Over on io9 the have an article about the “rule of 50”, to help you know when to give up on a book when you’re just not into it. I very seldom give up on a book because I usually only start books that I know I’m going to like. That being said, it was a pretty pathetic year for my reading. In reality, I’m constantly reading good stuff online, but I have such a hard time finding the time to sit down with a book. I only read 17 books this year, but I’m almost done with two others, so I’m going to call it 19. Still pretty pathetic, but better than none I guess.

Here is what I read this year:

• Inside Scientology – Janet Reitman
• Hatching Twitter – Nick Bilton
• On the Road – Jack Kerouac
• Without Their Permission – Alexis Ohanian
• Gulp – Mary Roach
• An Astronaut’s Guide to Life on Earth – Chris Hadfield
• The Honest Truth About Dishonesty – Dan Ariely
• For One More Day – Mitch Albom
• Beautifully Unique Sparkleponies – Chris Kluwe
• The Fault in Our Stars – John Green
• Unorthodox – Deborah Feldman
• My Story – Elizabeth Smart
• What if? – Randall Munroe
• The Martian – Andy Weir
• Finding Me – Michelle Knight
• Smoke Gets in Your Eyes – Caitlin Doughty
• The Art of Asking – Amanda Palmer
• No Place to Hide – Glenn Greenwald
• Ready Player One – Ernest Cline

I enjoyed all of them. Hopefully next year will be less hectic and I will be able to read more.

Sometimes it takes me a while to finish a book because I’m not that into it, other times it takes me a while because I don’t want it to end. The later refers to The Martian. It’s a great book that I could have read it a few hours, but I milked it because I didn’t want it to end. It’s easily the best book I’ve read in at least five years.

I’m looking forward to the movie despite it having no chance at being half as good as the book.

Go read it now!

So one of my blog friends, Nicole Wolverton, had her first book released today. It’s titled The Trajectory of Dreams, and can be picked up wherever you usually buy books. I obviously haven’t read it yet, but She is a great writer, so I’m sure her book is great. I’ve been looking forward to it for a while and am bumping it to the top of my “to read” queue.

So it’s that time of the year again when I look back and wish I would have read more books. My “to read” list grows way faster than I can keep up with. I read 21 books last year, and 24 this year, but this year a few of them were short stories, so I’m reading at about the same rate.

My podcasting/blogging/Twitter buddy, who probably doesn’t even know who I am, Kreg Steppe, is going to try I start reading more in the coming year. I congratulate him, and hope he succeeds. That was my goal 10 years ago when I picked up The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, after not reading a book since high school turned me off of reading. I may not be as prolific as some readers, but I usually manage to read 20 or so books a year, so that’s not too bad.

The week I am finally going to read Death from the Skies! by one of my favorite guys on the planet Phil Plait. I don’t know why it’s taken me this long to get to it, but it is probably a fitting book to start the year since it’s 2012 and all.

Here are the books I read this year. They were all great, and I would recommend them to anyone.

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks – Rebecca Skloot
God, No! – Penn Jillette
Ghost in the Wires – Kevin Mitnick
Between Two Worlds – Roxana Saberi
See a Little Light – Bob Mould
The Believing Brain – Michael Shermer
Death by Black Hole – Neil deGrasse Tyson
Idea Man – Paul Allen
Made by Hand – Mark Frauenfelder
Nonsense on Stilts – Massimo Pigliucci
A Short History of Nearly Everything – Bill Bryson
The Demon-Haunted World – Carl Sagan
And Another Thing… – Eoin Colfer
Daemon – Daniel Suarez
Hunter – Wil Wheaton
Packing for Mars – Mary Roach
Sunken Treasure – Wil Wheaton
The Day After – Wil Wheaton
Blood is Red – Scott Sigler
With a Little Help – Cory Doctorow
Paranormality – Richard Wiseman
The Cold Moon – Jeffery Deaver
Steve Jobs – Walter Isaacson
World War Z – Max Brooks

Over the weekend I downloaded a new book that I can’t wait to read — Paranormality: Why we see what isn’t there. I’ve been a Richard Wiseman fan for some time. He is actually self publishing his latest book in the US because he hasn’t been able to find a publisher in the US despite the book selling well in the UK and a few other countries. Some publishers even suggested that he re-write it to suggest that ghosts and psychics were real. Imagine that, in a country where probably 75% of the people believe in the paranormal, a book that disproves it can’t be published.

Thanks to the internet, and ebooks it is easy to self publish these days. I love it when authors self publish their books. It was a no-brainer for $8.99. I bet the book is going to do well in the US. It’s gotten some pretty good reviews. I can’t wait to read it.

The other day I went to buy some of the books in my Amazon wish list. I probably have 20 books ready to read on my iPad, but I thought I would pick up a few more to clean out my wish list some. What drove me crazy, and prevented me from buying many books was the crazy Kindle pricing. Why do most kindle books cost $12? On many occasions the paper edition was cheaper, and for a few even a hardcover book was cheaper than the kindle edition. Why? You can’t tell me it’s cheaper to chop down a bunch of trees, make some paper, print out the books, fill up the truck with gas, and ship the books across the country; than it is to send a 2 meg file max over the internet to anybody in the world in seconds.

Ebook publishers need to wake up. They need to look at the app store model. If an app is under $3 I pretty much buy it without thinking about it. When apps are priced higher, I think about it, and often don’t purchase them. Books to me have more entertainment value, and my no thinking purchase barrier is probably in the $5 to $8 range. At $12 I think about it, and often don’t make the purchase. If I see I can get the paper version cheaper I don’t just buy the paper one. It pisses me off and I don’t buy either, and will probably never buy it. I bet I’m not alone. Ebook publishers would make a killing just by passing some of their savings onto the customer.

I did end up only buying two ebooks. I bought two Scott Sigler books. I bought The Rookie for $4.99 and The Starter for $2.99. They were priced in that “no think” zone. Scott gets it, and hopefully ebook publishers realize how many more sales they will make just buy getting into that “no think” price zone.