Five years ago, I celebrated my five-year blogging anniversary by posting a list of fifty of my favorite or most memorable books. It's time for another round! In chronological order, the fifty most memorable books read since 2012:
- Bowling Alone: the Collapse and Revival of American Community, Robert D. Putnam
- Asphalt Nation: How the Automobile Took Over America and How We Can Take It Back, Jane Holtz Kay
- Lucifer's Hammer, Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle (Fiction)
- Blood, Iron, and Gold: How Railroads Transformed the World, Christian Wolmar
- Nickle and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America, Barbara Ehrenreich
- A Conspiracy of Paper, David Liss
- Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal, Eric Schlosser
- Suburban Nation: the Rise of Sprawl and the Decline of the American Dream, Andres Duany, Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, and Jeff Speck
- Consuming Kids: The Hostile Takeover of Childhood, Jennifer Linn
- The Great Good Place: Cafés, Coffee Shops, Bookstores, Bars, Hair Salons and Other Hangouts at the Heart of a Community, Ray Oldenburg
- The Green Metropolis: Why Living Smarter, Living Closer, and Driving Less are the Keys to Sustainability, David Owen
- John Adams, David McCullough
- A Man on the Moon, Neil Chaiken
- No Logo: The Case Against the Brand Bullies, Naomi Klein
- Waste and Want: A Social History of Trash, Susan Strasser
- The Arthur Trilogy, Bernard Cornwell
- Pedaling Revolution: How Cyclists are Changing American Cities, Jeff Mapes
- Straphanger: Saving Our Cities and Ourselves from the Automobile, Taras Grescoe
- The Death and Life of Great American Cities, Jane Jacobs
- The Plain Reader: Essays on Making a Simple Life, edited by Scott Savage
- Jayber Crow, Wendell Berry
- The Conservative Mind: From Burk to Eliot, Russell Kirk
- Religion for Atheists, Alain de Botton
- The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion, Jonathan Haidt
- small is beautiful: economics as if people mattered, EF Schumacher
- Starship Troopers, Robert Heinlein
- Look Homeward, America: In Search of Reactionary Radicals and Front Porch Anarchists, Bill Kauffman
- Human Scale, Kirkpatrick Sale
- Ninety Percent of Everything: Inside Shipping, Rose George.'
- Antifragile: How Some Things Gain from Disorder, Nassim Nicholas Taleb.
- Jesus and the Jewish Roots of the Eucharist, Brant Pitre
- A Short History of Byzantium, John Julius Norwich
- The Cult of the Presidency, Gene Healy (Politics)
- The Iron Web, Larken Rose (Political Thriller)
- Happy City: Transforming Our Lives through Urban Design, Charles Montgomery
- The Horse in the City, Clay McShane and Joel Tarr
- How I Killed Pluto and Why It Had it Coming, Mike Brown (Science)
- Picking Up: On the Streets and Behind the Trucks with the Sanitation Workers of New York City, Robin Nagle
- Future Crimes: Everything is Connected, Everyone is Vulnerable, and What We Can Do About It, Marc Goodman
- The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, Robert Heinlein
- Great Expectations, Charles Dickens
- The Chosen, Chaim Potok
- Driving with the Devil: Southern Moonshine, Detroit Wheels, and the Birth of NASCAR, Neil Thompson
- Sphere, Michael Crichton
- All the Shah's Men, Stephen Kinzer
- The Porch and the Cross, Kevin Vost
- Tolkien's Sanctifying Myth: Understanding Middle-Earth, Brad Birzer
- Musonius Rufus on How to Live, adapted Ben White.
- The Twilight of the Presidency, George Reedy
- Fear no Evil, Natan Sharansky
Well done on 10 Years blogging! I'm already looking forward to the next 10. I can't remember how I stumbled upon your Blog (or what link took me here) but I'm glad I found it/you. You've given me a lot to think about and a lot of books to consider. I was just thinking today that we seem to have similar aims but are coming at the target from very different directions. I think we have many interesting arguments/debates ahead. [lol]
ReplyDeleteA good list. A few I've read and a few are in various TBR piles - but many are (apart from your reviews) unknown to me. I guess that's mostly because of the Atlantic Ocean between us and growing up in very different cultures (I won't say a word about our age difference!)
Keep up the good work (and the good fight). I know you will.
Stephen,
ReplyDeleteI've only read five that are on your list, and all are fiction. Four of the five are SF, and the fifth is Potok's _The Chosen_, which I just read last month. I was so impressed with it that I got the sequel from the library, and I'll probably read it next week.
I congratulate you on two accomplishments: the longevity of your fine blog; your ability to recall and list your best reading experiences. As I am someone who has difficulty remember yesterday's lunch, I am impressed by memory. Well done!
ReplyDeleteI'm curious about how you select your books, it seems your middle name must be eclectic... Like Fred, I've read several of the fiction, but none of the others except for the one about the history of bicycles in the. Netherlands...
ReplyDelete@Cyberkitten: I'm sure it must have been through skeptical blogrolls or something. I'm not sure who discovered who, though! I think we've both been enablers of our respective habits..Bernard Cornwell and John Stack are two authors I discovered through you, not to mention "The Age of Absurdity"...which I've read 3 times and have never reviewed. Sigh..
ReplyDelete@Fred: Enjoy "The Promise"! I'd like to read more of Potok, especially "I Am Asher Leve".
@Tim: Oh, keeping lists of books helps! Thank you. :)
@Mudpuddle:
In the beginning I would literally wander the library and hope titles caught my eye. These days I rely on amazon, goodreads, and Worldcat. It helps to be curious about EVERYTHING, as I am -- horses, trains, pavement, medieval Spain, it seemingly never ends. All I have to do is search for a topic and those sources produce books, and those books lead me to other books....
I just finished THE PROMISE--excellent. Time to move on to some of his other works.
ReplyDelete