The Books of September 2017

Daily Ramble 42: The Books of September 2017

This month I was only able to read through 4 books this month. For some reason each on of them seemed to take longer that I expected and none of them really stood out as a top pick for me.

Here are the four titles I read:

• The Miracle Morning by Hal Elrod
• Robots and Empire by Issac Asimov
• The Bear and the Nightengale by Katherine Arden
• Barbarian Days: A Surfing Life by William Finnegan

I rate each of these a B. Not great but ok, but not bad either.

The Miracle Morning was a decent personal development book that suggested that by improving your morning routine you can make huge strides in your life. Some of the suggestions seem pretty good, particularly meditating and journaling in the morning so I’ll implement them and we’ll see how much they help.

Robots and Empire was the next installment in the Foundation and Empire series and I this is the first title I’ve “listened” to on YouTube. It was weird but after a dozen of so installments I got through the story and I can see how this was spdefinitely a bridge between the Robot stories and the space empire that’s about to blossom.

The Bear and the Nightengale was a good enough Russian fairytale but it just seemed a bit too similar to something from Naomi Novak or Neil Gaiman. I just wish I remembered more about it and since I don’t, it couldn’t have been much better than a B.

The last book I finished in September was Barbarian Days: A Surfing Life, a non-fiction selection. I enjoyed the stories of the different beaches he surfed and I could actually relate to some of the surfing since I took some surf classes in college and for a while was down at La Jolla every day. Somehow, this book didn’t really click with me but it was still a decent read.

So there yah have it…4 books in September and none that really stood out. My top 10 for 2017 is the same as last month but since I’ve taken to reading wider diversity of books lately, I might put together some extra lists – non-fiction or productivity. But I’ll leave that for another time.

1. Elantris – Brandon Sanderson (2007)
2. Gateway – Frederick Pohl (1977)
3. The Three-Body Problem – Cixin Liu (2014)
4. I, Robot – Isaac Asimov (1950)
5. Mistborn: The Final Empire – Brandon Sanderson (2009)
6. Dune – Frank Herbert (1965)
7. Red Rising – Pierce Brown (2014)
8. Beyond the Blue Event Horizon – Frederick Pohl (1980)
9. Lock In – John Scalzi (2014)
10. Heechee Rendezvous – Frederick Pohl (1985)

Hopefully my book selections for October are more memorable.