Friday, December 26, 2008

Books Read in 2008

Once again, here's my annual list of books I've read in the last year. I did somewhat worse than last year in finishing books I started, and I found last year disappointing. The piles of started but unfinished books are growing--but perhaps I can match last year's total by the end of the year (I'm only threetwo short at the moment). I've not done a good job of writing Amazon.com reviews of any of these, though I've put a few short comments on Facebook's Visual Bookshelf for a few of these. I owe Guy Harrison an Amazon.com review/blog review/etc. for his excellent book, which I recommend as a nice (and less threatening) companion piece to Julian Baggini's Atheism: A Very Short Introduction as an introduction to atheism.

  • Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Infidel
  • Matthew Chapman, 40 Days and 40 Nights: Darwin, Intelligent Design, God, OxyContin, and Other Oddities on Trial in Pennsylvania
  • Anderson Cooper, Dispatches from the Edge: A Memoir of War, Disasters, and Survival
  • Cory Doctorow, Little Brother
  • Cory Doctorow, Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town
  • Joseph Finder, Paranoia
  • Guy P. Harrison, 50 reasons people give for believing in a god
  • Gene Healy, The Cult of the Presidency: America's Dangerous Devotion to Presidential Power
  • Jeffrey Rogers Hummel, Emancipating Slaves, Enslaving Free Men: A History of the American Civil War
  • Susan Jacoby, Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism
  • Robert A. Levy and William Mellor, The Dirty Dozen: How Twelve Supreme Court Cases Radically Expanded Government and Eroded Freedom
  • Maureen McCormick, Here's the Story: Surviving Marcia Brady and Finding My True Voice
  • Mary Roach, Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex
  • William C. Speidel, Sons of the Profits
  • Jim Steinmeyer, Art & Artifice and Other Essays on Illusion
  • Jim Steinmeyer, Charles Fort: The Man Who Invented the Supernatural
  • Nassim Nicholas Taleb, The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable
  • Carl Zimmer, Soul Made Flesh: The Discovery of the Brain--And How It Changed the World
  • Jonathan Zittrain, The Future of the Internet and How To Stop It

    • (Previously: 2007, 2006, 2005.)
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    2 comments:

    1. Hume's GhostDecember 27, 2008 at 2:35 PM

      "I owe Guy Harrison an Amazon.com review/blog review/etc. for his excellent book.."

      Argh. I still owe the ACLU a review of Bill of Wrongs by Ivins and Dubose which they courteously sent me a free copy of last year around this time.

      ---

      Inspired by your list last year I kept one this year. I'm pretty sure I've read less books than the year before, and I'm a few books short of the target number I set for myself, although I may be able to get there by midnight 31st. The only book on your list that I read this year is Cult of the Presidency and the only other one that I've read previously is Freethinker; I enjoyed both.

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    2. PodblackDecember 28, 2008 at 8:29 AM

      Little Brother was great. Mind, I read it after a day touring San Fran, so all the locations were fresh in my mind. :)

      ReplyDelete