I’ve decided to take the 100 book challenge for 2010! You can find all the details here. This is a great idea to encourage reading.

January 2010

1. Boneshaker – Fairly good story. Not fantastic but might make a good movie and cool that its placed in Seattle.

2. Freedom (TM) – This is the sequel to Daemon by Daniel Suarez and an awesome awesome scifi book. Highly recommend and both books are in my top 5 for best sci fi of the decade.

3. In a Sunburned Country by Bill Bryson – Hilarious book about traveling in Australia and Bill’s random thoughts. My step dad recommended it and it was just great writing, I’m going to buy all his other books as soon as they release them on Kindle. I literally was laughing out loud, plus where else do you find out that Australia has 12 foot long earth worms???

4. My Life in France – Great book about Julia Child, had some nice commentary on politics between generations that I enjoyed. She had a very interesting life and the food all sounds amazing, as well as being in France to watch them rebuild.

5. Selling the Invisible: A Field Guide to Modern Marketing – Not bad, I would recommend to someone who hasn’t done a lot of modern marketing, esp in the Twitter age.

6. Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking – Great book, highly recommended! Humans are so weird in that we have a great ability to take an instant snapshot of something that is so useful and also analyze, the problem seems to be which we choose and how we decide on each. The conclusion one researcher reaches is that for straight forward decisions go with analysis, and with complicated multi variable problems we should trust our Gut more. Very very interesting. I also like the bit on providing screens in the court room, understanding how our brains work and tricking them to operate how we want, over the failed assumption we can change so many years of evolution and trained thin slicing.

February 2010

7. The Truth Machine – A great SciFi book on the possibility of creating a machine that could perfectly tell if anyone is lieing, the affects on civilization and a little personal story about the creator. I really enjoyed it, quick read, well price and entertaining!

8. Long After Midnight at the Niño Bien: A Yanqui’s Missteps in Argentina – A great book about the Tango and Argentina during the last financial crisis. Very interesting stuff on the history of Argentina and the Tango and just a good travel story.

And this is why I love going on vacation, I read tons of books . I read 9 books in the last 4 days.

9. A Short History Of Nearly Everything – This book is a national treasure and should be ready by every high school or junior high student. It makes science just so awesome and awe inspiring, I love love love this book and going to be buying a lot of copys for friends. Fantastic!

10. MetaGame – A really interesting SciFi book about religion/god and a future reality where everything is structured around “games”. That doesn’t do the book description but it was a very fun book.

11. Origin – A fun book about the interesting conundrum of what do you do if you actually find the devil buried in a coffin… Part horror, part scifi… Just a fun book and I love it because nobody would publish it so the author shelved it and later released it on the Kindle, fantastic story of how the Kindle is going to revolutionize the book business!

12. Pirate Latitudes – This is a Crichton book and one they found in his notes after he died. And for good reason as its not as good as any of his others, just a fun pirate book.

13. Drive – I really liked this book and it does it’s best to explain what drive’s us after you take care of the basics and money. It isn’t all about money and it is time we adjust our system to understand that for business and for education. Great thinking book!

14. Julian Comstock – Great scifi book about the time after the fall of oil. Just a good scifi read and nothing too spectacular.

15. Wireless – A collection of short story SciFi stories by Charles Stross. This made me realize how much I dislike short stories, I’m about char development, not concepts in most cases. Good stuff but I did have to skip one story which was just too weird and not well done.

16. The Ghost Writer – Fantastic thriller and just great book! Very fun read and it is going to make a great movie!

17. Brisingr – Book 3 in a fantasy series I started reading a long time ago. This is the best one yet as I believe the author was 12 years old for the first one, he has come a far way and although they are pretty cliche it is a great concept a very fun read!