Another year has passed, and although 2011 will go down as the year before the year the world ends, that doesn’t mean there were not a menagerie of books that were read. Like last year, here is a big, fat list of all of the books I put to my brain.

#1 Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption, Laura Hillenbrand

Here is a story about WWII vet Louis Zamperini and his incredible journey from being an olympic runner to being shot down in the Pacific, to becoming a POW in some of the most heinous Japanese camps. Hillenbrand tells this incredible tale with aplomb, and as you read the pages you can see how this story could easily fit to screen. That feeling makes sense, considering Hillenbrand’s last book was Seabiscuit.

Pages: 406

#2 The Marvelous Land of Oz, L. Frank Baum

I found out soon after reading The Wonderful Wizard of Oz that there actually fifteen books in the Oz series. FIFTEEN! This second in the series focuses on Tip, a boy that has been basically tortured by an evil witch lady on the outskirts of Oz. When the woman threatens to turn him into stone, Tip runs away, but not without first stealing some magic powder that animates a sawhorse. With his new buddy, Tip rides off into the sunset to have adventures with the Tin Man, Scarecrow, and a very dignified bug. Together they fight an army of girls that take over the Emerald City and Tip’s former captor, the evil witch Mombi. Yeah, it’s weird, and certainly not as iconic as the first story, but it’s not bad.

Pages: 154

#3 Let the Great World Spin: A Novel, Colum McCann

I’ll be honest, the first chapter or two of this novel didn’t grab me. The story jumps through the shoes of several people in the early 1970s revolving around the event of a fearless tightrope walker dancing in-between the Twin Towers, but is not about that event specifically. While the story focuses quite a bit on an Irish immigrant named Corrigan, it deftly weaves his tale in and around the stories of others. Throughout the ride you are confronted with abandonment, atonement, and redemption.

After those first couple of chapters, once you see what the book is doing, it becomes very riveting. You start looking for how one person’s story fits in with the rest, and when you find those links it makes it even more worthwhile.

Pages: 349

#4 Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen, Christopher McDougall

Hey, hippy runners! Are you tired of Nikes and New Balances making your feet feel terrible? Well then this is the book for you! The story here is that of the author’s journey into Mexico to investigate a little known tribe whose culture revolved around running. The tribesman’s only means of transportation are themselves, and from an early age their bodies are trained to run incredible distances with little help but from small strips of flexible padding on their feet called huaraches. Interweaved with this story is a newer take on how our ancestors thrived (spoiler: we could outrun prey) and other tales about minimalists running and runners. This is the book many point to that kicked off the whole “barefoot” running thing. I guess it worked, because about a month after finishing this I ran a half marathon fully unshod (like a boss).

Pages: 311

#5 American Raiders: The Race to Capture the Luftwaffe’s Secrets, Wolfgang W. E. Samuel

This book was an impulse buy for me. Upon visiting Washington D.C., I walked my a table in the Air and Space Museum where a small, white haired man was sitting behind a table covered in these books. I spoke with Mr. Samuel for a few minutes about his book and decided I needed it.

Raiders tells us things that Americans don’t really like to hear, most namely that we aren’t the best at everything ever. The book says that in a more eloquent way, but the information here certainly isn’t what you’d really learn much of in high school history. As WWII was winding down, and reconstruction of European countries was beginning, military officials knew that it would be a perfect time to gain knowledge from the enemy. The book discussed the several operations the military embarked on to take the technology, research, and scientists the Germans created during the war. Much of the focus of the book is around German aviation, specifically jet technology. It turns out the Germans were about ten years ahead of us in jet tech, and had they focused their efforts squarely on getting more jets in the air, the war might have been prolonged.

Although there are times when military acronyms get in the way of enjoyable learning, Raiders is overall very interesting and worth a look for history buffs.

Pages: 451

#6 Bossypants, Tina Fey

Do you like funny people? Then read this autobiography. That’s all you need to know. It’s hilarious. There are few books that have had me audibly laughing aloud like this one.

Pages: 185

#7 A Dance with Dragons: A Song of Ice and Fire: Book Five, George R.R. Martin

Here we go, the grand poobah of books that came out in 2011. Well, at least in the fantasy world. The fifth book in the Ice and Fire series, Martin tells the other half of the story from A Feast for Crows (A Song of Ice and Fire, Book 4) with all of the characters that you probably wanted to hear from in that book. And it only took five years! I am not going to get into the story, because at this point it’s so complicated (or convoluted depending on where you stand) that it would be moot. At one point in the story, though, book four and book five converge, and set the stage for book six. And if we go on the release schedule from book four, we’ll see book six in 2016! Woo!

Still, these books are the best in fantasy you can get right now.

Pages: 1,016

#8 Tinkers, Paul Harding

This is a story about a man’s life and the evolution of actions and emotions that exist between generations. The story begins with a man at the end of his life, laying in a bed in his living room among his family, slowing fading away. His memories give breath to the lives of his father and grandfather, and their stories flesh out the present.

Honestly, I need to go back and re-read this book. I think I read it at a poor time, and it didn’t cement itself in my mind.

Pages: 191

#9 The Complete Sherlock Holmes: All 4 Novels and 56 Short Stories, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Full Disclosure: the set of short stories that I read is not exactly the thing that is linked here, but the link gives you everything for $10.

Since what I read is a series of short stories in the Holmes universe, I won’t get too detailed, but I would recommend checking out any Holmes story. They are great and fun, but they might make to snobbish towards the most recent films. Luckily, they will make you like the current BBC show Sherlock even better!

Pages in my version: 312

#10 The Call of the Wild, Jack London

If you want a good story about a dog (Buck) that gets sold to a dogsledder in the great white north, then look no further! London does a really great job of helping you visualize the trials and tribulations of a sled dog by telling the story from Buck’s perspective. It’s quite impressive, really. I RECOMMEND THIS BOOK FOR YOU TO READ.

Pages: 229

#11 Goliath (Leviathan), Scott Westerfeld

The third and final book in the Leviathan series brings back Deryn and Alek in their quest to stop Steampunk WWI and hopefully not let their differing backgrounds tear everything apart. This time we meet a colorful character by the name of Nikola Telsa, and he might have a cannon that can destroy entire cities with electricity. This is a really fun end to the series, and like the other books, there are really interesting historical events peppered throughout the story that make it just that much better.

Pages: 543

#12 The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (Dover Thrift Editions), Robert Louis Stevenson

Over the year of 2011 and about half of 2010, I had started reading some “classic” books, and unfortunately, I think this one is my least favorite. This emotion comes from a mixture of having known what happens in the story by osmosis and because I feel like it’s not written that interestingly, taking from the point of view of a pretty boring lawyer who tries to figure out what’s going on. So poop on that.

Pages: 153

And those are the novels that I WASTED SO MUCH TIME TO READ in 2011. And because I like numbers, in 2011 I read 4,300 pages of text. Yeah! Books!