Books

The real reason to read is to meet more interesting people than we have time to meet in a lifetime.
– Harold Bloom

I’ve been a reader all my life. I remember spending hours and hours browsing the stacks and sitting with a book at libraries though my childhood, under (and inspired by) The Flying Saucer at the historic Hyattsville library, where my mom worked, and later at the now-closed Wilde Lake branch of the Howard County library system.

Occasionally, I write a review. Not as often as I “should” or would like, but when I do they’re posted in the Books category of the blog.

My Most-Often Recommended Books

• Africa Is Not a Country: Notes on a Bright Continent, by Dipo Faloyin
• Chasing the Boogeyman, by Richard Chizmar
• Soundtracks, by Jon Acuff
• The Porch and the Cross: Ancient Stoic Wisdom for Modern Christian Living, by Kevin Vost
• The Stand, by Stephen King
• These Truths: A History of the United States, by Jill Lepore
• Atomic Habits [book of the month, Jan ’19], by James Clear [ review ]
• Bo’s Café, by John Lynch, Bill Thrall, Bruce McNicol
• Factfulness, by Hans Rosling
• New York 2140, by Kim Stanley Robinson
• We’re All Damaged, by Matthew Norman [ review ]
• In a Pit With a Lion On a Snowy Day: How to Survive and Thrive When Opportunity Roars, by Mark Batterson
• Love Does: Discover a Secretly Incredible Life in an Ordinary World, by Bob Goff
• Kill Decision, by Daniel Suarez
• The Invention of Air, by Steven Johnson
• The Jesuit Guide to (Almost) Everything: A Spirituality for Real Life, by James Martin
• Practices of an Agile Developer: Working in the Real World, by Venkat Subramaniam [ review ]
• Daemon (Daemon, #1), by Daniel Suarez [ review ]
• The Gunslinger (The Dark Tower, #1), by Stephen King [ review ]
• Everything Bad is Good for You, by Steven Johnson
• Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity, by David Allen
• First You Have to Row a Little Boat: Reflections on Life & Living, by Richard Bode
• Rich Dad Poor Dad: What The Rich Teach Their Kids About Money That the Poor and Middle Class Do Not!, by Robert T. Kiyosaki
• The Junk-Drawer Corner-Store Front-Porch Blues, by John R. Powers
• Guns, Germs and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies, by Jared Diamond
• Time and Again, by Jack Finney
• The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, #1), by Douglas Adams

Books I’ve read

It wasn’t until 1997 that I began keeping a list of the books I’ve finished reading. As I scroll through that list myself, it strikes me how many of those books can I not only remember reading but also visualize exactly where I was – physically and in my life – when I read them.

This is a mostly-complete list; There are books that I remember reading in the 1980-1996 range but don’t have the exact date so I’ve approximated based on where I recall being while reading them. There are plenty more from earlier years of which I have memories but can’t recall enough detail to identify date, title or author — when the heck did I read Dolphin Island or The White Mountains? Sometime in the mid 1970s under the flying saucer.