The List 2008

In 2008 I read a total of 17 books comprising 4,988 pages (for an average number of 13.62 pages read per day). This is a miserable failure. The goal at the start of the year was a minimum of 20 books with unspoken aspirations of 30. Between getting bogged down in a couple books and encountering an assortment of distractions (combined with a lapse in the discipline customary with such endeavors) the year slipped away before the reading goal was achieved. However, it must duly be noted that the last five books (29% of the annual total) in the list below (comprising 1,440 pages, or nearly 29% percent of the annual page count) were all read in the month of December, a time when both discipline and focus were high. So at any rate, The List of books read this year is presented below in a Title (Author) number of pages format.

1. The Discovery of the Igorots (William Henry Scott) 332p.
2. Jerusalem Delivered (Tarquato Tasso) 413 p.
3. The Diary and Life of William Byrd II (Kenneth Lockridge) 166p.
4. Histories of the Dividing Line Expedition (William Byrd II) 320p.
5. The Last Lecture (Randy Pausch) 206p.
6. Guns, Germs, and Steel (Jared Diamond) 464 p.
7. Beowulf (Author unknown) 105p.
8. Travels Through America (Jonathan Carver) 228p.
9. Utopia (Sir Thomas More) 150p.
10. The Alchemist (Paulo Coelho) 167p.
11. The Picture of Dorian Gray (Oscar Wilde) 229p.
12. Che: A Revolutionary Life (Jon Lee Anderson) 768p.
13. Hegemony or Survival (Noam Chomsky) 255p.
14. Hugo! The Hugo Chavez Story from Mud Hut to Perpetual Revolution (Bart Jones) 487p.
15. Pathologies of Power: Health, Human Rights and the New War on the Poor (Paul Farmer) 256p.
16. The Bolivian Diary (Ernesto “Che” Guevara) 276p.
17. Profit Over People (Noam Chomsky) 166p.

Which book of 2008 was my favorite? While they all had their varying degrees of merit, the best when considered in terms of totality was unquestionably Pathologies of Power. If there was ever a book that bring about a true conscious-raising as to the structural violence that constitutes the underlying causes of poverty and illness, of which we’re all culpable, this is it. The book will make you angry; the book will enlighten you; the book presents a masterful, broadly applicable theoretical framework into which many of the world’s injustices can be logically subsumed. I do not recall ever marking up a book as much as I did this one with notes scribbled in the margins, key phrases underlined, and important pages dog-eared. What’s more, the bibliography is among the best I’ve ever encountered and serves as a great resource for further inquiry into structural violence, the savaging effects of neoliberal economic policies on the developing world, economic and social rights, and, of all things, liberation theology. Much ink and many pages of the personal journal have since been devoted to the oft quoted phrase “preferential option for the poor.”

My favorite author of 2009? Chomsky. If you have never read Chomsky, I strongly suggest you do. He’s a powerful and insightful writer and even if you don’t necessarily agree with him, his arguments will make you think. Hegemony or Survival was the better of the two Chomsky books read this year, much of which dovetails nicely with the arguments put forth by Farmer in Pathologies of Power regarding economic and social violence, though Farmer takes it a step further in his application to sickness and health. I foresee reading much more of Chomsky this year.

On to 2009. The goal will be a minimum of 30 books. I've already knocked out two: Tortilla Flat by John Steinbeck and Chomsky's Failed States and am well into my third: Beatriz Manz's Paradise in Ashes: A Guatemalan Journey of Courage, Hope, and Terror.