What I Read In 2019

Here are the books I read in 2019. Goodreads tells me that it was 34,268 pages.  This is more for my information, but I would recommend most of them.

1. 21 Lessons for the 21st Century by Yuval Noah Harari
2. 84, Charing Cross Road by Helene Hanff
3. A Bound Woman is a Dangerous Thing: The Incarceration of African American Women from Harriet Tubman to Sandra Bland by DaMaris B. Hill
4. A Call for Revolution: A Vision for the Future by The Dalai Lama with Sofia Stril-Rever
5. A Complaint Free World by Will Bowen
6. A Good Dog: The Story of Orson, Who Changed My Life by Jon Katz
7. A Small Place by Jamaica Kincaid
8. Aftermath by Chuck Wendig
9. All-American Murder: The Rise and Fall of Aaron Hernandez, The Superstar whose Life Ended on Murderers' Row by James Patterson
10. American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America by Chris Hedges
11. American Prison: A Reporter's Undercover Journey into the Business of Punishment by Shane Bauer
12. An Astronaut's Guide to Life on Earth by Col. Chris Hadfield
13. An Ordinary Man: An Autobiography by Paul Rusesabagina
14. Artemis by Andy Weir
15. Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup by John Carreyrou
16. Barnum: An American Life by Robert Wilson
17. Baseball Cop: The Dark Side of America's National Pastime by Eddie Dominguez
18. Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End by Atul Gawande
19. Bowlaway by Elizabeth McCracken
20. Boy: Tales of Childhood by Roald Dahl
21. Breaking and Entering: The Extraordinary Story of a Hacker Called "Alien" by Jeremy N. Smith
22. Brief Answers to the Big Questions by Stephen Hawking
23. Burn Before Reading: Presidents, CIA Directors and Secret Intelligence by Stansfield Turner
24. Can You Ever Forgive Me?: Memoirs of a Literary Forger by Lee Israel
25. Choosing Gratitude: Learning to Love the Life You Have by James A. Autry
26. Confessions of a Rogue Nuclear Regulator by Gregory B. Jaczko
27. Death Need Not Be Fatal by Malachy McCourt and Brian McDonald
28. Democracy in Black: How Race Still Enslaves the American Soul by Eddie S. Glaude, Jr.
29. Dreaming the Beatles: The Love Story of One Band and the Whole World by Rob Sheffield
30. Dying of Whiteness: How the Politics of Racial Resentment is Killing America's Heartland by Jonathan M. Metzl
31. Earn. Save. Give. Wesley's Simple Rules for Money by James A. Harnish
32. Educated: A Memoir by Tara Westover
33. Faith by Jennifer Haigh
34. Filthy Rich: The True Story Behind the Jeffrey Epstein Sex Scandal by James Patteron, with John Connolly and Tim Malloy
35. Forgotten: The Untold Story of D-Day's Black Heroes, at Home and at War by Linda Hervieux
36. From Here to Eternity: Traveling the World to Find the Good Death by Caitlin Doughty
37. Genesis: The Deep Origin of Society by Edward O. Wilson
38. Girl, Woman, Other by Bernardine Evaristo
39. God Help the Child by Toni Morrison
40. God's Favorites: Judaism, Christianity and the Myth of Divine Chosenness by Michael Coogan
41. Grateful: The Subversive Practice of Giving Thanks by Diana Butler Bass
42. Gridiron Genius: A Master Class in Winning Championships and Building Dynasties in the NFL by Michael Lombardi
43. Guardians of the Whills by Greg Rucka
44. Hamilton: The Revolution by Lin-Manuel Miranda and Jeremy McCarter
45. Help. Thanks. Wow: The Three Essential Prayers by Anne Lamott
46. Here and Now by Henri J.M. Nouwen
47. Home by Toni Morrison
48. Humans Need Not Apply: A Guide to Wealth and Work in the Age of Artificial Intelligence by Jerry Kaplan
49. I Must Say: My Life as a Humble Comedy Legend by Martin Short
50. In My Father's House: A New View of How Crime Runs in the Family by Fox Butterfield
51. In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror and an American Family in Hitler's Berlin by Erik Larson
52. Inventing Los Alamos: The Growth of an Atomic Community by Jon Hunner
53. Jesus Feminist: An Invitation to Revisit the Bible's View of Women by Sarah Bessey
54. Just Kids from the Bronx: Telling it the Way it Was: An Oral History by Arlene Alda
55. I’ll Be Gone in the Dark: One Woman’s Obsessive Search for the Golden State Killer by Michelle McNamara
56. Lady Almina and the Real Life Downtown Abbey by Fiona Carnarvon
57. Laika's Window: The Legacy of a Soviet Space Dog by Kurt Caswell
58. Letter to a Christian Nation by Sam Harris
59. Life's Too Short to Pretend You're Not Religious by David Dark
60. Longitude: The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time by Dava Sobel
61. Lord, Teach Us: The Lord's Prayer and the Christian Life by William Willimon and Stanley Hauerwas
62. Lords of Discipline by Pat Conroy
63. Meet Me in Atlantis: My Obsessive Quest to Find the Sunken City by Mark Adams
64. Monday Morning Leadership: Eight Mentoring Sessions You Can't Afford to Miss by David Cottrell
65. Mountains of the Pharaohs: The Untold Stories of the Pyramid Builders by Zaho A. Hawass
66. Names for the Messiah by Walter Brueggemann
67. No One at the Wheel: Driverless Cars and the Road of the Future by Samuel L. Schwartz and Karen Kelly
68. No One is Too Small to Make a Difference by Greta Thunberg
69. Notes of a Native Son by James Baldwin
70. One Stick Song by Sherman Alexie
71. Out of Step: A Memoir by Anthony Moll
72. Perfectly Reasonable Deviations from the Beaten Track: Letters of Richard P. Feynman edited by Michelle Feynman
73. Ready Player One by Ernest Cline
74. Retrograde by Peter Cawdron
75. Saving Italy: The Race to Rescue a Nation's Treasures from the Nazis by Robert M. Edsel
76. Seven Practices of a Mindful Leader: Lessons from Google, Search Inside Yourself and a Zen Monastery Kitchen by Marc Lesser
77. Squeezed: Why Our Families Can't Afford America by Alissa Quart
78. Star Wars: From a Certain Point of View edited by Elizabeth Schaefer
79. Stealing Your Life: The Ultimate Indentity Theft Protection Plan by Frank Abagnale, Jr.
80. Storm Kings: The Untold History of America's First Storm Chasers by Lee Sandlin
81. Tell Them of Battles, Kings and Elephants by Mathias Enard, translated by Charlotte Mandell
82. The Art of Death: Writing the Final Story by Edwidge Danticat
83. The Banished Immortal: A Life of Li Bai by Ha Jin
84. The Battle of Fort Negro: The Rise and Fall of a Fugitive Slave Community by Matthew J. Clavin
85. The Bible Doesn't Say That by Joel M. Hoffman
86. The Corrosion of Conservatism: Why I Left the Right by Max Boot
87. The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don't Work and What to do About It by Michael Gerber
88. The Escape Artists: A Band of Daredevil Pilots and the Greatest Prison Break of the Great War by Meal Bascomb
89. The Fire This Time: A New Generation Speaks about Race edited by Jesmyn Ward
90. The Five: The Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper by Hallie Rubenhold
91. The Future of the Mind: The Scientific Quest to Understand, Enhance and Empower the Mind by Michio Kaku
92. The Good Neighbor: The Life and Work of Fred Rogers by Maxwell KIng
93. The Greatest Prayer: A Revolutionary Manifesto and Hymn of Hope by John Dominic Crossan
94. The Guardians by John Grisham
95. The Heart Led Leader: How Living and Leading from the Heart Will Change Your Organization and Your Life by Tommy Spaulding
96. The Last Jedi by Michael Reaves and Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff
97. The Library Book by Susan Orlean
98. The Lord and His Prayer by N.T. Wright
99. The Man Who Loved Books too Much: The True Story of a Thief, a Detective and a World of Literary Obsession by Allison Hoover Bartlett
100. The Mouse that Roared: Disney and the End of Innocence by Henry A. Girouz
101. The Professor in the Cage: Why Men Fight and Why We Like to Watch by Jonathan Gottschall
102. The Real All-Americans: The Team that Changed a Game, a People, a Nation by Sally Jenkins
103. The Real Lolita: The Kidnapping of Sallry Horner and the Novel that Scandalized the World by Sarah Weinman
104. The Reckoning by John Grisham
105. The Revisioners by Margaret Wilkerson Sexton
106. The Second Founding: How the Civil War and Reconstruction Remade the Constitution by Eric Foner
107. The Sin of Certainty by Peter Enns
108. The Soul of America: The Battle for Our Better Angels by Jon Meachem
109. The Story of My Father by Sue Miller
110. The Tao of Leadership: Lao Tzu's Tao Te Ching Adapted for a New Age by John Heider
111. The Tao of Happiness: Stories from Chung Tzu for Your Spiritual Journey by Derek Lin
112. The Time is Now: A Call to Uncommon Courage by Joan Chittister, OSB
113. The Unmaking of the President 2016 by Lanny David
114. The Year of Lear: Shakespeare in 1606 by James Shapiro
115. There There by Tommy Orange
116. Three Simple Rules: A Wesleyan Way of Living by Reuben P. Job
117. Treason by Timothy Zahn
118. Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging by Sebastian Junger
119. Truth in Our Times: Inside the Fight for Press Freedom in the Age of Alternative Facts by David E. McCraw
120. Trying to Save Piggy Sneed by John Irving
121. Tyrant: Shakespeare on Politics by Stephen Greenblatt
122. Under Pressure: Confronting the Epidemic of Stress and Anxiety in Girls by Lisa Damour
123. War Dogs: The True Story of How Three Stoners from Miami Beach Became the Most Unlikely Gunrunners in History by Guy Lawson
124. We Cast a Shadow by Maurice Carlos Ruffin
125. What in God's Name? by Simon Rich
126. What Truth Sounds Like: RFK, James Baldwin and Our Unfinished Conversation about Race in America by Michael Eric Dyson
127. Why Religion? A Personal Story by Elaine Pagels
128. Why Women Have Better Sex under Socialism and Other Arguments for Economic Independence by Kristen R. Ghodsee
129. Wild Bill: The True Story of the American Frontier's First Gunfighter by Tom Clavin
130. You Throw Like a Girl: The Blind Spot of Masculinity by Don McPherson

The Future of Reading

Two recent items from the newest issue of the Christian Century caught my eye.

The first is entitled "Readers Wanted" and reports that a librarian at the University of Denver says that 47% of the books acquired from 2000-2009 where never checked out. The University of Arizona says they spent $19 million on books over the last decade that have never been used. Both libraries are going to be implementing a new system in which new books will be rented as e-books upon request, and then after demand is shown they may be purchased for the libraries collection.

After writing so much about having to make changes to keep up with changing technology, I can't really say that I am necessarily opposed to this, but I do have some concerns. The first is that, while almost half of the books weren't checked out, more than half were. What is also unknown is how these numbers compare to prior decades. Has there been a real change, or just a perceived one. I certainly know that a lot of research is done on the web today, but does that mean that the books are not needed? Also just because the books are not checked out does not mean they are not used. Which leads me into my second concern.

As someone who studies church history, I am often checking out books that have not been checked out in decades. When I was working on my thesis I would often be the first person checking a book out in the past 75 years, and one of them the library has had for 120 years and I was only the third to check it out. That of course does not mean that others didn't use it in the library, but I was certainly glad the library had it because it would not have been available to me otherwise. I also used Google books, and would not have been able to complete my thesis without them. If you haven't gone tried them you should. Again I was able to gain access to old texts that it would have taken me months to acquire through inter-library loans. Many of the books I used were digitized by libraries out of their collections in order to be more freely available to people who needed them, as well as to preserve them for future generations to use.

We are embarking on a significant change to how books and information are gathered and retained, but I'm not quite ready to say that the way that libraries operate at the moment has fundamentally changed. Even when I was getting books electronically, I was still printing them to read. I have looked at e-book readers and know people who love them, but I'm not quite there yet. Although having a book electronically in order to search them has been a God send on many occasions (again try Google books for this), but I have still gone back to the hard-copy to read the text.

Libraries, to me at least, still serve as the repository for information and they simply must have books that have little interest to most people, because no one else will carry them. If libraries start only being concerned with making sure all their books are popular, then we are in trouble. Most of the books I read cannot be found in normal bookstores, but are often available in libraries. Libraries do need to be concerned about shelving space, and digital books will make a significant difference for this, but when I want to pick up a book on the religious life of American youth I either have to buy it, or check it out of the library. Now there is certainly not much demand for this type of book, but does that mean the library shouldn't have it even if no one checks it out for several years? And if libraries aren't purchasing these books will publishers even publish them anymore?

Which leads into the second blurb entitled "Slow Reading." Apparently there is now a movement encouraging people to slow down their reading by employing two different strategies. The first is to have people read out-loud and the second is to focus on memorization, both of which force people to slow down and focus on the words. Lindsay Waters, an editor for Harvard University Press, said "Instead of rushing by works so fast that we don't even muss our hair, we should tarry, attend to the sensuousness of reading, and allow ourselves to enter the experience of words."

I guess the end gist of this is to go ahead and download that book to your i-pad or kindle, but then read it out loud.