2008 was the second year that I kept track of all the books I read and listened to on audio, still using librarything. As the final project for a class I took last semester, I created a readers’ advisory wiki resource using Google sites, called Recreational Reading. You can use this site to help you find what to read next, and if you have additional sources, feel free to add them to the site – it’s very easy to use. I felt like I got much less reading done this year because I was so bogged down with school, and in fact, I finished 2 books less than in 2007 but three times more were audiobooks. Here is the list of books I read or listened to in 2008, in the order I finished them.
1. The Sonnet Lover by Carol Goodman
2. The Rope Walk by Carrie Brown
3. Possible Side Effects by Augusten Burroughs
4. Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything by Stephen J. Dubner
5. Everything is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer
6. Out Stealing Horses by Per Petterson
7. The Knitting Circle by Ann Hood
8. What the Dead Know: A Novel by Laura Lippman
9. Atonement by Ian McEwan
10. Learning to Breathe by Karen White
11. Beaufort by Ron Leshem
12. The Gravedigger's Daughter by Joyce Carol Oates
13. Thirteen Reasons Why by Jay Asher
14. The Senator's Wife by Sue Miller
15. People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks
16. Forgive Me by Amanda Eyre Ward
17. Betrayal by John Lescroart
18. Kabul Beauty School: An American Woman Goes Behind the Veil by Deborah Rodriguez
19. Double Cross by Jame Patterson
20. Love and Other Impossible Pursuits by Ayelet Waldman
21. Curse of the Spellmans by Lisa Lutz
22. The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield
23. Another Thing to Fall by Laura Lippman
24. Bridge of Sighs by Richard Russo
25. The Gum Thief by Douglas Coupland
26. Eleven Days: A Novel of the Heartland by Donald Harstad
27. The Zookeeper's Wife: A War Story by Diane Ackerman
28. Killer Heat by Linda Fairstein
29. Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer
30. Ellington Boulevard: A Novel in A-Flat by Adam Langer
31. The Burnt House by Faye Kellerman
32. The Center of Everything by Laura Moriarty
33. The Air We Breathe by Andrea Barrett
34. Hold Tight by Harlan Coben
35. Phantom Prey by John Sandford
36. Three Cups of Tea: One Man's Mission to Promote Peace One School at a Time by Greg Mortenson
37. The Third Angel by Alice Hoffman
38. I Am the Messenger by Markus Zusak
39. Escape by Robert K. Tanenbaum
40. Nothing to Lose by Lee Child
41. Then We Came to the End by Joshua Ferris
42. If You Could See Me Now by Cecelia Ahern
43. Garden Spells by Sarah Addison Allen
44. We Are On Our Own by Miriam Katin
45. The Other by David Guterson
46. March by Geraldine Brooks
47. The Broken Window: A Lincoln Rhyme Novel by Jeffery Deaver
48. The Sugar Queen by Sarah Addison Allen
49. The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls
50. Kosher Sex: A Recipe for Passion and Intimacy by Shmuley Boteach
51. Belong to Me by Marisa De los Santos
52. Just Do It: How One Couple Turned Off the TV and Turned On Their Sex Lives for 101 Days (No Excuses!) by Douglas Brown
53. The Sister by Poppy Adams
54. The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch
55. Mekimi by Noa Yaron-Dayan
56. Twilight by Stephenie Meyer
57. The Wednesday Sisters by Meg Waite Clayton
58. The World Is Flat 3.0: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century by Thomas L. Friedman
59. The Mercedes Coffin: A Decker and Lazarus Book by Faye Kellerman
60. The Attack by Yasmina Khadra
61. The Same Sweet Girls by Cassandra King
62. The 19th Wife by David Ebershoff
63. Free For All: Oddballs, Geeks, and Gangstas in the Public Library by Don Borchert
64. Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations by Clay Shirky
65. The Condition by Jennifer Haigh
66. The Lace Reader by Brunonia Barry
67. Halfway House by Katharine Noel
68. I See You Everywhere by Julia Glass
69. Heat Lightning by John Sandford
70. A case of exploding mangoes by Mohammed Hanif
71. The plague of doves by Louise Erdrich
72. Kissing Games of the World by Sandi Kahn Shelton
73. The Beach House by Jane Green
74. Chicago by Alaa Al Aswany
75. The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
76. The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer
77. The Hour I First Believed by Wally Lamb
78. The Gate House by Nelson DeMille
79. Testimony by Anita Shreve
80. The Book of Lies by Brad Meltzer
81. Scarpetta by Patricia Cornwell
Of the 81 books I consumed in 2008, there were 7 authors who I read more than one of his/her works in 2008, 32 were audiobooks, 13 were non-fiction, one was in Hebrew, 5 were ‘young adult’ fiction, and 5 dealt with the Holocaust to some degree which is unusual for me since I usually run the other way from Holocaust books.
Some of my favorites and books I would recommend are People of the Book, Bridge of Sighs, The Glass Castle, and The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society. The book I most looked forward to reading was Wally Lamb’s The Hour I First Believed and I did enjoy it but thought it was too long and had a few too many plotlines going on. It would have been better I had he stuck to the main storyline. I read several books that included a supernatural element and was able to suspend my disbelief enough to enjoy them but one that I particularly disliked (immensely) was Cecilia Ahern’s I see you everywhere. I decided to give Patricia Cornwell another chance after finding her last books so awful that I stopped reading them and found Scarpetta an okay read. Not great but not terrible either. I read (actually listened to) Twilight because I was curious about all the hype it was getting and I just don’t get it. Too long and nothing happened. I do not plan on reading the other three although I did buy the set for my daughter for Chanuka.
You can find me on librarything, reading social, or goodreads which I'm trying to use just because a fellow reading buddy has friended me there.
Although I have a pile of books from the library, none of them seem to be holding my interest so I plan to head over to the library tomorrow and get started on 2009's list.
