The first three quarters of last year, I robbed my brain of the benefit of reading any books. I fixed that by Reading 10 books the last quarter of the year, and falling in love with reading again. At the end of the year, I reflected on those books and the adventures they provided. I promised myself that I would go on more adventures in 2020.
I spent a bit of time thinking about what books I was going to read this year. I finalized my list with the following:
- Unspeakable Things – Jess Lourey (Complete)
- The Name of the Wind – Patrick Rothfuss (currently reading/listening)
- We Were Soldiers Once… and Young – Harold G Moore, Joseph L. Galloway
- American Dirt – Jeanine Cummins
- Dead Mountain: The untold true story of the Dyatlov Pass incident – Donnie Eichar
- The Snow Child – Eowyn Ivey
- Black Edge: Inside Information, Dirty Money, and the quest to bring down the most wanted man on Wall Street – Sheelah Kolhatkar
- The Outsider – Stephen King
- Dark Matter – Black Crouch
- The Closer: My Story – Mariano Rivera
- Outlaw Platoon: Heroes, renegades, infidels, and the brotherhood of war in Afghanistan – Sean Parnell
- Pet Cemetery – Stephen King
- The Alchemist – Paulo Coelho
- Being Mortal: medicine and what matters in the end – Atul Gawande
- Open – Andre Agassi
- Why we sleep: unlocking the power of sleep and dreams – Matthew Walker
- The Water Dancer – Tanehisi Coates
- The Tattooist of Auschwitz – Heather Morris
- The Goldfinch – Donna Tartt
- Born a Crime: stories from a South African childhood – Trevor Noah
- Digital Minimalism: Choosing a focused life in a noisy world – Cal Newport
- Permanent Record – Edward Snowden
- The Silent Patient – Alex Michaelides
- Midnight in Chernobyl: The untold story of the world’s greatest nuclear disaster – Adam Higginbotham
- Where the Crawdads sing – Delia Owens
- Mansfield’s Book of manly men: An utterly invigorating guide to being your most masculine self – Stephen Mansfield
- Moneyball: The art of winning an unfair game – Michael Lewis
- The Testaments – Margaret Atwood
- The Ride of A Lifetime: lessons learned from 15 years as CEO of Walt Disney Company – Robert Iger
- Writing that works: how to communicate effectively in business – Kenneth Roman
- I’ll be gone in the dark – Michelle McNamara
- Lord of the flies – William Golding
- A Clash of Kings – George R.R. Martin
Though there are 33 books in this list, my actual goal for the year is to finish 30 of them. There was no particular science to these choices, just some recommendations by friends and mere curiosity. I’m sure I am going to enjoy a lot of these books and probably dislike others. Such is the nature of giving yourself to a story.
I am also exploring the world of audiobooks for the first time. I started with The Name of the Wind, which is a long book. It is such a good story and I will most likely add the sequel to my list. Having no experience with audiobooks required I train my brain to listen to a book instead of reading it, but it proved to be fairly simple. It’s as easy as listening to a podcast — a very long one at that.
I’m also exploring Amazon Prime Reading which provides free reads for Prime members. I read Unspeakable Things from Prime Reading and I enjoyed it. You can’t go wrong with free* books, right?
I’ll continue to explore this list and update my progress to see how I’m doing. Let’s get reading!
*Prime membership includes a yearly fee, but I’m a user simply for the free shipping, and recently, some of their shows