Books Read

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I have a horrible memory. And I love to read. In the year 2000, while lamenting the fact that I couldn't remember anything about books I had read just the year before, I started keeping a journal where I wrote down the things I wanted to remember about the books I was reading.

I'm still doing it. These days, it seems, I can't read a book without dog-earing a page or two and scribbling down thoughts in the margin that I want to be sure to capture in the write-up I will eventually compose. Some people approach these write-ups as if they were book reviews, but I don't think of them that way. Although they often contain criticism or praise, they are more a way for me to document my personal experience with each book I read -- the pieces that resonate with my philosophical and reflective self. I know that the things I read help shape that self, and by keeping my journal I have the ability to see that process unfold.

Here's an index to the write-ups appearing on this blog:

Art
11/06/23 - Art and Artist by Otto Rank
09/18/23 - The Essential Edward Hopper by Justin Spring
01/24/22 - Rodin by David J. Getsy
12/20/21 - Taming the Big Data Tidal Wave by Bill Franks
08/02/21 - Stacking the Deck by David S. Pottruck
05/24/21 - The Zero Dollar Car by John Ellis
01/04/21 - The Fifth Discipline by Peter M. Senge
10/05/20 - The Facilitator's Guide to Participatory Decision-Making by Sam Kaner
08/24/20 - What Really Matters by John Pepper
07/27/20 - Stop Selling Vanilla Ice Cream by Steve Van Remortel
04/20/20 - Robert's Rules of Order by Henry M. Robert
09/14/19 - Narcissistic Leaders by Michael Maccoby
06/22/19 - X Matrix by Darrell Casey
06/08/19 - Exception to the Rule by Peter Rea, James K. Stoller, and Alan Kolp
04/27/19 - The Carver Guide Series on Effective Board Governance by John Carver and Miriam Mayhew Carver
03/16/19 - Emotional Intelligence 2.0 by Travis Bradberry and Jean Greaves
12/22/18 - The Association CEO Handbook by Paul A. Belford
11/24/18 - Association 4.0 by Sherry Budziak and Kevin Ordonez
07/21/18 - Resonate by Nancy Duarte
04/18/15 - When Millennials Take Over by Jamie Notter and Maddie Grant
10/04/14 - Stop Stealing Dreams by Seth Godin
05/31/14 - Robert E. Lee on Leadership by H. W. Crocker III

Fiction and Literature
03/18/24 - King Arthur, His Knights, and Their Ladies by Johanna Johnston
07/13/20 - Memento Mori by Muriel Spark
06/29/20 - One of Ours by Willa Cather
06/15/20 - Alexander's Bridge by Willa Cather
05/04/20 - The Redskins by James Fenimore Cooper
03/09/20 - Black House by Stephen King and Peter Straub
01/27/20 - The Painted Veil by W. Somerset Maugham
01/13/20 - Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk
11/09/19 - The Magician by W. Somerset Maugham
10/26/19 - Small Gods by Terry Pratchett
10/12/19 - The Martian by Andy Weir
09/28/19 - Nashville Chrome by Rick Bass
07/06/19 - Talk Talk by T. C. Boyle
05/25/19 - Maggie: A Girl of the Streets by Stephen Crane
04/13/19 - Saint Joan by Bernard Shaw
02/16/19 - Everything's Eventual by Stephen King
02/02/19 - Burr by Gore Vidal
01/19/19 - Main Street by Sinclair Lewis
01/05/19 - Angels and Demons by Dan Brown
10/27/18 - The Ring of Ikribu by David C. Smith and Richard L. Tierney
09/01/18 - The Bell by Iris Murdoch
08/04/18 - Best Stories of O. Henry
06/09/18 - The Chainbearer by James Fenimore Cooper
05/12/18 - Youth and the Bright Medusa by Willa Cather
04/14/18 - Without a Hero by T. C. Boyle
03/17/18 - The Night in Question by Tobias Wolff
02/17/18 - Duma Key by Stephen King
01/20/18 - A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving
09/30/17 - The Good Soldier by Ford Madox Ford
09/02/17 - The Hermit's Story by Rick Bass
08/19/17 - Hooking Up by Tom Wolfe
07/22/17 - American Pastoral by Philip Roth
05/13/17 - Riven Rock by T. C. Boyle
04/15/17 - Sapphira and the Slave Girl by Willa Cather
03/18/17 - Good Faith by Jane Smiley
02/18/17 - The Razor's Edge by W. Somerset Maugham
12/24/16 - Antic Hay by Aldous Huxley
12/10/16 - Cass Timberlane by Sinclair Lewis
11/12/16 - Sister Carrie by Theodore Dreiser
10/29/16 - Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card
10/15/16 - By Sorrow's River by Larry McMurtry
09/17/16 - Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell
08/20/16 - Out of Africa by Isak Dinesen
07/23/16 - The Known World by Edward P. Jones
07/09/16 - Eyeless in Gaza by Aldous Huxley
06/11/16 - The Sirens of Titan by Kurt Vonnegut
05/28/16 - Independence Day by Richard Ford
04/30/16 - The Stranger by Albert Camus
03/05/16 - Moo by Jane Smiley
02/20/16 - The Death of Bunny Munro by Nick Cave
01/23/16 - The Song of the Lark by Willa Cather
01/09/16 - Lost Horizon by James Hilton
12/12/15 - The Subtle Knife by Philip Pullman
11/28/15 - The March by E. L. Doctorow
11/11/15 - Humboldt's Gift by Saul Bellow
10/17/15 - Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
09/05/15 - Closing Time by Joseph Heller
07/25/15 - Continental Drift by Russell Banks
07/11/15 - All the Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy
06/13/15 - The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie
05/30/15 - A Man in Full by Tom Wolfe
05/16/15 - O Pioneers! by Willa Cather
04/04/15 - Twin Sombreros by Zane Grey
03/07/15 - Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides
02/21/15 - Black Hole by Charles Burns
02/07/15 - Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri
01/10/15 - The Crucible by Arthur Miller
12/27/14 - The Sweet Hereafter by Russell Banks
12/13/14 - The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck
11/29/14 - Budding Prospects by T. C. Boyle
11/15/14 - Creatures of Circumstance by W. Somerset Maugham
08/23/14 - My Antonia by Willa Cather
07/26/14 - A Thousand Acres by Jane Smiley

History and Biography
05/18/20 - A Campaign of Giants by A. Wilson Greene
04/06/20 - The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich by William L. Shirer
03/23/20 - Sachiko by Caren Stelson
12/21/19 - Willa Cather by Philip L. Gerber
08/03/19 - The Unwinding by George Packer
07/20/19 - Nixonland by Rick Perlstein
03/30/19 - The Ordeal of Woodrow Wilson by Herbert Hoover
11/10/18 - Yankee From Olympus by Catherine Drinker Bowen
09/15/18 - On to Petersburg by Gordon C. Rhea
05/26/18 - Andrew Jackson and the Course of American Democracy by Robert V. Remini
04/27/18 - Andrew Jackson and the Course of American Freedom by Robert V. Remini
03/31/18 - Glimpses of World History by Jawaharlal Nehru
03/03/18 - Wild by Cheryl Strayed
11/25/17 - The March of Folly by Barbara W. Tuchman
07/08/17 - Lindbergh by A. Scott Berg
06/24/17 - Doubt by Jennifer Michael Hecht
05/27/17 - The Rise and Fall of the American Whig Party by Michael F. Holt
03/04/17 - I Will Bear Witness by Victor Klemperer
02/04/17 - On Many a Bloody Field by Alan D. Gaff
01/21/17 - Fiasco by Thomas E. Ricks
01/07/17 - What Went Wrong? by Bernard Lewis
11/26/16 - Maugham: A Biography by Ted Morgan
09/03/16 - Before the Storm by Rick Perlstein
06/25/16 - A Night to Remember by Walter Lord
05/14/16 - Colonel Roosevelt by Edmund Morris
04/16/16 - Papal Sin by Garry Wills
02/06/16 - Freedom Betrayed by Herbert Hoover and George H. Nash
12/26/15 - To Appomattox by Burke Davis
10/03/15 - Broken Music by Sting
09/19/15 - Kepler's Witch by James A. Connor
08/08/15 - The American Future by Simon Schama
11/01/14 - An Hour Before Daylight by Jimmy Carter
09/20/14 - Citizen Tom Paine by Howard Fast
03/09/13 - Seven Pillars of Wisdom by T. E. Lawrence

Holiday Break Posts - Best Book of Each Year
2023 - The Wreath by Sigrid Undset
Politics and Philosophy
02/05/24 - The Book of Insults by Nancy McPhee
02/24/20 - The Philosophical Disenfranchisement of Art by Arthur C. Danto
02/10/20 - In the Dust of This Planet by Eugene Thacker
08/17/19 - Free Will by Sam Harris
05/11/19 - Existentialism from Dostoevsky to Sartre by Walter Kaufmann
03/02/19 - The History of Sexuality, Volume 1 by Michel Foucault
10/13/18 - Unbelievable by Katy Tur
09/29/18 - The Sublime Object of Ideology by Slavoj Zizek
07/07/18 - Going to Tehran by Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann Leverett
06/23/18 - Among the Dead Cities by A. C. Grayling
12/23/17 - The Incredible Shrinking Son of Man by Robert M. Price
10/28/17 - The New Oxford Annotated Bible with the Apocrypha
10/14/17 - 25 Years of Tomorrow by Dan Perkins
04/01/17 - The Marketing of Evil by David Kupelian
08/06/16 - Moral Politics by George Lakoff
03/19/16 - The Reason Driven Life by Robert M. Price
06/27/15 - With Liberty and Justice for Some by Glenn Greenwald
05/02/15 - The Selected Writings of the Marquis De Sade, selected and translated by Leonard De Saint-Yves
03/21/15 - The Accidental Superpower by Peter Ziehan
01/24/15 - We Who Dared Say No to War, edited by Murray Polner and Thomas E. Woods, Jr.
08/09/14 - Crisis and Leviathan by Robert Higgs

Science and Sociology
03/25/24 - The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross by John M. Allegro
06/01/20 - Six Impossible Things Before Breakfast by Lewis Wolpert
01/04/20 - The Paradox of Choice by Barry Schwartz
12/07/19 - The Physics of Consciousness by Evan Harris Walker
11/23/19 - Moral Minds by Marc D. Hauser
08/31/19 - The Extended Phenotype by Richard Dawkins
12/08/18 - The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot
08/18/18 - Broca's Brain by Carl Sagan
02/03/18 - A Devil's Chaplain by Richard Dawkins
01/06/18 - I'm OK -- You're OK by Thomas A. Harris, M.D.
09/16/17 - Games People Play by Eric Berne, M.D.
08/05/17 - The Denial of Death by Ernest Becker
06/10/17 - The Mind and the Brain by Jeffrey M. Schwartz, M.D., and Sharon Begley
04/29/17 - A Primate's Memoir by Robert M. Sapolsky
10/01/16 - The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins
04/02/16 - Totem and Taboo by Sigmund Freud
10/31/15 - Parallel Worlds by Michio Kaku
08/22/15 - X Saves the World by Jeff Gordinier
10/18/14 - The Devils of Loudun by Aldous Huxley
09/06/14 - The Human Brain by Isaac Asimov
06/28/14 - The Happiness Myth by Jennifer Michael Hecht
09/21/13 - The End of Biblical Studies by Hector Avalos