{"id":830,"date":"2021-02-20T16:53:50","date_gmt":"2021-02-21T00:53:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/marcusvorwaller.com\/blog\/?p=830"},"modified":"2021-02-20T16:53:50","modified_gmt":"2021-02-21T00:53:50","slug":"an-update-on-my-50-books-in-2021-goal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/marcusvorwaller.com\/blog\/2021\/02\/20\/an-update-on-my-50-books-in-2021-goal\/","title":{"rendered":"An update on my 50 books in 2021 goal"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Two months into 2021 and I’m ahead on the 50 book challenge. Here’s a list of what I’ve read so far along with brief notes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

  1. Cultural Amnesia<\/em> – Clive James. Review here<\/a>.<\/li>
  2. The Naked and the Dead<\/em> – Norman Mailer. Mini-review here<\/a>.<\/li>
  3. The Hamlet<\/em> – William Faulkner. Not my favorite Faulkner, but still Faulkner.<\/li>
  4. The Dog Stars<\/em> – Peter Heller. I’m a sucker for good post-apocalyptic stories. This was a fun one.<\/li>
  5. Jayber Crow<\/em> – Wendell Berry. My first book by Berry. Beautiful story. Much better than what I anticipated.<\/li>
  6. Tortilla Flat<\/em> – John Steinbeck. Funny! <\/li>
  7. The Sunset Limited<\/em> – Cormac McCarthy. Bittersweet in that this is the last of McCarthy’s novels that I haven’t read. Guess it’s time to start over from the beginning again. I also watched the Tommy Lee Jones & Samuel Jackson movie. Very existential. It reminded me a lot of the Grand Inquisitor in the Brothers Karamazov by Dostoyevsky.<\/li>
  8. Where the Crawdads Sing<\/em> – Delia Owens. This was a recommendation from a friend. I don’t read a lot of recently-released-fiction, but I’m glad I read this one. It’s got a heavy focus on birds and ecology, it’s set in the South, and it’s a fun whodunit type of book.<\/li>
  9. Conscious<\/em>– Annaka Harris. Panpsychism is a fascinating concept.<\/li>
  10. The Red and the Black<\/em> – Stendhal. I read this because it was influential for Ren\u00e9 Girard. I’m still processing it. As I read it I didn’t find it extremely engaging but I’ve found that it’s stuck with me.<\/li>
  11. Extraterrestrial<\/em> – Avi Loeb. Read this. A real scientist making a very<\/em> compelling case for extraterrestrial life.<\/li>
  12. The Evolution of Desire<\/em> – Cynthia L. Haven. A book about the life and works of Ren\u00e9 Girard. Very well written and a great introduction to Girard.<\/li>
  13. Never Enough<\/em> – Judith Grisel. An engaging and pragmatic look at drug addiction.<\/li><\/ol>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Two months into 2021 and I’m ahead on the 50 book challenge. Here’s a list of what I’ve read so far along with brief notes. Cultural Amnesia – Clive James. Review here. The Naked and the Dead – Norman Mailer. Mini-review here. The Hamlet – William Faulkner. Not my favorite Faulkner, but still Faulkner. The […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-830","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-etc"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/ppj2P-do","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcusvorwaller.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/830","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcusvorwaller.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcusvorwaller.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcusvorwaller.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcusvorwaller.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=830"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/marcusvorwaller.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/830\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":831,"href":"https:\/\/marcusvorwaller.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/830\/revisions\/831"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcusvorwaller.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=830"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcusvorwaller.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=830"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcusvorwaller.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=830"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}