Matt's Year of Reading

I began this year with a goal to increase my annual reading load to fifteen books from last year's twelve. I also had planned to blog about each one.

Oops.

Since finishing What Americans Really Want... Really by Frank Lutz, I've also read:

The copious number of children's books don't make the list as that would be the most heinous form of cheating.

I had planned to get started on the last tome of The Baroque Cycle by Neal Stephenson, but keep getting interrupted by other, smaller books. I started The Four Seasons of Marriage by Gary Chapman, but found it incredibly boring, and have since moved on to Forgotten God by Francis Chan.

Each of the books I read this summer and early fall were for a specific purpose. The first launched me into a whole new world of software development practice, which has been a fantastic experience. The second has helped with disciplining my 2-year-old, even if it is not a perfect solution. Oryx and Crake was a gift from a fellow employee who wanted to expose me to Canadian apocalyptic literature. It worked, and I'm certain to acquire its sequel shortly. The next two have enriched me and my life. The Year of Biblical Living was very interesting, and only served to motivate me to read his previous book about reading the entire encyclopedia.

By December, I am certain that I can get past last year's count of twelve, but hitting fifteen is going to be a stretch (I'm on 13 now). One of the men in our church mentioned that he reads about 80 books per year, and my wife figures she gets to around 50. Personally, I've discovered that the summer months are not conducive to reading in the least, unless there's a camping trip (which there was not). Instead, all my free time was spent on one project or another.

Speaking of which, I really should post about the train table I built (and my wife decorated) for our son a couple of months ago. I don't know why I can't break out of the teens, though. I'll need to work on that next year. Here's my reading list for the remainder of 2010:

Nov 29th, 2010
books, geek habits

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