2014 overview

Sorry, this post isn't about a book I've read. However, this whole blog was started about a year ago in an effort to encourage me to read more critically; to retain more of what I read from non-fiction books, to derive more meaningful enjoyment from fiction books, and generally to force me to keep up a regular reading habit in case strangers on the internet got the impression that I was slipping.

   Anyway, with 2014 behind us and an arguably admirable thirty-three books (of massively varying length and intensity) under my belt, I'm glad to announce that this blog has become a pleasurable habit, one which I will continue into the foreseeable future for all books I finish reading.

   But before I start dumping my reactions from books in 2015 upon you, I'm going to reflect on some of the ones I finished this year, with a handful of books best befitting a series of arbitrarily-selected categories. These will probably just be the ones with the most memorable reading experiences, but I will have distinctly separate reasons for choosing each one. So, here we go:

1. A novel that made me somewhat teary;
• Stoner, by John Williams.
• The Humans, by Matt Haig.
• The Damned Utd, by David Peace.
2. A novel that made me laugh so hard that I missed my stop on the bus;
• Three Men in a Boat, by Jerome K. Jerome.
3. For the sake of pretentious future conversations, and also because it was rather enjoyable, I'm glad I read;
• Ulysses, by James Joyce.
4. Worst novel I read this year;
• The Stupid Swedish Forrest-Gump-esque Thing With a Really Long Title Which I Sort of Wished Would Climb Out of the Window and Disappear, Much Like its Arse of a Protagonist.
5. Only book I've ever read that was outright bad/wrong/infuriating enough that I ripped it apart and recycled it after reading;
• Wild at Heart, by John Eldredge.
6. Vaguely magical for very different reasons;
• Neverwhere, by Neil Gaiman.
• The Human Animal, by Desmond Morris.
7. Made me thoroughly enjoy being an economics/philosophy student;
• The Worldly Philosophers, by Robert Heilbroner.
• Finite and Infinite Goods, by Robert Merrihew Adams.
8. All christians should read;
• Generous Justice, by Timothy Keller.
9. The bonus christian-encouragement award;
• The Good God, by Mike Reeves.
10. All those passionate about society say aye;
• Economics: the User's Guide, by Ha-Joon Chang.
11. All those passionate about nature say aye;
• Feral, by George Monbiot.
12. And finally, cats;
• Cats cats cats.

   I don't know if you're a regular reader or not, but I hope you enjoy and maybe continue to enjoy my spewage of half-thunk reactions to prose well into the future. [Also, I've realised I barely read anything written by non-white-males last year, which was not deliberate but is pretty bad in terms of limiting my intake of human experience and viewpoint. I will be making a conscious effort in 2015 to read more things from groups who haven't always found it ludicrously easy to make their voices well heard in the publicity of verbage. Hopefully the module on feminism I'm taking this spring will kickstart that...]

To words! To writing them, reading them, thinking and speaking in them; may they always be found in quantities, qualities and orders in which they are wonderful!