Three weeks ago, I counted my book list to see how many books I had read up to that point. I was at 47 and in the midst of reading David Copperfield. I thought it would be a nice goal to reach 52 books for the year.
52 books, for 52 weeks.
However, I was progressing through David Copperfield at only a chapter or two a day and, according to my kindle, I still had about nine hours left to read. Charles Dickens writing does not make for an easy read. A chapter drains you and makes you feel as if you’ve just read a novel.
I thought that if I could finish David Copperfield on the train (10 hours) on the 17th, then I’d have from the 18th to the 31st with not much to do other than to read. The weekend before the 17th, I took a break from David Copperfield and read Dune Messiah. It was only 256 pages. I didn’t end up finishing David Copperfield on the train. I couldn’t, but I finished it a few days later.
Before Christmas, I also read Children of Men and Looking For a City in America: Down These Mean Streets a Man Must Go…, which is really an essay that’s 20+ pages long, but, since the majority of the books I read are over 600 pages, with some being in the 1000s, I figured I could count it. If my mom can read 52 books that are around 300 pages, then I don’t think it’s wrong for me to count an essay. I also read a short story called The Lottery, which I’m not counting.
After Christmas, I finished my 52nd book on the 29th. It was Children of Dune. These are the books I read:
1)The War on Normal People
2)Outlander
3)The River of Doubt: Theodore Roosevelt’s Darkest Journey
4)Thai Stick: Surfers, Scammers and the Untold Story of the Marijuana Trade
5)Alive: The Story of the Andes Survivors
6)Replay
7)The Language of Architecture: 26 Principles Every Architect Should Know
8)No Friend But the Mountains
9)Shōgun
10)Rocket Boys
11)The Way of the Kings (Stormlight Archive book 1)
12)Words of Radiance (Stormlight Archive book 2)
13)Edgedancer
14)Oath Bringer (Stormlight Archive book 3)
15)Dawnshard
16)Rhythm of War (Stormlight Archive book 4)
17)Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis
18)Gardens of the Moon (Malazan book 1)
19)Sleep Donation
20)Brave New Homes
21)The Poison Squad: One Chemist’s Single-Minded Crusade for Food Safety at the Turn of the Twentieth Century
22)Great Expectations
23)Artemis
24)Generation Kill
25)Tip of the Iceberg
26)101 Things I Learned at Architecture School
27)Experiencing Architecture
28)The Remains of the Day
29)Animal Farm
30)Neverwhere
31)A Rumor of War
32)The Thousand Names (Shadow Campaign 1)
33)Perspective Made Easy
34)The Sorrow of War
35)Fatherland
36)The Shadow Throne (Shadow Campaign 2)
37)Class Action Park: Fast Times, Wild Rides, and the Untold Story of America’s Most Dangerous Amusement Park
38)Towards a New Architecture
39)Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture
40)In Praise of Shadows
41)Tales of the Alhambra
42)Form and Function
43)The International Style
44)From Bauhaus to Our House
45)PREFAB
46)Thinking With Type
47)Ulm Design: The Morality of Objects
48)Dune Messiah
49)Looking for a City in America: Down these mean streets a man must go
50)David Copperfield
51)The Children of Men
52)Children of Dune
53*)The Lottery (Short story)