Book List 2011

Taking a cue from one of my friend’s blogs, I’m going to do a list of the books I read during 2011. Unfortunately, it’s a pretty small list. You would think that writers should be reading a lot, and generally they should. But I really don’t read that much. Or rather, I tend to start reading books, but I usually stop reading them fairly quickly. I guess I have a short attention span. For 2012 my goal is to increase the number of books I read to 15. Seems like a reasonable goal to me.

So here are the books I read in 2011. I think this is all of them. Not sure though. It’s possible I’m forgetting some. But oh well. I’ll also list how long each book is. (Short: 200 or fewer pages – Medium: 200-600 – Long: 600-999 – Epic: 1000+) Listed more-or-less in the order I finished them. Not included are children’s books, because they’re too short and I read a lot of them. (Mostly to kids. Mostly.)

1. The Case For Christ (medium)
2. Having a Mary Spirit (medium)
3. The Red Pyramid (medium)
4. Crazy Love (medium)
5. Beauty From Ashes (medium)
6. Heaven is For Real (medium)
7. Japanese Children’s Stories (short) [I know it’s a children’s book, but it’s in a foreign language.]
8. Obama’s Wars (medium)
9. Family Practice (short) [A super long medical text book. But I only read the first few chapters.]
10. The Bible (epic)

Here’s hoping I get more reading done in 2012.

2011 in Review – Top posts

2011 was the first full year I’ve kept a blog, and I found it to be a good experience. It’s not only a good way to hone and improve my writing skills, but it’s also helped me mature as a person. Not to mention, it’s fun, and I enjoy sharing things with you. Thank you so much for reading. I really appreciate knowing that people do read my blog, and I appreciate the feedback I’ve received.

Here’s what I consider to be my best posts from 2011. I chose this list (and the order) based on my own critical analysis of myself, and based on the feedback I’ve gotten. It’s a very unscientific list, and you are free to make your own judgements. I’ll also list the reasons why I chose them.

 

5. Even if we’re just dancing in the dark

I had to include at least one of my writings from the first half of the year, and this was one of them that received quite a bit of feedback. I considered all of the others that I wrote, but some I thought were too long, while others I thought I hadn’t written as well.

4. Cambodia Sharing

This was the transcript of the testimony I gave at church about my mission trip to Cambodia over the summer.

3. Praise of the Week

I couldn’t make a list without including a post about my kids from school. (And I also limited myself to one, because when it comes to posts about kids, I’m sorta biased.) I chose this post because it’s short and sweet, and kinda sums up my interaction with kids into one little post.

2. Ashlyn the Whack-a-Mole

Funny because you wouldn’t expect this type of behavior from a little kid, yet still innocent and sweet.

1. True Love

I chose this as my number one article of the year because I think it’s heartfelt and deep. Not too long, and not too short, I think it’s one of my more well-written posts of the year.

 

I guess the list is biased, since 4 out of 5 choices were written in the second half of the year. I tend to judge my earlier writings harsher than my more recent writings. One reason is because my earlier writings were lengthier, and recently I’ve been into writing shorter, more frequent posts. The other reason is I’m slightly afraid of going back and reading my earlier writings. I don’t know why. I guess I’m afraid they’ll be terrible, and I’ll be embarrassed for having written them. But I guess that’s part of the process, right? People grow and change. I may have written something at one point in my life, but that doesn’t mean I would have written it the same way at a later point. The same, I think, goes for everyone, in everything we do in life. Interesting to see growth and change, no?