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List of books I've read

• ★ — Terrible.
• ★★ — Did not enjoy this at all, but reluctant to say it was "bad". Might just be me.
• ★★★ — Did not enjoy this very much. Still worth reading, though.
• ★★★★ — Great! Enjoyed this. Would recommend.
• ★★★★★ — Would read this over and over again.

Books completed in 2014:

• Poetic Lives: Dickinson
• Author: Rebecca Swift
• Date completed: 18 Dec 2014
• 160 pages
• Rating: ★★★

• Fourth of July Creek
• Author: Smith Henderson
• Date completed: 9 Dec 2014
• 470 pages
• Rating: ★★★★★
• People's lives are complicated. Sometimes horrible things happen to go people. Nobody's perfect, but trying counts.

• Pulphead
• Author: John Jeremiah Sullivan
• Date completed: 30 Nov 2014
• 365 pages
• Rating: ★★★★★
• An excellent collection of essays. Would read again.

• My Bright Abyss: Meditation of a Modern Believer
• Author: Christian Wiman
• Date completed: 26 Nov 2014
• 182 pages
• Rating: ★★★
• Wonderfully written, but just not for me.

• Evidence of things unseen.
• Author: Marianne Wiggins
• Date completed: 21 Nov 2014
• 400 pages
• Rating: ★★★★

• The Sagas of the Icelanders.
• Author: Robert Kellogg (introduction); multiple translators
• Date completed: 11 Nov 2014
• 782 pages
• Rating: ★★★★

• The Saga of the Volsungs: the Norse Epic of Sigurd the Dragon Slayer.
• Author: Jesse L. Byock (translation and introduction)
• Date completed: 23 Oct 2014
• 145 pages
• Rating: ★★★★

• The Poetic Edda: The Heroic Poems
• Author: Henry Adams Bellows (translation and introduction)
• Date completed: 21 Oct 2014
• 336 pages
• Rating: ★★★★
• Helgi & Hethin. Fafnis, Sigurth, Guthrun, Atli.

• Relevance: Communication and Cognition
• Author: Dan Sperber & Deirdre Wilson
• Date completed: 15 Oct 2014
• 338 pages
• Rating: ★★★★
• Will definitely read again.

• The Discoverer
• Author: Jan Kjærstad
• Date completed: 14 Oct 2014
• 460 pages
• Rating: ★★★★★
• In the end, the greatest discovery of all, is that it all comes down to love.

• The Conqueror
• Author: Jan Kjærstad
• Date completed: 5 Oct 2014
• 493 pages
• Rating: ★★★★
• Fear of commonness, mediocrity. "How does one become a conqueror?"

• The Seducer
• Author: Jan Kjærstad
• Date completed: 29 Sept 2014
• 606 pages
• Rating: ★★★★
• The multiplicity and importance of narrative in our lives. "Life can only be comprehended as a collection of stories".

• The Model
• Author: Lars Saabye Christensen
• Date completed: 12 Sept 2014
• 240 pages
• Rating: ★★★★
• I was disappointed by the ending. Not because it was so sad, but because it was so unexpected. I couldn't understand what Christensen meant to achieve by it. It seemed unnecessarily melodramatic. But it's still a beautifully written book, and well worth reading.

• The Horse, the Wheel and Language: How Bronze-Age Riders from the Eurasian Steppes Shaped the Modern World
• Author: David W. Anthony
• Date completed: 06 Sept 2014
• 553 pages
• Rating: ★★★★
• Proto-Indo-European homeland, language, culture, economy, political organisation, etc. Historical linguistics. Archeology. Impact of the wheel, the chariot, the domestication of the horse. Spread of Proto-Indo-European culture and language through migration and political alliance. What's not to like? Dry bits here and there can be skimmed. By no means a difficult read.

• The Ocean at the End of the Lane
• Author: Neil Gaiman
• Date completed: 25 Aug 2014
• 181 pages
• Rating: ★★★★
• Who are the Hempstocks? Same fictional universe as that in American Gods?

• Swann's Way (In Search of Lost Time #1)
• Author: Marcel Proust
• Date completed: 22 Aug 2014
• 615 pages
• Rating: ★★★★★
• Incredible. I see a reflection of myself in Proust's narrator, whose thoughts on memory and desire and place are so much like my own, and empathise deeply with Swann, whose troubles I recognise and know intimately.

• Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter
• Author: Tom Franklin
• Date completed: 24 Jul 2014
• 274 pages
• Rating: ★★★★★

• Petua: Reminiscing Grandmother Tales and Superstitions
• Author: Visual Inconsideration, The HeartThrob Project
• Date completed: 21 Jul 2014
• 115 pages
• Rating: ★★★★

• Fahrenheit 451
• Author: Ray Bradbury
• Date completed: 20 Jul 2014
• 227 pages
• Rating: ★★★★
• Started reading this because I thought it was about censorship. Actually it's about quite a bit more. Not sure what I think about it.

• The Diary of Samuel Pepys
• Author: Samuel Pepys
• Date completed: 17 Jul 2014
• 1096 pages
• Rating: ★★★★★
• Restoration England through the eyes of somebody who lived it. Read part pf this while in London for a conference in June. Definitely leant a bit of texture to the experience. Especially visiting some of the places mentioned in it, seeing Pepys' portrait at the National Portrait Gallery, etc.

• Gone Case
• Author: Dave Chua
• Date completed: 30 Jun 2014
• 153 pages
• Rating: ★★★★
• Singaporean writer.

• The Great Good Place
• Author: Ray Oldenburg
• Date completed: 26 Jun 2014
• 338 pages
• Rating: ★★★
• Very long-winded. Hard to get through. Especially after the first couple of chapters. But interesting thesis worth considering and thinking about. Maybe do what I did and read the first chapter, then skim the rest.

• My Man Jeeves (Jeeves #1)
• Author: P. G. Wodehouse
• Date completed: 07 Jun 2014
• 256 pages
• Rating: ★★★★
• Short stories. Classic.

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