A new year has begun. That means that it’s once again time to take a look back at what books I read over the past year. Unfortunately, it appears I’m trending entirely in the wrong direction. While I managed to read 38 books in 2009 and 33 in 2010, I only made it through 29 this past year. Hopefully I can reverse that trend in 2012.
One interesting trend—at least to me—is that I returned to reading a lot more web related books (10!) this year. This is in no small part related to the A Book Apart series. If they keep churning out quality books like this, that count is likely to stay very high.
As always, if the book made this list, then I enjoyed it on some level. There are far too many good books out there to suffer through one that doesn’t interest me. If I’m not enjoying it I set it aside.
If you’re looking for specific recommendations, “The Invisible Man” (which I had read before and will read again) and “The Demolished Man” top my (short) list of fiction. “Obliquity”, “Marshall McLuhan: You Know Nothing of My Work!” and “The Death and Life of the Great American School System” are at the top for non-fiction (excluding the web-related ones).
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Hardboiled Web Design by Andy Clarke
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2001: A Space Odyssey by Arthur C. Clarke
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Linchpin by Seth Godin
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Pull by David Siegel
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The Death and Life of the Great American School System by Diane Ravitch
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Confessions of a Public Speaker by Scott Berkun
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Rainbows End by Vernor Vinge
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The Demolished Man by Alfred Bester
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Where Good Ideas Come From by Steven Johnson
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HTML5 for Web Designers by Jeremy Keith
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Obliquity by John Kay
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Responsive Web Design by Ethan Marcotte (See my review)
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Adaptive Web Design by Aaron Gustafson
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CSS3 for Web Designers by Dan Cederholm
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The Elements of Content Strategy by Erin Kissane
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Presentation Zen by Garr Reynolds
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The Invisible Man by HG Wells
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The Filter Bubble by Eli Parson
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Big Deal by Robert Hoekman Jr.
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Delivering Happiness by Tony Hsieh
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The Information by James Gleick
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Mobile First by Luke Wroblewski (See my review)
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Designing for Emotion by Aaron Walter
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Content Strategy for the Web by Kristina Halverson
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Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott
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Marshall McLuhan: You Know Nothing of My Work! by Douglas Coupland
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Mindfire by Scott Berkun
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Simple and Usable by Giles Colborne
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Loose by Martin Thomas