This past week I finally finished my yearly quota of one hundred books. I’m a little early, I know, but I planned to read ten books a month for ten months, in order to have the last two months freed up for the holiday season. After this, anything else is just gravy.*
Below is my list. As I self-restricted myself, not included in the list are any picture
books, graphic novels, How-To books (comprised mostly, though not entirely, of
quilting or cookbooks), or any books I re-read.
100 Books of 2014
1. In A Pickle - Beth
Overmeier
2. The Faith - Charles
Colson and Harold Fickett
3. Crossroads of
Freedom: Antietam - James M. McPherson
4. Homer and the Epic -
G.S. Kirk
5. The Odes of Horace
6. Party Politics in the
Age of Caesar - Lily Boss Taylor
7. Between Man and Beast
- Monte Reel
8. The Tomb of Zeus: A
Laetitia Talbot Mystery - Barbara Cleverly
9. Tactics: A Game Plan
for Discussing Your Religious Convictions - Gregory Koukl
10. Rome - M. Rostovtzeff
11. The Last Camel Died
at Noon - Elizabeth Peters
12. The Golden Days of
Greece - Olivia Coolidge
13. The Under Dog and
other Tales - Agatha Christie
14. My Inventions -
Nikola Tesla
15. A History of Egypt -
James Henry Breasted
16. A Right to Die - Rex
Stout
17. The Legacy of Greece
- ed. Sir Richard Livingstone
18. The Kreutzer Sonata -
Leo Tolstoy
19. The Minoans: The
Story of Bronze Age Crete - Sinclair Hood
20. The Echo of Greece -
Edith Hamilton
21. The Tesla Papers -
ed. David Hatcher Childress
22. Laugh Again:
Experience Outrageous Joy - Charles R. Swindoll
23. Five Children and It
- E. Nesbit
24. The Idylls of the
King - Tennyson
25. The Greek Way - Edith
Hamilton
26. The Secret Adversary
- Agatha Christie
27. In Search of the
Castaways; or, The Children of Captain Grant - Jules Verne
28. "The Making of a
Marchioness" and "The Methods of a Lady" - Frances Hodgson
Burnett
29. The Near East -Isaac
Asimov
30. The Egyptians - Isaac
Asimov
31. How Right You Are,
Jeeves - P.G. Wodehouse
32. The Hero's Guide to
Saving Your Kingdom - Christopher Healy
33. The Greeks: A Great
Adventure - Isaac Asimov
34. The Roman Republic -
Isaac Asimov
35. The Roman Empire -
Isaac Asimov
36. The Dark Ages - Isaac
Asimov
37. The Shaping of
England - Isaac Asimov
38. Dreamhunter -
Elizabeth Knox
39. A Day in Old Rome -
Davis
40. The Snake, the
Crocodile, and the Dog - Elizabeth Peters
41. Such Wicked Intent -
Kenneth Oppel
42. Parzival - Wolfram
von Eschenbach
43. Fall of the Roman
Republic - Plutarch
44. The Hero's Guide to
Storming the Castle - Christopher Healy
45. The Quest of the Holy
Grail - trans. Pauline M. Matarasso
46. Cristoforo Colombo:
God's Navigator - Douglas T. Peck
47. The History of Tom
Jones, a Foundling - Henry Fielding
48. Worship Matters:
Leading Others to Encounter the Greatness of God - Bob Kauflin
49. The Last Days of
Socrates - Plato
50. Postern of Fate -
Agatha Christie
51. The Snowflake:
Winter's Secret Beauty -Kenneth Libbrecht and Patricia Rasmussen
52. Just My Type: A Book
About Fonts - Simon Garfield
53. Wisconsin Underground
- Doris Green
54. Measuring America:
How the United States Was Shaped by the Greatest Land Sale in History - Andro
Linklater
55. Tristan - Gottfried
von Strassburg (with "Tristran" by Thomas)
56. A Preface to Paradise
Lost - C.S. Lewis
57. A Princess of Neptune
- Quentin Dodd
58. Rocks and Fossils: A
Visual Guide - Robert R. Coenraads
59. Medieval Mysteries,
Moralities and Interludes - ed. Vincent
F. Hopper and Gerald B. Lahey
a. Abraham and Isaac
b. Noah's Flood
c. The Second Shepherd's
Play (I'd already read this)
d. The Castle of
Perseverance
e. Everyman (already
read)
f.
Johan,
the Husband
g. The Four PP
60. I Am a Church Member:
Discovering the Attitude that Makes the Difference - Thom S. Rainer
61. Seven Steps for
Planting Churches - Rodney Harrison
62. A Hero's Guide to
Being an Outlaw - Christopher Healy
63. Pandora Gets
Frightened - Carolyn Hennessy
64. St. Patrick of
Ireland: A Biography - Philip Freeman
65. Wisconsin History
66. Thucydides' Complete
Writings - Thucydides
67. Publishing Your
E-Book - Daniel E. Harmon
68. Anatomy of Steampunk:
The Fashion of Victorian Futurism - Katherine Gleason
69. In the Land of
Invented Languages - Arika Okrent
70. The Outlaw Sea: A
World of Freedom, Chaos and Crime - William Langewiesche
71. Food - Ogden Nash
72. The Interesting
Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano
73. The Pirate Queen -
Susan Ronald
74. From Alexander to
Cleopatra: The Hellenistic World -
Michael Grant
75. The Enormous Room -
E.E. Cummings
76. Eggs, Beans and
Crumpets - P.G. Wodehouse
a. All's Well with Bingo
b. Bingo and the Peke
Crisis
c. The Editor Regrets
d. Sonny Boy
e. Anselm Gets His
Chance
f.
Romance
at Droitgate Spa
g. A Bit of Luck for
Mabel
h. Buttercup Day
i.
Ukridge
and the Old Stepper
77. The Golden Spiders -
Rex Stout
78. The 39 Steps - John
Buchan
79. The Moving Finger -
Agatha Christie
80. Elephants Can
Remember - Agatha Christie
81. Robur the Conqueror -
Jules Verne
82. The Hippopotamus Pool
- Elizabeth Peters
83. The Black Mountain -
Rex Stout
84. 12 Years a Slave -
Solomon Northrup
85. Sketches by Boz -
Charles Dickens
86. The Romans - Alfred
Duggan
87. The Byzantines -
Thomas Caldecot Chubb
88. The Northmen - Thomas
Caldecot Chubb
89. The Prairie - James
Fenimore Cooper
90. Murder is Easy -
Agatha Christie
91. And Be A Villain -
Rex Stout
92. Black Orchids - Rex
Stout
93. Three Act Tragedy -
Agatha Christie
94. Witness for the Prosecution
- Agatha Christie
95. The Caine Mutiny -
Herman Wouk
96. English and Its
History: The Evolution of a Language - Robert D. Stevick
97. An Introduction to
Modern English Grammar -Jean Malmstrom
98. Passenger to
Frankfurt - Agatha Christie
99. Cress - Marisa Meyer
100. The Unending Mystery:
A Journey Through Labyrinth and Mazes - David Willis McCullough
As you can see, a vast majority of these books were
either history or mystery. (It was
entirely unintentional that they should rhyme like that, by the way.) However I focused on these because I’ve been
putting off going through my collection of history books I’d gotten for free at
a book-drop some years ago, and decided this was the year to finally read
through them and weed out any that were too juvenile or repetitive or boring to
keep. While I did discover I owned some
really marvelous ones, let’s just say I also freed up a lot of space on my
shelves.
As for the mysteries, this was because:
a) A small paperback mystery novel is a quick read and a
sort of vacation after all the dull dates and hard-to-pronounce Latin names in
said history books,
b) I wanted to make a dent in my Agatha Christie/Rex
Stout TBR pile, which I did, and
c) At a book-sale this summer I bought several Agatha
Christie paperbacks with horrid cover illustrations and wanted to know which
ones I actually wanted (most I hadn’t read before purchasing).
I’m not sure I’ll conduct the same self-imposed challenge
on myself next year, though I would hope I’d still read about 100 books in any
case. I certainly have several more
years of reading 100 books per anum before I really make a dent in the enormous
list of books that are enticing me to read them…speaking of which I should
probably stop prevaricating here and get back to perusing my bookshelves for any
other TBR tomes that may be hiding there.
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