Actually, I left out some technical books that I spent quite a bit of time in at work.  I was trying to make myself pay attention to the kinds of reading I did.  Also, I was just plain old curious about how many books I read in a year.  I’m sure that there have been years in which I read many more books; there were whole months in which I felt I didn’t read at all, whatever the twitrecord says.  After all, I wrote at least a couple hundred thousand words last year, mostly during the times I would normally have been reading.

The best part of tweeting my reading, though, was how it affected what I chose to read.  Especially at the end of the year, I was making a conscious effort to find books I’d never read before.  I’m sure I never had a year before in which I reread fewer books, or in which I read so many books by authors I’d never read before.  By the end of 2010, I’d resolved to go a year without rereading a single book.

March is almost over, and so far I haven’t even been tempted.  At this point, it feels like I haven’t reread anything in ages; it might be six months already, for all I know.  I’ve got some great stuff lined up to read next:

1. Felix Gilman, The Half-Made World
2. Dexter Palmer, The Dream of Perpetual Motion
3. Thomas Mullen, The Many Deaths of the Firefly Brothers
4. John Locke, Saving Rachel
5. Richard Kadrey, Sandman Slim and Kill the Dead
6. Keith Jeffery, The Secret History of MI6
7. Peter Hessler, Country Driving: A Journey Through China from Farm to Factory
8. Alex Butterworth, The World That Never Was: A True Story of Dreamers, Schemers, Anarchists and Secret Agents

Dan Wells’s I Don’t Want to Kill You will come out soon, and it will go immediately to the top of the list.  As much as I’m enjoying Half-Made World, Dan Wells’s first two books were among my favorites all year.

Of course, I’ve completely dropped the ball on the reading and tweeting thing, but then, it turns out that Twitter is a totally crap way to keep track of anything – if you try to search for #readin2010 – go ahead – my tweets are now one with the neiges d’antan.

1980′s

Neuromancer, William Gibson

Count Zero, William Gibson

“Burning Chrome”,William Gibson

Ender’s Game, Orson Scott Card
In his early days in Battle School, Ender exploits a deliberate input-sanitation vulnerability to create bogus accounts on the Battle School computer.  Orson Scott Card used to programming articles for Creative Computing, the seminal publication of personal computing.

1990′s

Synners, Pat Cadigan

Snow Crash, Neal Stephenson

The Long Run, Daniel Keys Moran

The Last Dancer, Daniel Keys Moran

The Matrix, Wachowski Brothers

Hackers, Iain Softley
Added at the suggestion of commenter Ericka

2000′s

Diamond Age, Neal Stephenson

Cryptonomicon, Neal Stephenson

Little Brother, Cory Doctorow

Halting State (Ace Science Fiction), Charles Stross

Charles Stross is one of the most technically adept SF writers, and his books in general contain the most accurate or plausible depictions of software that anyone has yet published.

Digital Fortress: A Thriller, Dan Brown

Added at the suggestion of commenter Matthew. An excellent negative test for SF-ness. The Maguffin in this book is some sort of universal crypto thingy, so implausible that I did in fact throw the book away when I came to it. An SF book with this tone would have to account for the crypto in some way, whereas in thrillers, the guns, subs and planes have to be right, but the science is under no such constraint.

1. Started your own blog
2. Slept under the stars
3. Played in a band
4. Visited Hawaii
5. Watched a meteor shower
6. Given more than you can afford to charity
7. Been to Disneyland [world, that is]
8. Climbed a mountain
9. Held a praying mantis
10. Sang a solo
11. Bungee jumping
12. Visited Paris
13. Watched a lightning storm at sea
14. Taught yourself an art from scratch
15. Adopted a child
16. Had food poisoning
17. Walked to the top of the Statue of Liberty
18. Grown your own vegetables
19. Seen the Mona Lisa in France
20. Slept on an overnight train
21. Had a pillow fight
22. Hitch hiked
23. Taken a sick day when you’re not ill
24. Built a snow fort [man, have I  ever. I'll have to scan the picture sometime]
25. Held a lamb
26. Gone skinny dipping
27. Run a Marathon
28. Ridden in a gondola in Venice
29. Seen a total eclipse
30. Watched a sunrise or sunset
31. Hit a home run
32. Been on a cruise
33. Seen Niagara Falls in person
34. Visited the birthplace of your ancestors
35. Seen an Amish community
36. Taught yourself a new language
37. Had enough money to be truly satisfied
38. Seen the Leaning Tower of Pisa in person
39. Gone rock climbing
40. Seen Michelangelo’s David
41. Sung karaoke
42. Seen Old Faithful geyser erupt
43. Bought a stranger a meal at a restaurant
44. Visited Africa
45. Walked on a beach by moonlight
46. Been transported in an ambulance
47. Had your portrait painted
48. Gone deep sea fishing
49. Seen the Sistine Chapel in person
50. Been to the top of the Eiffel Tower in Paris
51. Gone scuba diving or snorkelling
52. Kissed in the rain
53. Played in the mud
54. Gone to a drive-in theatre
55. Been in a movie
56. Visited the Great Wall of China
57. Started a business
58. Taken a martial arts class
59. Visited Russia
60. Served at a soup kitchen
61. Sold Girl Scout Cookies
62. Gone whale watching
63. Got flowers for no reason
64. Donated blood, platelets or plasma
65. Gone sky diving
66. Visited a Nazi Concentration Camp
67. Bounced a check
68. Flown in a helicopter
69. Saved a favourite childhood toy
70. Visited the Lincoln Memorial
71. Eaten caviar
72. Pieced a quilt
73. Stood in Times Square
74. Toured the Everglades
75. Been fired from a job
76. Seen the Changing of the Guards in London
77. Broken a bone
78. Been on a speeding motorcycle
79. Seen the Grand Canyon in person
80. Published a book
81. Visited the Vatican
82. Bought a brand new car
83. Walked in Jerusalem
84. Had your picture in the newspaper
85. Read the entire Bible
86. Visited the White House
87. Killed and prepared an animal for eating
88. Had chickenpox
89. Saved someone’s life
90. Sat on a jury
91. Met someone famous
92. Joined a book club
93. Lost a loved one
94. Had a baby
95. Seen the Alamo in person
96. Swam in the Great Salt Lake
97. Been involved in a law suit
98. Owned a cell phone
99. Been stung by a bee
100. Read an entire book in one day

I think that’s 44 48 49! I keep finding more.  I don’t know where Matthew got the list, which has at least one dependent element – do 49, get 81 for free.

Like Matthew, I’m taking credit for 94 when all of the hard work was done by someone else.

Seeing 100 not bolded on someone’s list would make me very sad.

Let’s see – things I’ve done that are least likely to appear on someone else’s list:

101. Read War and Peace in one day.  The Sunday after the first US war in Iraq started, I woke with the idea and carried it out.  Third time I read W&P.

101a.  Read more than one entire book in a day.

101b.  Read four books in one day.  Pride and Prejudice, The Naive and Sentimental Lover (LeCarre), A Mask for the General (Lisa Goldstein), Taming a Seahorse (Robert B. Parker).

[I'm just plain obsessive at times.  In one 24-hour period this weekend, I read Roberto Bolano's 2666.  In the next 24-hour period, I reread Memory, Komarr, and A Civil Campaign, by Lois McMaster Bujold.  And I was social enough through all this that no one killed me.]

[Not my copy]

102. Attended college as a fifteen year old.  For three weeks, then I turned sixteen.

103. Been frisked by soldiers of a national army and a revolutionary army in the same day.  Night, actually, in Colombia.

104. Climbed around in the stacks of the Library of Congress.  As a kid.

105.  Had more than fifty books in my car at once.

106.  Written a PDF reader – in Java 1.1.  Ooh, you madman.

107.  Ridden the cable car into the mountains outside Zagreb.

108.  Squared timber with an axe.

109.  Conversed for hours with someone I didn’t share a language with.

110.  Been to a wedding in Venice.

"…[the longbow] was six feet long and three inches in circumference, made of yew, and required a force of one hundred pounds to draw it.  (When the body of an archer was recovered from the dredged-up Mary Rose, lost in 1545, the bone of the left arm was noticeably thicker than that of the right, and his shoulder and spinal bones were noticeably deformed) …"

Think about that.  Longbowmen had thick, muscular left arms – I think we can assume that they were all shooting right-handed, since it would be difficult to arrange lefties and righties together in formation – so much so, you could probably tell by looking at them.  Longbowmen probably stood crooked, left shoulder high, spine twisted up between the scapulae. 

If they shot enough that their arm bones thickened on the left side, can you imagine what their right hands looked like from pulling back the string?  Probably, something like this guy’s hand:

  Imagine shooting a longbow for hours during a battle.  Could anyone do that, pull back a draw of a hundred pounds, over and over again, throughout a battle?

This from By the Sword, by Richard Cohen, who was selected to fence for the UK in the Olympics in 72, 76, 80, and 84.  He would have been hit by the boycott in 80, I suppose.  By the Sword is a fun read, and a fascinating history.  Highly recommended.