A Book A Week Challenge Results

"Five years from now, you’re the same person except for the people you’ve met and the books you’ve read." — John Wooden

One of my "Goals for 2010" was to read a book a week for the entire year. I thought it would be easy as I read quite a bit, but it definitely was not! After a few months I let things slide a bit and had to pay catch up. In fact, I was behind so many books that my own wife confessed to me that she didn’t think I could do it and promptly made a bet with me that I would fail. Today though I’m pleased to report the results of my challenge:

Stats:
Books read	53
Pages read	16270
Avg pages per book	306.98

I did it! It’s amazing, but when I think of all the new ideas I’ve read I do totally feel like a different person. My mind has been stretched so much on so many topics: psychology, finances, faith, sex, nature, etc. Would I do it again? Absolutely. Because I had a goal I had to actively search out new things to read – and often I found the unexpected. Of course not all of them were great so tomorrow I will post a list of my favorite reads from the last year. In the meantime here is the list of completed books for anyone who is interested:

	A Book A Week
Number	Book Title	Pages
1	Velvet Elvis by Rob Bell	208
2	The Five Love Languages By Gary Chapman	208
3	Last Child In The Woods by Richard Louv	390
4	The Sex Starved Marriage by Michele Weiner Davis	224
5	Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson	349
6	The Art of War by Sun Tzu	96
7	Pure Desire by Ted Roberts	300
8	The Richest Man in Babylon by George Clason	208
9	The Call Of The Wild by Jack London	128
10	Love Is A Decision By Gary Smalley	224
11	The Wealthy Barber by David Chilton	224
12	Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser	383
13	Every Man's Battle by Stephen Arterburn and Fred Stoeker	336
14	The Automatic Millionaire: Canadian Edition by David Bach	256
15	Love Must be Tough by James Dobson	272
16	Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 (graphic novel) by Tim Hamilton	160
17	Secrets Of The Millionaire Mind by T. H. Eker	224
18	The Liar In Your Life by Robert Feldman	304
19	The Glass Castle by Jeanette Walls	288
20	Out Of The Silent Planet by C.S. Lewis	160
21	The Feeling Good Handbook by David Burns	768
22	Perelandra by C.S. Lewis	288
23	That Hideous Strength by C.S. Lewis	544
24	The Mummy at the Dining Room Table: Eminent Therapists Reveal Their Most Unusual Cases	336
25	And No Birds Sang by Farley Mowat	256
26	Robin Hood - King of Sherwood by J.A. Watson	100
27	Never Cry Wolf by Farley Mowat	288
28	Jungle – A Harrowing Story of Survival by Yossi Ghinsberg	272
29	Byzantium by Stephen Lawhead	880
30	The Boat Who Wouldn’t Float by Farley Mowat	256
31	Honey, I Don't Have A Headache Tonight by Sheila Wray Gregoire	144
32	You Have What It Takes by John Eldredge	64
33	Switch - How To Change Things When Change Is Hard by Chip and Dan Heath	320
34	The One Minute Millionaire by Mark Hansen & Robert G. Allen	388
35	When The Game Is Over It All Goes Back In The Box by John Ortberg	256
36	The Four Hour Work Week by Timothy Ferriss	416
37	People of the Deer by Farley Mowat	264
38	I Will Teach You To Be Rich by Ramit Sethi	266
39	The Island of Doctor Moreau by H.G. Wells	168
40	Codependent No More by Melody Beattie	264
41	The Last Lecture By Randy Pausch	224
42	Superfreakonomics by Steven Levit & Stephen Dubner	288
43	The Speed of Trust by Stephen M.R. Covey	384
44	Losing My Virginity - The Autobiography by Richard Branson	608
45	Animal Farm by George Orwell	112
46	The 47th Samurai: A Bob Lee Swagger Novel by Stephen Hunter	384
47	The Life and Times of the Thunderbot Kid: A Memoir by Bill Bryson	448
48	The Snowball - Warren Buffet and the Business of Life by Alice Schroeder	976
49	The Voyage of the Dawntreader by C.S. Lewis	180
50	The Silver Chair by C.S. Lewis	190
51	Rich Kid, Smart Kid by Robery Kiyosaki	288
52	The Horse and His Boy by C.S. Lewis	180
53	The Lost Symbol by Dan Brown	528

Book Review: The Horse and His Boy

Book Review: The Horse and His Boy by C.S. Lewis

This is the third book in the Narnian Chronicles and my favorite. It is mostly set in Calormen, an Arabic-like nation south of Narnia and I like how Lewis’s characters interact with this unique culture. A boy named Shasta grows up in this land and eventually runs away from his father with a talking horse named Bree. The book follows their adventures as they try to escape to Narnia. There are battles, desert crossings, palace intrigues, and of course powerful interactions with Aslan the Lion.

I think that I like this book the most because the character of Shasta connects with me. He is a humble boy who has no real assets according to the world around him but finds himself to be very special (and eventually heroic). Is this not every boy (and man’s) privately held hope? I also enjoy how Aslan is portrayed in this book and how everything he does/allows to happen is for a reason. He tells several of the characters who are looking for answers as to why certain things happened "I tell no one any story but his own." I rate this book 4.6 ninja stars out of 5.

Book Review: The Lost Symbol

Book Review: The Lost Symbol by Dan Brown

This book is hard to put down. I read it it’s over 500 pages in just over 2 days. It felt like literary crack cocaine. Dad Brown is a truly amazing author in that he can keep you engaged at such a high level for such a long time that you begin to wonder if you are being hypnotized. That being said, this book is not quite as addictive as "The DaVinci Code." It is a new adventure with Robert Langdon, the humble symbologist who is the hero of Brown’s previous books but instead of the Church being his main target, it is the Masons.

Although this book got lots of bad reviews, I thought it was actually pretty good. Like his previous books, Brown tries to get you to swing to his worldview (deism) and so in many ways it’s a propaganda book that most Christians would find annoying or theologically “abhorrent” but as pure entertainment I’ve read far worse. I’d give it 1 ninja stars for its message and 5 stars for fun so in the end it gets a 3 ninja stars out of 5 rating.