Everything I Read in 2014

While it's a significant step down from the 80 books I read last year, I'm fairly proud of this year's list. For my best of list, check here.

80 Books I Read in 2013

• This is probably bragging. But I'm feeling rather proud of myself, so here's the list. It's been a good year. I set the goal pretty early on, but didn't actually expect to reach it. About a month ago, I started getting a bit strategic and finished the last eleven books, throwing a few short ones in. (Hey, Les Mis and Middlemarch ought to have counted for several.)

Long story short, I finished the last two before lunch December 31.

“Who Could That Be at This Hour?” – a Review

First of all, Happy Birthday, Daniel Handler, a.k.a. Lemony Snicket.

As a lover of sarcasm, black humor, and dry wit, Lemony Snicket’s books have always appealed to me. I loved A Series of Unfortunate Events, featuring the Baudelaire orphans and the wicked Count Olaf. Snicket's latest novel,“Who Could That Be at This Hour?” is in the same vein, and I wouldn’t give it any points on dramatic originality when compared to former work. Still, it’s plenty of fun.

 

Like ASOUE, in this, the first installment in the All the Wrong Questions series, we have a young protagonist who has to make his way in the world with little help from adults. The time period and location is ambiguous, sometimes feeling like the 1930s, sometimes like the modern day. There’s the same intriguing secret society that hovers around the edges of the tale, but never comes into full view. Lemony Snicket, who is the narrator and main character, loves books, hates coffee, and has had a very unusual education. He also has a female friend who never appears (for ASOUE fans, I suspect this might be the elusive Beatrice.)

 

The Truly Great Man - My Understanding of St. Crispin's Day

Shakespeare is the number one best-selling author in the world, with Agatha Christie as a close second. (Taking into account that Bible has one Author, and He not of this world). But while Shakespeare is amazing as a writer, he really wrote to be spoken. When put in the hands of a brilliant director, like Kenneth Branagh, the result is magic. I’ve seen Branagh’s adaptation of Henry V several times, and it still gives me chills. Like Fiddler on the Roof, it’s one of the few older films that stand the passage of time.

There’s one scene in particular, near the end of the movie, which, without fail, makes my heart soar. King Henry V, nicknamed “Harry”, has led the British troops into France, and the Battle of Agincourt approaches. The French outnumber them by a large margin. It’s a pretty hopeless situation.

A fellow named Westmoreland laments, rather understandably, “O that we now had here but one ten thousand of those men in England that do no work to-day!”