Looking back, I haven’t published a blog post in 3-years. For about a 2-year period, I blogged on a regular basis – writing primarily on faith and matters of the church. During that period, I had a fountain of inspiration as I read regularly and was immersed in a career that consumed my thoughts and passions.
Boy how things change.
Since then, I have left the church, held jobs in two distinctly different arenas, and stayed generally silent on hot button issues. Given the current political and cultural climates, there has been no shortage of opportunities to speak my viewpoints – but by speaking out on every thought I had, I found I was growing in anger towards people rather than towards issues. I’m not so sure that my relative silence was a good thing, as by not challenging others, I was also not challenging myself.
I was stagnating and again feeling like the handsome fellow who wrote this blog post:
I want to blog again. Selfishly, this is for me to process my thoughts – but in order to do so, I need to grow in knowledge. To that end, my goals for 2019 are to read at least 50 books, watch 52 of IMDB’s top 100 movies of all times, complete at least 12 woodworking projects, and write at least 12 new blog posts. Along the way, I will blog about what I read, watch, and build – and maybe, if inspiration and courage abound, about my thoughts on current events. For the few of you who dare, my hope is that you find entertainment, encouragement, and maybe are even challenged to think deeper.
So, today I share with you my reading list for 2019 (the movie list comes tomorrow). This list took some time to compile and includes a mix of re-reads of some of my favorites, classics that I somehow have never read, and books that I hope challenge me – pushing me to think more deeply about the world, my own beliefs, and the impact I can have. It is a mix of books for fun, books for knowledge, and books for challenge. Along the way, I am hoping to find fodder to feed the blogging monster. Now, without much further adieu, here is my 2019 Reading List – feel free to weigh in with your thoughts on my list and recommend additional material for me:
| Title | Author | Type |
| A Walk Across America | Peter Jenkins | Non-Fiction |
| An Edible History of Humanity | Tom Standage | Non-Fiction |
| Moby Dick | Herman Melville | Fiction |
| Dark Places | Gillian Flynn | Fiction |
| The Ruins | Scott Smith | Fiction |
| The Brothers Karamazov | Fyodor Dostoyevsky | Fiction |
| Invisible Man | Ralph Ellison | Fiction |
| John Dies at the End | David Wong | Fiction |
| This Book is Full of Spiders | David Wong | Fiction |
| What the Hell Did I Just Read? | David Wong | Fiction |
| Dead Souls | Nikolai Gogl | Fiction |
| The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes | Arthur Conan Doyle | Fiction |
| American Gods | Neil Gaiman | Fiction |
| Kidnapped | Robert Louis Stevenson | Fiction |
| What is the Bible? | Rob Bell | Non-Fiction |
| Gods of Myth & Man | Derek Murphy | Non-Fiction |
| Beyond Religion | Dalai Lama | Non-Fiction |
| Post-Truth | Lee McIntyre | Non-Fiction |
| The Invention of Air | Steven Johnson | Non-Fiction |
| Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind | Yuval Noah Harari | Non-Fiction |
| The Disappearing Spoon | Sam Kean | Non-Fiction |
| Norse Mythology | Neil Gaiman | Fiction |
| The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason | Sam Harris | Non-Fiction |
| Frankenstein | Mary Shelley | Fiction |
| Welcome to the Universe | Neil DeGrasse Tyson | Non-Fiction |
| The Island of Dr. Moreau | H.G. Wells | Fiction |
| Around the World in 80 Days | Jules Verne | Fiction |
| Neverwhere | Neil Gaiman | Fiction |
| The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy | Douglas Adams | Fiction |
| The Broken Ladder: How Inequality Affects the Way we Think, Live, and Die | Keith Payne | Non-Fiction |
| How Democracies Die | Steven Levitsky | Non-Fiction |
| Out of the Silent Planet | C.S. Lewis | Fiction |
| Perlandra | C.S. Lewis | Fiction |
| That Hideous Strength | C.S. Lewis | Fiction |
| Things Fall Apart | Chinua Achebe | Fiction |
| A Brief History of Time | Stephen Hawking | Non-Fiction |
| The Maltese Falcon | Dashiell Hammett | Fiction |
| The Hate U Give | Angie Thomas | Non-Fiction |
| The Alchemist | Paulo Coelho | Fiction |
| Geek Love | Katherine Dunn | Fiction |
| A People’s History of the United States | Howard Zinn | Non-Fiction |
| A Confederacy of Dunces | John Kennedy Toole | Fiction |
| The Sword of Shannara | Terry Brooks | Fiction |
| The Elfstones of Shannara | Terry Brooks | Fiction |
| The Wishsong of Shannara | Terry Brooks | Fiction |
| The Elementals | Micheal McDowell | Fiction |
| Broken Monsters | Lauren Beukes | Fiction |
| The Haunting of Hill House | Shirley Jackson | Fiction |
| The Common Good | Robert Reich | Non-Fiction |
| Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World | Anand Giridharadas | Non-Fiction |
| A Brief History of Everyone Who Every Lived: The Human Story Retold Through Our Genes | Adam Rutherford | Non-Fiction |
| Spell or High Water (Magic 2.0 Book 2) | Scott Meyer | Fiction |
| An Unwelcome Quest (Magic 2.0 Book 3) | Scott Meyer | Fiction |
| Fight and Flight (Magic 2.0 Book 4) | Scott Meyer | Fiction |
| Out of Spite, Out of Mind (Magic 2.0 Book 5) | Scott Meyer | Fiction |
farther up 
I will advise some caution on a confederacy of dunces. I read it a couple years ago and it was hard going. People laid it but I don’t think they have all read it. I find the characters not as endearing as they think themselves to be.
Moby dick is a book written by a man who friggen loved words. You best love em too.
The Maltese Falcon is my favorite book. Let me know when you read it.
Thanks for the heads up. I’ve actually read Moby Dick a few times – it is wordy, but it is one of my all-time favorites.