Monday, January 1, 2018

Books Read in 2017

My original goal for 2017 was to read 60 books. This year I completed 58. The following is my summary list with my top 10 listed at the bottom:

1) Insurgent by Veronica Roth--as the factions of Tris's world begin to dissolve, she and her fellow Dauntless try to figure out what triggered the attack on Abnegation, why the Erudite want the Divergent dead, and whether or not to side with the factionless in destroying Erudite. Tris decides to seek truth and discovers in the last page that there is an entire world outside the fence (525 pages).

2) Tracks by Robyn Davidson--a memoir of one woman's adventure of walking across the eastern desert of Australia with her camels and a dog. I thought this book would be amazing and fuel wanderlust. but her writing was very scattered and vague and reading it was a chore of a journey in of itself (268 pages).

3) Left Neglected by Lisa Genova--a stressed businesswoman and mother has a significant life change after a car accident leaves her with a TBI and left neglect. In the process of relearning to use her left side, she also learns more about the mother who distanced herself throughout their relationship (322 pages).

4) The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway--a fishing story of an old man's battle with a giant fish--I see it more as a parallel to the increasing loneliness and struggle of old age (127 pages).

5) Z: A Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald by Therese Anne Fowler--a historical fictional novel about the rise and fall of the famous Fitzgeralds, as told from Zelda's point of view (371 pages).

6) Small Victories by Anne Lamott--essays on handling hard situations graciously. Not sure about her theology but really amazed by her syntax and analogies (286 pages).

7) The Martian by Andy Weir--an astronaut gets stranded on Mars and must learn how to survive until his crew can return to rescue him (369 pages).

8) The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood--a woman in the Gilead society is assigned to a commander with the job of being breeding stock. Gilead is dystopian; women are used as either reproductive vessels or as house help. Offred, the narrator, tells about the strict society that oppresses women under the guise of religion. Every one of the higher ups that she meets has ulterior motives--whether from her commander who uses her to fulfill his own sexual desires or from the commander's wife who tries to manipulate Offred to have a child for them by any means necessary. I tried to read this book years ago and never got into it; this time I was hooked (311 pages).

9) The Miserable Mill by Lemony Snickett--gotta keep up with my Awana friends! In this series of unfortunate events, the Baudelaire children are sent to work in a lumber mill and Count Olaf uses hypnosis to try to coerce Klaus into causing accidents that will get the children kicked out of the mill and into the hands of Count Olaf (194 pages).

10) Our Boys: A Perfect Season on the Plains with the Smith Center Redmen by Joe Drape--an extensive look at one year (2008) with a small town high school football team in their quest to earn the longest winning streak in Kansas (278 pages).

11) Thrashing About with God by Mandy Steward--a memoir of a woman going through times of doubting her religion. She had a few really poignant thoughts but the majority of the book made me feel like I was reading a story of all this woman's insecurities and paranoias and made me feel really disoriented and confused as to her point in writing (258 pages).

12) The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd--14 year old Lily and her housekeeper, Rosaleen, leave behind her abusive father and the racism of their town to find a new home with the black women who raised Lily's mother. While living with them, Lily lives in pursuit of her mother while also learning about bees and life. The Help meets catholic adoration of Mary (302 pages).

13) Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil by John Berendt--a true crime story about Savannah, Georgia, society. Basically Great Gatsby, if Gatsby was a gay antiques dealer on trial for the murder of his lover (388 pages).

14) The Austere Academy by Lemony Snicket--the Baudelaire orphans are sent to a boarding school where they befriend the Quagmires but are ultimately found by Count Olaf, disguising himself as a gym teacher in an attempt to steal their fortune. He ultimately kidnaps the Quagmires, who reveal the letters VFD as a mysterious discovery before their kidnapping (221 pages).

15) The Man in the High Castle by Philip K. Dick--a novel describing what it would be like if Germany and Japan had won WWII. Tells the story of various people and their responses to the new world. Very possibly ended with a twist that it was all an illusion, but too ambiguous to truly interpret the ending (274 pages).

16) Lady Susan by Jane Austen--a short novel about a promiscuous widow who attempted to manipulate her daughter into marrying for money while also trying to lure the attentions of her deceased husband's brother in law and the husband of a friend with whom she was having an affair (136 pages).

17) Bonhoeffer by Eric Metaxes--the extensive biography of martyr Dietrich Bonhoeffer and his work as a Lutheran pastor in the Confessing Church of Germany during WWII. Defied the Third Reich, helped to provide safety for Jews, and joined a conspiratorial plot to assassinate Hitler (544 pages).

18) Allegiant by Veronica Roth--in the conclusion to the Divergent series, Tris and crew leave the city where they discover they have been part of a government experiment to cure people who had been genetically modified in an old attempt to cure humanity from evil. They must then figure out how to cure the genetic racism that is occurring outside the city while also protecting those inside the city from killing one another (526 pages). 

19) The Hunchback of Notre Dame by Victor Hugo--a story of the mistreatment of a gypsy girl named Esmeralda--at the hands of officer Phoebus who only wants her body, the gypsies who stole her from her mother, and Don Claude Frollo, the priest who lists after her to the point of setting her up for execution when she won't have him. Esmeralda is frequently rescued by Quasimodo, although he ultimately fails to save her before her execution (485 pages).

20) The Winter People by Jennifer McMahon--a supernatural ghost story about a mysterious rock formation called the Devils Hand and the search of people throughout history trying to find a way to raise the dead (382 pages). 

21) The Ersatz Elevator by Lemony Snicket--the Baudelaires are once again foiled by Olaf as he hides their friends in a false elevator shaft (259 pages). 

22) The Light Between Oceans by M.L. Stedman--the story of a lighthouse keeper and his wife who find a boat with a baby washed up on shore and decide to keep it and raise it as theirs, not realizing the child had a mother who was searching for her in order to be reunited (343 pages). 

23) Attachments by Rainbow Rowell--an IT worker at a newspaper falls in love with a woman whose emails end up flagged in his filter (323 pages).

24) In Cold Blood by Truman Capote--the true crime story of a senseless murder of a family of four in Holcomb, KS (343 pages). 

25) Gilead by Marilynne Robinson--an old and dying pastor writes a journal to his young son. The majority of the journal deals with the preacher's feelings towards his father, grandfather, and godson, spanning the Civil War and the Great Depression (247 pages). 

26) The Radium Girls: the Dark Story of America's Shining Women by Kate Moore--the story of luminous dial painters in the 1920s, their poisoning by the radium used in their work, and how their deaths ultimately paved the way for science to learn that increasing radioactivity in a human is a really terrible idea (399 pages). 

27) Blue Highways by William Least Heat-Moon--a travel book based on observations seen on the lesser traveled backroads of America (411 pages). 

28) I am the Messenger by Markus Zusak--an ordinary cabdriver becomes a message of inspiration after receiving instructions to help certain people and goes about improving their lives through kindness (357 pages). 

29) Crazy Love by Francis Chan--rereading in my quest to reengage in the gospel for the love story that it is (175 pages). 

30) The Museum of Extraordinary Things by Alice Hoffman--a story combining a Coney Island freakshow and the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire. This book was so poorly written it was like reading a high schoolers confusing fan fiction (361 pages).  

31) Surprised by Joy by C.S. Lewis--a lot of school day rambling with occasional profound moments towards the end in regards to Lewis's conversion from atheism to Christianity (252 pages). 

32) The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck--the hard luck story of an Oklahoma family escaping the Dust Bowl in order to make a better life in California; what they find is poverty, starvation, oppression, and the destruction of the family unit (502 pages). 

33) Far From the Tree: Parents, Children, and the Search for Identity by Andrew Solomon--reviewing how parents learn to love their children with horizontal identities: deaf, dwarfs, Down syndrome, autism, schizophrenia, multiple disabilities, prodigies, children conceived in rape, children who commit crimes, and transgender (702 pages). 

34) Till We Have Faces by CS Lewis--a retelling of the Psyche mythology that focuses on her sister, Orual, and her lifelong struggle to love others selflessly and to be reconciled with the gods. I felt like this book was exactly what I needed to read right now and that it will take me months to process what I read (313 pages).

35) The Night Sister by Jennifer McMahon--a story of a Vermont family cursed by a recessive trait of transforming into mares, humans that take animal form and cause devastation (319 pages). 

36) The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman--a dark and beautiful story that felt like A Wrinkle in Time for adults, with a battle between dark and light, three eternal and wise women, and a healing ocean disguised as a duck pond (178 pages). 

37) Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov--yeah, I read it. And yeah, it was horrifying. But also interesting in a "view from a predator" psychological way (206 page).

38) The Music Lesson by Victor Wooten--I was far too sober to enjoy this book (273 pages).

39) My Grandmother Asked Me To Tell You She's Sorry by Fredrik Backman--basically a jumbled Swedish version of Big Fish, in which a little girl goes on a quest to learn about the real life counterparts of her granny's fairy tales (370 pages). 

40) Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie--a man is murdered on a train stopped by snow and the solution to the crime is discovered through wild conjectures and improbable circumstances (212 pages).

41) The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky--the story of three brothers and the murder of their father. I'm actually a little enraged at how much time I wasted on this book that I absolutely loathed (702 pages). 

42) Jesus for President by Shane Claiborne and Chris Haw--politics for ordinary radicals. Further affirmation in choosing to stand for the kingdom of God and to sit for the pledge of allegiance (335 pages). 

43) Alexander Hamilton by Ron Chernow--more details than I ever knew I needed to know about one of America's founding fathers (731 pages). 

44) Idaho by Emily Ruskovich--a confusing and beautiful story of a family torn apart by murder and how the new wife wove together their stories to keep the family alive in memories (305 pages). 

45) Isaac's Storm by Erik Larson--an account of the deadly Galveston hurricane of 1900 and the people who lived through the destruction (273 pages). 

46) My Louisiana Sky by Kimberly Willis Holt--re-reading a favorite from childhood about a girl coming to age in Louisiana and learning to live with her simple parents and small town (208 pages).

47) A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman--the story of a curmudgeonly man who learned to love his neighbors even after his beloved wife had passed away (337 pages). 

48) The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne--re-reading an old favorite about the pain and guilt of hidden sin (234 pages). 

49) Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban by JK Rowling--revisiting old favorites during sleepy early autumn (435 pages). 

50) Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire by JK Rowling (734 pages).

51) The Tenth Circle by Jodi Picoult--a girl is raped by her ex-boyfriend who is later found dead. Discusses how far parents will go to save their children (385 pages). 

52) Wonder by RJ Palacio--a boy with facial deformities goes to school, makes friends, and changes the opinions of others on accepting those who are different (315 pages). 

53) Everything, Everything by Nicola Yoon--an overprotective mother tells her daughter she is allergic to everything and must stay inside. When the girl turns 18 she begins to desire freedom and falls in love with the boy next door, leading him to join her in escaping their respective lives (310 pages). 

54) Sold by Patricia McCormick--an account of a Nepalese girl sold into sexual slavery to a brothel in India, her struggles, and her rescue (268 pages).

55) The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers--four people in the 1930s south--a drunk communist, a black doctor, a music-crazed girl, and a restaurant owner--all face their own forms of loneliness and heartache, projected onto the mute man who lives in the town and whom they all believe can understand them and their sorrows despite his deafness and his own struggles with loneliness and isolation (359 pages). 

56) 11/22/63 by Stephen King--an English teacher goes back in time to stop the JFK assassination, falling in love with a woman and a small Texas town during the process of attempting to change the future (1080 pages). 

57) The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe by CS Lewis (206 pages).

58) Cast of Characters: Common People in the Hands of an Uncommon God by Max Lucado--a series of devotional about the every day people of the Bible who were called out to follow Jesus (221 pages).

My 10 Favorites for 2017 (no order):
-The Martian by Andy Weir
-The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood
-Bonhoeffer by Eric Metaxes
-The Hunchback of Notre Dame by Victor Hugo
-Far From the Tree: Parents, Children, and the Search for IDentity by Andrew Solomon
-Till We Have Faces by CS Lewis
-Jesus for President by Shane Claiborne and Chris Haw
-Idaho by Emily Ruskovich
-The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers
-11/22/63 by Stephen King

Year End Stats:
58 books completed (plus I finished the "read the Bible in a year" plan; not listed above). 
20,550 pages
Goal for next year: 30 books



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