Sunday, December 30, 2012

Data analysis: every single book I read in 2012

Above: Adolfo Bioy Casares

In 2012, I read a total of 40 books. Of these books...

  • 36 were written by men; 4, by women
  • 33 were written by white people; 6 were written by non-white people; in 1 case I am not able to make any determination
  • Of the non-white authors, 2 were African-American, 2 were Mexican-American, 1 was Indian-American, and 1 was Chinese.
  • 21 of the authors are still alive; 17 are dead; 1 can reasonably be assumed to be dead; and, in 1 case, I have no idea
  • 16 of the books were fiction; 24 were non-fiction
  • I read 24 of the books for the first time; 16 of them were books I had read before at least once
  • I owned 26 of the books; 14 of them were from the library


Every single book I read in 2012

Above: Ryszard Kapuscinski in Angola

The Normandy Diary of Marie-Louise Osmont: 1940-1944-- Marie-Louise Osmont
Catch-22-- Joseph Heller
Slaughterhouse-Five or The Children's Crusade-- Kurt Vonnegut
The Caine Mutiny-- Herman Wouk
From Stalingrad to Pillau: A Red Army Artillery Officer Remembers the Great Patriotic War-- Isaak Kobylyanskiy, edited by Stuart Britton
A Farewell to Arms-- Ernest Hemingway
Condemned to Live: A Panzer Artilleryman's Five-Front War-- Franz A. P. Frisch and Wilbur Jones, Jr.

A Quarter-Century of Un-Americana-- edited by Charlotte Pomerantz
Remembering Scottsboro: The Legacy of an Infamous Trial-- James A. Miller
The Ox-Bow Incident-- Walter Van Tilburg Clark
To Kill a Mockingbird-- Harper Lee
The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man-- James Weldon Johnson
The Neighborhood of Baseball-- Barry Gifford
Another Day of Life-- Ryszard Kapuscinski
There's a Boy in the Girl's Bathroom-- Louis Sachar (out loud to my students)
Time for Outrage/Indignez-vous!-- Stephane Hessel
Change-- Mo Yan
Moving Through Here-- Don McNeill
Fugitive Days: A Memoir-- Bill Ayers
Out of The Whale-- Jonah Raskin
Hillsborough: The Truth-- Phil Scraton
The Day of the Hillsborough Disaster: A Narrative Account-- Compiled and Edited by Rogan Taylor, Andrew Ward, and Tim Newburn
The Education of Hopey Glass-- Jaime Hernandez
The Girl From H.O.P.P.E.R.S.-- Jaime Hernandez
The Catcher in the Rye-- J.D. Salinger
Hammer of the Gods: The Led Zeppelin Saga-- Stephen Davis (2008 edition)
LZ-'75: The Lost Chronicles of Led Zeppelin's 1975 American Tour-- Stephen Davis; Photographs by Peter Simon
On High Steel: The Education of an Ironworker-- Mike Cherry
Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? (And Other Concerns)-- Mindy Kaling
Good Ol' Snoopy-- Charles M. Schulz
Good-Bye To All That-- Robert Graves
Desert Solitaire: A Season in the Wilderness-- Edward Abbey
Cut Off behind enemy lines in the Battle of the Bulge with two small children, Ernest Hemingway and other assorted misanthropes-- Bill Davidson

Naples '44: An Intelligence Officer in the Italian Labyrinth-- Norman Lewis
The Color of Truth: McGeorge Bundy and William Bundy: Brothers in Arms: A Biography-- Kai Bird
JIM: The Author's Self-Centered Memoir on the Great Jim Brown-- James Toback
The Dream of Heroes-- Adolfo Bioy Casares
The Big Fix-- Roger L. Simon

The Third Man-- Graham Greene
The Maltese Falcon-- Dashiell Hammett

"Hockey ought to be sternly forbidden, as it is not only annoying but dangerous." Halifax Morning Sun, quoted in Michael McKinley's Hockey - A People's History