2006: My year In Books

I think you can learn quite a bit about a person based on what they read. So, here's a test of that theory by looking at myself in book form for the year:

1. Perfectly Reasonable Deviations from the Beaten Track (Michele/Richard Feynman)
2. Harvests of Joy -- How the good life became great business (Robert Mondavi)
3. On the road with Charles Kuralt (Charles Kuralt)
4. The Tomato in America -- Early History, Culture, and Cookery (Andrew F. Smith)
5. The High Tech Start Up (John Nesheim)
6. All the Pretty Horses (Cormac McCarthy)
7. Hard Boiled Wonderland at the End of the World (Haruki Murakami)
8. The Ultimate Kauai Guidebook (Andrew Doughty)
9. Kauai Trailblazer (Jerry & Janine Sprout)
10. Deep Lie (Stuart Woods)
11. Running With Scissors (Augusten Burroughs)
12. Lipstick Jungle (Candace Bushnell)
13. Flatland: A romance of Many Dimensions (Edwin A. Abbott)
14. I'd Rather Laugh (Linda Richman)
15. The Year of Magical Thinking (Joan Didion)
16. Chicken Soup for the Grieving Soul (Canfied & Hansen)
17. Kitchen Table Wisdom: Stories that Heal (Rachel Naomi Remen, MD)
18. The Elegant Gathering of White Snows (Kris Radish)
19. Nigella Bites (Nigella Lawson)
20. Julie & Julia: 365 Days, 524 Recipes, 1 Tiny Apartment Kitchen (Julie Powell)
21. Why Marriages Succeed or Fail (John Gottman, Ph.D.)
22. The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work (John M. Gottman, Ph.D)
23. Quick & Easy (Martin Yan)
24. Vineyards in the Sky: The Life of Legendary Vintner Martin Ray (Eleanor Ray/Barbara Marinacci)

What does this say about my year? Well, I see more than 2 books each on food, travel, wine, mourning, guilty-pleasure chick-lit, and marriage. These main themes are rounded out with singular books devoted to the spicey random additions that struck my fancy including math, physics, espionage, cyberpunk, classic literature, entrepreneurship, and one of this year's NYT best-seller memoirs of a neurotic family.

Yup, that's a fairly good summary of where my spare brain cycles for the year were spent, whether reading or otherwise.

(Reviews for some of the books here and here).