Reading on A Geek's Life

The Year in Reading - 2021

Fri, 31 Dec 2021 05:23:36 +0000

It’s that time of the year again where I reflect on my reading over the course of the year. My previous attempts are linked here.

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I have a litany of reasons to give for the paltry return of fourteen books completed this year, as big a drop as could be from the twenty-three I put way with consummate ease last year, chief of which was the welcome disruption L brought to our lives this year and all that came with it. The chief effect of that was a a significant number of unread books, all the free time I had in the latter part of the year being eighty minutes each day on the bus to and from work on work days. The vast majority were thus audiobooks, the experience of which I tried to improve by taking copious notes in Notion. Of the lot, a few stood out for various reasons. I plan on re-reading a few in hard copy in the near future, real life permitting. So here goes:

The Year in Reading 2020

Wed, 30 Dec 2020 02:20:00 +0000

It’s that time of the year again where I reflect on my reading over the course of the year. For a more wide-ranging review of the year in books, check out the coverage at The Millions here . My previous attempts are linked here.

Coming out here dominated my thoughts at the turn of the year, which was how it found me digging into Richard Templar’s The Rules of Work . True the overwhelming sense at the time was of anticipation but there was enough uncertainty around how well I would navigate bridging a credibility deficit that looking for help came to mind most readily. In my notes from that first reading, I detect a sense of holding back against what seemed like rules promoting blatant self promotion. With the benefit of hindsight, and a big dollop of reality to boot, my view of the book is a lot more considered. There are certainly gems in there, which is why I intend to return to the book in the new year.

2020 Reading: #1 - The Practice of The Presence of God

Thu, 16 Jul 2020 13:06:50 +0000

The Practice of The Presence of God (In Modern English) by Brother Lawrence (Author) and Marshall Davis (Translator)

A classic which dates back to the late 1600s, this is a book that regularly makes it on to lists of great devotional books. This (newish) translation is by Marshall Davis, who has form for this sort of reimagining. Between this year being my year of delving deeper and plenty of time thanks to COVID-19, I finally got round to reading this! to read has ended up on my pile for years. The central characters are a French lay brother, born Nicholas Herman but better known as Brother Lawrence, and Father Joseph de Beaufort, the vicar general to the Archbishop of Paris. A perhaps unlikely friendship given their different stations in life, we have it to thank for the letters and conversations recorded here.

The Year in Reading 2019

Mon, 23 Dec 2019 09:10:38 +0000

It’s that time of the year again where I reflect on my reading over the course of the year. It wasn’t the most productive year of reading proper books (the web has cannibalised that for good for me I’m afraid) but a late spurt in November and December brought some redemption. For a more wide-ranging review of the year in books, check out the coverage at The Millions here. My previous attempts are linked here .

My Year in Reading 2018

Tue, 18 Dec 2018 11:40:26 +0000

It is that time of the year when others - more (or better) read than I - share the highlights of their reading from the year. As with last year , I’ve commissioned myself -unbidden, besides perhaps a desire to record the key themes that drove and/or came out of my reading - to weigh in with the highlights of my own reading.So here goes.

Michael Wolff’s Fire and Fury was all the rage on the airwaves at the turn of the year, which is how I ended up grabbing a copy for myself and digging in. As I plodded through it, I found the mix of fly-on-the-wall behind the scenes reporting and qualified conjecture curiously engaging, drawn by the lurid details behind public events and happenings in what at the time had been a Trump presidency that seemingly lurched from one PR disaster to the other. A few themes ran through Fire and Fury - the Trump team being surprised by the election win and thus poorly prepared to lead, the hold of Stephen Bannon and the alt-Right and infighting amongst various factions of the administration. Despite strenuous denials at the time, the events of the year - multiple firings, leaks, indictments, evidence of Russian activities and prison sentences - would seem to give credence to the viewpoint of the book, more so as the year draws to an end.

31 Days of Journaling, Day 14: Something Consumed

Wed, 14 Nov 2018 20:37:02 +0000

[caption id=“attachment_178” align=“alignnone” width=“2976”]

For Day 14

Currently on my reading list is David Leeming’s tell all biography of James Baldwin. Whilst it is a hefty read - and I have spent the most of the last month plodding through it between doing life and work - a few themes have stood out, including the influence of church, the civil rights movement and his struggle with his sexuality.

The more I read this, the clearer just how great an intellect he was is under scored in my mind. I’ll never read Go Tell It On The Mountain or Giovanni’s Room the same way again.

31 Days of Journaling, Day 3: One Thing

Sat, 03 Nov 2018 11:33:33 +0000

For the prompt for Day 3 of the 31 Day Journaling Challenge at The Art of Manliness

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Alongside a regular practice, building a regular practice of prayer and bible study has been one of the things I have struggled most with over the years and which has come up again in this latest iteration of beginning again.

As for actual steps this time, I have bought a copy of 90 Days in Judges, Galatians and Ephesians by Tim Keller and Richard Coekin, a notebook and a pack of hibiscus tea, the intent being to make that part of a new morning routine in which I brew a cup of tea and settle in to read the assigned reading of the day and write notes in my mew black book. Two days in already, I hope I can make it to the 90 and then beyond.

Lent

Tue, 13 Feb 2018 18:56:43 +0000

Photo by Thuong Do on Unsplash

This year for lent, I am taking up the challenge from Desiring God to read through John Piper’s book, Fifty Reasons Jesus Came To Die. Whilst that may or may not be more spiritual than giving up caffeine, what is not in doubt is that it is firmly aligned with a few of the things I want to achieve this year, notably read more books, and developing a daily practice of prayer and bible study. At a chapter a day (and two on Good Friday, Holy Saturday, and Easter Sunday), it shouldn’t be too big a strain on all the other reading I’m doing. Win-win? I’d say so!

The Year in Reading

Tue, 26 Dec 2017 17:37:12 +0000

After many years of having thoroughly enjoyed the annual parade of opinions of books over at The Millions, I decided to have a go myself this year. Far from being a celebration of a year in which I read deeply and widely, it is a light reflection on all the things I managed to read this year. Enjoy! ---

Of the myriad of things I most deeply wanted to achieve this year, two loomed large in the personal development domain; to read more and write more, which was why I entered the year clutching my copy of Patty Dann’s The Butterfly Hours close to my chest. In my head, writing more - and by extension, better - required tools for tuning my craft, which was why this book, with its promise of personal memoir married to prompts, seemed the perfect fit. It helped that all nineteen reviews on Amazon were 5*. I did enjoy the book, albeit more an an example of easy reading memoir than a collection of prompts. I suspect that had a lot more to do with me than the book. If it is any consolation, I returned to it several times over the course of the year, it along with Dinty Moore’s Crafting The Personal Essay being fine examples of the sort of creative non-fiction I would like to churn out.

The Year in Reading 2017

Tue, 26 Dec 2017 17:37:12 +0000

The Year in Reading 2015

Thu, 31 Dec 2015 06:39:58 +0000

Trying to get a lot more structured with reading - 25 books in total spread across 5 categories - Christian Classics, Literary Classics, Popular Fiction, Modern Christian Writing and Productivity, Personal Development & Non-fiction.

Completed:

Moonwalking with Einstein - Joshua Foer
The Pioneer Detectives -Konstantin Kakaes
The Best American Essays 2014 - JJ Sullivan (ed)
The Land of Steady Habits - Ted Thompson
Sexual Detox - Tim Challies
NW - Zadie Smith
Crafting the Personal Essay - Dinty W Moore
What’s so Amazing About Grace - Phillip Yancey
How To Be Alone - Jonathan Franzen
The Best American Essays 2013 - Cheryl Strayed (ed)
The Seven Good Years - Etgar Keret
Hunger of Memory: The Education of Richard Rodriguez - Richard Rodriguez
The Children Act - Ian McEwan
The Things They Carried- Tim O’Brien
Something to Answer For - P.H. Newby

The Year In Reading 2014

Wed, 31 Dec 2014 06:37:50 +0000

Teaching My Mother How To Give Birth - Warsan Shire
The Outsider - Albert Camus
Merry Christmas, Alex Cross - James Patterson
The Map of Love - Ahdaf Soueif
Finally Free: Fighting For Purity with the Power of Grace - Heath Lambert
The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do and How To Change - Charles Duhigg
On Writing - Steven King
Love At First Click - Laurie Davis
The Fault in Our Stars - John Green
Everyday is for the thief- Teju Cole
On Beauty - Zadie Smith
Don’t Tell Mum I work on the Oil Rigs - Paul Carter
The Inheritance of Loss - Kiran Desai
Frank Sinatra Has A Cold: And Other Essays - Gay Talese
Another Man’s War - Barnaby Phillips
A Delicate Truth - John le Carré

The Year In Reading 2013

Tue, 31 Dec 2013 06:32:26 +0000

And the Mountains Echoed - Khaled Hosseini
The Sound of Things Falling - Juan Gabriel Vasquez
Fine Boys - Eghosa Imasuen
The One: A Realistic Guide to Choosing Your Soul Mate - Ben Young & Sam Adams
Jesus, My Father, The CIA and Me: A Memoir of sorts - Ian Morgan Cron
Networking for people who hate networking - Devora Zack.
The Practice of the Presence of God - Brother Lawrence
Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a world that can’t stop talking - Susan Cain
The God of Small Things - Arundhati Roy