2011 Reading
Jan. 16th, 2012 06:26 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
stoutfellowI see that I didn't post a reading list for 2011, either at midyear or at year's end. I don't think I'll bother with the full list, but just make a few remarks.
I read 110 books during the year, down from 125 in 2010. Nineteen of them were nonfiction; fifteen of the remainder were rereads, and seventy-six new fiction. Of the nonfiction, eight were histories, four each on religion and science, and one each of biography, philosophy, and linguistics. Almost all of the fiction was f/sf. The exceptions were: Marilynne Robinson's Home (the events of Gilead, more or less, but from a different POV; not quite as good as the other, but not bad); a couple of Dick Francis mysteries (Rat Race and Flying Finish); Trust Me on This, a typical piece of fluff from Jennifer Crusie; and - a reread after some thirty years - George Eliot's Middlemarch. The religious works were three of Thomas Merton's early writings, plus Thomas Browne's Religio Medici / Christian Morals (two essays, bound together in my copy).
What were the standouts? Middlemarch, among the mainstream fiction, of course; of the f/sf, Hugo nominees Feed and The Dervish House, Jim Butcher's Changes (possibly the best of the Dresden Files to date), and China Mieville's Kraken were excellent. I was a bit disappointed in Vernor Vinge's The Children of the Sky: not enough sensawunda other than the revelations about the Choir, and too obviously incomplete. Ghost Story was a good follow-up to Changes. Among the nonfiction, Barfield's The Perilous Frontier was particularly good, with honorable mentions for Kwame Appiah's Cosmopolitanism and Ned Sublette's The World That Made New Orleans. (I also read de Tocqueville's book on the Old Regime, which was, mmm, disquieting in the present context.) Richard Feynman's The Pleasure of Finding Things Out was entertaining, but not particularly enlightening; likewise, although a bit more informative, for James Gleick's The Information.
So. Onward to 2012!
I read 110 books during the year, down from 125 in 2010. Nineteen of them were nonfiction; fifteen of the remainder were rereads, and seventy-six new fiction. Of the nonfiction, eight were histories, four each on religion and science, and one each of biography, philosophy, and linguistics. Almost all of the fiction was f/sf. The exceptions were: Marilynne Robinson's Home (the events of Gilead, more or less, but from a different POV; not quite as good as the other, but not bad); a couple of Dick Francis mysteries (Rat Race and Flying Finish); Trust Me on This, a typical piece of fluff from Jennifer Crusie; and - a reread after some thirty years - George Eliot's Middlemarch. The religious works were three of Thomas Merton's early writings, plus Thomas Browne's Religio Medici / Christian Morals (two essays, bound together in my copy).
What were the standouts? Middlemarch, among the mainstream fiction, of course; of the f/sf, Hugo nominees Feed and The Dervish House, Jim Butcher's Changes (possibly the best of the Dresden Files to date), and China Mieville's Kraken were excellent. I was a bit disappointed in Vernor Vinge's The Children of the Sky: not enough sensawunda other than the revelations about the Choir, and too obviously incomplete. Ghost Story was a good follow-up to Changes. Among the nonfiction, Barfield's The Perilous Frontier was particularly good, with honorable mentions for Kwame Appiah's Cosmopolitanism and Ned Sublette's The World That Made New Orleans. (I also read de Tocqueville's book on the Old Regime, which was, mmm, disquieting in the present context.) Richard Feynman's The Pleasure of Finding Things Out was entertaining, but not particularly enlightening; likewise, although a bit more informative, for James Gleick's The Information.
So. Onward to 2012!
