For the past few years I’ve had a goal to read 52 books a year. This year I managed to read 57 books. Many were hefty tomes, like Barack Obama’s The Promised Land. One or two barely deserve the title of novel, like Mark Twain’s The Jumping Frog. I choose a variety of lengths and genres to make reading interesting as well as to make my 52-books goal achievable.
This year, I completed a full year as a member of the San Jose Rotary Book Club. Members take turns choosing books. Most of the picks are not books I would have chosen, but they turned out to be quite good, such as Churchill’s Secret Messenger, Horse, and Facing the Mountain.
It’s difficult to pick a favorite, but Ed Yong’s An Immense World was one of the most eye-opening nonfiction books of the year. I finally understand why I will never be able to make friends and communicate with the wild deer and turkeys on my property, or any nonhuman species for that matter. It all comes down to the sensory organs of each species. The facts are jaw dropping. Check it out. Ed Yong is engaging as the reader of the audiobook version.
My reading typically reflects my travel. I read Voyage Into Danger, a story about Linblad grounding a ship of tourists in Antarctica, whilst sailing on the Linblad-National Geographic Endurance across Western Antarctica. I found it odd they had the book in the ship library, but with today's modern technology, I was not concerned about being shipwrecked. That trip, which was a month long, gave me lots of opportunities to read other unusual things, such as Seeds On Ice: Svalbard and the Global Seed Vault.
To prepare for a trip to Iceland, I read novels by Arnaldur Indridason and Halldor Laxness. For a musical tour down the Danube, I read Mozart. I'm not fond of the man's music, but when in Vienna, I wanted to have a solid understanding of his life and accomplishments.
Perhaps this list will give you ideas of what to read next. If you have suggestions for me, send them along.
The Double Helix: A Personal Account of the Discovery of the Structure of DNA, James D. Watson
The Mistletoe Motive, Chloe Liese
A Time to Die: The Untold Story of the Kursk Tragedy, Robert Moore
Crean: The Extraordinary Life of an Irish Hero, Tim Foley
Out of the Ice, Ann Turner
Voyage Into Danger, Clara Lee Brown
Two Old Women: An Alaska Legend of Betrayal, Courage and Survival, Velma Wallis
Seeds On Ice: Svalbard and the Global Seed Vault, Cary Fowler
Artifacts (A Faye Longchamp Mystery), Mary Anna Evans
The Vintner’s Luck, Elizabeth Knox
Freezing Order, Bill Browder
Red Notice, Bill Browder
An Immense World, Ed Yong
Tosca’s Rome: The Play and the Opera in Historical Perspective, Susan Vandiver Nicasio
Churchill’s Secret Messenger, Alan Hlad
I Contain Multitudes, Ed Yong
The Murder Rule, Dervla McTiernan
Mozart, Paul Johnson
The Coroner’s Daughter, Andrew Hughes
Horse, Geraldine Brooks
The Jumping Frog, Mark Twain
Miss Pym Disposes, Josephine Tey
Remarkably Bright Creatures, Shelby Van Pelt
Simply Lies, David Baldacci
Jar City, Arnaldur Indridason
Silence of the Grave, Arnaldur Indridason
A Memory Called Empire, Arkady Martine
The Fish Can Sing, Halldor Laxness
The Promised Land, Barack Obama
Generation Loss, Elizabeth Hand
Last Party, Clare Mackintosh
Available Dark, Elizabeth Hand
Farewell Summer, Ray Bradbury
This Changes Everything, Naomi Klein
Sea of Tranquility, Emily St. John Mandel
Spider Woman’s Daughter, Anne Hillerman
The Mountain in the Sea, Ray Nayler
The Covenant of Water, Abraham Verghese
The Personal Librarian, Marie Benedict, Victoria Christopher Murray
A Chateau Under Siege, Martin Walker
So You Shall Reap, Donna Leon
And Thus Adonis Was Murdered, Sarah Cauldwell
The Pole, J.M. Coetzee
Facing the Mountain, Daniel James Brown
The Great Reclamation, Rachel Heng
A Haunting on the Hill, Elizabeth Hand
By Way of Sorrow, Robyn Gigl
Solaris, Stanislaw Lem
The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store, James McBride
The Twilight World, Werner Herzog
The Plot, Jean Hanff Korelitz
Ella Minnow Pea, Mark Dunn
The Line Between, Tosca Lee
Isaac’s Storm, Erik Larson
The Firm, John Grisham
The Exchange, John Grisham
Let Us Descend, Jesmyn Ward