Year in Review: Books
Every year since 2003 I’ve kept a list of the books I’ve read during the year. I try to post about them as I finish them, but this year, as in some previous years, I get behind. Â Still, I like to post a final list at the end of the year. This year I had the goal to read 50 books, and read 111. I’ve bolded my 5 Â favorites below. Â 67 were fiction, 44 non fiction and 13 re-reads. I read the least in February, and the most in November.
Since I’ve been keeping track of my reading for 10 years now, I’m working on an analysis of what I’ve read and my reading patterns over that time. I know you’re all waiting spellbound for it. 🙂
If you want to read what I wrote about any of these books, use the search box at the top of the page. But not the Amazon search box. Some of the books toward the end might not have been written about- if so, and you really want to know what I thought, just ask and I’ll tell you.
The Happiness Diet- Tyler Graham and Drew Ramsey
Keeping House: The Litany of Everyday Life – Margaret Kim Peterson
The Red Tent- Anita Diamant
Make the Bread, Buy the Butter- Jennifer Reese
The Well Trained Mind: A Guide to Classical Education at Home- Susan Wise Bauer, Jessie Wise
Bringing up Bebe: One American Mother Discovers the Wisdom of French Parenting- Pamela Druckerman
For Your Own Good: Hidden Cruelty in Child-Rearing and the Roots of Violence – Alice Miller
Reading Lolita in Tehran – Azar Nafisi
The Great Gatsby- Fitzgerald
Blameless- Gail Carriger
Unschooling Rules- Clark Aldrich
Aurorarama- Jean-Christophe Valtat
Heartless- Gail Carriger
Timeless – Gail Carriger
Johannes Cabal: The Fear Institute – Jonathan L. Howard
French Kids Eat Everything by Karen Le Billon
Nurturing Creativity: A guide for Busy Moms by Renee Tougas
Mindset for Moms by Jamie C. Martin
Dead Man’s Chest- Kerry Greenwood
House of Yes- Wendy MacLeod
Past Imperfect- Julian Fellowes
Oscar Wilde and the Vatican Murders- Gyles Brandreth
The Storytelling Animal: How Stories Make Us Human- Jonathan Gottschall
Emperor Mollusk Versus the Sinister Brain- A. Lee Martinez
The Night Circus- Erin Morgenstern
Croissants and Courage: Inspiring Joyful Living, A Story and Life Guidebook – Suzanne Saxe- Roux and Jean P. Roux
Tea- Stacey D’Erasmo
Losing Clementine- Ashley Ream
Treasure Island!!! – Sara Levine
The Help- Kathrynn Stockett
The Duchess of Padua- Oscar Wilde
Sacre Bleu: A Comedy D’Art- Christopher Moore
Paris Portraits: Stories of Picasso, Matisse, Gertrude Stein, and their circle – Harriet Lane Levy
The Paris Wife- Paula McLain
Blue Nights- Joan Didion
The Uncommon Reader- Alan Bennett
The Illustrated Man- Ray Bradbury
We have always lived in the Castle- Shirley Jackson
Sacre Bleu: A Comedy D’Art- Christopher Moore
Mitz: The Marmoset of Bloomsbury – Sigrid Nunez
The Book of Proper Names – Amelie Nothomb
The Diving Pool- Yoko Ogawa
Drinking with Dead Women Writers- Elaine Ambrose and AK Turner
Frommer’s Tokyo 12th Edition – Beth Reiber
Tokyo on Foot: Travels in the City’s Most Colorful Neighborhoods- Florent Chavouet
Vida- Delacorta
Back to Homeschool- Misty Krasawski
The Scrapbook of Frankie Pratt- Caroline Preston
At Home in Tokyo- Gwen G. Robinson
Steampunk Holmes: Legacy of the Nautilus- P.C. Martin
A Wrinkle in Time- Madeline L’Engle
Fluke- Christopher Moore
Confessions of a Memory Eater- Pagan Kennedy
Phoenix Rising: A Ministry of Peculiar Occurrences Novel- Morris, Ballantine
No Sweat Home Schooling- The Low Stress Way – Kelly Wallace
The Sun Also Rises- Ernest Hemingway
Sum: 40 Stories from the Afterlives- David Eagleman
The Times we Had- Marion Davies
The Whole Brained Child- Daniel Siegel
Raising a Thinking Child- Myrna B Shure
New Cthulhu: The Recent Weird – ed. Paula Guran
Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar- Cheryl Strayed
Then Again- Diane Keaton
Wild (From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail)- Cheryl Strayed
Twelfth Night- William Shakespeare
State of Wonder- Ann Patchett
Your Voice in My Head- Emma Forrest
The Coffins of Little Hope- Timothy Schaffert
Garden of Eden- Ernest Hemingway
Charles Jessold, Considered as a Murderer- Wesley Stace
A Sense of an Ending- Julian Barnes
A Year of Writing Dangerously- Barbara Ambercrombie
The Private Lives of the Impressionists- Sue Roe
Women, Food, and God- Geneen Roth
Work in progress – Jamie S. Rich
The Hours – Michael Cunningham
Machine of Death-ed by Ryan North, Matthew Bennardo, David Malket
Penumbra’s 24 Hour Bookstore- Robin Sloan
When it Happens to You- Molly Ringwald
Who Could That Be At This Hour? – Lemony Snicket
American Gods- Neil Gaiman
Wind Up Bird Chronicle- Haruki Murakami
The Vanishers- Heidi Julavits
The Graveyard Book- Neil Gaiman
The Writing Life- Annie Dillard
On Becoming a Novelist- John Gardner
Island of the Sequined Love Nun- Christopher Moore
The Girl Who Fell Beneath Fairyland and Led the Revels There- Cathrynne Valente
Happier at Home- Gretchen Rubin
The Starry River of the Sky- Grace Lin
When Did I Get Like This- Amy Wilson
The Templeton Twins Have an Idea- Ellis Weiner
Dead Writers- P.K. Rossetti
The Land of Later On- Anthony Weller
Not Quite Nirvana- Rachel Neumann
Dead Until Dark- Charlaine Harris
Life Among Giants- Bill Roorbach
The Stockholm Octavo- Karen Englemann
Marlene Dietrich ABCs- Marlene Dietrich
Marlene- Marlene Dietrich
My Berlin Kitchen- Luisa Weiss
Wild Mind:Living the Writer’s Life- Natalie Goldberg
My Booky Wook-Russell Brand
My Booky Wook 2- Russell Brand
Hotel Angeline: A Novel in 36 Voices
Maps and Legends- Michael Chabon
The Body in the Library Agatha Christie
Death on the Nile-Agatha Christie
The Thirteen Problems- Agatha Christie
Pocket Full of Rye- Agatha Christie
Elephants Remember- Agatha Christie
My Year With Eleanor- Noelle Hancock
You Learn By Living- Eleanor Roosevelt
Wow, I think you read more books than I did last year! Now I can understand why you like to write mystery novels so much. Half of your list is just that! 🙂