So, another year has passed. What a trip! Last year I posted this post detailing my goals for the year. Let's see how I did!
Read at least 20 new books
For your viewing pleasure, I present the entire list of books that I have read this year. The list is 59 books long.
*denotes re-read
- most enjoyable reads in bold
MediaMaking - Grossberg, Wartella, and Whitney
Paradox of Choice - Barry Schwartz
High-Tech Heretic - Clifford Stoll
A Quick Guide to Analogue Synthesis - Ian Waugh
Issues in Advertising - Edited by David G. Tucek
Red Dragon - Thomas Harris
All Consuming Images - Stuart Ewen
Model - Michael Gross
Blink - Malcolm Gladwell
Finally Alive - Dr. John Piper
Renegade Kids, Suburban Outlaws - Wayne S. Wooden
The Faces of Homelessness - Marjore Hope and James Young
Killing Yourself to Live - Chuck Klosterman
Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
Fool’s Gold - Andrew B. Schmookler
The Wisdom Of Crowds - James Surowiecki
The Tipping Point - Malcolm Gladwell
Fast Food Nation - Eric Schlosser
The Communist Manifesto - Marx & Engels
Culture Of Complaint - Robert Hughes
Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs - Chuck Klosterman
Ideas of the Great Philosophers - William Sahakian
Principles of Biomedical Ethics - Beauchamp and Childress
Bowling Alone - Robert D. Putnam
Blue Like Jazz - Donald Miller*
The Communications Revolution - George N. Gordon
The Myth of a Christian Religion - Greg Boyd
Mere Christianity - C.S. Lewis
Trapped in the Net - Gene I. Rochlin
The Internet Church - Walter P. Wilson
The Passion of Jesus Christ - Dr. John Piper
A Spot of Bother - Mark Haddon
Wild At Heart - John Eldredge
Scribal Culture and the Making of the Hebrew Bible - Karl Van Der Toorn
Generation Ecstasy - Simon Reynolds*
Don’t Waste Your Life - Dr. John Piper*
Fargo Rock City - Chuck Klosterman
The McDonaldization of Society - George Ritzer
Nickel and Dimed - Barbara Ehrenreich
The Two-Income Trap - Elizabeth Warren and Amelia Warren Tyagi
Chaos - James Gleick
Joy at the End of the Tether - Douglas WIlson
Culture Jam - Kalle Lasn
Nonviolence in Theory and Practice - Edited by Robert L. Holmes
Semantics - Sidney Shanker
Toxic Psychiatry - Peter R. Breggin
Lives of Master Swordsmen - Makoto Sugawara*
There Are No Children Here - Alex Kotlowitz
Winning PR in the Wired World - Don Middleberg
Being Digital - Nicholas Negroponte
Notes From a Small Island - Bill Bryson
Experiencing Poverty - D.Stanley Eitzen
The Death of Common Sense - Philip K. Howard
Hannibal Rising - Thomas Harris
Technopoly - Neil Postman*
The Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
Jurassic Park - Michael Crichton*
This Momentary Marriage - Dr. John Piper*
Code of the Samurai - Thomas Cleary
If you are really interested, you can go through my blog posts over the last year and make rough correlations from certain posts to what I was reading at the time. I doubt you will have time to do this. I don't even have time to do this.
Read through the Bible in a year
Completed on 12/27/09! This was a really rewarding experience. Some books, like the prophets, dragged on a bit (I'm looking at you, Isaiah.) Others, like Genesis, still gave me new perspectives on stories I had read dozens of times before.
Not buy any new music
My iTunes tells me that I have added 612 new tracks to my library since 12/31/08. Some of these were gifts, but most were not. FAIL! I did get some really good stuff, though. Some highlights are:
- Ki - Devin Townsend
- Fire In Our Throats Will Beckon The Thaw - Pelican
- You've Come a Long Way Baby - Fatboy Slim
- Everything That Happens Will Happen Today - David Byrne and Brian Eno
- Silence Followed by a Deafening Roar - Paul Gilbert
- Equinoxe - Jean Michel Jarre
- The Man Who Sold The World - David Bowie
Double my blogs posts to 174
The side bar on your right will tell you how I did. Pretty sucky, I guess. Well, 132 is 75% of 174, so I get a C- on that one. But at least I didn't blogspam. I wrote when I felt like it and didn't when I was busy. A big part of my falling short is that I developed a serious interest in cycling over the summer, and spent most of my free time doing that. Looking back, some of my favorite posts from the year:
Memorize a list of logical fallacies
My hard drive crashed during the year, and I lost my web bookmarks. On top of that, I forgot all about this one. So, maybe a 50%.
Produce a piece of ambient music that I like
I got close, I think. But I gave my keyboard back to my parents in June, and haven't touched ambient music since then. A large part of that is lack of interest. After reading Outliers I realized that if I truly want to be good at something, I have to dedicate a LOT of time to it. I decided that making music wasn't something I wanted to pursue even fractionally.
Give away five Macs
This flat out did not happen. The reason for this is that after reading Cliff Stoll's criticisms of computer technology, I realized that kids don't need help being exposed to computers. They can learn to use them well on their own. Hence, this post about computer education. And this one. I did, however, supply three (or four :-( ) people with bicycles, which I am happy about.
What a year! I feel that I learned and grew a lot as a person, and am excited to see what this year will hold. Last year I didn't know I enjoyed cycling so much; what will I learn this year!?
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