I logged 40 films and read 57 books in the year 2014. That is really 50 books when you remove the graphic novels, essays and lecture series. Considering my GoodReads Challenge this year was 45 books, I did well. Next year I am setting it to 50. Why not?
I did two reviews for the Literary Review of Canada this year (one to be published early 2015), which meant a lot of background reading and research. Plus, for a few months I attended a book club, which meant an extra book each month, but it wasn’t that difficult. Probably because of how I consume books: 72% of my read books were in audio format. Considering how many podcasts I listen to, that is a lot of media consumption through the ears.
The fiction to non-fic split was 28 to 22. Seems like a pretty good balance. Almost half and half.
8 books got 5 stars from me. Here is the quick list:
- The Origins of Political Order: From Prehuman Times to the French Revolution
- To Save Everything, Click Here: The Folly of Technological Solutionism (my review)
- The Hard Thing About Hard Things
- Dirty Wars: The World Is A Battlefield
- Superman: Red Son
- Among Others
- The Martian
- The Handmaid’s Tale
- The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay
The first two, Origins and To Save Everything probably influenced me the most this year. I would also like to give special mention to The Circle (4 stars), which was problematic in execution, but sparked a lot of excellent conversation.
Politics was a big theme for me this year. I spent a lot of time thinking about how so much of our tech is about facilitating social interaction, and how social interaction is governed by politics. It has shifted my focus to thinking more about the underlying political infrastructure of our technology, instead of the technological infrastructure of our politics. The result so far has been a sidelining of technology per se, at least from my perspective. I am getting re-acquainted with political theory again. More on this in the future I’m sure.
Another highlight of the year was being introduced to the excellent Margaret Atwood and Ursula Le Guin. I don’t know why I had never read them before, but I plan on reading more.
On film
12 of the 40 films I logged were watched with my kids. I only watched Frozen once, even though my kids could have logged it 40 times. Anyways, my top films of 2014 were:
I guess my theme in film this year was “captains”…? Or maybe, “U-S-A! U-S-A!”, which is funny because a lot of the books I read this year were much the opposite!
See previous entries:
- The best of 2013
- Best of 2012 Books and film
- My year in books (The best of 2011)
