KC Podcast - Episode 117: Passing the Baton

2014 Book Awards and Reading List

January is almost over, and I have not yet upheld my yearly blog tradition of giving book awards. For those of you who are just joining us, every January I list the books I read in the previous year and name the best ones out of a variety of mostly arbitrary categories that I sometimes change from year to year but mostly keep the same. The only books I consider for each award are books that I have read for the first time this particular year, so rereads are not in the running. 

So without further ado, Ladies and Gentlemen: the 2014 Flying Inn Book Awards!


Best Fiction Book I Read this Year: TIE
Labyrinths by Jorge Luis Borges
Empire of Bones by N.D. Wilson




Best History Book I Read this Year: TIE
Ghost on the Throne by James Romm
The Punic Wars by Adrian Goldsworthy



Best Theology Book I Read this Year:
Our Reasonable Faith by Herman Bavinck



Best non-history, non-theology, non-fiction Book I Read this Year:
The Life of the Spider by Jean-Henri Fabre


Best Book I Read Out Loud to My Kids This Year:
The Marsh King by C. Walter Hodges


And, as always, here are the books I read this year:


  • Dinner at Deviant's Palace by Tim Powers 12/14
  • Saint Julian by Walter Wangerin, Jr. 12/14
  • The Greatest Gift by Ann Voskamp 12/14
  • The Hidden Stream by Ronald Knox 12/14
  • Captain Blood Returns by Rafael Sabatini 12/14
  • The Major Works by Anselm of Canterbury 12/14
  • The Persian Boy by Mary Renault 12/14
  • The Marsh King by Walter C. Hodges 11/14
  • Ancient Greece by Thomas R. Martin 11/14
  • The House on the Borderland by William Hope Hodgson 11/14
  • Westminster Systematics by Douglas Wilson 11/14
  • Encyclopedia of Mysterious Places by Robert Ingpen and Philip Wilkinson 11/14
  • The Art of Rhetoric by Aristotle 10/14
  • 1611 King James Bible 10/14
  • Little Town on the Prairie by Laura Ingalls Wilder 10/14
  • Sketches of Jewish Social Life in the Days of Christ by Alfred Edersheim 10/14
  • Western Civilization by Jackson Spielvogel 10/14
  • The History of England by Jane Austen 10/14
  • In Ole Virginia by Thomas Nelson Page 9/14
  • The Return of the King by J.R.R. Tolkien 9/14
  • The Mason Bees by Jean-Henri Fabre 9/14
  • The Pentateuch in Its Cultural Environment by Herbert Livingstone 8/14
  • Cards on the Table by Agatha Christie 8/14
  • The Second One Thousand Years (John Richard Neuhaus, ed.) 8/14
  • A Primer on Free Will by John Gerstner 8/14
  • Pontius Pilate: A Biographical Novel by Paul Maier 8/14
  • One Shot by Lee Childs 7/14
  • The Edge of Evolution by Michael Behe 7/14
  • Scarlet by Stephen Lawhead 7/14
  • Beowulf: A Translation and Commentary by J.R.R. Tolkien 7/14
  • The Life of the Spider by Jean-Henri Fabre 7/14
  • The Two Towers by J.R.R. Tolkien 7/14
  • The Passionate Observer  by Jean-Henri Fabre 7/14
  • Quo Vadis by Henryk Sienkiewicz 6/14
  • I, Claudius by Robert Graves 6/14
  • Our Reasonable Faith by Herman Bavinck 6/14
  • The Man in the Iron Mask by Alexandre Dumas 6/14
  • The Big Over Easy by Jasper Fforde 6/14
  • Labyrinths by Jorge Luis Borges 5/14
  • Fifty Famous Stories Retold by James Baldwin 5/14
  • Greenmantle by John Buchan 5/14
  • The Punic Wars by Adrian Goldsworthy 5/14
  • Mansfield Park by Jane Austen 5/14
  • The Brendan Voyage by Tim Severin 5/14
  • Boys of Blur by N.D. Wilson 4/14
  • The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde 4/14
  • The Lightning Thief by Percy Jackson 4/14
  • First Among Sequels by Jasper Fforde 4/14
  • The Fellowship of the Ring by J.R.R. Tolkien 4/14
  • The Secret Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert by Rosaria Champagne Butterfield 4/14
  • Cover Her Face by P.D. James 3/14
  • Empire of Bones by N.D. Wilson 3/14
  • The Consolation of Philosophy by Boethius (H.R. James, trans.)3/14
  • Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie 3/14
  • The Narnian by Alan Jacobs 3/14
  • The Drowned Vault by N.D. Wilson 3/14
  • Crusades by Terry Jones 2/14
  • Arthur by Stephen Lawhead 2/14
  • The Prayer of the Lord by R.C. Sproul 2/14
  • The African Queen by C.S. Forester 2/14
  • A Shot of Faith to the Head by Mitch Stokes 1/14
  • Ghost on the Throne: The Death of Alexander the Great and the War for Crown and Empire by James Romm 1/14
  • The Dragon's Tooth by N. D. Wilson 1/14
  • The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame 1/14
  • The Cave and the Light: Plato Versus Aristotle, and the Struggle for the Soul of Western Civilization by Arthur Herman 1/14

Comments

Erica said…
I think I have Ghost on the Throne on my reading list. Somewhere. It's hard to find things on there. (It also sounds like an anime, but that's beside the point.)

Also, here's a GIF for you to use: http://img3.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20110907204834/random-ness/images/6/64/Kermit_yay_icon.gif