As is tradition, with the end of one year, and the beginning of another, its time for our little yearly celebration of books! You (probably) aren't subscribed here if reading is your least favorite thing to do, and I'm sure I'm far from the only one who plows through a large stack of literature over the past year - whether history, other non-fiction, or just a good story.
So, fellow historians, what did you read last year!? What did you enjoy the most? What was the biggest stinker? What would you recommend to everyone else?
And of course, what is on your reading list for 2020!?
Books read in 2019
Altered Carbon - Richard K. Morgan
War of the Spark: Ravnica - Greg Weisman
The Color of Magic - Terry Pratchett
Starship Troopers - Robert A. Heinlein
Star Wars: Rogue Planet - Greg Bear
Star Wars: A New Dawn - John Jackson Miller
Star Wars: Dark Disciple - Christie Golden
Star Wars: Heir to the Empire - Timothy Zahn
Star Wars: Dark Force Rising - Timothy Zahn
Star Wars: The Last Command - Timothy Zahn
Star Wars: Outbound Flight - Timothy Zahn
Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith Episode III - Matthew Stover
Star Wars: Dark Lord - James Luceno
Star Wars: Kenobi - John Jackson Miller
Star Wars: Darth Plagueis - James Luceno
Star Wars: Thrawn - Timothy Zahn
Star Wars: Thrawn Alliances - Timothy Zahn
Star Wars: A New Hope - George Lucas
Star Wars: Empire Strikes Back - Donald F. Glut
Graphic Novels:
The Umbrella Academy - Gerard Way
Darth Vader: Vader
Darth Vader: Shadows and Secrets
Darth Vader: The Shu-Torun War
Darth Vader: End of Games
Books to read in 2020 --
More Star Wars and I've been thinking about starting the Witcher books since I enjoyed the show as much as I did. I'll also probably re-read DUNE in anticipation for the new film.
Edit: I didn't look at the Subreddit and now I feel stupid.
2019 was not the best year for me in terms of reading. Checking Goodreads, it was my lowest year since 2008. I read a total of 27 books, with only fourteen non-fiction books. Not having a proper few week holiday didn't help.
My favourites from the year:
I'm hoping to read a lot more in 2020. Mostly about the interwar period. I also really want to increase my historical fiction reading and would love suggestions.
So I read a nice mixture of history and fiction this past year, 2019 is when I rediscovered a love of fiction!
That said, I do think I read some interesting and noteworthy non-fiction books, some of my favourites.
Starting my 2019 off was /u/chriskemps The First World War in Computer Games which was recommended to me by /u/bernardito! I still haven't made that YouTube series/whatever on the representation of the First World War in games but I'd still like to at some point (I've been looking at works dealing with musical/film representation recently to see what the dialogue is like with those kinds of media as well!)... Although I don't know if I would have as strong an interest in representations of the war without having read The First World War in Computer Games so hats off to you Chris and Bernardito for helping ignite that interest of mine!
Another interesting book I read was The Submarine: A Cultural History from the Great War to Nuclear Combat by Duncan Redford. It looked at the history of the Submarine in the United Kingdom through a cultural lens which I thought was a really cool way of tackling that! However, the argumentation in regards to the World Wars (especially the First) I felt was lacking. He doesn't really engage with British submarine usage during the First World war, and if he had, it would have at the least altered some of his arguments in that portion of the book. And while he looked at submarines from a cultural angle, he neglected the culture of submariners themselves. He instead opted only to look at the corporate culture of the Royal Navy and the culture of civilians in the UK (although looking back I do think that may have been too wide of a net). A third of the puzzle is really missing, what did submariners think of what they were doing, of what was going on? Redford claims that the Jolly Roger wasn't adopted by the RN Submarine Service until the Second World War and dismisses its usage in the First. However, we have photographic evidence of it being flown in the First World War and that it was a decently widespread practice during the First World War! It was a simultaneously frustrating and interesting read.
Kevin M. Levin's Searching for Black Confederates was a short and punchy book about the history of a specific myth surrounding the Civil War, that of African Confederate Soldiers. Well worth a read and it deals with the period from the Civil War to now and how that myth evolved!
Fighting the Great War at Sea felt like a bigger book than it was, but the technical detail that Dr. Norman Freidman put in there was astonishing. He also made some interesting, if controversial arguments, about events such as the Battle of Gallipoli (he posits that one of the main drivers was a need for Russian wheat!). One of the most comprehensive books on the war at sea in the North Sea!
I read a pretty huge number of books this year. Sadly I don't have a full list. Every month I swear I'm going to keep an updated book list, and every month it peters out within a week or two.
There was a fair bit of fiction, especially warhammer and 40k. (Gotrek for the win.) I'm not a huge fan of the Horus Heresy, but I picked up a few books from that particular series.
According to my partial records I read 12 Terry Pratchett Discworld books, and one book three times.
Strategy Strikes back: How Star Wars explains modern military conflict. Edited by Max Brooks. was a stand out favorite and recommended to me by the great /u/ghostofherzl.
How To by Randal Munroe. It's an XKCD comic on crazy ways to do simple things. Great for a laugh and I'm really considering picking up a copy for the next time I need to destroy and undestroyable book, or do impossible things.
The Venetians: A New history, from Marco Polo to Casanova by Paul Strathern.
Brick By Brick, How Lego rewrote the rules of innovation. By Bill Breen and David C. Robertson.
Another favorite was The Feather Thief: Beauty, Obsession and the Natural History Heist of the Century. By Kirk Wallace Johnson. A man steals hundreds of feathers and exotic birds from the museum, as well as a history and purpose of museums in our modern world. I've never read a book that makes me want to strangle a musician before.
The Brothers Vonnegut: Science and Fiction in the house of Magic. By Ginger Strand. All about Kurt and Bernard Vonnegut. Kurt’s start in writing, and Bernards work on weather modification. As well as a fair bit about the morality of how to research and use science.
The Elephant Whisperer by Lawrence Anthony. An amazing South African Conservationist takes in and bonds with a herd of ‘rogue’ elephants. I teared up repeatedly.
Just finished the Mr Rogers biography which was really cool. Recommended by the fabulous /u/jschooltiger. Mr. Rogers is a really fascinating guy and his commitment to his ideals was hard core.
The Merchant of Mokha was the story of a guy who starts researching the history of Coffee and wants to bring back the Yemen coffee industry. The ending is both somewhat anti climatic and really interesting because he gets caught up in the escalating civil war, which kind of derails all the coffee stuff.
And so much more. My library record frustratingly doesn't tell me titles, but does say I checked out 70 odd books over the last six month. Now that sounds impressive, but I probably actually read maybe half of that. The rest I didn't get into, never got around to, etc etc.
My 2020 list is growing pretty extensively. I still have a huge portion of lasts years list. I've dedicated a good chunk to Chinese history, especially some books on the Taiping recommended by /u/EnclavedMicrostate.
There's also a couple of titles that have caught my eye.
American Serengeti: The Last Big Animals of the Great Plains
Dark Emu. Because it comes up a lot on the board and I want to get what's going on when people argue.
@War by Shane Harris, on the rise of cyberwarfare. It's been on my list awhile but my library doesn't have it yet.
Ronald Numbers' Galileo Goes to Jail and Other Myths about Science and Religion
The Fate of Africa: A History of the Continent Since Independence by Martin Meredith.
The Bear Went Over The Mountain: The soviets vs Mujahadeen in Afghanistan.
And plenty more. I know my above list doesn't show it, but I'm particularly planning to work on expanding my history horizons. More stuff that's not western, or about different parts of the world. Less military stuff and more of a focus on people and peace time. I'm far more interested in logistics and the homefront, but I'd like to tone that down as well to focus just on some different stuff.
I plan to extensively mine this thread for ideas.
Fiction wise is probably going to be the same. I want to finish the Expanse series. A pretty good chance of tons of warhammer continuing to show up on the list. I'm not as keen to go reading the Witcher, but everyone I know wont stop talking about it so I probably will.
I'll tell you what book not to read in 2020:
Custer At Gettysburg: A New Look at George Armstrong Custer Versus Jeb Stuart in the Battle’s Climactic Cavalry Charges by Phillip Thomas Tucker
I was in Ft Irwin for some really terrible training and tried to escape through reading about the civil war. The problem I ran into with this book is Tucker managed to say in 50 or so pages what could have been said in 5. In fact, I'm convinced he wrote those 5 pages, and instead of figuring out how to draw that information out in a creative way, literally just said the same thing over and over with barely any words changed between the repetitive paragraphs. Seriously, I challenge anyone to read the first 50 pages and tell me that's a good book.
I haven't read much in the way of history books (I just started 1776), but is this kind of extremely reptitive writing common? I really want to learn more history outside a classroom, but I won't subject myself to bad writing.
I didn't keep good track of which books I read this year, but in the last couple of months my three highlights have been:
Not counting stuff for uni, 2019 saw me get back into recreational reading with:
This Whispering In Our Hearts by Henry Reynolds
The Other Side of the Frontier by Henry Reynolds
The Tyranny of Distance by Geoffrey Blainey
Noongar Land, Noongar People by Kingsley Palmer
The Original Australians by Josephine Flood
The First Footprints by Scott Cane
The History Wars by Stuart McIntyre
Capturing Time by Edwin Barnard
The Macquarie Atlas of Indigenous Australia
Australian History in Seven Questions by John Hirst
Nearly all of these were read during my uni breaks. With no uni next year, I'll have plenty of incentive to read.
For Xmas I bought myself my next set of books to read:
Skin Deep by Liz Conor
Forgotten War by Henry Reynolds
The Concise History of Australia by Stuart McIntyre
Das Kapital and the Communist Manifesto by Marx and Engels
I also have unread on my shelf:
A Pirate of Exquistie Mind (about Dampier) by D and M Preston
Aboriginal Perth (a collection of works by early 20th cent anthropologist Daisy Bates)
Beyond that, I have a list of 113 history books from my local library that I want to read saved on my phone. I kept going to the library to study only to get distracted looking for more future reading.
I read too many wonderful books last year to list them all, so here my top three non-fiction books I loved most last year.
Quackery: A Brief History of the Worst Ways to Cure Everything by Lydia Kang and Nate Pedersen. This book is hilarious and informative!
Murder by the Book by Claire Harman, recounting a murder/investigation/execution in 1840 London, England. I love this era, so I found it fascinating!
The Amazons by Adrienne Mayor. A very in-depth look at the evidence to support female warrior horsewomen behind the exaggerated myths.
Honorable mention: The Rise and Fall of Dinosaurs by Steve Brusatte, which was informative and made me want to seek out other books on the subject but had too many personal anecdotes for my tastes.
On my reading list for 2020:
SPQR by Mary Beard
Laughter in Ancient Rome by Mary Beard
In Bed with the Ancient Egyptians by Charlotte Booth
Gods and Robots by Adrienne Mayor
The First English Detectives by J.M. Beattie
A Certain Share of Low Cunning by David J. Cox
Inglorious Empire by Shashi Tharoor
Women Warriors by Pamela D. Toler
The Butchering Art by Lindsey Fitzharris
and various Great Courses.
I had to think about it to remember all the way back to a year ago, before accidentally starting a master's, but I got there. Here is a non-exhaustive and potentially inaccurate list, in no particular order.
The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien
The Belgariad by David Eddings
Scottish Fairy Belief by Lizanne Henderson
The Secret Republic of Elves, Fauns and Fairies by Robert Kirk and Andrew Lang
Celtic Goddesses by Miranda Aldhouse-Green
Warriors of the Word by Michael Newton (that might have been Fall 2018)
Last of the Free by James Hunter
The People of Glengarry by Marianne McLean
Clanship to Crofter's War by T.M. Devine
Pickle the Spy by Andrew Lang
Witchcraft and Belief in Early Modern Scotland ed. Julian Goodare, Lauren Martin and Joyce Miller
And I started in on the mammoth two-volume Campbells of the Ark by Ronald Black, but it's 2000 pages at least of biography, and is going to take a while (but he's a very engaging writer and I'm loving it).
The astute reader might notice I've got a bit of a side interest going, but I try to leave it mostly inter-semesters. I'll be going through this degree at a snail's pace due to money, but where I can, try to flesh out additional reading.
Books I read in 2019:
Tupaia: Captain Cook's Polynesian Navigator - Joan Druett
Aphrodite's Island: The European Discovery of Tahiti - Anne Salmond
Empire, Barbarism & Civilization: Captain Cook, William Hodges and the Return to the Pacific - Harriet Guest
Enlightenment Orpheus: The Power of Music in Other Worlds - Vanessa Agnew
Capitalist Realism - Mark Fischer
Introducing: Marxism - A Graphic Guide
Introducing: Slavoj Zizek - A Graphic Guide
Trial of the Cannibal Dog: Captain Cook in the South Seas - Anne Salmond
Introducing: Martin Heidegger - A Graphic Guide
Bligh in the South Seas - Anne Salmond
Captain Cook: Explorations and Reassessments - Glyndwr Williams
The Essays: A Selection Michel de Montaigne
Books I currently am reading in 2020:
Introducing: Evolutionary Psychology - A Graphic Guide
The New Zealand Wars/Nga Pakanga o Aotearoa - Vincent O'Malley
South Sea Maidens: Western Fantasy and Sexual Politics in the South Pacific - Michael Sturma
The Songlines - Bruce Chatwin
The Essays: A Selection Michel de Montaigne
Books I am planning/aiming to read in 2020:
Introducing: The Enlightenment - A Graphic Guide
Introducing: Capitalism - A Graphic Guide
Introducing: Hegel - A Graphic Guide
Introducing: Hinduism - A Graphic Guide
Introducing: Critical Theory - A Graphic Guide
Introducing: Feminism - A Graphic Guide
Introducing : Philosophy - A Graphic Guide
Introducing: Foucault - A Graphic Guide
Introducing: Chaos - A Graphic Guide
The Ethics - Baruch Spinoza
Dark Emu - Bruce Pascoe
The Other Side of the Frontier: The Aboriginal Resistance to the Invasion of Australia - Henry Reynolds
Tears of Rangi: Experiments Across Worlds - Anne Salmond
The Whispering in Our Hearts Revisited - Henry Reynolds
How to Read Lacan - Slavoj Zizek
Introduction to Deleuze - Todd May
Simulation and Simulacrum - Jean Baudrillard
We - Yevgeny Zamyatin
The History of Sexuality - Michel Foucault
The Technique of My Musical Language - Oliver Messiaen
Silence - John Cage
Evenings With the Orchestra - Hector Berlioz
100 More Orchestration Tips - Thomas Goss
The Wealth of Nations - Adam Smith
I'm not a historian or anything, but two history books I read and enjoyed last year were Servants of Allah: African Muslims Enslaved in the Americas by Sylviane A. Diouf and Ida: A Sword Among Lions by Paula J. Giddings. In historical fiction, a few books I enjoyed were Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Aya: Life in Yop City by Marguerite Abouet, and No-No Boy by John Okada.
I've got about a trillion books on my to-read list, but I particularly want to start on the General History of Africa series, and also try to read at least one good general book about the history of the Philippines. (There's one on the AH booklist that I may end up reading, but it doesn't seem to have an ebook version, and I'm trying to minimize the number of print books I own.)