47 Books, Plus 7

Ok, I was going to wait until I'd read just a couple more books to post my list, but I'm getting impatient with myself, so here it is now. A couple of things to note, as you can see there are only 47 books listed, but I'm going to give you seven bonus books that I read last year after I'd posted my last reading list. The other seven are school-related, but if you're looking to learn about life story interviews, drop me a line and I'll be able to give you some ideas. I'll star everything I would recommend to, let's say, a general audience. I'm also going to preemptively recommend the book I'm reading right now, The Narrow Road to the Deep North by Richard Flanagan. If I haven't already forced you to read Gould's Book of Fish, go read Gould's Book of Fish. If, once you've finished that, you find you must compulsively read every other book Richard Flanagan has written, consider reading TNRTTDN next, it's gorgeous. All right, without further ado, the list!

1. "Surely You're Joking Mr. Feynman!" -- Richard Feynman was a weird dude, you guys.
2. Double Down
3. The Human Factor 
4. Lean In -- Nope.
5. The Better Angels of Our Nature* -- I love Steven Pinker, and this book definitely changed how I think about conflict, but let me know if you've seen good rebuttals!
6. The Good Lord Bird* -- I will read any book about John Brown, and this was a very good book that was sort of about John Brown.
7. The Swerve: How the World Became Modern
8. The Sixth Extinction
9. Danubia* -- I really loved this book, even though I didn't know Hapsburg history to follow everything as well as I would have liked. Definitely LOL'd a bunch.
10. The Beautiful Struggle* -- Did you think I wouldn't recommend Ta-Nehisi Coates's memoir? Very good stuff.
11. Catch-22*
12. Man's Search for Meaning* -- Had a weird conversation on a bus about this book, but I think it's worth reading even if you don't plan on running into someone who wants to talk to you about personal growth seminars for three hours.
13. Love and Math -- Purports to make very complex math understandable to a general audience, and does not succeed.
14. The Monkey Wrench Gang*
15. The Goldfinch* -- I loved this book even though the internet has made me feel like an idiot for loving it.
16. Flash Boys -- I read some things about why this book's premise is wrong, and even though I don't totally remember what they said it was enough for me to lump Michael Lewis in with Malcolm Gladwell and to have decided never to take anything he writes seriously again.
17. The Night Gardener -- Ooh boy, this was not very good. I was excited to read George Pelecanos because he writes about DC, and I will read anything about DC, plus he helped write "The Wire," but this was... not Shakespeare. He described one character multiple times as "an average-sized black man." Really?
18. The Poisonwood Bible*
19. The Circle -- Call me naive, but I don't believe Carleton grads would fall for this nonsense.
20. Oryx and Crake*
21. King Leopold's Ghost* -- Helped explain why my 10th grade history teacher emphasized "that magnificent African cake" so much. Not to be flip, but colonialism was the worst.
22. Men to Match My Mountains* -- Ok, I'm going to qualify my recommendation. I really like reading about the development of the American West, so I enjoyed this book a lot, but keep in mind that it was written in 1956 and there's some racism ("The Chinese loved building the railroads!") and he refers to women throughout as "the female of the species." Still, interesting read.
23. House of Cards
24. The Year of the Flood*
25. MaddAddam* -- (but recommended less enthusiastically than the first two in the series)
26. Gone Girl -- The one good thing about this book, apart from how entertaining I found it, was that, while I normally think, "Man, I'm going to be alone forever :(" after reading this book I thought, "I'm going to be alone forever, THANK GOD."
27. Atmospheric Disturbances* -- Emily recommended this one to me, and it was as inventive/weird as you would expect.
28. Their Eyes Were Watching God*
29. Things Fall Apart*
30. Dissident Gardens* -- Really liked this one, but I have to include the caveat that my grandparents were Communists in Queens in the 1930s and 1940s, so I read it a bit more personally than others might. Still, hard to go wrong with Jonathan Lethem.
31. Dare Me* -- Another Emily rec, really good especially if you're into books about heartless teenage girls.
32. The Dismal Science* -- Good but crushing
33. Red or Dead** -- This was definitely my favorite book of the year. I read a few reviews that said it felt like a stunt, and I can see that, but I sort of like books like that. Check out the NYT review before you try it, if you're still interested, go read it, it's amazing.
34. Call for the Dead -- Meh, it's the first George Smiley novel, and it's good but it's no Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy.
35. The Ogallala Road -- I sort of hated this book, but I wasn't really in the right mood for it, and I'm not from Kansas.
36. A Murder of Quality -- This is the second George Smiley novel, but I really wouldn't bother. Call for the Dead fills in a couple of details in later books, but this one is just a weird one-off about how much JLC dislikes British public schools.
37. Countdown -- Oof, overpopulation is going to destroy the earth. I probably would have liked this one better if I had been surprised by any of it.
38. Transatlantic*
39. The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P. -- In Laura's words, "If these are the kind of people who are out there, I would rather stay celibate for the rest of my life."
40. Occupied City* -- The only book the Wellesley Public Library had by David Peace. Not as good as Red or Dead, but still very good.
41. Endless Night -- Meh, I mean, don't throw it out if your grandparents were really into mystery novels and you have a copy of it. Not bad airplane reading. Plus, when I was browsing the upcoming season of "Masterpiece Mystery" (like people do), I saw they're doing a Miss Marple of this one this season, which I'm much more excited about than I should be.
42. The Spy Who Came in from the Cold*
43. Americanah* -- Everyone is right, this is a very good book. I liked Half of a Yellow Sun better, I think, but this was great too.
44. Fingersmith* -- More twisty, Victorian, lesbian thrillers, please!
45. Vienna Nocturne -- The best parts of this book, by a woman who studied voice at Yale, are the descriptions of singing. It's fine, it's fairly well-researched, it's just not that interesting.
46. Regeneration* -- Second best book I read this year, I will be reading everything Pat Barker has written as soon as I can get my hands on it. Love, love, love good WWI literature, especially when it features Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon as characters.
47. Brave New World

Bonus books from 2013:
1.  The Theory of Everything -- I got really into physics at the end of last year.
2. Go Tell It on the Mountain*
3. Angle of Repose* -- Like I said, love books about the American West. My mom thought it was anti-Semitic, but I must have missed that.
4. Ike's Bluff -- You might like this if you are in late middle-age.
5. Motherless Brooklyn* -- Again, Jonathan Lethem is pretty great. Inventive, exciting book.
6. Reflections on Judging* -- Recommend specifically if you are in law school or are really into law, for some reason.
7. Quantum Reality -- Like I said, I was going through sort of a phase at the end of the year.

So, that's the list for now! Add me on Goodreads for real-time reading updates, if you're interested.