A year of books

I did this last year and it seemed like an interesting and maybe even useful thing to continue this year.

Trends in my reading this year? Lots and lots on science and technology, especially on the impacts of those on intellectual culture. A great year, in that respect, with Shirky's Here Comes Everybody leading the way. Not so much fiction, and especially sf, this year. This'll be corrected by the Sunburst reading I do this year and next (not recorded here, see below), but I think I just needed a break.

Overall, the total number of books I'm reading this year is the highest it's been in quite a long time. Why? Well, honestly, I think it's because of the variety. I used to read mostly fiction, mostly fantastic fiction, and I think I was just getting bogged down by the sameness of it all. Lately, since my sabbatical especially, I'm just reading much wider. And that's made my reading wider and more interesting to me. And this results in me reading more.

So, without further ado, here's a list of all the books I've read this year with links to my reviews:

1. Ambient Findability by Peter Morville
   
2. Year's Best Fantasy 6 edited by David G. Hartwell & Kathryn Cramer
   
3. Slide by Ken Bruen & Jason Starr
   
4. Farthing by Jo Walton
   
5. The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2007 edited by Richard Preston & Tim Folger (Series Editor)
   
6. The Keeper by Sarah Langan
   
7. A Century of Noir edited by Mickey Spillane and Max Allan Collins
   
8. Einstein: A Life by Walter Isaacson
   
9. Hardboiled America: Lurid Paperbacks And The Masters Of Noir by Geoffrey O'Brien
   
10. Supercrunchers: Why Thinking-By-Numbers is the New Way To Be Smart by Ian Ayres
    
11. Tin Roof Blowdown by James Lee Burke
    
12. 40 Days and 40 Nights: Darwin, Intelligent Design, God, Oxycontin, and Other Oddities on Trial in Pennsylvania by Matthew Chapman
    
13. Year's Best SF 11 edited by David G. Hartwell & Kathryn Cramer
    
14. Infected by Scott Sigler
    
15. Pyramids by Terry Pratchett
    
16. Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations by Clay Shirky
    
17. Free as in Speech and Beer: Open Source, Peer-to-Peer and the Economics of the Online Revolution by Darren Wershler-Henry
    
18. The Big Switch: Rewiring the World, from Edison to Google by Nicholas Carr
    
19. The Green Glass Sea by Ellen Klages
    
20. Big City, Bad Blood by Sean Chercover
    
21. Complications: A Surgeon's Note on an Imperfect Science by Atul Gawande
    
22. Best New Horror 17 edited by Stephen Jones
    
23. Forty Signs of Rain by Kim Stanley Robinson
    
24. The Future of Reputation: Gossip, Rumor, and Privacy on the Internet by Daniel J. Solove
    
25. The Best of Technology Writing 2007 by Steven Levy
    
26. The Sum of All Fears by Tom Clancy
    
27. Wrinkles in Time: Witness to the Birth of the Universe by George Smoot and Keay Davidson
    
28. The End of the Beginning by Harry Turtledove
    
29. Clapton: The Autobiography by Eric Clapton
    
30. The Ruins by Scott Smith
    
31. Heart-Shaped Box by Joe Hill
    
32. Comrades of War by Sven Hassel
    
33. Solomon's Vineyard by
    
34. Pursuit of Genius: Flexner, Einstein, and the Early Faculty at the Institute for Advanced Study by Steve Batterson
    
35. Archimedes to Hawking: Laws of Science and the Great Minds Behind Them by Clifford Pickover
    
36. Why Darwin Matters: The Case Against Intelligent Design by Michael Shermer
    
37. Triptych by Karen Slaughter
    
38. Dark Crusade by Karl Edward Wagner
    
39. Little Girl Lost by Richard Aleas
    
40. The Wraparound Universe by Jean-Pierre Luminet
    
41. Once You're Lucky, Twice You're Good: The Rebirth of Silicon Valley and the Rise of Web 2.0 by Sarah Lacy
    
42. Bad Moon Rising by Jonathan Maberry
    
43. The Canon: A Whirligig Tour of the Beautiful Basics of Science by Natalie Angier
    
44. The Best American Science Writing 2008 edited by Sylvia Nasar & Jesse Cohen (series editor)
    
45. Heat: An Amateur's Adventures as Kitchen Slave, Line Cook, Pasta-Maker, and Apprentice to a Dante-Quoting Butcher in Tuscany by Bill Buford
    
46. The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2008 edited by Jerome Groopman and Tim Folger (series editor)
    
47. The Quantum Ten: A Story of Passion, Tragedy, Ambition, and Science by Sheilla Jones
    
48. The Dime Detectives: a Comprehensive History of the Detective Fiction Pulps by Ron Goulart
    
49. Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies by Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff
    
50. Content: Selected Essays on Technology, Creativity, Copyright, and the Future of the Future by Cory Doctorow
    
51. God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything by Christopher Hitchens
    
52. Mafiaboy: How I Cracked the Internet and Why It's Still Broken by Michael Calce and Craig Silverman

I should mention that there are a significant number of books I've read that aren't on the list. I'm not recording the books I read for the Sunburst Awards as I don't think the list of books actually submitted for consideration are made public anywhere.

One book that I did read that's not on the list is The Open Laboratory: The Best Science Writing on Blogs 2007, edited by Reed Cartwright and Bora Zivkovic. Since I was on the advance screening panel of judges for the book, I did read all the posts that are reprinted in it during the judging period at the end of 2007; I also ordered and received the book in 2008. But I never actually cracked the cover and re-read all the posts during 2008. I did re-read a few, but not all.

Notable non-fiction, in no particular order:

• Here Comes Everybody by Clay Shirky
  
• The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2008 edited by Jerome Groopman and Tim Folger (series editor)
  
• Content by Cory Doctorow
  
• The Canon by Natalie Angier
  
• Einstein: A Life by Walter Isaacson

Notable fiction, in no particular order (Note that this doesn't include Sunburst books, which would make the list quite different):

• The Keeper by Sarah Langan
  
• Tin Roof Blowdown by James Lee Burke
  
• Green Glass Sea by Ellen Klages
  
• The Ruins by Scott Smith
  
• Triptych by Karen Slaughter

As a side note, I really do love reading other people's lists of books they've read. So, those of you who are so inclined (and who are odd enough to actually record each and every book they read during the year), consider this a meme and consider yourselves tagged.

Review-wise, I still have to figure out what to do with the growing backlog of annual essay collections that I haven't reviewed yet. I may end up doing a mass review with one-liner comments at some point. Of books that deserve full-length treatment, I still have Groundswell, Doctorow's Content and Mafiaboy, but it might be a while before I get to any of those. FWIW, I probably won't be reading too many non-Sunburst books for at least a few more months.

(I've been recording every book I read since 1983 and on my other blog I've been occasionally transcribing the list on a year by year basis. I've stalled of late, but I'll probably do a few more during the holidays this year. This list will also be re-posted there eventually.)