Hunter Johnson — Reading List 2006
The books I read in 2006.
Nothing Like It in the World by Stephen Ambrose. More than WWII changed 20th-century American life, the transcontinental railroad (and the telegraph wires next to it) changed 19th-century American life. Ambrose is engaging in this history lesson.The Lead Like Jesus Study Guide by Ken Blanchard and others. Too much aimed at business management for our group (who are mostly "individual contributors" but family-leaders). Useful bits, but probably would go with a book aimed at fathers next time.
Web Design Garage, by Marc Campbell. An introductory HTML and CSS reference nestled among some actually useful design tidbits. Better than average, for those bits.
The "Great Book" Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad. Short, vivid, and as dark as you expect.
The Bounty Lands, by William Donohue Ellis. An amazing novel about a pig farmer, a lawyer, and a land speculator in post-Revolution America as what will become Ohio is settled.Dostoyevsky's Notes from the Underground. A book mentioned in Philip Yancey's Soul Survivor, which I read last year.
Dubious Shards, a collection of Lovecraftian essays, reviews, and one role-playing game adventure from Kenneth Hite. Hite is one of my favorite wordsmiths, along with Trotter and Yancey, so now I just want to read more Lovecraft. Maybe when once I finish War & Peace...Raising Cain, by Dan Kindlon and Michael Thompson. A parenting book, which there are too many of, but I enjoyed it. Shows a lot of respect for the kids and still encourages structure.
Rudyard Kipling's Kim. I should hardly count this one, I glazed over so much of it. But I did enjoy the exotic dialog.Niccolò Machiavelli's The Prince. I was clueless enough about this title that I was expecting a novel when I picked it up. This edition also includes the shorter works "Description of the Methods adopted by the Duke Valentino when murdering Vitellozzo Vitelli, [et al.]" and "The Life of Castuccio Castracani of Lucca".
Thomas Mann's The Magic Mountain, translated by H. T. Lowe-Porter. A book I've owned since high school. The heaviest prose in the list, but sometimes it's good to exercise those reading-for-comprehension skills. Too heavy for reading in parallel with so many other books though.Ambient Findability by Peter Morville. Parts search, philosophy, psychology, and futurism.
The scripts in Steve Oualline's Wicked Cool Perl Scripts were not really wicked cool, just mostly utilitarian. Some overlong examples (culminating in the way-too-long regexp grapher). But useful enough for examples of complete programs.
Jerry Remy's Watching Baseball is an easy read, but easy to interrupt too. Not gripping, but still fun.Back to Hogwarts with J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. I read these to the kids; they're palatable enough for me, but I'll keep pushing to interleave them with more classic "classics".
Bruce Holland Rogers' Word Work gives advice on how to be a writer rather than on how to write. Conversational and motivating.
James Robert Smith's debut novel, The Flock, is a "summer read", a speculative adventure with prehistoric terror birds in modern Florida. An excellent debut; a few cookie-cutter characters, but more unpeggable ones, and believable relationships.The Cincinnati Red Stalkings, by Tony Soos. Baseball, local (to me) history, and a murder mystery nicely rolled up. Did you know the 1869 Red Stockings are the only professional baseball team to go undeafeted? Now you do.
Thucydides' History of the Peloponnesian War. Another Great Book, and ancient military history to boot. The speeches were interesting, but the rest tended to run together on me.Philip Yancey's The Jesus I Never Knew. Didn't displace What's So Amazing About Grace? as my favorite Yancey book, but it came close. Amazing work at magnifying Jesus' person-hood.
I've read precious few books from the "Expanded Universe", probably because Timothy Zahn's Thrawn trilogy, starting with Heir to the Empire set the bar so high. We were alternating the Thrawn trilogy with some Harry Potter books after dinner this year.
But the kids decided to stop after Dark Force Rising and just go with Potter. Lori's reading the final book, of course — I don't know how the kids can stand not knowing...
Hunter Johnson (hunter@hunterandlori.com)
