Post your reading accomplished and goals here.


Mine:

Goal 24 books. Read: 11

Alexander the Great, Cartledge
Mythology, Hamilton
Grapes of Wrath, Steinbeck
Atlas Shrugged, Rand
Plato and a Platypus Walk into a Bar, Cathcart
Aristotle for Everybody, Adler
Sparta: New Perspectives, (scholarly compilation)
A History of Civilizations, Braudel
The World from Beginnings to 4000 BCE, Tattersall
Notre Dame de Paris, Hugo
Daily Life of the Ancient Greeks, Garland

Next year my goal will be 24 and hopefully I'll get a little bit closer to it. I did tackle some pretty heavy reading but there are some very 'light' books on the list as well.

nice goin' Prez!

i'm envious, i wish i had read all those books, they sure look like pearlers, which one gave you the biggest impact?

i read a lot in 2012, lots of jung, campbell, watts, mythology, interbane, articles, etc but mostly nibbling and grazing, didnt really sink my teeth into much, saved that for movies and music.

on a bit of a jung bender at the mo' tho' and i suppose i will continue that for a while.

i'm trying to track down a good write up of ancient zodiac symbolism which assuming i find said tome it will be a goal to read.

It's difficult to say which book has impacted me the greatest. Fiction books sure do have a way of making emotional arguments which can be applied to real world applications. In this way they reveal 'truths' the same way that myths or parables do in ancient texts. This creates a pretty strong 'feeling' as it alters or enhances personal values. The emotions are ignited and heightened. Non-fiction books usually don't provide such a powerful motivator for personal change despite providing more emotionally detached, 'whole' truths, in the form of scientific facts.

I dunno. My History is a big part of my life now. While the two fictions Wrath and Shrugged together had a nice impact, I feel the history books I slowly consume will one day add up, brick by brick, book by book, into something impressive and will ultimately serve me the best. It's a long term investment. Fiction books are like chocolate for the soul. These History books are my meat and vegetables.

Jung sounds interesting.

very interesting point about the various impacts.

reminds me of a kind of "kung fu movie" metaphor, the one inch punch vs. the trembling hand technique. the one inch punch is explosive and immediate whereas the trembling hand you might not even feel at the time but ages later drop dead from the after effects.

but whether it's chocolate or meat and veg, bon apetite El Presidente.

I am always impressed by your reading list Pres. I cannot list all that I have read in 2012, but the year is not yet over. I still have 200 pages of Les Mis to read before I can see the musical on Christmas day. Les Miserables will be my great read of 2012. Having a great read makes for a good reading year!

I didn't have a goal for 2012, but I am thrilled that I finally started a book review website, The Book Wheel. This year I am going to try to read some classics for the Classics Club and tackle my 2013 TBR Challenge list.

My goal for 2012 was 52 books (one per week on average) but I fell off in the Fall... for some reason I always seem to read less during Autumn. My final tally was just over 40.

My goal is the same this year, though my course load at university may have something to say about that.

Theomanic, what were the 40 you were reading? And which of them do you recommend?

Aomame wrote:Theomanic, what were the 40 you were reading? And which of them do you recommend?

Well that's a big question! I had a "2012" shelf on my GoodReads but I deleted it once 2013 rolled around... Let me see what I can remember.

The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Luis Zafon - About a "cemetery of forgotten books" and a boy who takes a book from it (to guard it) and the events of his life in the next decade or two. Highly recommend, very interesting, a little dreamy.

Murder of Angels by Caitlin R. Kiernan - A girl is medicated to forget some mysterious trauma she experienced a decade ago. I found the character development a little thin and I was kind of forcing myself to finish it.

Let's Pretend This Never Happened by Jenny Lawson - A funny memoir from a lady who has a blog. Quite hilarious, I enjoyed it a lot.

The Ice Princess by Camilla Lackberg - Some lady comes back to her tiny home town and there was a murder. I thought it was mediocre, but others I've lent it to quite liked it. I found the plot quite predictable, but I seem to have a super power of knowing whodunnit in mysteries.

White Cat by Holly Black - Teen novel about some witchy people and a mysterious family past. It was okay but doesn't compare to her Tithe trilogy, which was excellent.

Going Bovine by Libba Bray - A teen is diagnosed with Mad Cow Disease and goes on a bizarre cross-country trip in an effort to find a cure. I really like Libba Bray and find her main characters often have a wry humour that I enjoy. This book was good, though I liked her Gemma Doyle trilogy more. Though I loved the Gemma Doyle books, so it's hard to compare.

City of Fallen Angels by Cassandra Clare - Fourth book in the Mortal Instruments series (which is coming out in movie form soon). Again, alright, but didn't really compare to the initial trilogy.

Clockwork Angel & Clockwork Prince by Cassandra Clare - Books one and two in the prequel series to the Mortal Instruments. Pretty neat actually, and I like the way she's dealing with characters we've already met in the "future". I generally am not a fan of prequels but this one it pretty decent.

Virals by Kathy Reichs - The writer of the Bones books started a teen series and this is the first one. I liked it.

Temperance Brennan, books 1-7 by Kathy Reichs - The aforementioned Bones books. I really enjoyed books 1-4, but starting with 5 I found them less interesting and compelling. Also, the main character is weirdly bitchy sometimes, she has issues. Which is fine but I don't think she's supposed to seem bitchy.

Kraken by China Mieville - A giant kraken goes missing from a museum and the scientist who helped preserve it's body is caught up with some cults and supernatural detectives as people try to find it before the end of the world. Very interesting, a lot of neat ideas. I've read another book by the same author, which I found a lot more obtuse, but this was very readable.

The Song of the Lioness, books 1-4 by Tamora Pierce - Another teen series, this one fantasy based. The first book was quite strong, but each successive novel seemed weaker to me, to the point where I found the 4th novel a bit of a chore.

Sophie's World by Jostein Gaardner - A book about philosophyn written in a philosophical manner. I read this when I was a teenager and wanted to reread it. The book starts out quite magically, but at the 3/4 point or slow it becomes a lot more of an information dump and less interesting.

Stephanie Plum, books 1-12 by Janet Evanovich - A series about a terrible bounty hunter. Mysteries, blah. Definite beach reading! The books start out pretty well, but the further into the series, the more the bounty hunter (Stephanie) is shown as a bumbling incompetent, and every time she tries to catch a criminal it turns into some Three Stooges sketch. I was getting pretty sick of it all by book 12, but they're great to read when you have a cold.

The Strain & The Fall by Guillermo del Toro & Chuck Hogan - Vampires are re-introduced to the world and they set about ruling it. I had high hopes for these books because a lot of reviews I read said they were genuinely scary... but they weren't. Nothing really original or unique to see here.

Magic Slays by Ilona Andrews - Book five in the Kate Daniels series, which is about a bounty hunter in a near future Atlanta in which magic has re-appeared in the world. The first three books in this trilogy were great. The fourth was alright, this one was not excellent.

Gunmetal Magic by Ilona Andrews - Set in the same world as the former, about a were-hyena who works at the bounty hunter agency Kate Daniels runs. Good for the genre.

The Hunger Games by Suzanne Coillins - A girl set in a dystopian future(?) is forced to fight to to the death against 11 peers. Pretty well known, movie based on it. I was surprised by how much I enjoyed this book considering a lot of the people who recommended it also liked Twilight......

Twelve Houses, books 1-3 by Sharon Shinn - A series about a fantasy world wherein twelve houses rule the land, under a king. The land is experiencing unrest, and some people are sent out to discover what is happening. The first one, Mystic Rider, is head and shoulders above the others, but they're still good books and I intend on finishing the series (there's five total).

The Secret History of Moscow by Ekaterina Sedia - A secret magical underworld sort of thing in Moscow... sort of like Neverwhere but in Moscow instead of London. I thought I would like this more than I did, but I didn't find the stories weaved together well enough.

As you may be able to tell, that's more than 40, but some of the teen books I group in twos because they're so light.