Tag Archives: Year in review

Year in Review?

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If I didn’t blog about the books I read, I’d forget half of them – not the books, just when I’d read them. My brain, apparently is less efficient at retaining this information than a sieve is at holding water.

The question from Booking Through Thursday, yesterday, was about favorites over the year. Least favorites, all of that. I’m not in the mood to do anything formal, but here are a few highlights.

Favorite Comfort Reading:
Anything by Cleo Coyle, under any of her pen names. The Haunted Bookstore cannot have a new volume soon enough, and her Coffee Mysteries are just my cup of…espresso con panna.

Favorite Mystery:
The latest from Sara Paretsky, Body Work and Richard Doestch’s The 13th Hour.

Favorite General Fiction:
I’m not sure. Jennifer Wiener’s latest disappointed me a bit, and most of what I read has been genre. I enjoyed my summer of Nantucket Novels, but I wouldn’t call them my favorites, really.

Favorite Women’s Fiction:
Without a doubt, The Naked Gardener, and not just because it’s the debut novel from someone I know through blogging.

Favorite Non-fiction:
Susan Casey’s The Wave, because it had water, myth, science, and adventure all in one book.

And just so you know, I’m currently still reading:
Slip Knot, by Linda Greenlaw
A Pointed Death, by Kath Russell
and a few more I won’t bother to list.

Happy New Year, everyone.

2009 in Review

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It’s a new year here at Bibliotica, which means it’s time to take a look at my stats for the old one. If I have any kind of bookish resolution it’s to be better about logging and reviewing everything I read, for my own sake, if nothing else. I like to see how my tastes have changed and evolved over time.

How did I do?

In the year 2009, not including books I forgot to catalogue, I read 85 books, for an average of 1.635 books per week. My best months were January and May, with 12 books each, and my worst was November, when I logged only three.

(As an aside, I must say that if there were any kind of mechanical breakdown insurance for the brain, books would be it. When I was trying to cope with a miscarriage in May, books were my escape, and the savers of my sanity.)

I don’t generally pick favorites – my favorites change too often to keep up! – but Laurie R. King and Cleo Coyle (in her various guises) made up a significant portion of my reading list, and Diane Johnson’s Lulu in Marrakech is the one that most disappointed me.

I’m sort of in book limbo right now. I have stacks of stuff to read, but none of it is really demanding my attention. I have, however logged my first book of the new year already: Alice Kimberly’s The Ghost and the Dead Man’s Library.