I tried to make a conscious effort to split my time half-and-half between fiction and non-fiction this year. I started out the year with three non-fiction books in a row, so I obviously didn’t get off to a great start. But I ended the year with 6 fiction and 9 non-fiction (if you count my still-ongoing reread of Lord of the Rings as a single book), so I don’t think I did too bad.
- As They See 'Em: A Fan's Travels in the Land of Umpires by Bruce Weber - This story changed the way that I think about baseball. There aren't two teams on the field, there are three. And one team can never win, they are only ever ignored or reviled. And the challenge before them is just as hard as the one the actual players have to do.
- Kluge: The Haphazard Construction of the Human Mind by Gary Marcus
- SuperFreakonomics: Global Cooling, Patriotic Prostitutes And Why Suicide Bombers Should Buy Life Insurance by Steven Levitt
- The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga
- The Yiddish Policemen's Union by Michael Chabon
- The Diamond Age: Or, a Young Lady's Illustrated Primer by Neal Stephenson
- Rework by Jason Fried - Wins the coveted Logan's Favorite Book of 2010 award, and is a strong early favorite for Logan's Favorite Book of the Decade. The philosophy that the guys behind 37signals operate their business under resonate incredibly deeply. When I run a company, this will be my bible.
- The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine by Michael Lewis
- Interview With the Vampire by Anne Rice
- An Imaginary Tale: The Story of i by Paul Nahin
- The Algorithm Design Manual by Stephen Skiena
- The Long Dark Tea-time of the Soul by Douglas Adams - This was the last remaining book of his that I had never read. Reading the two Dirk Gently books has been a treat. It was something like finding an unknown painting by an old master. It's the same tilted voice I grew up loving, but with a story I wasn't familiar with.
- The Punch: One Night, Two Lives, and the Fight That Changed Basketball Forever by John Feinstein
- The Grand Design by Stephen Hawking
- The Hobbit, The Fellowship of the Ring, and The Two Towers by J.R.R. Tolkien - This is a re-read. Every time I read these books, I'm reminded how much of an amazing trilogy the movies were, but also how much of a pale imitation they are of the depth of the books. (I'm still reading Return of the King.) I have a four-volume boxed set of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. One of my earliest memories is my dad reading me the passage through Mirkwood out of this book. This fall, I thought I had left The Hobbit in a hotel room in New Hampshire, and I got surprisingly emotional about it. Luckily, it just slid under the driver's seat in my car.