{"id":1659,"date":"2012-01-21T12:45:15","date_gmt":"2012-01-21T18:45:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kickert.info\/blog\/?p=1659"},"modified":"2012-01-21T12:45:18","modified_gmt":"2012-01-21T18:45:18","slug":"6-months-of-reading","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/kickert.info\/blog\/2012\/01\/21\/6-months-of-reading\/","title":{"rendered":"6 Months of Reading"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>As of this week, we have been in Swaziland for six months.&#160; In my last blog post I talked about just how much has changed in the past year and how I now feel we are settling into our &quot;new normal.&quot;&#160; One part of our new routine that I am very grateful for is that ability we now have to read much more.&#160; I have always enjoyed reading \u2013 especially historic nonfiction \u2013 but now it is easy to fit reading into our days.&#160; What is crazy is that I don&#8217;t feel like I have turned into a bookworm; however, that must be the case since I just realized that I had read well over 20 books in 6 months.&#160; Here is the list in alphabetical order.<\/p>\n<p><strong><em>1984 <\/em><\/strong>\u2013 I started reading &quot;Hunger Games&quot; but Beth took the kindle from me, so I started reading the classic dystopia book.<\/p>\n<p><strong><em>Animal Farm<\/em><\/strong> \u2013 At one point a few months ago I found an old paperback copy of this book in the closet and decided it was probably one of those books that everyone should read.<\/p>\n<p><strong><em>Bonk <\/em><\/strong>\u2013 I love Mary Roach and after reading all her other books, I figured I should read this one too.<\/p>\n<p><strong><em>Cold Death<\/em><\/strong> (or something like that) \u2013 I am not sure of the title, but this was another paperback I found in the closet.&#160; It was about a bunch of trappers that died in Canada.&#160; Not a great read.<\/p>\n<p><em><strong>Fear and loathing in Las Vegas<\/strong><\/em> \u2013 Another one of those books that I felt obligated to read if for no other reason than to connect with the cultural references it creates.<\/p>\n<p><strong><em>Flight to Heaven<\/em><\/strong> \u2013 Thought it was &quot;survival story,&quot; but quickly realized that was not the main point.<\/p>\n<p><strong><em>Freakonomics <\/em><\/strong>\u2013 I had a pdf copy of this given to me and really enjoyed reading it.&#160; I love the &quot;approachable science&quot; type&#160; books.<\/p>\n<p><strong><em>Heart of Darkness<\/em><\/strong> \u2013 I have had this book on my kindle for a while, but finally found the time to read it.&#160; Unlike some &quot;classics&quot; that I feel like I should read, I really enjoyed this one.<\/p>\n<p><strong><em>HIV\/AIDS: A very short introduction<\/em><\/strong> \u2013 I read this book on the airplane over.<\/p>\n<p><strong><em>Hunger Games Trilogy<\/em><\/strong> \u2013 Beth got me to read these.&#160; I enjoyed the concept, and found them very engaging, but I thought the last book ruined the trilogy.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong><em>The Hunger Games<\/em><\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong><em>Catching Fire<\/em><\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong><em>Mockingjay<\/em><\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong><em>Journey on the Estrada Real<\/em><\/strong> \u2013 This book was written by an author whom we met here in Swaziland while he was doing a story on the Cabrini sisters.&#160; I really like his wry humor and crazy stories.<\/p>\n<p><strong><em>Kitchen Confidential<\/em><\/strong> \u2013 yet another book I found in our closet.&#160; It was entertaining.<\/p>\n<p><strong><em>Lab 257<\/em><\/strong> \u2013 I just finished this book tonight and found it interesting, but a bit wandering in terms of the topic.<\/p>\n<p><strong><em>Love Mercy<\/em><\/strong> \u2013 It was very interesting to read this book since it is about friends of mine from Kentucky going on a trip to Swaziland.&#160; It was odd to read a book about people I know going on a big journey to the place I live.<\/p>\n<p><strong><em>Stieg Larsson Trilogy<\/em><\/strong> \u2013 I hardly every read modern fiction, but absolutely loved these books.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong><em>The girl who kicked the hornet\u2019s nest<\/em><\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong><em>The girl who played with fire<\/em><\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong><em>The girl with the dragon tattoo<\/em><\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong><em>The Communist Manifesto<\/em><\/strong> \u2013 Another book I have had on my kindle for a while and felt like I should read.<\/p>\n<p><strong><em>The five dysfunctions of a team<\/em><\/strong> \u2013 Since I am getting more and more into the management side of things, I wanted to have some fresh ideas to have bouncing around my head.<\/p>\n<p><strong><em>The Red Badge of Courage<\/em><\/strong> \u2013 I read this book when I was in school and had downloaded it awhile ago. I didn&#8217;t like it then, and thought I might have just been too immature to appreciate.&#160; But unfortunately no\u2026 I still didn&#8217;t like it.<\/p>\n<p><strong><em>Unbroken<\/em><\/strong> \u2013 This was a great true story of an olympic runner turned solider turned POW.&#160; Excellent!<\/p>\n<p>&#160;<\/p>\n<p>Of all the books, Unbroken was probably my favorite.&#160; I also really enjoyed Freakonomics.&#160; I enjoyed reading the fiction books more than I expected I would.&#160; I also found myself fascinated by the classics &quot;Heart of Darnkess&quot; and &quot;1984.&quot;<\/p>\n<p>Who knows what the next 6 months will hold.&#160; On one hand, I have read a lot of the books on my &quot;to read&quot; list and I don&#8217;t have a lot of books I am dying to read.&#160; However, I actually expect to have more time to read now that things have started to settle down.&#160; All I know is that the next book I will be reading will be Tipping Point because I already have it on my kindle.<\/p>\n<p>If you have any suggestions on what I should read next \u2013 especially in the exploration\/survival and &quot;approachable science&quot;&#160; genres \u2013 please send me an email or leave me a comment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As of this week, we have been in Swaziland for six months.&#160; In my last blog post I talked about just how much has changed in the past year and how I now feel we are settling into our &quot;new normal.&quot;&#160; One part of our new routine that I am very grateful for is that [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[541,717],"class_list":["post-1659","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-thoughts","tag-books","tag-reading"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/kickert.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1659","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/kickert.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/kickert.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/kickert.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/kickert.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1659"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/kickert.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1659\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1660,"href":"http:\/\/kickert.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1659\/revisions\/1660"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/kickert.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1659"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/kickert.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1659"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/kickert.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1659"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}