Year In Review, 2018.

Books Read (in order)
1. A Criminal Defense by William L. Myers, Jr. (2017)
2. A River in Darkness: One Man's Escape by Masaji Ishikawa (2017)
3. What I Talk About When I Talk About Running: A Memoir by Haruki Murakami (2008) [cd unabridged]
4. Deliverance by James Dickey (1970)
5. On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft by Stephen King (2000) [cd unabridged]
6. Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage by Haruki Murakami (2013) [cd unabridged]
7. Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community by Robert D. Putnam (2000)
8. Law Man: My Story of Robbing Banks, Winning Supreme Court Cases, and Finding Redemption by Shon Hopwood with Dennis Burke (2012)
9. I'm Fine...and Other Lies by Whitney Cummings (2017)
10. Capital Gains: Smart Things I Learned Doing Stupid Things by Chip Gaines (2017)
11. Hacks by Donna Brazile (2017)
12. Republican Like Me: How I Left the Liberal Bubble and Learned to Love the Right by Ken Stern (2017)
13. Jesus Before the Gospels: How the Earliest Christians Remembered, Changed, and Invented Their Stories of the Savior by Bart D. Ehrman (2016) [cd unabridged]
14. The Sports Gene: Inside the Science of Extraordinary Athletic Performance by David Epstein (2013)
15. Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything by Joshua Foer (2011) [cd unabridged]
16. World Without Mind: The Existential Threat of Big Tech by Franklin Foer (2017)
17. Brain on Fire: My Month of Madness by Susannah Cahalan (2012)
18. Applied Economics: Thinking Beyond Stage One by Thomas Sowell (2004) [cd unabridged]
19. Making Sense of God: An Invitation to the Skeptical by Timothy Keller (2016)[cd unabridged]
20. 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos by Jordan B. Peterson (2018)
21. How to Turn Down a Billion Dollars: The Snapchat Story by Billy Gallagher (2018)
22. After the New Testament: The Writings of the Apostolic Fathers by Bart D. Ehrman (2005) [cd unabridged]
23. Big Sur by Jack Jack Kerouac (1962) [cd unabridged]
24. Skin in the Game: Hidden Asymmetries in Daily Life by Nassim Nicholas Taleb (2018)
25. The Road by Cormac McCarthy (2006) [cd unabridged]
26. The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test by Tom Wolfe (1968)
27. Rocket Men: The Epic Story of the First Men on the Moon by Craig Nelson (2009) [cd unabridged]
28. A Walk Across America by Peter Jenkins (1979)
29. Death is a Lonely Business by Ray Bradbury (1985) [cd unabridged]
30. North: finding My Way While Running the Appalachian Trail by Scott Jurek with Jenny Jurek (2018)
31. Finished I'll Be Gone in the Dark: One Woman's Obsessive Search for the Golden State Killer by Michelle McNamara (2018)
32. Conspiracy: Peter Thiel, Hulk Hogan, Gawker, and the Anatomy of Intrigue by Ryan Holiday (2018)
33. A Marriage in Dog Years: a Memoir by Nancy Balbirer (2018)
34. The Walk West: A Walk Across America 2 by Peter and Barbara Jenkins (1981)
35. The Glass Castle: A Memoir by Jeannette Walls (2005) [cd unabridged]
36. Submission by Michael Houellebecq (Lorin Stein, trans., 2015)
37. The Triumph of Christianity by Bart D. Ehrman (2018)
38. The Bonfire of the Vanities by Tom Wolfe (1987) [cd unabridged]
39. Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption by Bryan Stevenson (2014) [cd unabridged]
40. But Enough About Me by Burt Reynolds and Jon Winokur (2015) [cd unabridged]
41. Plunder and Deceit: Big Government's Exploitation of Young People and the Future by Mark Levin (2015) [cd unabridged]
42. The Prince by Niccolò Machiavelli (1532)[cd unabridged]
43. First Man: The Life of Neil A. Armstrong by James R. Hansen (2005)
44. The Triple Package: How Three Unlikely Traits Explain the Rise and Fall of Cultural Groups in America by Amy Chua and Jed Rubenfeld (2014) [cd unabridged]
45. Resistance is Futile! by Ann Coulter (2018)
46. Everyman by Philip Roth (2006) [cd unabridged]
47. Lincoln's Last Trial: The Murder Case that Propelled Him to the Presidency by Dan Abrams and David Fisher (2018)
48. Catch-22 by Joseph Heller (1961) [cd unabridged]
49. Enough. True Measures of Money, Business, and Life by John C. Bogle (2009)
50. Shattered Air: A True Account of Catastrophe and Courage on Yosemite's Half Dome by Bob Madgic (2005)
51. Shattered: Inside Hillary Clinton's Doomed Campaign by Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes (2017) [cd unabridged]
52. The Little Book of Common Sense Investing by John C. Bogle (2007) [cd unabridged]
53. Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup by John Carreyrou (2018)
54. Small Fry by Lisa Brennan-Jobs (2018)
55. Alone on the Wall by Alex Honnold with Dave Roberts (2016)
56. Republicans Buy Sneakers, Too by Clay Travis (2018)
57. Educated by Tara Westover (2018) [cd unabridged]
58. The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho (1993) [cd unabridged]
59. The Bite in the Apple: A Memoir of My Life With Steve Jobs by Chrisann Brennan (2013)
60. Thomas Paine's Rights of Man by Christopher Hitchens (2007) [cd unabridged]
61. Over the Edge: The True Story of Four American Climbers' Kidnap and Escape in the Mountains of Central Asia by Greg Child (2002)
62. Thanks A Thousand by A.J. Jacobs (2018)

The Golden Decade of Cinema List (in order of year)
1. MASH (1970)
2. Patton (1970)
3. The Landlord (1970)
4. Love Story (1970)
5. Harold and Maude (1971)
6. Duel (1971)
7. The French Connection (1971)
8. A Clockwork Orange (1971)
9. Dirty Harry (1971)
10. The Godfather (1972)
11. Deliverance (1972)
12. The Poseidon Adventure (1972)
13. The Mechanic (1972)
14. The Exorcist (1973)
15. The Sting (1973)
16. Serpico (1973)
17. American Graffiti (1973)
18. The Paper Chase (1973)
19. High Plains Drifter (1973)
20. The Godfather, Part II (1974)
21. Thunderbolt and Lightfoot (1974)
22. Death Wish (1974)
23. The Conversation (1974)
24. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975)
25. Dog Day Afternoon (1975)
26. The Eiger Sanction (1975)
27. Jaws (1975)
28. Rocky (1976)
29. Taxi Driver (1976)
30. All the President's Men (1976)
31. The Gauntlet (1977)
32. Star Wars (1977)
33. Deer Hunter (1978)
34. Coming Home (1978)
35. Midnight Express (1978)
36. ...And Justice for All (1979)
37. Kramer vs. Kramer (1979)
38. Breaking Away (1979)
39. Being There (1979)
40. Apocalypse Now (1979)
Honorable Mention: Escape From Alcatraz (1979)

Losses Sustained
John W. Young
Stephen Hawking
Milos Forman
Tom Wolfe

Book of the Year
A River in Darkness: One Man's Escape by Masaji Ishikawa (2017)
Honorable Mentions: Skin in the Game: Hidden Asymmetries in Daily Life by Nassim Nicholas Taleb (2018) and Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup by John Carreyrou (2018)

Film of the Year
Free Solo

Trial of the Year

"Trust"

My client was the successor trustee of a trust. We obtained an order removing the predecessor trustee, his brother. In addition, the prior trustee and his spouse sought to charge the trust with "salaries" for himself and his wife. After we cross-examined them using logs of caregivers, who were paid separately from the trust, the trial judge found no reason for this duplication of expenses and efforts. The court disallowed six figures of these purported expenses and rejected the other side's attempt to remove my client as successor trustee or to find any breaches of fiduciary duty on my client's part. He was an inspirational figure. He became blind as an adult (while serving in the military), and thereafter obtained a master's degree in mathematics. He demonstrated grace and dignity under pressure.


Athletic Achievement of the Year
Long segment of PCT (near Big Bear Lake, CA)


Plus 365/365 workouts [fourth year-in-row]
Fulfilled annual treks to Maui and Sedona