2011 Reading Recap
Posted on January 1, 2012
by Anne
1 Comment
Not long ago, my friend, Nyla asked what my non-fiction to fiction ratio was. I really didn’t know, because I enjoy both, so she put me in the 50/50category. Not this year:
24 non-fiction to 40 fiction
My favorite fiction reads were The Help and The Book Thief, followed by Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet. Favorite non-fiction was My Life in France and Mornings on Horseback.
The most important thing I read was Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide, which introduced me to many non-profits doing great work across the globe including Women for Women International. I am now an active sponsor.
New for me this year was diving into the audio books. I am going through books much more quickly when I can sit and work on a Project Linus blanket at the same time. I wonder if that isn’t why I read fewer non-fiction – there are definitely fewer non-fiction books on audio in the library.
I still buy books faster than I read them. And I don’t do as much on the Kindle as many people. Here was the final tally (the links are to the appropriate page on Librarything. If you are interested in my “reviews” you might find the “50 Book Challenge 2011” tag down the right-hand side of the page and scroll through):
11 Days in December: Christmas at theBulge, 1944
Stanley Weintraub
Santa Clawed: A Novel (Mrs. MurphyMysteries)
Rita Mae Brown & Sneaky Pie Brown
Autobiography of Santa Claus, The
Jeff Guinn
In the Dark Streets Shineth: A 1941 Christmas Eve Story
David McCullough
A Week in December
Sebastian Faulks
Christmas Eve at Friday Harbor
Lisa Kleypas
The Christmas Train
David Baldacci
The Fat Man: A Tale of North Pole Noir
Ken Harmon
The Book Thief
Markus Zusak
Home for Christmas
Andrew M. Greeley
A Christmas Secret
Anne Perry
Everyman
Philip Roth
Dr. Zhivago
Boris Pasternak
Losing Mum and Pup: A Memoir
Christopher Buckley
The Lake of Dreams: A Novel
Kim Edwards
Travels with My Aunt (Penguin ClassicsDeluxe Edition)
Graham Greene
Homer & Langley
E.L. Doctorow
The Tortilla Curtain: A Novel (PenguinInk)
T.C. Boyle
The Castle in the Forest: A Novel
Norman Mailer
Harp
John Gregory Dunne
The Last Dickens: A Novel
Matthew Pearl
What If?: Short Stories to SparkDiversity Dialogue
Steve L. Robbins
Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet
Jamie Ford
True Compass: A Memoir
Edward M. Kennedy
Working for Peanuts: The Project LinusStory
Karen Loucks Rinedollar
Changing the World on a Tuesday Night
Tammi DeVille
The Flanders Panel
Arturo Perez-Reverte
Between Two Worlds: Escape from Tyranny:Growing Up in the Shadow of Saddam
Zainab Salbi
Presidential Courage: Brave Leaders andHow They Changed America 1789-1989
Michael Beschloss
The Red Leather Diary: Reclaiming a LifeThrough the Pages of a Lost Journal (P.S.)
Lily Koppel
I Am Charlotte Simmons: A Novel
Tom Wolfe
The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel PieSociety
Mary Ann Shaffer
Thunderstruck
Erik Larson
Neverwhere: A Novel
Neil Gaiman
Einstein: His Life and Universe
Walter Isaacson
Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter
Seth Grahame-Smith
Exiles in the Garden
Ward Just
Run
Ann Patchett
A Spot of Bother (Vintage)
Mark Haddon
Son of a Witch: Volume Two in the WickedYears
Gregory Maguire
Mornings on Horseback: The Story of anExtraordinary Family, a Vanished Way of Life and the Unique Child Who BecameTheodore Roosevelt
David McCullough
The Shack (Special Hardcover Edition)
William P. Young
American Creation: Triumphs and Tragediesin the Founding of the Republic
Joseph J. Ellis
The Acts of King Arthur and His NobleKnights: (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)
John Steinbeck
White Jazz: A Novel
James Ellroy
Under the Tuscan Sun: At Home in Italy
Frances Mayes
Zombie Spaceship Wasteland: A Book byPatton Oswalt
Patton Oswalt
My Life in France
Julia Child
Unaccustomed Earth: Stories (VintageContemporaries)
Jhumpa Lahiri
Things I Overheard While Talking toMyself
Alan Alda
The Help
Kathryn Stockett
Boom!: Talking About the Sixties: WhatHappened, How It Shaped Today, Lessons for Tomorrow
Tom Brokaw
Suite Francaise
Irene Nemirovsky
Half the Sky: Turning Oppression intoOpportunity for Women Worldwide (Vintage)
Nicholas Kristof
The Poe Shadow: A Novel
Matthew Pearl
THE SECRET ADVERSARY
Agatha Christie
A Separate Country
Robert Hicks
The Child in Time
Ian McEwan
1776
David McCullough
Bloody Crimes: The Chase for JeffersonDavis and the Death Pageant for Lincoln’s Corpse
James L. Swanson
The Zahir: A Novel of Obsession (P.S.)
Paul Coelho
THE EDIBLE WOMAN by Margaret Atwood(Paperback – Jan 1969)
Margaret Atwood
Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science andSex
Mary Roach
The Witches of Eastwick
John Updike
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The Next Dark Age 
Humblebrag: I clocked 130, which is three short of the record.