Reading 2013

The 27 books I read in 2013:

"The Rosie Project" Graeme Simsion. 5 stars. Hilarious. Brilliantly done. Engrossing.

"The Secret Garden" Francis Burnett. 4.5 stars. The gentle awakening touch of nature, the Magic of life. Rang true and pulled the heart ...
"A Storm of Swords" George RR Martin. 4.5 stars. Blimey, he really hits his straps in this one. Great to be re-reading these.
"Mindsight" Daniel Siegel. 4.5 stars. Clear and rational explanation for how the brain/mind/emotions work. Very helpful & revealing.
"The Australian Moment" George Megalogenis. 4.5 stars. Politics and the economy as never been so interesting! Must read for recent Aus h ...
"The Antidote" Oliver Burkmann. 4.5 stars. A superb synthesis of pragmatic philosophies for how to live well. Must read!

"1835" James Boyce. 4 stars. A fascinating and revealing history of the founding of Melbourne.
"Antifragile" Nassim Taleb. 4 stars. Refreshing & eye-opening perspective on the world, but waffles on a bit.
"Chronicles of Prydain" Lloyd Alexander. 4 stars. Classic fantasy for young readers.
"Jack de Crow" AJ Mackinnon. 4 stars. Rollicking good yarn of sailing a dinghy across Europe.
"Feral" George Monbiot. 4 stars. Eye-opening and appealing entreaty for rewilding our world. Not so relevant in Australian context though.

"Mountain Solitudes" Aat Vervoorn. 3.5 stars. Humble and philosophical tales of solo mountaineering in NZ.
"The Mountain" Drusilla Modjeska. 3.5 stars. An immersive insight into PNG history and culture.
"The Farseekers" Isobelle Carmody. 3.5 stars. An improvement on book one. A good escapist read.
"Sweet Poison" David Gillespie. 3.5 stars. Illuminating on the potential evils of fructose. Implies it increases short-term appetite, bu ...
"The Long Earth" Terry Pratchett & Stephen Baxter. 3.5 stars. A great premise and absorbing read but lacking a few explanations.
"Dance of Dragons" George Martin. 3.5 stars. Slow progress, excess characters, but good times with Jon and Arya. Clumsy finish.
"Cooked" Michael Pollan. 3.5 stars. Interesting exploration of cooking of all types. Learnt a few things but not brilliant.
"Wool" Hugh Howey. 3.5 stars. Great post-apocalyptic premise, but lacks good characters.
"The Boy Who Wouldn't Die" David Vincent. 3.5 stars. Amazing story of a Sudanese boy and his long road to Australia. Reality check!
"The Gathering" Isobelle Carmody. 3.5 stars. Dark. Absorbing.

"Obernewtyn" Isobelle Carmody. 3 stars. Missed this as a young 'un. Some good ideas but a bit clunky, and ended too rapidly.
"Born on a Blue Day" Daniel Tammet. 3 stars. A window into an Aspergers mind. Synesthesiac numbers - amazing!
"Krakatoa" Simon Winchester. 3 stars. Well written, wide ranging if overly detailed pop science/history.

"The Scatterlings" by Isobelle Carmody. 2.5 stars. Passably written and mildly interesting post-apocalyptica.

"The Bone Season" Samantha Shannon. Two stars. Trash. Readable, but ultimately dissatisfying.

"Shift" Hugh Howey. 1.5 stars. Disappointing follow-up to Wool. Mostly boring.

Reading 2012

What I read in 2012, 31 books in all:

"A Place Of My Own" Michael Pollan. 5 stars. Boy can he write! A stunning account of building and architecture.
"Infidel" Ayaan Hirsi Ali. 5 stars. Wow. Eye-opening. Shocking. More than a little worrying! Compulsory reading.

"Sarah Thornhill" by Kate Grenville. 4 stars. So much tragedy. A beautifully but starkly crafted of a history we all share.
"I Can Jump Puddles" Alan Marshall. 4 stars. He rides! What a tough kid.
"The Liveship Traders" series by Robin Hobb. 4 stars. Pirates! Magic ships! Dragons! A rich world with great characters.
"Mockingjay" Suzanne Collins. 4 stars. War. Twisted humanity. The horror!
"The Last American Man" Elizabeth Gilbert. 4 stars. A fascinating insight into an extraordinary man. He is one messed up dude though!
"Master & Commander" Patrick O'Brian. 4 stars. Indulgent nautical terms, absurd wartime gentility, daring and dorky.

"The Painted Man" by Peter V Brett. 3.5 stars. Simply written, but a good premise and gripping tale. Demons and heroes!
"Pandora's Star" by Peter Hamilton. 3.5 stars. A touch long-winded but has some cool future tech ideas and a big bang of a finish.
"For the Term of his Natural Life" Marcus Clarke. 3.5*. Harrowing and relentlessly tragic. Plot a little too contrived.
"The Hunger Games" by Suzanne Collins. 3.5 stars. Twisted. Un-put-down-able.
"The Street Sweeper" Elliot Perlman. 3.5 stars. Very well told stories of the Holocaust and being black in America, but too convenient.
"Catching Fire" Suzzane Collins. 3.5 stars. A worthy sequel, and not as predictable as it could have been.
"Reframe" Eric Knight. 3.5 stars. Simple really: a widening of perspective can reveal solutions. Reaffirms bottom-up action.
"I Heard The Owl Call My Name" Margaret Craven. 3.5 stars. Paints the feeling of a Canadian Indian village beautifully, full of deep sad ...
"Biggest Estate on Earth" Bill Gammage. 3.5 stars. A great realisation of how dramatically Aboriginals shaped Australia.
"Rain Wild Chronicles" Robin Hobb. 3.5 stars. Simpler style but still sucked me in. Third book added a few plot lines. Have to wait for ...
"Second Nature" Michael Pollan. 3.5 stars. Some excellent chapters on nature and culture, and the philosophy of gardening. But others drag.
"All The Pretty Horses" Cormac McCarthy. 3.5 stars. Languid.
"The Left Hand of Darkness" Ursula LeGuin. 3.5 stars. Some great ideas and well executed, but lacking in engaging characters.

"The Desert Spear" Peter Brett. 3 stars. A passable sequel that covers a lot of the same ground and doesn't progress the story much.
"Little Women" by Louisa May Alcott. 3 stars. Sometimes just a little too wholesome and moralistic. But touching nonetheless!
"Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha" Roddy Doyle. 3 stars. Never quite connected with this.
"Eat Pray Love" Liz Gilbert. 3 stars. An enjoyable and varied read, a lot of which I could relate to.
"The Ways of the Bushwalker" Melissa Harper. 3 stars. A moderately interesting, occasionally suprising, history of bushwalking in Aus.
"The Comfort of Men" Dennis Altman. 3 stars. A pleasant insight into gay life, but in a secessionist Tasmania!
"The 100 Year Old Man Who Climbed Out The Window And Disappeared" Jonas Jonasson. 3 stars. Amusing, if rather absurd.

"We Want Real Food" Graham Harvey. 2.5 stars. Alarming expose of the dramatic fall in the mineral content of foods. Not rigourous.
"The Wild Shore" Kim Stanley Robinson. 2.5 stars. Dubious premise, poorly told.

"Organic Manifesto" Maria Rodale. 1 star. Poorly informed, simplistic understanding of food systems. Unconvincing and disappointing.

Reading 2011

Reading list from 2011, scraped from my twitter account:

5 stars:
"Born to Run" by Christopher McDougall. 5 stars. Brilliant. Perfect mix of story telling and popular science. Will make you want to run ...
"The New Organic Grower" by Eliot Coleman. 5 stars. The ultimate guide to market gardening. Some new ideas. Makes me want to try!
"Meat: A Benign Extravagance" by Simon Fairlie. 5 stars. A brilliant examination of livestock and farming systems. For the ag nerd.

4.5 stars:
"The Wise Man's Fear" by Patrick Rothfuss. 4.5 stars. I wonder where it will go but don't care. Getting there is such a pleasure.

4 stars:
"Prosperity Without Growth" by Tim Jackson. 4 stars. An excellent look at how to move away from a growth economy. A must read!

3.5 stars:
"Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" by Robert M Pirsig - 3.5 stars. Moments of brilliance, sometimes a slog.
"A Short History of Progress" by Ronald Wright. 3.5 stars. Good concise overview of failed civilisations but degrades into a rant and do ...
"Persepolis" by Marjane Sastrapi. 3.5 stars. A graphic novel. Great way to learn something of Iran's recent history.
"Sunbathing Naked" by Guy Kennaway. 3.5 stars. A dark comedy, sometimes painful, about psoriasis. Terrifying how bad it can get.
"Slow Death by Rubber Duck" 3.5 stars. Oh god, chemicals are everywhere. We'll all be rooned! Learnt a lot about what to avoid.
"Acacia" by DA Durham. 3.5 stars. Engaging. Ruthless. But the way the story is told makes it hard to get emotionally involved.
"The Lieutenant" by Kate Grenville. 3.5 stars. Beautifully written history brought to life, but a disappointing climax.
"The One-Straw Revolution" by Masanobu Fukuoka. 3.5 stars. A great deal of wisdom, but we've learned very little of it.

3 stars:
"The Social Climbers" by Chris Darwin. 3 stars. A warts and all telling of mad foolishness: holding a dinner party on a 6800m mountain.
"The Carbon Diaries 2015" by Saci Lloyd. 3 stars. Carbon rationing. Natural disasters. Over the top, but readable.
"Bypass" by Michael McGirr. 3 stars. Who'd have though the Hume Highway could be so interesting. A comfortable and engaging read.
"Swallows and Amazons" by Arthur Ransom. 3 stars. An enjoyable flight of fancy. Should have read this when I was a kid.
"Life & Adventures of William Buckley" 3 stars. Amazing story. Reads like a litany of violent acts by the Aboriginals he lived with.
"The Catcher in the Rye" by JD Salinger. 3 stars. I didn't understand this book, but it's very well written.
"Biomimicry" by Janine Benyus. 3 stars. Fascinating in places, pedestrian in others. The promise in this book remains distant.
"The Longest Road" by Paul Pritchard. 3 stars. Not particularly engaging, but he must have a will of iron to keep pushing himself.
"Killing Mister Watson" by Peter Matthiessen. 3 stars. Fun to explore pioneering Everglades. Well told, but too few revelations.

2.5 stars:
"The Partner" by John Grisham. 2.5 stars. Somewhat clever light entertainment. Passable holiday reading.
"Riddley Walker" by Russell Hoban. 2.5 stars. Dialect requires concentration. Not much reward though! Didn't understand message.

2 stars:
"Pride of Carthage" D.A. Durham. 2 stars. Historically interesting but not all that engaging - I nearly have up on it.
"It's not about the bike" Lance Armstrong. 2 stars. Comes across as a typical arrogent American athlete. Bloody minded!