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slyall

* The Greater Journey: Americans in Paris by David McCullough

* Higher: A Historic Race to the Sky and the Making of a City by Neal Bascomb

* Caesar’s Last Breath: Decoding the Secrets of the Air Around Us by Sam Kean

* Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari

* A Man on the Moon: The Voyages of the Apollo Astronauts by Andrew Chaikin

* The Actor’s Life: A survival guide by Jenna Fischer

* The Interstellar Age: The Story of the NASA Men and Women Who Flew the Forty-Year Voyager Mission by Jim Bell

* The Sports Gene: Inside the Science of Extraordinary Athletic Performance by David Epstein

* Uncommon People: The Rise and Fall of the Rock Stars 1955-1994 by David Hepworth

* Chasing Space: An Astronaut's Story of Grit, Grace, & Second Chances by Leland Melvin

* The Johnstown Flood by David McCullough

* Jefferson: Architect of American Liberty by John B. Boles

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"Sapiens," is extraordinary on how well it summaries the human journey through time from the start. It never gets too technical but it's highly informative. It's 500+ pages yet it's hard to put down because it's so entertaining. I highly recommend it.

This is all true, but I sometimes missed the nuance of less witty but more detail-oriented histories. Harari could seem flippant at times, which mostly amused me when I agreed with him, but left me worried when I didn't. In a book this short on a period so vast, there was no space to steelman anything.

David McCullough is an American treasure.

Have you read all of these?

Better have

FWIW my library account shows me as having loaned 28 books this year. I’d say I finished 80% of them.

Don’t watch too much television, don’t read too much crap online. There’s plenty of time in life to read.

Also there are apps to block social media while reading: Offtime app works great.

If you use Goodreads to track what you read, you get some stats per year, like number of books read, number of pages read.

Mine: https://www.goodreads.com/review/stats/63629672-henrik-warne

I find it very useful, and especially by combining the two.

For example, in 2015 I've read more than double of the amount of books I've read this year, but comparing by the number of pages, the difference is just a few dozen pages.

While the amount I've read remained steady, I'm clearly able to retain longer focus necessary to read longer titles, which is something I wouldn't easily spot in such a short timeframe otherwise.

Well listened since they were all audiobooks. But they are the top 20% or so.

For around the last year I've been listing (with a little review) the ones I listen to

https://blog.darkmere.gen.nz/category/misc/

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