I’ve missed this post for a couple of years, which is too bad, I need to write more on my blog. I’ve got a whole bunch of draft posts, maybe this year I actually finish them.

Also, in case this is not clear, these are the best books that I managed to read in 2022. I’m sure there are more interesting lists of the best books that came out in 2022.

I managed to read 1 more book in 2019 than I did in 2018 and I didn’t wait until May to write about them. I feel pretty good about that. But one book different is basically the margin of error with book you start in 1 year and end is the second. It’s interesting look at my GoodReads “My Year in Books”. They give a page count (which is a little strange given I usually listen to audio book, but it’s probably roughly accurate). I have an annual reading habit of about 15-20 books and about 7,000 to 10,000 pages.

I finished 25 books in 2017. Not bad. I got the number up from last year but I think it’s mostly because I read lots of “fun” books. Lots of fantasy. Another factor is that now with 2 children I have less time for things like movies and TV shows, audiobooks and podcasts are what I have time and energy for these days.

Non-Fiction

Politics: The Dictator’s Handbook by Bruce Bueno De Mesquita and Alastair Smith it great. I read it early in the year and the ideas in the book really have stuck with me and I’ve thought about them a lot.

According to what I tracked on Good Reads, I finished 20 books is 2017. I feel OK about that. I wish I had a done a bit more “serious” reading, there was a lot of entertainment in there, but it was all fun (at least most of the time) and even in the fluff there were some interesting ideas.

Non-Fiction

Politics: The Righteous Mind by Jonathan Haidt is one of my favorite books of all time and one of the most important books I’ve read. So far I’ve been able to talk at least 3 other people into reading it and they’ve loved it too.

First off while, I was writing this article, I had Robot Parade by They Might be Giants stuck in my head the whole time.

I’ve been reading a lot of economists deriding a higher minimum wage and they’ve got me a bit riled up (here’s a very small selection).

• An Open Letter to Arindrajit Dube
• If Government Can Work Miracles…
• Alex Tabarrok on Price Floors and the Minimum Wage

Where I live in Minneapolis there is an annual May Day Parade. After the parade they have a free speech section. Every year I’ve watched the parade the group Fight for $15 has marched.

The bad news is I only read 17 books in 2015. However I feel pretty good about that because I read all 10 of The Malazan Book of the Fallen by Steven Erikson, which are all massive. All 10 averaged well over 40 hours a piece. It’s kinda scary to think I spent so much time listening to those books. Recording them must have been a massive undertaking.

The Malazan books were good books, an absolutely massive world with lots of interesting stuff going on, however I may have over done it. At the end I felt like I had been put through a lot, given it a lot of my time and the end just didn’t quite satisfy as much as I had hopped. Maybe I’ll feel differently about it in a few years. Mostly I blame my self. If I had stretched it out a little bit longer, read some more different kinds of books in the gaps (like what would have happened if I read them as they were published), I suspect I would have enjoyed the experience a lot more and would be raving about how good they were right now.

The number of titles of books I read this year seems a little light, 30 books in 2013, only 18 in 2014. Looking over the list though, I feel a little better about my reading last year, there were some big books on the list.

Non-Fiction Politics and Theology (always a dangerous combination): A Farewell to Mars - An Evangelical Pastor’s Journey Toward the Biblical Gospel of Peace by Brian Zahnd. One could criticize it for being cavalier at times, but it’s covering a lot of ground in small book. It was much more then just an overview for me though, there were several new ideas, new metaphors and even some history that was new to me.

I think I’m going to start writing an annual blog post about my favorite books every year. Here’s this years run down. In case you are wondering I don’t actually have a memory capable of remembering all the books I’ve read this year and what I thought of them, but I’ve been logging my reading at GoodReads.com and that makes it easy.

Here they are in no particular order. I’m probably going to try to stick to one book per category.