2011 reading roundup

2011 was not a great reading year for me and I'm not sure why. Despite being challenged by my friend, KD, to read 100 books, I only read 44 books in 2011. I didn't listen to any audiobooks in 2011 because my car radio doesn't have an AUX input to connect an mp3 player, and anyway, my dog ate my mp3 player (sad but true).

Brandi, the mp3 player, shoe, pen, etc eating dog

I think that I spent much more time in 2011 looking for books I want to read, and downloading them to my Kindle, than I actually did reading them. 

Here is the list of the books I read in 2011 in the order I read them:

1.    The Imperfectionists by Tom Rachman
2.    The Cookbook Collector by Allegra Goodman
3.    Last Night in Twisted River by John Irving
4.    Major Pettigrew's Last Stand by Helen Simonson
5.    The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
6.    Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins
7.    Storm Prey by John Sandford
8.    Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins
9.    How to Be an American Housewife by Margaret Dilloway
10.  The Bean Trees by Barbara Kingsolver
11.  Blindman's Bluff by Faye Kellerman
12.  Everything Changes by Jonathan Tropper
13.  House Rules by Jodi Picoult
14.  About a Boy by Nick Hornby
15.  Moscow Rules by Daniel Silva
16.  The Defector by Daniel Silva
17.  Killing Floor by Lee Child
18.  The Miracle Life of Edgar Mint by Brady Udall
19.  The Redeemer by Jo Nesbo
20.  A Change in Altitude by Anita Shreve
21.  Solitude of Prime Numbers by Paolo Giordano
22.  The Mercy Rule by John Lescroart
23.  Family History by Dani Shapiro
24.  The Weird Sisters by Eleanor Brown
25.  Sunnyside by Glen David Gold
26.  The Widower's Tale by Julia Glass
27.  The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet by David Mitchell
28.  Persuader by Lee Child
29.  The Blessings of the Animals by Katrina Kittle
30.  The Third Rail by Michael Harvey
31.  Her Fearful Symmetry by Audrey Niffenegger
32.  Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann
33.  Freedom by Jonathan Franzen
34.  The Hard Way by Lee Child
35.  Think of a Number by John Verdon
36.  The Known World by Edward P. Jones
37.  Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates
38.  The Bricklayer by Noah Boyd
39.  Portrait Of A Spy by Daniel Silva
40.  The Stuff That Never Happened by Maddie Dawson
41.  A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan
42.  The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood
43.  Fall of Giants by Ken Follett
44.  The Affair by Lee Child

My favorite books this year included Last Night in Twisted River, The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, Let the Great World Spin, and A Visit from the Goon Squad. I also liked the Hunger Games series even though I found the idea of it very disturbing. I do wish I had paid better attention reading Let the Great World Spin and A Visit from the Goon Squad. They are similarly structured with each chapter taking the form of a short story related to the other chapters. Both contain multiple characters and it was hard to keep track of how all the storylines and characters are related.

The books I liked least were Major Pettigrew's Last Stand, Solitude of Prime Numbers, Sunnyside, Revolutionary Road, and Her Fearful Symmetry. The first three got a lot of hype and were adored by many but they just didn't do it for me. I was looking forward to reading Her Fearful Symmetry, by the author of The Time Traveler's Wife, and I really disliked the book and found it creepy.

Fifteen of this year's books were read on the Kindle, twenty-three were by authors I've read more than once (either this year or previously), eighteen were by women, and two books were Pulitzer Prize winners.

If you want to keep up with the books I read  you can add me on Goodreads or Librarything where I catalog my books. You can also see the books I'm hoping to read on my Amazon wishlist.

Hoping 2012 is filled with good books!

“Reading one book is like eating one potato chip.”  ~ Diane Duane, So You Want to be a Wizard

My first time...

Bound and Gagged by Dana Summers September 11, 2010

 ...reading on a Kindle, that is.

I legally purchased an ebook from the Amazon Kindle store for my first read on my new Kindle. I downloaded The Imperfectionists by Tom Rachman for $5.00 after much deliberation and on the recommendation of CK and now that I've finished it, I can share my first impressions about reading on a Kindle.

At first, it's a bit weird. The Kindle is a bit wider than the standard paperback and much thinner. It doesn't have the solid heft of holding a book but I got used to that pretty quickly. The design is comfortable though everyone I showed it to tried to use it as a touchscreen. It seems like it should be touchscreen but I don't find that a drawback at all. The navigation buttons on both sides of the Kindle for page forward and page back are a mixed blessing. On the one hand, it's very easy to navigate your book with whatever hand you choose but their location makes it hard to figure out how to hold your Kindle. Sometimes I accidentally paged forward when I didn't mean to.

I don't like not knowing how many pages are in a book. The Kindle does give you a numeric location which Amazon says is "a digital answer to page numbers" and also shows you a progress indicator displaying what percentage of the book you've read. This took some getting used to but I guess it's something I can live with. 

Other than that, once you get used to it (and that happens pretty quickly), reading on the Kindle is terrific! There isn't eye strain and you can download tons of books and have them easily available. It's actually a little dangerous - how impulsively you can see a new book you want to read and decide you have to have it now. 

For now, I have found some alternatives to purchasing ebooks from Amazon and I already have 5 more books waiting to be read as well as 2 free word games. 

I have a feeling that with my new Kindle I'll be able to read more books though of course the biggest drawback is that it can't be used on Shabbat (hey Machon Tzomet - how about a grama).

So stay posted for more info as I get ready to delve into a new book on my Kindle.

2010 reading roundup

This is the fourth year I've been keeping track of the books I read or listened to. I primarily use Librarything (here's my profile page) but I also use Goodreads (see my profile) because some of my friends use it and in some ways it's more user friendly than Librarything. This year I  read 65 books, which is about 20 books less than I read in 2007 and 2008 and about 10 less than last year.One reason for this is that I couldn't connect my mp3 player to my car radio so I listened to fewer audiobooks this year, in fact, the least amount so far.

Here is the list of the books I read in 2010 in the order I read them:

1.    Now You See Him by Eli Gottlieb

2.    Brooklyn: A Novel by Colm Toibin

3.    The Club Dumas by Arturo Perez-Reverte

4.    Prince of Fire by Daniel Silva

5.    Blue Diary by Alice Hoffman

6.    It Only Takes a Moment by Mary Jane Clark

7.    Self Storage: A Novel by Gayle Brandeis

8.    Nobody’s Fool by Richard Russo

9.    City of Bones by Michael Connelly

10. South of Broad by Pat Conroy

11. The Help by Kathryn Stockett

12. Plainsong by Kent Haruf

13. Going Bovine by Libba Bray

14. The Piano Tuner by Daniel Mason

15. Run by Ann Patchett

16. The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets' Nest by Stieg Larsson

17. The View from Garden City by Carolyn Baugh

18. A Spot of Bother by Mark Haddon

19. Between the Tides by Patti Callahan Henry

20. The Myth of You and Me: A Novel by Leah Stewart

21. Night Listener by Armistead Maupin

22. Chang and Eng by Darin Strauss

23. Year of Wonders by Geraldine Brooks

24. U is for Undertow by Sue Grafton

25. She's Come Undone by Wally Lamb

26. Ribbons For Their Hair by Estelle Chasen

27. The Song Is You: A Novel by Arthur Phillips

28. The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair that Changed America by Erik Larson

29. Driftwood Summer by Patti Callahan Henry

30. Death in a Strange Country by Donna Leon

31. The Fugitive Wife: A Novel by Peter C. Brown

32. The Confessor by Daniel Silva

33. Hour Game by David Baldacci

34. How to Talk to a Widower by Jonathan Tropper

35. The Eight: A Novel by Katherine Neville

36. Welcome to the Great Mysterious by Lorna Landvik

37. The Scent of Rain and Lightning by Nancy Pickard

38. In the Woods by Tana French

39. Bloodroot by Amy Greene

40. Julie and Julia: My Year of Cooking Dangerously by Julie Powell

41. Back Spin by Harlan Coben

42. The Last Child by John Hart

43. The Summer We Fell Apart by Robin Antalek

44. The Map of True Places by Brunonia Barry

45. The Handbook for Lightning Strike Survivors by Michele Young-Stone

46. Angels Flight by Michael Connelly

47. The Swimming Pool by Holly LeCraw

48. Impatient with Desire by Gabrielle Burton

49. The Crying Tree by Naseem Rakha

50. The Rembrandt Affair by Daniel Silva

51. Innocent by Scott Turow

52. The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake by Aimee Bender

53. Gone, Baby, Gone by Dennis Lehane

54. Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman's Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia by Elizabeth Gilbert

55. Child 44 by Tom Rob Smith

56. 61 Hours by Lee Child

57. Gone by Jonathan Kellerman

58. The Seduction of Water by Carol Goodman

59. The Black Echo by Michael Connelly

60. The Lake Shore Limited by Sue Miller

61. The Weed That Strings the Hangman's Bag by Alan Bradley

62. Worth Dying For by Lee Child

63. Deception by Jonathan Kellerman

64. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot

65. The Virgin's Lover by Philippa Gregory

Some of my favorite reads this year were Nobody's Fool (partly because I kept imagining Paul Newman as the leading character since he played him in the movie which I haven't seen), The Help, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest ( a great finale for the Millenium Trilogy and as I was warned by CK, I was sorry that there weren't more books to read when I finished this), Year of Wonders, How to Talk to a Widower, The Eight,  The Last Child, Child 44 (hard to get into but once you do, well worth it), and The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks (fascinating).

My favorite line from a book came from The Myth of You and Me: A happy ending isn't really the end. It's just the place where you choose to stop telling the story.

Most awaited book: South of Broad by Pat Conroy, who I absolutely love. His book, Beach Music, is my all time favorite book and one of only two books I've ever reread (intentionally that is). Every few years I feel like I want to read it again. If you haven't read it, you should. South of Broad is Conroy's first novel in 14 years, since Beach Music. I guess with the expectations I had going it's not surprising that I was disappointed with it. It just didn't hold a candle to Beach Music (or Prince of Tides, also by Conroy). 

Least understood book: The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake which got great reviews was totally lost on me. I still don't understand what the deal is with the brother. If anyone read it and can help me figure it out, drop me a line.

Book I was most surprised not to hate: I resisted reading Eat, Pray, Love for a long time because I just knew I would hate it. But the book got so much hype that I was too curious to pass it up. Surprisingly, I actually enjoyed it. It's a bit whiny at first but it picks up.

2010 saw the birth of the Book Sisters, a group that includes four women here in Israel and one in the states who I've either reconnected with or gotten to know and the four of us here get together periodically (but not often enough) to chat, complain, and kvell as well as swap books. At least seven of my books came from them this year (I wasn't keeping track but I think I will from now on), not including The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest which CK graciously gave me as a library school graduation gift (and thanks too to SK who shlepped it home from London).

The highlight of 2010 occurred last week, when I was gifted with a Kindle by four of my friends in San Jose, organized and delivered by Katie Devorah.  For those of you who don't follow me on Facebook, I've been obsessing about following e-readers since about 2006 and I guess I post about them an awful lot (can you say understatement). Anyway, it is the most awesome and unexpected gift and I want to once again and publicly thank Katie Devorah, Leah, Barbara, and Rachel. You guys rock and I miss you! Now back to the Kindle. I bought one book from Amazon so far and I have three Overdrive library books on it (not really legal and if you want the details e-mail me privately) and I'm not really sure how this is going to change my reading habits. I'm looking forward to getting acquainted with my new toy and will try to keep you updated in 2011. 

On my Amazon wishlist you can see some of the books I'm looking foward to reading in 2011. 

Here's hoping that 2011 is a year filled with good friends and reading adventures! 

	2007	2008	2009	2010
Number of books	83	81	76	65
Audio books	11	32	18	7
Non fiction	10	13	4	3