I've been keeping track of how many books I read each year, and 2004 was a slow year for me. I read 42 books, more than 20 books less than what I read in 2003. Boo!

Perhaps some of the slowness was due to the fact that I didn't read many books that knocked my socks off. Here are some of the ones I enjoyed:

• Evolution - Stephen Baxter - Not his best work, but an incredibly ambitious work which paints a detailed view of life over the ages.
• Feed - MT Anderson - If you haven't read this YA book, you're missing out on a wonderfully engaging SF novel set in a realistic near-future environment. This was the first book of his I've read, and I'm looking forward to reading more.
• A Million Open Doors - John Barnes - I've liked all the John Barnes' books I have read, but I enjoyed this vision of how humans might splinter as they venture out into the galaxy.
• Elegant Universe and Fabric of the Cosmos - Brian Greene - The first book falls into the "about damned time I read that"-category for me. Both books deal, quite nicely, with string theory and its ramifications for our understandings of physics. Not quite written for the general public in my opinion, but I can see now why so many of my students have read his works.
• And of course, the novel by Greg - definitely one of the highlights of the year!

Here's to happy reading in 2005!