Reading Lists

Jan9

What did you read this past year? What were your favorites? What did you try to read but couldn’t quite get into? Which books made a real impression on you? What was overrated? What did you waste time reading? What do you recommend?

What do you plan to read in 2006? Why?

Post a link in the comments to your own reading list for 2005–or your reading plan for 2006, and I’ll link to it here.

Writing and Living lists the books she read and the ones she planned to read in 2005: 31 books read in 2005 and a year of Dickens coming up for 2006.

Melissa of the Bonny Glen plans to read Dickens, Chesterton, and a few other books. Did you know that Chesterton wrote a biography of Dickens?

Todd is reading Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion and blogging about it.

Mental Multivitamin’s Year in Review, including a list of her ten favorite reading experiences in 2005 (scroll down).

Laura in a strange land posts her edition of THE LIST. She’s going to read Dorothy Sayers and Louisa May Alcott among others–two of my favorites.

Stefanie at So Many Books read 55 of them this year, and she lists the five best ones. C.S. Lewis’s Till We Have Faces is at the top of the list. Yes! I love that book.

Fimble Fowl’s organized and ambitious list—from the bathroom floor??

Susan(Pages Turned) has her lists for 2004 and 2005 of books read in the sidebar. She’s read some of the books I plan to read: The March, Canticle for Leibowitz, Never Let Me Go. Maybe that’s where I found them, or maybe I should check them out at her place before I commit myself.

Tim Hutchison, missionary doctor in Nairobi, has read some good stuff, including a lot of Patrick O’Brian. (Master and Commander and all that nautical jazz). Who’s Neal Stephenson, and what kind of stuff does he write?

Kathryn Judson’s Book Recommendations from 2005. I added The Privateer by Josephine Tey to THE LIST because I like Josephine Tey’s Daughter of TIme very much.

A blatant display of Amanda’s lit-geekery. Her words, not mine. I think it just looks like an interesting year of books.

Here’s Carrie Mommy Brain’s Reading List for 2006. And here’s a list of the books she read in 2005.

Sparrow at Intent implies that THE LIST is much too long and shows no restraint. What can I say? She’s right. Her list for 2006, on the other hand, is much more ladylike and sane: Jane Austen, Edith Schaeffer’s What Is a Family?, Till We Have Faces (second appearance in these links). Her list is eminently respectable, but she cheats. Wodehouse, Sayers, McCall Smith, and Ellis Peters don’t count!

Chicken Spaghetti posts her 2005 favorites in the sidebar.

John M. is reading Gibbon.

Sandra at Book World confesses that she buys more books than she reads and that she is not really reading the classics she thought she was reading. Then on New Year’s Eve she posts a plan for the new year: science, poetry, classics, Shakespeare. Buy fewer books.

Ella has a picture and commentary about her first ten books of the new year. She’s already started on War and Peace. And she’s planning on reading Thomas Hardy, Edith Wharton, Oscar WIlde, and Thoreau.

Anita just started her book blog: It’s All About the Book. She’s planning to read modern classics, mostly twentieth century stuff. I think she should start with LOTR if she hasn’t read it.

A Somewhat Dated and Highly Subjective Real Book Lover’s Guide to the Ten Best Books of 2005 by Doppelganger at 50 Books. She likes Thackeray and Wodehouse and Laura Ingalls Wilder.

Anne in Hawaii (Palm Tree Pundit) has this list of books read in 2005. Ooooh, she read Kristin Lavransdattar which I am definitely planning to get around to reading this year. I’ve been planning to read it for a long time.

At Half-Pint House, Megan read 40 books in 2005, Her goal was three books per month. I see that she read The Eyre Affair; maybe she can tell me what it was supposed to be about.

Craig and Doug blog and list books at Twenty Someone. Twenty Someone is the title of the book they co-authored, and they’re a couple of young Christian guys just out of their twenties. It looks as if they run a good blog.

CDR Salamander list seven books he read and enjoyed this past year. Nonfiction as befits a military guy.

Cinnamon at Nose in a Book posts My Reading: Year in Review. She included some Alcott, some Austen, and two-thirds of LOTR. Keep going; the ending is a tear-jerker.

Danielle at A Work in Progress is planning to read the Modern Library 100 best novels. She’s starting at the bottom of the list and working her way up, hoping to reach #80 by the end of 2006. #100 is The Magnificent Ambersons by Booth Tarkington. I’ve never read it, but I have read Penrod. Does that count for anything?

Jamie from Canada has his list, mostly theology, N.T. Wright and others. No fiction!?

Amy at Perpetual Thursday read a variety of genres and subjects. In fact, I think hers is the most varied reading list I’ve seen yet.

Jonathan would like to read Total Truth and God Is the Gospel, among others. I’d like to finish those two, too. I wonder which one of us will do it.

Tym all the way over in Singapore read 19 books, including LOTR, The Lion the Witch , and the Wardrobe and several dense-sounding philosophy books.

Circle of Quiet Reading for 2006. I am honored; she says she got some of her ideas for reading material from me.

Kate’s Favorites from 2005 I disagree with her about Case Histories, but I would like to add a couple of her other favorites to THE LIST.

The lady at Seasonal Soundings has a plan for 2006–morning reading, educational reading, evening reading, even beach reading.

Roger of the A-Team group blog is starting a new blog, Never Enough Tea: Reflections on all Th.ings C.S. Lewis “My goal is to blog 2-3 times a week reflecting on Lewis, his writings, and writings about him and his writings. Though I�m reading chronologically, I�ll likely pull from stuff I�ve already read anyway. I�ll also be reading and reviewing books on Lewis and his works. From time to time I�ll branch out a bit and go into works that influenced Lewis- such as Boethius, Chesterton, MacDonald, etc.”

Kate at The Little Bookroom, who recommended several of the books on THE LIST, read some fine books last year,including Madeleine L’Engle’s Ring of Endless Light which is also one of my favorites. She also has some interesting plans for this year, books from The Modern Library list of 100 Best Novels of the Twentieth Century. I’d prefer the 19th century, but we’ll see how it goes for Kate.

Last but certainly not least, I’m going to end this list of lists with Eldest Daughter’s Top Ten of 2005. I must gloat a little; one of her top ten I recommended, and another I gave her as a Christmas gift. Am I good or what?

***(This is really fun–seeing what everyone else has read and is reading and is planning to read.I’m moving this post to the top of the blog for New Year’s Day one more time since I’ve added several more lists.)

19 thoughts on “Reading Lists”

  1. I think my favorite book this year has been God is the Gospel by John Piper. I’m just finishing it and will be blogging it soon.

  2. I posted my favorites from 2005 in this post:

    http://mentalmultivitamin.blogspot.com/2005/12/mental-multivitamin-year-in-review.html

    As for a 2006 reading list, frankly, it’s the serendipity of the reading life that has always attracted me, not the planning — as in, reading Never Let Me Go led to More Than Human; The Year of Magical Thinking led to Evenings at Five; and so on.

    One idea I did have was three hundred short stories and three hundred poems in 2006. For me, these are woefully neglected areas.

    We’ll see. This is a weekend of reorganizing, rethinking, reshaping, isn’t it?

    Health and happiness to you and yours in the new year, S.

    MFS

  5. I’ve read 77 books this year–they’re listed in my sidebar following the links. I should have a list of my favorites posted by the end of the day.

  7. Thanks for picking up my list – and for hosting this list of lists. I am having a blast looking at other people’s recommendations and plans.

  8. Thanks so much for compiling these wonderful resources – – I just started my own blog on books (I have an established one called Fighting Inertia), and I’m really enjoying finding all these literary blogs and seeing what other people read, recommend, etc.

  10. I greatly appreciate you including my less than established blog on your list. Thanks to you I’ve had a few comments which is very encouraging when you are starting a new blog!

  11. I thoroughly enjoyed “Alexander Hamilton” and am looking forward to reading “1776.” For devotional reading “Amazing Grace” which is a hymn a day for reflection. Best wishes for a wonderful 2006 to you and all your readers.

  13. Ha! Although I did enjoy reading The Eyre Affair, I’m not certain I could explain it. Unusual reading, that’s for sure!

  14. You can feel honored regularly, Sherry. You’ve been a regular source of ideas since first finding Semicolon!

    Thanks for your excellent work.

    ~Diane

  15. I read that Tarkington’s favorite character that he created was actually Penrod–so I would say that having read it, yes, does count for a lot! 🙂 I have just started Ambersons and it looks like it will be very good!

  16. I should have put down that I am drooling with jealousy over your list…especially if you actually get through the whole thing.

    Thanks for the inspiration. I’ll be checking that long, glorious list of yours for ideas through the year.

    (and I didn’t include Wodehouse or Peters in the actual count! *wink*)

  17. I just posted my reading list for 2005 on my book blog. I’m only on my 2nd book for 2006 and they are a serious contrast to “Out” by Natsuo Kirino (read for Kimbofo’s Reading Matters book club) which was my last book of 2005. I finished “Al Capone does my Shirts” and am now reading Lois Lowry’s “The Giver”.

  18. Favorite of the year: The Way of a Pilgrim.
    I find it very easy to get lost in my head and forget that Christianity is not an academic achiement test. This is a good remedy.
    Currently reading: Seeking God, the Way of St. Benedict, by Esther deWaal
    Just started it – so far, so good.
    To read this year: The Brothers Karamazov
    Started this several years ago, then fell into The Project From Hell and never finished. Need to start from page 1.

  19. How have I not been here before? Hi. I’m guessing you’re the Sherry that comments a lot on the Thinklings blog? Your daughter visited my site and told me about yours, so hey hey. I shall be reciprocating the linky-love soon.

    And thanks for linking to my lit-geekery. 🙂

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