As another year comes to a close many begin reflecting on what they did in the past year. For me I always like to take the time to review the books I have managed to fit into my schedual. And so I present Grim's comprehensive 2008 reading list in order of least to most recently read:

Grand and Ancient Forest - Carolyn De Vries
The Last Great Forest - Ian Urquhart
Wolves and Wilderness - John B Theberge
Stumped - Ken Drushka
Canada's Deadly Secret - Jim Harding
The People of Paper - Salvador Plascencia
The Atlas of the Future - Ian Pearson
Bear Attacks - S. Herrero
Fire and Ice - Michael Henry Adams
Lenin: A Biography - David Shub
Revolution Cuban style - Gil Green
The discarded people - Cosmas Desmond
The Pocket Darwin - John & Mary Gribbin
The Revenge of Gaia - J. E. Lovelock
On Being Certain - Robert Burton
Hegemony or Survival? - Noam Chomsky
Marx and Freedom - Terry Eagleton
The Limits of Power - Andrew Bacevich
The Hijacking of Jesus - Dan Wakefield
A Secular Faith - D. G. Hart
God in the White House - Randall Balmer
The New Paradigm for Financial Markets - Soros George
Some Like it Cold - Robert C. Paehlke
Earth: The Sequel - Miriam Horn, Fred Krupp
The Warrior's Honor - Michael Ignatieff
The Limits of State Action - WILHELM VON HUMBOLDT

In total I managed to read 26 book and understand far less. Not bad considering how busy things are where I live.

Grim, do you speed read? I've been thinking about teaching high schoolers how to do that. I learned 50 years ago. How did you pick your books? What's with the Zambian flag? So many questions, so little time.

No I don't speed read, although sometimes I wish I could finish books slightly faster. I can really only read a book every two weeks, which means that for a book with 200 pages I read around 14.3 pages/day which is highly manageable. Usually if I have a busy week I have no problem catching up on the weekends.

I usually pick which book I am going to read next from a long list that I keep of books that have piqued my interest at one time or another. I find a lot of interesting books on the internet especially anobii.com, in the bibliographies of books I have finised or by simply browsing library shelves.

The flag means little to me personally, I like being unconventional I guess. I like interesting patterns I suppose.

How did you correctly surmise that it was the Zambian flag? Can you guess where the flag I am currently using is from?

Lawrence wrote:Grim, do you speed read?

I've been thinking about teaching high schoolers how to do that. I learned 50 years ago.

How did you pick your books? What's with the Zambian flag? So many questions, so little time.

how does one go about learning how to speed read? and where did you learn how to do it so long ago?

It involves the hasty recognition of key words and a direguard for normal linguists (a, is, so, it) of sentence structure I think. I'm sure there is more to it than that.

One L by Scott Turow
Audacity of Hope by Barack Obama
were the last two.... read about 15 this year.

In 2009 I plan to read a biography on everyone who signed the Declaration of Independence, I am headed to law school and am interested in constitutional law and history of law.

This year was the lightest reading year for me in 4 years. I only read about 14 books. In 2006, I read 46 books.

If it were not for audio books and my decision to try them out, I would have read only about 6 books.

I gotta find time to start reading again.

I am a constant reader, which is one reason I like Booktalk. I don't keep a list of the books I read, but should. A good new year's resolution. I enjoy reading more than watching TV and movies, as books move faster and have more content, and often mass media promotes values that I disagree with. Most recently, I read After Tamerlane, The Secret Garden, God is Not Great, The Ezekiel Code and Limits of Power, and am now reading Faith and History by Reinhold Niebuhr. Unfortunately with Niebuhr I have to read every page twice to really get it. I don't speed read as that is a recipe for not understanding the content. Highlights for me this year were The Pagan Christ , Our Inner Ape, Your Inner Fish, Exile and the Kingdom, Heart of Darkness and The Secret Agent. Next on my list is The Bottom Billion by Paul Collier.

Many thanks to Chris for hosting Booktalk and arranging discussions on such an interesting lot of books.

No need for speed reading - I have 5 Hour Energy Drinks

Here is my 2008 list. I got through 64 books. A lot are kids literature because of the course that I did in the area of children's literature, so they were fairly quick for me. This year I am aiming for 75, and hoping for more varied across several genres.

1. The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame
2. Seven Little Australians by Ethel Turner
3. The Magic Pudding by Norman Lindsay
4. Odysseus Returns Home by Homer
5. Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
6. Death Du Jour by Kathy Reichs
7. Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
8. On the Banks of Plum Creek by Laura Ingalls Wilder
9. The Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum
10. Heidi by Johanna Spyri
11. Comet in Moominland by Tove Jansson
12. Storm Boy by Colin Thiele
13. Two Weeks with the Queen by Morris Gleitzman
14. Snugglepot and Cuddlepie by May Gibbs
15. The Voyage Out by Virginia Woolf
16. Scotland Myths and Legends by Beryl Beare
17. Winnie-the-Pooh by A.A. Milne
18. The House at Pooh Corner by A.A. Milne
19. When We Were Very Young by A.A. Milne
20. Now We Are Six by A.A. Milne
21. The Tale of Mrs Tiggy-Winkle by Beatrix Potter
22. Little Men by Louisa May Alcott
23. The Tale of Peter Rabbit by Beatrix Potter
24. The Story of Miss Moppet by Beatrix Potter
25. Possum Magic by Mem Fox/Julie Vivas
26. A.A. Milne: His Life by Anne Thwaite
27. The Complete Short Stories of Roald Dahl by Roald Dahl
28. The Tale of Tom Kitten by Beatrix Potter
29. Northern Lights by Philip Pullman
30. The Subtle Knife by Philip Pullman
31. The Amber Spyglass by Philip Pullman
32. To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf
33. The Pie and the Patty Pan by Beatrix Potter
34. The World of the Book by Des Cowley and Clare Williamson
35. Schindler’s Ark by Thomas Keneally
36. Xerxes Invades Greece by Herodotus
37. The Aeneid by Virgil
38. The Tale of the Flopsy Bunnies by Beatrix Potter
39. Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand
40. Cannery Row by John Steinbeck
41. Robin Hood by Henry Gilbert
42. Magic, Witchcraft and Ghosts in the Greek and Roman Worlds by Daniel Ogden
43. Ulysses by James Joyce
44. Tutankhamen by Renzo Rossi
45. Knossos by Renzo Rossi
46. Fairy Tales and the Art of Subversion by Jack Zipes
47. The Sea, The Sea by Xenophon
48. The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde
49. The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver
50. Sylvia by Bryce Courtenay
51. Finn Family Moomintroll by Tove Jansson
52. The Iliad by Homer
53. The Enchanted Wood by Enid Blyton
54. The Magic Faraway Tree by Enid Blyton
55. The Folk of the Faraway Tree by Enid Blyton
56. The Little Prince by Antoine De Saint-Exupéry
57. Lost in a Good Book by Jasper Fforde
58. The Caged Virgin by Ayaan Hirsi Ali
59. The Thousand and One Nights
60. The Tales of Beedle the Bard by JK Rowling
61. The Freedom Writers Diary by The Freedom Writers with Erin Gruwell
62. The Exploits of Moominpappa by Tove Jansson
63. Love and Friendship: Juvenilia by Jane Austen
64. The Abduction of Sita by R.K. Narayan [narrator]