Books Read

I tend to set goals. I always have. It’s just the way I am. One day, I decided to try and read 100 books in a year. When I set the goal, I didn’t do the math, and it wasn’t until months later that I realized that in order to read 100 books in a year, I’d have to read 8.3 books a month. Or, in other words, 1.9 books a week. And it was then that I realized that I was woefully behind schedule.

Nonetheless, I persevered and managed to read 65 books that year, followed by the remaining 35 books the next year.

The books I tackled during that challenge are listed below, as are the books I’ve read since then.

Why does all of this reading matter to a writer, you ask? Stephen King supplies the answer in his book On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft:

“If you don’t have time to read, you don’t have the time (or the tools) to write. Simple as that.”

Books read 2011: 65

Books read 2012: 36 (100 books read in 23 month period)

Books read 2013: 32

Books read 2014: 14

Books read 2015: 8

Books read 2016: 15

Books read total to date: 170

Books Read in the Year 2011:

1. Hunger Games
2. Catching Fire
3. Matterhorn
4. The Big Burn
5. The Confession
6. School of Fear
7. Unbroken (WWII)
8. Olive Kittreridge
9. On Stealing Horses
10. Mockingjay
11. Imperfectionists
12. The Glass Castle (Jeannette Walls)
13. Interpreter of Maladies
14. Natural Acts (David Quamen)
15. Half Broke Horses (Jeanette Walls)
16. The Tiger: A True Story of Vengeance and Survival (John Valliant)
17. Ship of Gold into the Deep Blue Sea
18. The Dead Women of Juarez
19. Ocean Story
20. This is Butte; You Have Ten Minutes
21. The Golden Spruce
22. Skinny Bastard
23. In Search of Captain Zero
24. The Summer Son
25. The Lincoln Lawyer
26. The Hobbit
27. The Secret Life of Bees
28. Marching Powder
29. The Thousand Autumns of Jacob DeZoet
30. Silk Parachute (John McPhee)
31. Finders Keepers: A Tale of Archaeological Plunder and Obsession (Craig Childs)
32. Long Island Shaolin
33. The Boat Who Wouldn’t Float (Farley Mowat)
34. The Sportsman (Dhani Jones)
35. Priceless (Robert K. Wittman)
36. Levels of the Game (John McPhee)
37. The Help (Kathryn Stockett)
38. Middle School: The Worst Years of My Life (James Patterson)
39. Nature Girl (Carl Hiaasen)
40. The Summer He Didn’t Die (Jim Harrison)
41. The Art of Racing in the Rain (Garth Stein)
42. Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter (Tom Franklin)
43. Hellhound on His Trail (Hampton Sides)
44. Late Rain (Lynn Kostoff)
45. The Lotus Eaters (Tatjana Soli)
46. The Lacuna (Barbara Kingsolver)
47. Driving on the Rim (Thomas McGuane)
48. True North (Jim Harrison)
49. The Road (Cormac McCarthy)
50. In Search of Small Gods (Jim Harrison)
51. Caught Inside: A Surfer’s Year on the California Coast (Daniel Duane)
52. Spud
53. Eddie Would Go (Stuart Holmes Coleman)
54. Riding the Magic Carpet (Tom Anderson)
55. The Maze Runner (Dashner)
56. The Giver (Lois Lowry)
57. The Untethered Soul: the journey beyond yourself (Michael A. Singer)
58. Book Proposals and Query Letters (Marilyn Allen and Coleen Shea)
59. She Would Not Be Moved [Rosa Parks] (Herbert Kohl)
60. MFA in a Box (John Rember)
61. To Kill A Mockingbird
62. Outliers (Malcom Gladwell)
63. Killer Summer (Ridley Pearson)
64. The Scorch Trials (James Dashner)
65. Drive (Daniel Pink)

2012:

66. The Time of Our Lives (Tom Brokaw)
67. Going Bovine
68. The Man from Beijing
69. Brain Camp (graphic novel)
70. Cutting for Stone
71. Zeitoun (David Eggers)
72. Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet (Jamie Ford)
73. American Sniper (Chris Kyle)
74. Escape from Camp 14 (Blaine Harden)
75. The Phantom Tollbooth (Norton Juster) (April 15, 2012-75^th book read)
76. On the Brink (Tyler Drumheller)
77. Opening Minds (BSWP Book)
78. Man Hunt (Peter L. Bergen)
79. Indian Creek Chronicles (Pete Fromm)
80. Opening Minds…(Peter Johnston)
81. Get It Right (Jeff Wilhelm)
82. The War of Art (Steven Pressfield)
83. The River of Doubt (Candice Millard)
84. The Bluest Eye (Toni Morrison)
85. For King and Planets (Ethan Canin)
86. The Man in the Empty Boat (Mark Salzman)
87. Wild (Cheryl Strayed)
88. How to Write a Book Proposal (Michael Larsen)
89. Into the Wild (Jon Krakauer)
90. The Appeal (John Grisham)
91. Where Men Win Glory (Jon Krakauer)
92. This Is How You Lose Her (Junot Diaz)
93. The Surf Guru (Doug Dorst)
94. The Yellow Birds (Kevin Powers)
95. What Great Teachers Do Differently (Todd Whitaker)
96. I’d Like to Apologize to Every Teacher I Ever Had (Tony Danza)
97. Blue Nights (Joan Didion)
98. Cannery Row (John Steinbeck)
99. Peak (Roland Smith)
100. We Learn Nothing (Tim Kreider)—Nov. 28 (23 months)—Jan. 2010—Nov. 2012
101. One Step Behind (Henning Mankell)

2013:

102. A Desert of Pure Feeling (Judith Freeman)
103. One Shot (Jack Reacher Novel) (Lee Child)
104. Peak (Roland Smith)
105. Killing Floor (Lee Child)
106. Without Fail (Lee Child)
107. Short Nights of the Shadow Catcher (Timothy Egan)
108. The Happiness Project (Gretchen Rubin)
109. Whitey: The Life of America’s Most Notorious Mob Boss (Dick Lehr & G. O’Neill)
110. In the Land of the Living (Austin Ratner) (SV Writers Conference Book)
111. Death Without Company (Craig Johnson) (SV Writers Conference Book)
112. On These Courts (Wayne B Drash) (SV Writers Conference Book)
113. Eleven Rings (Phil Jackson)
114. Funny in Farsi (Firoozen Dumas) (SV Writers Conference Book)
115. The Tender Bar (JR Moehringer)
116. The End of Your Life Book Club (Will Schwalbe) (SV Writers Conference Book)
117. This One is Mine (Maria Semple) (SV Writers Conference Book)
118. The Books of My Lives (Aleksandar Hemon) (SV Writers Conference Book)
119. Dark Places (Gillian Flynn) (SV Writers Conf. Book)
120. On the Road (Jack Kerouac)
121. The Lost City of Z (David Grann)
122. Crossing the Wire (Will Hobbs)
123. Against All Grain (Danielle Walker)
124. Paleo Fitness (Darryl Edwards)
125. The Paleo Solution (Robb Wolf)
126. The Magic of Awareness (Anam Thubten)
127. The Core Six (Harvey F. Silver, et. al)
128. Jinete Sin Cabeza ( Washington Irving in Spanish-graphic novel)
129. Fall of Giants (Ken Follett)
130. The Outsiders (SE Hinton)
131. The Last Man (Vince Flynn)
132. Rumplestiltsken (graphic novel in Spanish)
133. The One-eyed Man is King (Gordon Graham)

2014:

134. 1 The Boys in the Boat (Daniel James Brown)
135. 2 Lone Survivor (Marcus Latrell)
136. 3 23 Anti-Procrastination Habits: How to…(SJ Scott)
137. 4 Writing Habit Mastery: How to…(SJ Scott)
138. 5 Divergent (Veronica Roth)
139. 6 The Racketeer (John Grisham)
140. 7 East of Eden (John Steinbeck)
141. 8 Blood River (Tim Butcher)
142. 9 La Linea (Ann Jaramillo)
143. 10 First Spanish Reader: A Dual-language Book (Angel Flores)
144. 11 Redeployment (Phil Klay)
145. 12 The Hundred Secret Senses (Amy Tan)
146. 13 The Heart and the Fist (Eric Greitens)
147. 14 Behind the Beautiful Forevers (Katherine Boo)

2015:

148. 1 State of Wonder: A Novel (Ann Patchett)
149. 2 Savage Harvest (Carl Hoffman)
150. 3 La Linea
151. 4 Three Cups of Deceit (J Krakauer)
152. 5 Missoula: Rape and the Justice System in a College Town (J Krakauer)
153. 6 Go Set a Watchman (Harper Lee)
154. 7 The Art of Stillness: Adventures in Going Nowhere (Pico Iyer)
155. 8 The Old Man and the Sea (Hemingway)

2016:

156. 1 Flora & Ulysses (Kate DiCamillo)
157. 2 Rethinking Grading (Cathy Vatterott)
158. 3 Happier than a Billionaire (Nadine Hays Pisani)
159. 4 The Lost Explorer: Finding Mallory on Mount Everest (Conrad Anker)
160. 5 A Death in Sweden (Kevin Wignall)
161. 6 Inside Seal Team Six (Don Man)
162. 7 The Big Seven (Jim Harrison)
163. 8 Barbarian Days: A Surfing Life (William Finnegan)
164. 9 Manage Your Day:… (Jocelyn K. Glei)
165. 10 A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Shakespeare)
166. The 100-year-old Man (Jonas Jonasson)
167. 12 The Perfect Storm (Sebastion Junger)
168. 13 Mindset (Carol Dweck)
169. 14 A Death in Belmont (Sebastion Junger)
170. 15 Over the Edge of the World (Laurence Bergreen)
171. 16 Stormbreaker (Anthony Horowitz)