In 2019 your ‘umble blogger read 46 books. That’s about my usual pace. Can you believe I’ve been writing these year-end reading posts since 2010? That’s a solid decade. Here’s the list from 2018.

Below are all the titles I read in 2019. Feel free to comment with your thoughts on your own reading in 2019 or, if you have the right combination of ambition and leisure time, to list all your books from the year.

1. “Do Not Sell at Any Price: The Wild, Obsessive Hunt for the World’s Rarest 78 rpm Records,” Amanda Petrusich
2. “Counter Intelligence: Where to Eat in the Real Los Angeles,” Jonathan Gold
3. “After/Image: Los Angeles Outside the Frame,” Lynell George
4. “Train,” Tom Zoellner
5. “The Lost Art of Walking,” Geoff Nicholson
6. “Over the Hills,” David Lamb
7. “Beyond This Horizon,” Robert A. Heinlein
8. “Edgeworks Vol. 1,” Harlan Ellison
9. “Edgeworks Vol. 2,” Harlan Ellison
10. “An Edge in My Voice,” Harlan Ellison
11. “The Blood of the Lamb,” Peter De Vries
12. “A Pleasure to Burn,” Ray Bradbury
13. “Dreams and Schemes,” Steve Lopez
14. “The Simulacra,” Philip K. Dick
15. “Lies Inc.,” Philip K. Dick
16. “The Unteleported Man,” Philip K. Dick
17. “Only Apparently Real,” Paul Williams
18. “The Colour of Memory,” Geoff Dyer
19. “The Orange and the Dream of California,” David Boulé
20. “The Merry Wives of Windsor,” William Shakespeare
21. “Timon of Athens,” William Shakespeare
22. “Pericles,” William Shakespeare
23. “Shakespeare: The World as Stage,” Bill Bryson
24. “Collected Stories,” Willa Cather
25. “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance,” Robert M. Pirsig
26. “California Dreamin’ Along Route 66,” Joe Sonderman
27. “On the Road With Bob Dylan,” Larry “Ratso” Sloman
28. “The Hippest Trip in America: Soul Train and the Evolution of Culture and Style,” Nelson George
29. “What to Eat,” Marion Nestle
30. “American Fried,” Calvin Trillin
31. “Alice, Let’s Eat,” Calvin Trillin
32. “Third Helpings,” Calvin Trillin
33. “The Cambridge Companion to Bob Dylan,” Kevin Dettmar, editor
34. “Counter-Clock World,” Philip K. Dick
35. “A Canticle for Leibowitz,” Walter M. Miller Jr.
36. “Can and Can’tankerous,” Harlan Ellison
37. “Alive in La La Land,” Jack Smith
38. “How the World Was: A California Childhood,” Emmanuel Guibert
39. “Dear Los Angeles: The City in Diaries and Letters, 1542 to 2018,” David Kipen, editor
40. “Panorama: A Picture History of Southern California,” W.W. Robinson
41. “The Library Book,” Susan Orlean
42. “Los Angeles: The Architecture of Four Ecologies,” Reyner Banham
43. “The Best of Stanley G. Weinbaum,” Stanley Weinbaum
44. “Silent Visions: Discovering Early Hollywood and New York Through the Films of Harold Lloyd,” John Bengtson
45. “J.D. Salinger: A Biography,” Paul Alexander
46. “2020 Vision”: Jerry Pournelle, editor

Books acquired: “Anthony Bourdain: The Last Interview,” Melville House, editor; “Wild LA: Explore the Amazing Nature In and Around Los Angeles,” LA Natural History Museum, editor

Books read: “Salinger: A Biography,” Paul Alexander; “2020 Vision,” Jerry Pournelle, editor

Happy New Year, readers! Before it feels too late to do so, let’s look back at December, in which we all had to squeeze reading in among holiday get-togethers and such. Leave us alone, people! We have seven chapters left!

Generally my Decembers are fairly leisurely as far as reading goes; perhaps yours are too. True to form, my year ended with two books read in December. The first was a fairly blah biography of J.D. Salinger, which I’d started a few weeks earlier, set aside and then ploughed through the last part of November, finishing a couple of days into December.

Having some slack time, I read a couple of stories from a 650-page science fiction anthology, at which I’ll probably continue to nibble away in the coming months (I’m up to p. 200), before putting that down to read the entirety of a 192-page science fiction anthology that was timely. That I finished Dec. 27. Since then I’ve read 100 pages of a 350-page anthology of a single science-fiction author and set that aside, hopefully to finish in February, to instead start a literary classic that I expect will be one of two or three books I’ll finish in January.

So, it’s been a fun few weeks, with my reading a bit less pressured than some months. Books of short stories can have that effect. You build up a certain momentum within them, yet the books don’t cry out to be finished immediately as with a novel.

Anyway, on to this month’s books.

“Salinger: A Biography”: Alexander gathered up the basic facts, interviewed a bunch of people and drew from Ian Hamilton’s unpublished but archived research. But the writing is clunky and some of his conclusions are bizarre: Salinger, whose writing is often a laugh riot, doesn’t have a keen sense of humor? Teddy kills his sister instead of the reverse? Salinger courted stalkers to fuel book sales? His preference for young adult women goes back to…when he was a young adult man? Do tell. Also, the cover is hideous. (It’s since been supplanted by one that’s a bit more professional.)

“2020 Vision”: The limits of SF’s ability to forecast the future are certainly clear in this 1974 book of stories set in 2020. Almost nothing has come to pass. But who cares? This is still a fun collection of SF originals. I actively enjoyed about half, with A.E. van Vogt and Norman Spinrad’s stories my favorites, and Dian Girard’s, about a future in which women’s ideal weight is enforced, was a welcome blast of feminism. I devoted my New Year’s Day column to this book. I read the book for my column more than for this blog, but it served a dual purpose.

I bought “Salinger” in 2002 at the Barnes and Noble in Old Town Pasadena (RIP) from a sale table and “2020” in 2007 at Book Baron in Anaheim (RIP) during a half-off closing sale. Two bargains! Although the books seem a little less like bargains after having sat around unread for more than a decade.

How was your December, readers? Feel free to just stick to December in your comments, as my annual year-end books post and column will follow in the next week, and we can reflect on our reading years there.

Next month: a Thoreau look at January.