Book-o-rama.

I loves me some goals. (But you know that already.)

It's been a while since I did quarterly goals. It's now 2015 and I just keep pushing out the completion date for these, at least until we are back in the Pacific Northwest. They all still apply and I still practice them on a fairly regular basis, so it's all good.

But the strangely addictive Goodreads put out a 2015 Reading Challenge. And I loves me some challenges. (But you also know that already.)  So I signed up to read 24 books this year. I'm at 8% of my goal already - hooray for lazy afternoons after a hard day at the farm!

In light of this exciting new goal, I was inspired to give a rundown of the books I have read over the past 650 days of our trip. We were really fortunate to pass through dozens of hostels, guesthouses, and WWOOF accomodations offering book exchanges so I found some real gems I probably would never have picked up otherwise.

So without further ado...  I didn't track every single book I read over the past few years on my Goodreads list, but if they aren't listed here they are probably forgettable to me.  An * means I really, highly recommend checking it out.

Literally literature

• * The Alchemist (Paulo Coelho) - completely mesmerizing.  Can't believe I didn't read this sooner.
• The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle (Haruki Murakami) - I really wanted to love this but it just got too weird.  I'll try another of his novels when I run across it, but in the meantime I recommend I Am a Cat (Natsume Soseki) instead.
• * The Wonderful World of Oz (Frank L Baum) - one of those books I re-read every few years, along with A Wrinkle in Time and The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.  I  always see something new in the story.
• The Metamorphosis (Franz Kafka) - probably would've appreciated this more 20 years ago, but it was definitely engaging.
• * Dracula (Bram Stoker) - any story about vampires is a good story, no matter how many times I've read it already.
• * What the Body Remembers (Shauna Singh Baldwin) - beautifully written.  The first book I read in ages that I actually couldn't put down.
• Please Don't Kill the Freshman (Zoe Trope) - ehhh... very Portland, very high school, very tedious.  I didn't quite finish it.
• * Tales of the Unexpected (Roald Dahl) - perfectly dark and twisted!   And I have a whole new appreciation for Royal Jelly now that I've worked with bees.  Anyone who loves Hemingway's short stories will love these too.
• * The White Tiger (Aravind Adiga) - edgy, fast-paced, very well written.  I really liked this one.
• * Last Man in Tower (Aravind Adiga) - and I liked this one even more, especially because the plot translates to almost anywhere in the world right now.
• Great House (Nicole Krauss) - I need to remember that I like her ex-husband's novels much more than I like hers...  As with History of Love, I ended up skimming the last several chapters due to lack of interest coupled with a need for closure.

Beach chair books

• The Fault in Our Stars (John Green) - I finished it in, like, a day, and then promptly forgot about it.
• Everything by Kathy Reichs - to be honest, I am ashamed to admit how many of her stupid books I have read on this trip.  If her characters were vampires I would probably suck these up like I did the Twilight series and the True Blood series... but after one too many "OMG SERIOUSLY WHO TALKS LIKE THAT?" exclamations, I finally had to call it in Hawaii.  I will never pick another one of her books up.  (Unless, yunno, it's just sitting right there and I'm on a beach somewhere.)
• You Suck (A Love Story) (Christopher Moore) - definitely teenage vampire pulp fiction.  A quick, fun read and I loved all the references to familiar San Francisco places and things.   
• The Gunslinger (Stephen King) - an oldie but a goodie.

True stories

• * No Picnic on Mt Kenya: A Daring Escape, A Perilous Climb (Felice Benuzzi) - the title really sums up the plot.  A really engaging read that I enjoyed very much.
• * Riding the Iron Rooster (Paul Theroux) - Theroux is my favorite travel writer, my hero in that sense.  This is the story of that year in the '80s that he spent riding the rails in China. I wanted to re-read it as soon as I finished it.
• * Booby Trap (Allison Bially) - anyone who knows Allison will love this book.  
• Point to Point Navigation (Gore Vidal) - I had no idea he knew so many famous people. I had no idea I would be so enthralled by stories about famous people. I later tried to read Palimsest but barely made it through a few chapters.
• * Daughter of the Killing Fields (Theary C Seng) - stunningly heartbreaking. And then we actually went to Cambodia and my heart broke again and again.  One of those only-available-locally books, so next time you're in SE Asia definitely pick it up.
• * Night (Elie Wiesel) - stunningly heartbreaking. And then we actually went to Auschwitz-Birkenau and my heart broke again and again.  Must find Dawn and Day.
• Garlic and Sapphires: The Secret Life of a Critic in Disguise (Ruth Reichl) - a fascinating look into the life of a food critic.  This book made me never want to eat in a hoity-toity restaurant ever again.
• * Me: Stories of My Life (Katharine Hepburn) - written as you'd imagine her talking.  She was an amazing lady.  Just look at all these awesome things she said...
• The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom (Jonathan Haidt) - Interesting thoughts mixed with too many words, too many examples, too many external sources.  He had me... Then he lost me with all the fluff... Then he quoted a bunch of studies from Flow and Influence (which I've read) and he really lost me with the simple regurgitation of ideas.  I liked the Geography of Bliss (Eric Weiner) a lot more.

Sorta true stories (where I got on a roll reading stories about true terribly depressing historical events set in fictional settings)

• * Burial Rites (Hannah Kent) - a beautifully written but terribly depressing story of an Icelandic woman charged with murder who lives her last days with the local sherrif and his very begrudging family.  
• * Year of Wonders (Geraldine Brooks) - an enthralling but terribly depressing account of a woman who saves her local village from the Black Plague.  
• * The Lazarus Project (Aleksandar Hemon) - a thoughtful (yep, and terribly depressing) tale of a writer exploring the questionable murder charges of an immigrant from the prior century.  Honestly, I never could figure out if this was based on an actual historic event but it had the same feel as the two above.

Our next life (where I sifted through thousands of permaculture and design books at our last Tasmania host's house - these are some of my favorites)

• * The Resilient Farm and Homestead (Ben Falk) - definitely the most accessible book on permaculture that I've come across, plus the author is in Vermont so a lot of the climate tips will be similar to Oregon.  I hardly ever get inspired to buy books anymore but I really want to buy this when we get back.
• * A Place of My Own: The Education of an Amateur Builder (Michael Pollan) - anything this guy writes is golden.
• * Mini Farming: Self Sufficiency on 1/4 Acre (Brett Markham) - another really accessible book, very relevant to how we want to start small.
• A Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings, Construction (Christopher Alexander) - lots of  interesting design theory, much of it was over my head but I still enjoyed perusing the concepts.
• And then these just had lots of pretty pictures and good design ideas:
• Sticks Stones Mud Houses: Natural Living (Nigel Noyes)
• Small Spaces (Terence Conran)
• Building of Earth and Straw Structural Design for Rammed Earth and Strawbale Architecture (Bruce King)
• The Beauty of Straw Bale Homes (Athena Swentzell Steen)

So that's my 2013-2014 summary.  What's on your plate to read this year?