Places 2011

Travel, ,

As usual, I’ve compiled a record of my travels in 2011 (2007, 2008, 2009, 2010). Athens was the most interesting place I visited, though it was for a conference, and I had a relatively little time for sightseeing. I also drove all the way across the country (and back), which was interesting if fairly uneventful. I’ve only included cities in which I spent at least one night, and I’ve starred those that I visited multiple times on non-consecutive days. I stopped at the cities marked with a † on my cross-country drive, so my experience of them was largely limited to interstate hotels I found on Hotwire.

  • Omaha, NE*
  • Ithaca, NY*
  • New York, NY*
  • Santa Clara, CA*
  • Elkhart, IN†
  • Laramie, WY†
  • Salt Lake City, UT*†
  • Reno, NV*†
  • Athens, Greece
  • La Porte, IN†
  • Bowling Green, OH

Books 2010

Uncategorized

Once again I’ve compiled a list of my reading from the past year. This year I split up books and audiobooks rather than using “page equivalents” like I did last year. I also haven’t compiled as many graphs as I did last year, but I may add these over time. See also my reading lists from previous years (2008, 2009)

Statistics

  • Total # of books: 23
  • Total length of books: 8250 pages
  • Total # of audiobooks: 17
  • Total length of audiobooks: 6 days, 8:49:32

Books

I reread the books highlighted in yellow.

# Title Author Pages Start Date End Date
1 Downbelow Station C.J. Cherryh 426 12/26 01/04
2 Total Recall: How the E-Memory Revolution Will Change Everything Gordon Bell and Jim Gemmell 270 01/05 01/20
3 Logicomix: An Epic Search for Truth Apostolos Doxiadis and Christos H. Papadimitriou 344 01/23 01/25
4 Accelerando Charles Stross 415 01/26 02/07
5 The Lost City of Z: A Deadly Obsession in the Amazon David Grann 284 02/07 02/23
6 Beautiful Testing Tim Riley and Adam Goucher (eds.) 322 02/27 07/24
7 Singularity Sky Charles Stross 337 03/10 03/23
8 Studs Terkel’s Working: A Graphic Adaptation Harvey Pekar 191 03/28 04/03
9 Stone’s Fall Iain Pears 594 04/05 05/09
10 Broker, Trader, Lawyer, Spy: The Secret World of Corporate Espionage Eamon Javers 288 05/10 05/22
11 Snow Crash Neal Stephensen 470 06/12 06/24
12 Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do Tom Vanderbilt 383 06/29 07/08
13 Gentlemen of the Road Michael Chabon 206 07/08 07/10
14 Contemporary Debates in Urban Planning Abhijeet Chavan and Christian Peralta and Christopher Steins 178 07/11 07/24
15 The Windup Girl Paolo Bacigalupi 359 07/24 08/03
16 River of Gods Ian McDonald 599 08/15 09/05
17 The Girl who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest Stieg Larsson 576 09/23 09/28
18 Zero History William Gibson 404 09/30 10/02
19 Surely You’re Joking Mr. Feynman Richard Feynman 317 10/10 10/22
20 The Dervish House Ian McDonald 358 10/24 11/26
21 Fab: The Coming Revolution on Your Desktop–from Personal Computers to Personal Fabrication Neil Gershenfeld 264 11/27 12/05
22 Thinking in Systems: A Primer Donella H. Meadows 185 12/10 12/20
23 The Half-Made World Felix Gilman 480 12/21 12/26

Audiobooks

# Title Author Length Start Date End Date
1 What the Dog Saw Malcolm Gladwell 11:36:15 01/10 01/18
2 The Whole Earth Discipline Stewart Brand 13:04:57 01/25 02/09
3 Born to Run Christopher McDougall 11:07:26 02/12 02/15
4 Outliers Malcolm Gladwell 7:17:51 02/21 02/27
5 The Irrational Economist Erwann Michel-Kerjan and Paul Slovic (eds.) 10:35:20 03/01 03/27
6 The Lightning Thief: Percy Jackson and the Olympians Book 1 Rick Riordan 10:01:00 03/24 03/28
7 The Big Short Michael Lewis 9:28:08 03/29 04/10
8 Freefall Joseph Stiglitz 13:23:37 04/16 05/04
9 The Great Reset Richard Florida 6:49:44 05/05 05/12
10 The Sea of Monsters: Percy Jackson and the Olympians Book 2 Rick Riordan 7:55:04 05/31 06/17
11 The Upside of Irrationality Dan Ariely 8:18:17 07/16 07/18
12 The Man Who Loved Books Too Much Allison Hoover Barlett 6:03:57 07/18 07/30
13 Cognitive Surplus Clay Shirky 6:50:11 08/04 08/19
14 The Titan’s Curse: Percy Jackson and the Olympians Book 3 Rick Riordan 8:48:30 08/12 08/15
15 Plenitude Juliet B. Shor 7:10:11 08/23 09/12
16 The End of the Free Market Ian Bremmer 7:10:53 09/28 11/02
17 Burning Chrome William Gibson 7:08:11 11/16 12/13

Places 2010

Travel

As in previous years (2007, 2008, 2009) I’ve compiled a record of my travels in 2010. This year marked my first visit to Asia, as well as vacations to the Adirondacks and Montréal. As before, I’ve included only those cities in which I spent at least one night, and I’ve starred those that I visited multiple non-consecutive days.

  • Omaha, NE*
  • Ithaca, NY*
  • Fairfax, VA*
  • Indianapolis, IN
  • Saranac Lake, NY (Adirondack National Park)
  • Montreal, QC, Canada
  • Singapore, Singapore
  • Memphis, TN

Books 2009

Books,

As I promised last year, I kept careful records of every book I read in 2009. In addition to recording the titles and authors, I’ve noted the length of each book and when I read it. Below are some statistics I’ve calculated from this data.

Reading Statistics

  • Total pages read: 18031
  • Avg. pages per month: 1502.58
  • Avg. pages per week: 346.75
  • Avg. pages per day: 49.40
  • Longest book: A Pattern Language, 1166 pages
  • Shortest book: Brunelleschi’s Dome, 165 pages
  • Longest time to read a book: A Pattern Language, 48 days
  • Shortest time to read a book: What I Talk About When I Talk About Running, 1 days

In addition to the average number of pages, I also computed the distribution of the number of pages read each month. For this I assume that I read at a constant (i.e. the same number of pages per day). This is clearly not true, but it still shows the basic trends.

Finally, I’ve plotted a histogram of the lengths of the books I read. As one would expect, the largest buckets are between 200 and 400 pages.

Here is the complete list of books I read in 2009. The rows highlighted in yellow are books I reread this year, and those highlighted in green are books I listened to in audiobook form. In the later case I used Amazon for the number of pages. Of course, the number of pages is approximate, and I make no claims to consistency about things like handling front and end matter or different editions.

# Title Author Pages Start Date End Date
1 The Book of Air and Shadows Michael Gruber 496 01/04 01/07
2* Cryptonomicon Neal Stephenson 918 01/08 02/15
3 Grammar Snobs are Great Big Meanies June Casagrande 199 01/13 01/23
4 Freakonomics Steven D. Levitt, Stephen J. Dubner 336 02/13 02/15
5 Sustainable Urbanism: Urban Design with Nature Douglas Farr 300 02/17 03/07
6* The Diamond Age Neal Stephenson 455 03/07 03/22
7 Emergency: This Book Will Save Your Life Neil Strauss 418 03/29 04/03
8 The Big U Neal Stephenson 308 04/09 04/25
9* Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces that Shape Our Decisions Dan Ariely 304 04/18 04/20
10* A Pattern Language Christopher Alexander, Sara Ishikawa, Murray Silverstein, Max Jacobson, Ingrid Fiksdahl-King, Shlomo Angel 1166 04/27 06/13
11 Zodiac Neal Stephenson 316 05/12 05/19
12 Super Crunchers: Why Thinking-By-Numbers is the New Way to be Smart Ian Ayres 320 05/14 05/19
13* Gig: Americans Talk about their Jobs John Bowe, Marisa Bowe, Sabin Streeter, eds. 670 05/19 05/24
14 Excession Iain M. Banks 451 05/24 06/04
15 Food Matters Mark Bittman 298 06/05 06/06
16 Home Witold Rybczynski 232 06/07 06/14
17 Adventures in Architecture Dan Cruickshank 283 06/14 06/25
18 The City in Mind James Howard Kunstler 252 06/15 06/25
19* Cyteen C.J. Cherryh 696 06/27 07/10
20 The Great Good Place Ray Oldenburg 368 07/11 07/18
21 In Praise of Slowness Carl Honore 336 07/19 07/21
22* The Bldg Blog Book Geoff Manaugh 272 07/27 08/01
23 Three Novels of Ancient Egypt Naguib Mahfouz 648 08/02 08/10
24 What I Talk About When I Talk About Running Haruki Murakami 192 08/15 08/15
25 The Angel’s Game Carlos Ruiz Zafón 544 08/16 08/20
26 Against a Dark Background Iain M. Banks 613 08/22 09/01
27 American Houses Gerald L. Foster 416 09/04 09/13
28 Create Your Own Economy Tyler Cowen 272 09/11 09/13
29* The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo Stieg Larsson 590 09/16 09/26
30 The Endless City Ricky Burdett and Deyan Sudjic, eds. 481 09/26 11/08
31 Farm City: The Education of an Urban Farmer Novella Carpenter 288 09/28 10/09
32 The Best American Travel Writing 2009 Simon Winchester, ed. 384 10/03 10/18
33 The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-to-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich Timothy Ferriss 320 10/09 10/12
34* The Geography of Bliss Eric Weiner 335 10/20 10/24
35* Regenesis C.J. Cherryh 585 11/08 11/16
36* Getting Stoned with Savages J. Maarten Troost 256 11/09 11/13
37 The Sex Lives of Cannibals J. Maarten Troost 288 11/13 11/16
38 Brunelleschi’s Dome Ross King 165 11/17 11/26
39* Green Metropolis David Owen 368 11/23 12/07
40 The Crystal World J.G. Ballard 210 12/01 12/12
41 The Girl who Played with Fire Stieg Larsson 503 12/14 12/18
42 The Magicians Lev Grossman 402 12/19 12/21
43 The Lost Symbol Dan Brown 528 12/22 12/29
44 Intown Living: A different American Dream Ann Breen, Dick Rigby 249 12/21 12/26

Update: I’ve added stars to those books that I particularly like.

2009 In Places

Travel, ,

It’s time for my annual year in places. As before, I only counted cities in which I spent at least one night. I visited those cities with a * on multiple non-consecutive days. The list is chronological by first visit. See also my lists from 2007 and 2008.

  • Omaha, NE*
  • Asilomar, CA
  • Ithaca, NY*
  • Fairfax, VA*
  • Mountain View, CA*
  • Providence, RI
  • Lyon, France
  • Paris, France
  • Memphis, TN