My goal for 2014 was to read 35 books. I just barely managed to finish1.
Seriously, I finished yesterday. I thought it was going to be easier to read a lot with a newborn. All they do is sleep, right? Oh man. The hilarity of that thought.
I was able to read a few books in the middle of the night when Jude (pictured) was brand new (April and May) while rocking him to sleep, but it wasn’t exactly what I wanted to be doing at 3 AM.
This list represents about 14,192 pages. Or, since I listen to a lot of audiobooks, only 6,011 pages plus 254 hours of audio. I listen to books at an average of 1.5x normal speed so the actual number of hours I spent listening to books is closer to 169.
Here’s the list, organized by date read. Here’s the same list on Goodreads.
January
Perilous Shield (The Lost Stars, #2), by Jack Campbell
The Total Money Makeover: A Proven Plan for Financial Fitness, by Dave Ramsey
I also re-read the following (and did not count them in the 35 books):
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (Harry Potter, #5), by J.K. Rowling
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (Harry Potter, #6), by J.K. Rowling
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (Harry Potter, #7), by J.K. Rowling
February
Partials (The Partials Sequence, #1), by Dan Wells
The Jester (The Riyria Chronicles #2.5), by Michael J. Sullivan
Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality, by Eliezer Yudkowsky
Yes, I read (past tense) Harry Potter fan fiction. While I have basically no shame2, I will say this: it’s well written and hilarious. It was also the longest thing I read all year3.
March
Royal Assassin (Farseer Trilogy, #2), by Robin Hobb
Words of Radiance (The Stormlight Archive, #2), by Brandon Sanderson
April
Fragments (Partials, #2), by Dan Wells
The picture on the right is Jude demonstrating his resolve to not let me read much for a while.
May
Ruins (Partials Sequence, #3), by Dan Wells
June
Throne of Jade (Temeraire, #2), by Naomi Novik
Earth Awakens (The First Formic War, #3), by Orson Scott Card
July
Vodnik, by Bryce Moore
Variant (Variant, #1), by Robison Wells
August
Assassin’s Quest (Farseer Trilogy, #3), by Robin Hobb
The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents (Discworld, #28), by Terry Pratchett
September
The Graveyard Book, by Neil Gaiman
October
Unseen Academicals (Discworld, #37), by Terry Pratchett
Feedback (Variant, #2), by Robison Wells
The Night Circus, by Erin Morgenstern
The Night Circus is magical.
November
Blood Song (Raven’s Shadow, #1), by Anthony Ryan
The Crown Tower (The Riyria Chronicles #1), by Michael J. Sullivan
Calculating God, by Robert J. Sawyer
Creativity, Inc.: Overcoming the Unseen Forces That Stand in the Way of True Inspiration, by Ed Catmull
A Night of Blacker Darkness, by Dan Wells
The Cricket on the Hearth, by Charles Dickens
December
The Time Paradox (Artemis Fowl, #6), by Eoin Colfer
The Viscount and the Witch (Riyria Chronicles, #1.5), by Michael J. Sullivan
The Rose and the Thorn (The Riyria Chronicles, #2), by Michael J. Sullivan
Skin Deep (Legion, #2), by Brandon Sanderson
The Snow Queen, by Hans Christian Andersen
Visitors (Pathfinder, #3), by Orson Scott Card
The Power Of Less: The Fine Art of Limiting Yourself to the Essential, by Leo Babauta
Code: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software, by Charles Petzold
What If?: Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions, by Randall Munroe
Wonder by R.J. Palacio
For 2015 I’m once again shooting for 35 books.
Sort of. Turns out, while going over this list, I realized that one of the books I marked as read (The Viscount and the Witch) is part of another book I read later (The Rose and the Thorn), so the number is really only 34. But! I totally left it marked as read so Goodreads would still show 35.
↩A lie.
↩According to Goodreads anyway. I have a hard time believing it was actually longer than Words of Radiance by Brandon Sanderson.
↩