A year in books

This year, Andrea and I each made an effort to read more books. I bought Andrea a new Kindle to replace her Kobo that broke, and a day hardly goes by without her reading something from it. The following is a list of books in what I believe is the order in which I read them this year:

• The Giver (Lois Lowry)
• Only Pack What You Can Carry (Janice Holly Booth)
• The 100 Thing Challenge (Dave Bruno)
• The Razor's Edge (M. Somerset Maugham)
• The Complete Idiot's Guide to Game Theory (Edward C. Rosenthal)
• Yes! (Noah Goldstein, et al)
• Switch: How to Change Things When Change is Hard (Chip Heath & Dan Heath)
• Freakonomics (Levitt & Dubner)
• House Lust (Daniel McGinn)
• The Art of Happiness (Dalai Lama)
• The Small House Book (Jay Shafer)

House Lust was recommended to me by my friend Jacek after I recommended The 100 Thing Challenge to him. I had previously read Switch -- an excellent book I discussed earlier this year, and have been meaning to read Freakonomics for some time. I just finished The Art of Happiness the other day. The Small House Book is mostly pictures of the various tiny homes Jay Shafer builds; it seems a little disingenuous to say I "read" that one, but I'm including it nonetheless.

Many of these books I was able to pick up either from swap.com or from the Great River Regional or Hennepin County libraries.

Of these books, I would recommend The Giver, The Complete Idiot's Guide to Game Theory (at least for math/computer geeks), Switch, Freakonomics, House Lust, and The Art of Happiness.

For Christmas, my parents bought me Toward a Psychology of Being (Abraham Maslow), which I have started reading and hope to have finished soon.