It's a new year, so it's time for me to disclose to the world the entire list of books I've read over the past year. I started keeping track a couple of years ago, and it's been an enjoyable exercise. One of my firmest goals is to have the list of books I read over the course of a year be longer than the list of movies I watched (which I'll talk about in a later post). Last year I didn't do it. But this year, I did. I read 38 books and only watched 32 movies. I was surprised at the number of personal memoirs/autobiographies I read this year: 10. The fiction to non-fiction ratio was 18 to 20, I try to keep them pretty even, so I did a good job.

Here is the complete list of books I completed in 2008 (this doesn't include scriptures or books I didn't finish). This year I've decided to list them in order of how much I liked them, with the date I finished them in parentheses. The ranking is kind of subjective, and most books (especially in the middle) could probably give or take a few rankings. Also bear in mind that I really liked most of the books I read this year - if I think a book is truly bad, I don't finish it.


1. The Quincunx by Charles Palliser (4/10/08). The longest, most demanding book I read in 2008, but clearly the best. I gave an extensive review at the time. This book is not for the faint-hearted, but the investment the reader has to make is well worth it.

2. The Complete Calvin and Hobbes, Book Three by Bill Watterson (10/18/08). Reading Calvin and Hobbes is both an exhilirating and depressing experience. Exhilirating because nearly every strip literally makes me laugh out loud. Depressing because I realize how cruddy every other comic strip in the world is by comparison.

3. Manhunt: The 12-Day Chase for Lincoln’s Killer by James L. Swanson (10/16/08). This is a gripping narrative of John Wilkes Booth's escape and capture. Swanson does a great job of presenting the information in an exciting way, almost making us cheer for Booth, but in the end, happy to see him brought to justice. I would really like to see a movie based on this book.

4. The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett (6/5/08). Excellent mystery novel, with interesting characters and plot points. One of the things I liked best about it was the way Hammett cleverly "wrote around" the things his characters did that would be scandalous to a 1930 audience. He never uses the swear words, and he never describes the sex scenes, but they're there. Modern authors could take a cue - Hammett comes off as a better storyteller while still keeping his characters real and a little despicable.

5. 1776 by David McCullough (7/18/08). McCullough is a fabulous writer who can bring history to life like few others can. This history of the first year of the Revolutionary War is divided into different sections about the siege of Boston, the Battle of New York, etc. I hope he writess 1777 through 1783, because he left George Washington in the lurch!

6. The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien (5/2/08). I don't know if there's a more likable character in all of fiction than Bilbo Baggins. Or a creepier one than Gollum.

7. Dracula by Bram Stoker (10/30/08). For a book in which very little action ever happens, and on top of that, for a vampire book in which vampires rarely appear, this was an enjoyable read. It's a lot more about the people who face Dracula than it is about Dracula himself, and I learned a lot about vampires.

8. The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson (5/3/08). We all know about how Dr. Jekyll turns into Mr. Hyde, but the fascinating part is how he deals with it after it's done.

9. The Hunt for Red October by Tom Clancy (6/17/08). Exactly what you'd want and expect out of this kind of book, Clancy keeps the action going, uses a lot of Naval terminology that is somewhat confusing but ultimately gritty and realistic, and he makes us cheer when the good guys win.

10. Dinner with Dad by Cameron Stracher (3/3/08). A memoir of a year when a New York lawyer makes a goal to be home with his family for dinner (and to make their dinner). I related more to the themes of caring for one's family and being a good father and helping your kids grow and learn than to the themes of work-life balance for a lawyer.

11. The Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux (1/19/08). I was surprised at how closely the musical hews to the book. The Phantom comes across more as a monster than as a misunderstood genius, though.

12. My Man Jeeves by P.G. Wodehouse (4/8/08). I honestly can't separate in my mind all the various Jeeves stories I've now read. This collection was on audiobook, a format which I recommend for Jeeves - you cannot read the text of a Wodehouse story without hearing it in a thick British accent, and hearing it that way helps a lot. Funny, funny, funny.

13. The Long Tail by Chris Anderson (11/13/08). This book was based on a magazine article by the author, and at times it felt like there was only enough material for one substantial magazine article. He explains how today's markets are concentrating more on a wide variety of things that only sell a few copies each, but doesn't do a lot to extend his theories outside of the intellectual property markets like music and movies.

14. The Worst Journey in the World by Apsley Cherry-Garard (9/3/08). A first-hand account of Robert Scott's ill-fated attempt to be the first to reach the South Pole in 1912 (the Norwegians beat him there by a couple of weeks, and Scott and three others died on the way back). Parts of it bog down with way too much detail, but parts of it really affected me emotionally as various members of the party made great sacrifices for each other.

15. Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen (8/29/08). I think this is my favorite Jane Austen novel (and I've now read four of the six), because the characters are more believable, the guy is likable, and Austen is - get this - actually funny sometimes.

16. Seventh Son by Orson Scott Card (7/24/08). I've meant to continue reading the other books in this series of fantasy novels based (very!) loosely on the life of Joseph Smith, but haven't gotten around to it. I imagine the more I read and the more I get into this alternate magical America Card has created, the more I'll like the books.

17. How the States Got Their Shapes by Marc Stein (12/10/08). Great idea, poorly executed. Stein endeavors to tell us the "why" behind every state border in the country, but he makes the inexplicable decision to organize it alphabetically by state, rather than geographically. This means when you're reading about Alabama, you have to flip forward to Mississippi to learn the details of their shared border, and by the time you're reading about Virginia or so, you already know everything he's going to say because you've read all the states that border it. That said, it's fascinating to learn things like the reason Michigan, not Wisconsin, has the Upper Peninsula (it was a consolation prize because Ohio got Toledo).

18. Musicophilia by Oliver Sacks (1/16/08). Kind of a clinical history of the author's patients with music-related mental disorders. Due to to his background, it's focused more on the neurology than the musicology, but it's an interesting read nonetheless.

19. Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ by Lew Wallace (2/27/08). The best-selling American novel of the Nineteenth Century (and the first third of the Twentieth!), and with good reason. Sometimes Ben-Hur can be a little superhuman, and I had trouble understanding and relating to his motivation (really - revenge should only take one so far), but he sure gets into some exciting situations.

20. The Invisible Man by H.G. Wells (4/22/08). The Invisible Man, it turns out, is a nasty meanie who uses his invisibility for his own advantage. He really has no redeeming qualities about him. It would have been better had Wells made him more of a real person with conflicts and personality.

21. Marley and Me by John Grogan (4/17/08). Pleasant memoir about life starting a family with "the world's worst dog." I've heard the movie that just came out can't decide if it's a movie about a dog or a movie about a family, and I guess I feel kind of the same way about the book.

22. Sojourner in the Promised Land by Jan Shipps (8/3/08). A collection of essays and articles by the foremost non-Mormon scholar of Mormonism, whom I met at a book club to discuss this book. It's interesting to get an outsider's perspective, and it was even more interesting talking to her about it.

23. My Grandfather’s Son by Clarence Thomas (1/4/08). This autobiography is just what you'd expect from Justice Thomas. It's a bit self-serving - he explains how underprivileged he was so you'll be impressed at where he ended up, he paints Anita Hill as a weirdo if not an outright villain, etc. - but I still feel that I came to understand him and where he's coming from.

24. The Backslider by Levi S. Peterson (10/7/08). Regarded as one of the preeminent examples of Mormon fiction, I was surprised at the amount of sex and profanity it contained, considering its primary audience. It's the story of the struggle of a rural Utah ranch hand in the 1950s to come to accept and believe in and - here's the hard part - live his religion. I'm not sure I agree with the doctrinal conclusion (the doctrine of the "Cowboy Jesus"), but it did give me a different (true or not) perspective on my people.

25. Boomsday by Christopher Buckley (7/3/08). This is a satirical novel in which it's proposed that the government give incentives for senior citizens to commit suicide ("voluntary transitioning," it's called) so as to save Social Security. The story is fun, but I felt like it just ended all of a sudden once the modest proposal is adopted, without exploring the consequences (maybe that was the point).

26. The Diving Bell and the Butterfly by Jean-Dominique Bauby (9/17/08). The amazing thing about this book isn't so much what it says (frankly, I can't remember much of what it says only a couple of months later, and it's very, very short anyway), but the fact that it exists at all. Bauby had a stroke that left his mind intact, but his body entirely paralyzed except for his eyes. He dictated this memoir by blinking in code, letter by letter.

27. Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass by Frederick Douglass (3/1/08). I can understand why people at the time thought Douglass had someone else ghost-write his autobiography for him. I don't share their beliefs that blacks are inherently inferior, but I'm still amazed that someone with only a slave-level education could be so eloquent. A moving screed against the horrors of slavery.

28. The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid by Bill Bryson (5/10/08). I've never been able to get into Bill Bryson like some other people. He seems superficial and trite to me sometimes. Nevertheless, this memoir of his childhood (I wonder how much of it is actually true) made me wish I had grown up in the '50s too.

29. The Story of My Life by Helen Keller (3/20/08). Another autobiography of someone who overcame substantial odds. Keller and her teacher Anne Sullivan come across as heroes and angels, but I couldn't help thinking throughout, "Where are this girl's parents?" They totally left the raising of their child to Sullivan. Imagine what Keller could have done with familial support as well as a good teacher.

30. The Call of the Wild by Jack London (5/27/08). No dog is as tough as Buck. But I suppose that's the point. London is trying to show his progression from pampered lap-dog to fierce beast.

31. My Life by Bill Clinton (abridged) (11/17/08). My main criticism is a lack of detail, but that's probably what I get for getting the abridged version. I actually listened to this on audiobook, read by the author. His familiar voice expressing hatred for Newt Gingrich or regret for Monica Lewinsky added a lot to the emotion of the story. I learned a lot about what I was missing when I didn't pay attention to politics as a teenager and young adult.

32. Mormonism: The Story of a New Religious Tradition by Jan Shipps (8/7/08). I figured if I was going to meet Jan Shipps, I might as well read as much of her work as I could get my hands on. This one is just a basic history of the LDS Church, with the thesis that we are different from and equal to the other major religious traditions such as traditional Christianity, Islam, Judaism, etc.

33. The Search by John Batelle (2/4/08). A narrative history of search engines generally and Google specifically. It didn't leave that much of an impression on me.

34. I Love You, Beth Cooper by Larry Doyle (5/24/08). I haven't seen movies like American Pie or Superbad, but I hear they're making a movie based on this book, and I'm certain it will be just like them. This is the book from this year that I most regret finishing - it had more objectionable content than I should have been willing to put up with, and - the cardinal sin for a comedic farce - it simply was not funny at all.

35. The Wisdom of Crowds by James Surowiecki (9/16/08). Hey, guess what? When you get a bunch of people to guess the number of jellybeans in a jar, the average of their guesses is more accurate than any one person's guess. Who knew?

36. The Millionaire Next Door by Thomas J. Stanley and William D. Danko (5/28/08). Hey, guess what? You'll get rich if you spend less than you earn.

37. The Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad (5/20/08). The only horror is putting up with this slogging narrative about some guy's weird fascination with some other guy for an entire novel.

38. The Future of the Internet and How To Stop It by Jonathan Zittrain (11/24/08). I didn't have Professor Zittrain at Harvard Law School, but I met him and I liked him. He's a very interesting person with very interesting interests. It's a wonder he made this book so darn uninteresting and even soporific. His (perhaps important, but certainly boring) thesis is that security concerns will lock down the Internet until it's not something we can use to come up with new ideas anymore. While this was the worst book I read this year, by far it has the best cover - so remember the old adage.