pretty things

I've managed to do a fair amount of reading this year, and thought I might try doing something that Aaron Swartz used to do, which I had always admired: write a brief list and review of books that he'd read in a year. When I counted up and found close to 25 books, I felt like I'd achieved something. But in revisiting Swartz's last list, I discovered how remarkable his reading rate was:

2011 was a stressful year, in many ways, and so for large parts of it I did not really read. Instead, I tracked how many books I started and how many pages I got through each, for a total of 112 books started, 70 finished, and over 20,000 pages read. Not up to my usual standards. — Aaron Swartz, "The 2011 Review of Books"

Nonetheless, here goes. What follows are a couple of paragraphs about each of the books I read. And for good measure, a list of the podcasts I've been listening to, which constitute probably an equal portion of my media consumption.