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.

I love supporting independent artists who release there stuff online as “pay what you want”. I just bought Wil Wheaton’s new short story Hunter, and Molly Lewis’s new song, “An Open Letter To Stephen Fry”. I love them both, and am more than happy to throw a few bucks at them for their hard work.

I would like to think and hope the “pay what you want” model works. I support it whenever possible, and always throw in a little extra. I would think most fans would chip in, and if they weren’t fans and downloaded it for free—Well, they may become fans and buy future works.

Wil Wheaton said he would probably get $125 for selling his short story to a magazine. With his fan base, I can almost guarantee he will make much for than that selling it online. It would just take 42 people to pay the $3 that I did. The best part is no DRM. I don’t have to crack the DRM like I do when I buy from Amazon, and it also feels good knowing that 100% of the money—after PayPal takes their cut—goes into his pocket.

And if you don’t know who Molly Lewis is, you can watch her on YouTube, and buy her music on BandCamp. I honestly listen to her music all the time, and am always looking for new stuff. Here is her video for her latest song that I just bought:

I always feel like I don’t spend enough time reading.  My Amazon wishlists grow much faster than I can read.  I have 18 unread books on my iPad, and 7 or 8 paper books I need to read.

Looking back on the year I ended up reading 21 books.  Some that have been on my “to read” list for years, and others that just recently came out.  I am not going to give reviews of them because I mostly find reviews worthless.  All the books I read this year were good.  Some were great, others just good, but none of them were bad.  Here is the list in no particular order:

• Columbine by Dave Cullen
• Andromeda Klein by Frank Portman
• The Accidental Billionaires by Ben Mezrich
• Shootin’ the Sh*t with Kevin Smith by Kevin Smith
• SuperFreakonomics by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner
• Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency by Douglas Adams
• Bonk by Mary Roach
• Welcome to Your Brain by Sam Wang and Sandra Aamodt
• Spook by Mary Roach
• What the Dog Saw by Malcolm Gladwell
• The Bedwetter by Sarah Silverman
• When Sysadmins Ruled the Earth by Cory Doctorow
• Hitch-22 by Christopher Hitchens
• Open by Andre Agassi
• How We Decide by Jonah Lehrer
• The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson
• Storm World by Chris Mooney
• Bad Astronomy by Philip Plait
• Have a Little Faith by Mitch Albom
• Shop Class as Soulcraft by Matthew Crawford
• The Grand Design by Stephen Hawking

One of my goals every year it to try and read more.  We will see this time next year if I accomplished that.

This month the audiobook I am listening to is Christopher Hitchens’ Hitch-22.  I am only two chapters in, but so far it’s pretty good.  I don’t know if I am going to make it though the whole thing though.  It’s read by Christopher Hitchens himself.  He is a good reader, but he has a heavy accent that I just can’t get use to.  Maybe after a few more chapters I will get use to it.  If not, I will just have to buy it in ebook form.

I love audiobooks.  I usually listen to one book a month while doing dishes or other household chores.  I actually tell the Wife not to clean up the kitchen just so I can do it listening to a book.

I have always liked math. Even when it was way over my head, I liked it. The one area of math that intrigued me the most was probability. Probably because it was useful in everyday activities, and the brain has a hard time understanding probabilities. I have forgotten more math then I know now. I pretty much forgot how to calculate the probability of things. What got me thinking about this is the current audiobook I am listening to, The Drunkard’s Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives. Yeah, I am listening to a book about math.

It’s really good. I just finished a chapter about probability. Did you know your chances at winning the lottery are about the same as getting killed driving to buy a ticket? I never heard of Pascal’s Triangle before, but now I am ready more about it. Today I just started a chapter about randomness, and how it’s pretty much impossible to have a truly random number. Math may be hard, but it’s awesome too.

I am a big fan of Malcolm Gladwell. I really enjoyed Blink, and The Tipping point, and am currently listening to Outliers on audio book. Malcolm Gladwell is great at getting you to think. Outliers explains how successful people got to where there are. He explains that their success has more to do with their family, their generation, their upbringing, than their actual work. His theory is that if you can do something for 10,000 hours, you will be successful at it.

Bill Gates grew up in a rich enough family that he went to a private school that actually had a computer club back when computers were fall from common. He spent all his free time programing computers. By the time computer use started to spread, he had is 10,000 hours in and was a computer genius. Most of his sucess is luck. He grew up in the right generation, had parents that were able to send him to private school, and had access to computers when most people didn’t.

He also mentioned the Beatles. When they first started playing together the got a gig in Germany in which they played for eight hours a night, four to five days a week. They quickly learned how to play well together. They learned what worked and what didn’t. By the time their popularity increased they had their 10,000 hours in. Their success had more to do with the amount they played than anything else.

I don’t know what it is, but I just love his stuff. Here is an old TED Talk he did back in 2004.