Tuesday, January 06, 2009

The 2008 Book List

This is the final list of books I read over 2008.

Desolation Island (the fifth volume in the Master and Commander series) by Patick O'Brian

Homage to Catalonia by George Orwell

For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway

The Places in Between by Rory Stewart

The Prince of the Marshes (and other occupational hazards of a year in Iraq) by Rory Stewart

Prince Caspian by C.S. Lewis

Worlds at War - The 2,500 Year Struggle Between East and West by Anthony Pagden.

King Leopold's Ghost - A Story of Greed, Terror and Heroism in Colonial Africa by Adam Hochschild

The Great Cat Massacre and Other Episodes in French Cultural History by Robert Darnton

Habits of the Mind: Intellectual Life as a Christian Calling by James W. Sire

God's Politics: Why the Right Gets it Wrong and the Left Doesn't Get It by Jim Wallis

The Songlines by Bruce Chatwin

Beowulf. A new tranlsation by Seamus Heaney. Bilingual (English/Anglo Saxon) Edition

In Patagonia by Bruce Chatwin

I enjoyed all these reads. I particularily enjoyed the two Rory Stewart books.

I have started 2009 with Taking on the System: Rules for Radical Change in a Digital World by Daily Kos founder Markos Moulitsas Zuniga and The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Doesteyevsky. The Brothers Karamazov is proceeding in fits and starts. I'm about halfway through. Many consider it Doesteyevsky's masterpiece...but so far I prefer both The Idiot and Crime and Punishment to Brothers.
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Regarding additional reading: I have dropped my subscription to SKI Magazine. I currently subscribe to Sierra (the official magazine of the Sierra Club), National Geographic, National Geographic Adventure and Skiing.