My reading

Looking at the 2012 book list, a few things are apparent. First, the kindle makes a huge difference. I got it in mid-October and then proceeded to read 32 more books before the year was over. Admittedly, there were more than a few lightweights in that span, but it is still remarkable to me. I continue to read less and less fiction, even when I make a point of reading it. Given my disinterest in fantasy fiction and romance novels, I'm not exactly being inundated with opportunities to change this. And, true to form, I'm starting 2013 with fiction in its densest possible form -- Infinite Jest. Other books that have been piling up for 2013: A Wilderness of Error by Errol Morris, Pearl Jam 20, Unforgiven by Rob Bagchi and Paul Rogerson, and Under the Volcano by Malcolm Lowry. I'm already about 30% through The Moviegoer by Walker Percy, so it is all but certain to be the first book of 2013.

Book List: 2012

Here's the list for 2012, all 77 books. I'm reading more than ever, but am also reading less fiction than I did in all the prior years (where I sure wasn't reading this kind of volume). My favorites for the year are starred.

January (5)
When March Went Mad by Seth Davis
College Humor: The Website: The Book by the writers of Collegehumor.com
The Great Typo Hunt by Jeff Deck and Benjamin D. Herson
The Book of Drugs by Mike Doughty
The American Way of Death Revisited by Jessica Mitford*

February (10)
Bottom of the 33rd by Dan Barry
The Universal Baseball Association, Inc., J. Henry Waugh, Prop. by Robert Coover
Jimmy Corrigan: the Smartest Kid on Earth by Chris Ware
D.C. Noir edited by George Pelecanos
2012 Baseball America Prospect Handbook edited by the editors of Baseball America The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde*
The Killer Angels by Michael Shaara
How to Archer by Sterling Archer
Now Pitching: Bob Feller by Bob Feller with Bill Gilbert
The Men Who Stare At Goats by Jon Ronson*

March (9):
Dirty Minds: How Our Brains Influence Love, Sex and Relationships by Kayt Sukel
The Perfection Point by John Brenkus
The Complete Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi
When I Was a Young Man by Bob Kerrey
Out of My League by Dirk Hayhurst*
Bossypants by Tina Fey
My Friend Dahmer by Derf Backderf
The Sweet Science by A.J. Liebling
The Curse of Rocky Colavito by Terry Pluto

April (2):
Sweetness: the Enigmatic Life of Walter Payton by Jeff Pearlman
Game Six by Mark Frost

May (3):
Shoeless Joe by W.P. Kinsella
The Pitch That Killed by Mike Sowell
Where I’m Calling From by Raymond Carver

June (3):
The Art of Fielding by Chad Harbach
Dreams From My Father by Barack Obama
I Am a Genius of Unspeakable Evil and I Want to be Your Class President by Josh Lieb

July (5)
The Power Broker by Robert Caro*
The Last Natural by Rob Miech
The Beats: a Graphic History by Harvey Pekar et al.
The McSweeney’s Book of Politics and Musicals edited by Christopher Monks
The Card: Collectors, Con Men, and the True Story of History’s Most Desired Baseball Card by Michael O’Keeffe and Teri Thompson

August (5)
Love is a Mix Tape by Rob Sheffield*
The Deportees and Other Stories by Roddy Doyle
Freakonomics by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner*
Summer of Shadows by Jonathan Knight
I Love It When You Talk Retro by Ralph Keyes

September (2)
Sleepwalk With Me and Other Stories by Mike Birbiglia
One Day in September by Simon Reeve

October (8)
America Again: Rebecoming the Greatness We Never Weren’t by Stephen Colbert
The Hall of Nearly Great edited by Jason Wojciechowski and Marc Normandin
Telegraph Avenue by Michael Chabon
The Wire-to-Wire Reds: Sweet Lou, Nasty Boys, and the Road to a World Championship by John Erardi and Joel Luckhaupt
Columbine by Dave Cullen*
The Beckham Experiment by Grant Wahl
Illegal Procedure by Josh Luchs and James Dale
The Best Show in Football: The 1946-55 Cleveland Browns -- Football’s Greatest Dynasty by Andy Piascik

November (15)
The Extra 2% by Jonah Keri*
Steinbrenner: The Last Lion of Baseball by Bill Madden
Change Up: an Oral History of 8 Key Events that Shaped Baseball by Larry Burke and Peter Thomas Fornatale with Jim Baker
Don’t Put Me In Coach by Mark Titus
The Joy of Keeping Score: How Scoring the Game Has Influenced and Enhanced the History of Baseball by Paul Dickson
Hard-Luck Harvey Haddix and the Greatest Game Ever Lost by Lew Freedman
How Soccer Explains the World by Franklin Foer
Super Freakonomics by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner*
Dream Team: How Michael, Magic, Larry, Charles, and the Greatest Team of All Time Conquered the World and Changed the Game of Basketball Forever by Jack McCallum
Scorecasting: The Hidden Influences Behind How Sports are Played and Games are Won by Tobias Moskowitz and L. Jon Wertheim
The Will to Whatevs by Eugene Mirman
Johnny Cash: I See a Darkness by Reinhard Kleist
Brief Interviews With Hideous Men by David Foster Wallace
Created in Darkness by Troubled Americans: The Best of McSweeney’s Humor Category edited by Dave Eggers et al.
Decoded by Jay-Z*

December (10): In the Peanut Gallery with Mystery Science Theater 3000: Essays on Film, Fandom, Technology and the Culture of Riffing edited by Robert G. Weiner and Shelley E. Barba
The Best of American Splendor by Harvey Pekar
The Secret History of the War on Cancer by Devra Davis
The Book of Baseball Literacy: 3rd Edition by David H. Martinez
Pre: the Story of America's Greatest Running Legend by Tom Jordan
Marathon: The Ultimate Training and Racing Guide by Hal Higdon
The Best American Humorous Short Stories edited by Alexander Jessup
E-mails from an Asshole by John Lindsay
F in Exams by Richard Benson
Winesburg, Ohio by Sherwood Anderson

Lists: Books

January (3)
Black and Blue: How Racism, Drugs and Cancer Almost Destroyed Me by Paul Canoville
Home Buying For Dummies by Eric Tyson and Ray Brown
Tips and Traps When Buying a Home by Robert Irwin

February (6)
Mortgages for Dummies by Eric Tyson and Ray Brown
The Damned United by David Peace
The Quitter by Harvey Pekar
An Object of Beauty by Steve Martin
The Good Stuff by Joe Posnanski
How to Beat Up Anybody by Judah Friedlander

March (3)
Zombie Spaceship Wasteland by Patton Oswalt
Hell in a Handbasket by Tom Tomorrow
2011 Baseball America Prospect Handbook by Jim Callis et al.

April (4)
The War for Late Night by Bill Carter
I Was Right On Time by Buck O'Neil
Bowerman and the Men of Oregon by Kenny Moore
For Your Eyes Only: Ian Fleming and James Bond by Ben Macintyre

May (5)
The Internet Is a Playground by David Thorne
Chronicles, Volume 1 by Bob Dylan
Living on the Black by John Feinstein
The Late Shift by Bill Carter
Cancer on $5 a Day *Chemo Not Included by Robert Schimmel and Alan Eisenstock

June (4)
The Game From Where I Stand by Doug Glanville
The Devil and the White City by Erik Larson
Permanent Midnight by Jerry Stahl
Mountain Man Dance Moves: the McSweeney's Book of Lists by the Editors of McSweeney's

July (6)
Chasing the Game by Filip Bondy
Shut Out: a Story of Race and Baseball in Boston by Howard Bryant
The Rocket That Fell To Earth by Jeff Pearlman
The Final Season by Tom Stanton
The New Frugality by Chris Farrell
Where the Wild Things Were by William Stolzenburg

August (5)
Project Nim by Elizabeth Hess
A False Spring by Pat Jordan
Zoo Story by Thomas French
High Heat by Tim Wendel
Those Guys Have All the Fun: Inside the World of ESPN by James Andrew Miller and Tom Shales

September (2)
My Year of Flops by Nathan Rabin
Last Call by Daniel Okrent

Since I've uploaded this, I've read nothing but nonfiction, but it's also included some real dense works -- Last Call took me the better part of two months. It's a good history of prohibition, but the word I'd use to describe it a bit too appropriate for such a topic, so I won't even use it.

...

I hit a run of science/ecology/biology books with Where the Wild Things Were, Project Nim, and Zoo Story. Now I'm starting a couple of novels, which is odd since I haven't read anything but nonfiction since apparently An Object of Beauty in February, which, while certainly not good, didn't warrant a half a year away from fiction entirely.

...

Fine, fine, Last Call is dry. Okay? Happy now? Can we move on?

The 50 book threshold seems a lot tougher this year. Admittedly, I've had a lot of lengthier books and I've really run out of go-to fiction authors (I've read everything from Chabon and Vonnegut now, and the Ian Fleming Bond novels are waaaay back in the rear-view mirror now), but it still seems like I've read a lot more than 38 books. I suppose moving near the subway has largely limited my ability to read when going to and from work -- my commute's no longer worth filling and this week I've taken to walking home while I'm trying to overcome an inexplicable injury/health issue that I'm not willing to run through. Either way, 50 is doable, and I suspect it could be done by November considering I have a couple more flights in my near future and no baseball games to fill my spare time.

Lists: Books (2011)

I'm at 20 books for the year and expect that I'll be at 21 by the end of the month. I've noticed that I'm accumulating a number of authors for whom I've read multiple books over the last few years -- likely because I read on very few topics and I don't have a lot of readers in my social circle who would really turn me on to someone. The latest to join this group is Bill Carter, who is a television writer, which is surprising, given that I don't really watch much in the way of television. But I read his book about the debacle at NBC with Conan O'Brien in April, which then led me to go back and read his book about the Letterman/Leno debacle at NBC -- of which I made short work. They're both fascinating to me and strike me as pretty ludicrously balanced. They don't make me despise Jay Leno any less, but they make a case for him as a sympathetic figure in both scenarios. But that was right on the heels of finishing John Feinstein's error-laden book about Mike Mussina and Tom Glavine, which was my second of his books.

I'm in the middle of three books: Where the Wild Things Were, Shut Out by Howard Bryant (see FJM post if you want a good reason why I've not felt motivated to pick this up again), and The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson (which I anticipate I may finish in the next two days).

So, since I started this quest in 2007, I've read 24 authors multiple times. Here's the list:
Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. (13)
Ian Fleming (12)
Michael Chabon (9)
Jon Krakauer (5)
Raymond Chandler (3)
Steve Martin (3)
Joe Posnanski (3)
JD Salinger (3)
Sherman Alexie (2)
Jim Callis et al. (Baseball America prospect handbook authors) (2)
Bill Carter (2)
Don DeLillo (2)
Dave Eggers (2)
John Feinstein (2)
Mark Haddon (2)
Dashiell Hammett (2)
Nick Hornby (2)
AJ Jacobs (2)
Chuck Klosterman (2)
Michael Lewis (2)
David Maraniss (2)
Jeff Pearlman (2)
Art Spiegelman (2)
Eric Tyson/Ray Brown (2) - no more from these two, it's safe to say.

I'm surprised that Fleming got beat out, I didn't realize I'd read that many Vonnegut books. I will definitely read more Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler when the opportunity presents itself, I just don't engage with fiction that often (the list of authors kind of shows that my forays into fiction are very concentrated in a given author).

I'd expect to add a few authors to that list since I already own the books to do it: Christopher Buckley, James M. Cain, Raymond Carver, Norman Mailer and Harvey Pekar.

54 books and counting

I'm back to posting reading lists. Here's 2010, which has been a whole lot of mediocrity. Looking at this list, I remember very few books that were exceptionally good. The Art of Racing in the Rain, The Soul of Baseball, Cardboard Gods, Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Inside Iraq's Green Zone, and The Pittsburgh Cocaine Seven are probably the top five for me. Not coincidentally, four of the five (not The Art of Racing in the Rain), I think I finished in no more than three or four days (or, in the case of The Soul of Baseball, about 14 hours). Born to Run is also an exceptional book, but since it also contributed to my returning to the Vibram FiveFingers (which immediately preceded my stress fracture -- though I'm reluctant to declare a causal link), I'm definitely docking it some points).

January (10)
9 Stories by J.D. Salinger
Eiger Dreams: Ventures Among Men and Mountains by Jon Krakauer
White Noise by Don DeLillo
Farewell, My Lovely by Raymond Chandler
Slapstick by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
Hammerin' Hank, George Almighty and the Say Hey Kid: the Year that Changed Baseball Forever by John Rosengren
The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson
Raise the Roofbeam High, Carpenters and Seymour, an Introduction by J.D. Salinger
You Shall Know Our Velocity! by Dave Eggers
American Lightning by Howard Blum

February (2)
The Book of Vice: Naughty Things (and How to Do Them) by Peter Sagal
From Here to Eternity by James Jones

March (2)
Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
Darkness at Noon by Arthur Koestler

April (7)
Why My Wife Thinks I'm An Idiot by Mike Greenberg
2010 Baseball America Prospect Handbook edited by Jim Callis et al.
The Road to Omaha: Hits, Hopes, and History at the College World Series by Ryan McGee
The Soul of Baseball: A Road Trip Through Buck O'Neil's America by Joe Posnanski
The Guinea Pig Diaries by A.J. Jacobs
Jailbird by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
Pop Apocalypse! by Lee Konstantinou

May (8)
The Punch by John Feinstein
You're a Horrible Person, But I Like You: The Believer Book of Advice edited by Eric Spitznagel
Chuck Klosterman IV: A Decade of Curious People and Dangerous Ideas by Chuck Klosterman
Cardboard Gods: An All-American Tale Told Through Baseball Cards by Josh Wilker
Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs by Chuck Klosterman
The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien
Big Hair and Plastic Grass by Dan Epstein
Armageddon in Retrospect by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.

June (3)
Soccernomics by Simon Kuper and Stefan Szymanski
Player Piano by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
For Love of the Game by Michael Shaara

July (2)
You Gotta Have Wa by Robert Whiting
Wrigleyworld by Kevin Kaduk

August (4)
U2 by U2 by U2
Catcher in the Wry by Bob Uecker
Mint Condition: How Baseball Cards Became an American Obsession by Dave Jamieson
The Art of Racing in the Rain by Garth Stein

September (5)
This Land Is Their Land by Barbara Ehrenreich
The View from the Upper Deck by D.J. Gallo
Long-Range Goals: the Success Story of Major League Soccer by Beau Dure
Born to Run by Christopher McDougall
Homer's Odyssey by Gwen Cooper

October (5)
Earth: a Visitor's Guide by Jon Stewart et al.
Odd Man Out by Matt McCarthy
The Pittsburgh Cocaine Seven by Aaron Skirboll
Big Fish by Daniel Wallace
Kiss It Good-Bye by John Moody

November (4)
Deadeye Dick by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
Ball Four by Jim Bouton
The Lost Dogs by Jim Gorant
Actual Innocence by Barry Scheck, Jim Neufeld and Jim Dwyer

December (2)
Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Inside Iraq's Green Zone by Rajiv Chandrasekaran
How to Lose Friends and Influence People by Toby Young