-zorra.livejournal.com]

Thanks for posting the list. I'm looking forward to seeing your list of the best of what you read too.

It's so interesting to see what the people you know read!

How do you regard The Fall of the Asante Empire?

Love, C.

[stoutfellow.livejournal.com]

It was interesting; I certainly learned a lot. Unfortunately, it wasn't quite what I was looking for. Not the author's fault; he made it clear that he was primarily going to discuss the military aspects of the empire. I was hoping for more discussion of the Asante polity and culture. (Some time back, I'm not sure where [Basil Davidson, maybe?], I read something that led me to believe that the Asante empire, at the beginning of the 19th century, had a serious shot at modernizing, something like Meiji Japan did. There are, of course, major differences between the two cases; Japan was a largely literate society, for example, but on the other hand the Asante had much more in the way of resources, and a more flexible political structure. I wanted - want - to learn more about that.)

[al-zorra.livejournal.com]

Maybe if I go hunting I can suggest a title that would provide more of what you're looking for.

Not today, probably. We're going to be leaving soon for uptown and a party that will be mostly historians of New York City.

Love, C.

[stoutfellow.livejournal.com]

Thanks, I'd appreciate that. Edgerton's bibliography includes some possibly-useful sources, but I haven't begun exploring them yet.

[filkferengi]

Don't forget: each of the [Andre] Norton books you mentioned is an omnibus & is actually two books each, so you can add two to your total number of books read [assuming you read both novels in each omnibus].

[stoutfellow.livejournal.com]

No, for these purposes I count physical books only. Otherwise, how would I count The Portable Oscar Wilde, for instance? Anthologies? Essay collections?