Book List Archive 2012

It's that time again!  Time for me to recap my year reflecting on how crazy my goals are for myself while comparing them from year to year to show what progress I'm making on being the best overachiever I know how to be.  Last year I was bragging about how brilliant I was at combining running with audio books so I could *double* my reading.  The total for 2011 was a whopping eighteen books.  Hold onto your hats, people.  2012 saw over double the number of the previous year. 

• Middlesex, Jeffrey Eugenides (the prose of this book still haunts me with its beauty)
• The History of Love, Nicole Krauss (book club)
• Letters for Emily, Camron Wright (book club)
• Bullet, Laurell K. Hamilton
• Uglies, Scott Westerfeld (book club)
• The Night Circus, Erin Morgenstern (my pick for book club)
• The Hunger Games, Suzanne Collins (re-read for hubby on a road trip because of the movie)
• Catching Fire, Suzanne Collins (re-read because hubby insisted - I made him read the third himself because I hated it so much the first time)
• Towers of Midnight - Wheel of Time #13, Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson (20 years later the series still isn't finished)
• Following Atticus, Tom Ryan
• Sense and Sensibility, Jane Austen (book club)
• Defending Jacob, William Landay (book club)
• Dies the Fire, S. M. Stirling
• One For The Money, Janet Evanovich
• Unbroken, Laura Hillenbrand (book club)
• The Ice Limit, Lincoln Child & Douglas Preston
• Are you there Vodka? It's me, Chelsea, Chelsea Handler
• Hit List, Laurell K. Hamilton
• Variant, Robison Wells
• Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children, Ransom Riggs
• On the Island, Tracy Garvis-Greaves
• A Princess of Mars, Edgar Rice Burroughs (another road trip read to hubby)
• The Gods of Mars, Edgar Rice Burroughs (had to find out what else happened!)
• Calico Joe, John Grisham (book club)
• 11/22/63, Stephen King
• The Age of Miracles, Karen Thompson Walker
• The Hollow City, Dan wells
• Divine Misdemeanors, Laurell K. Hamilton
• The Chaperone, Laura Moriarty
• The Wind Through the Keyhole - Dark Tower 4.5, Stephen King
• Before I Fall, Lauren Oliver
• Gone Girl, Gillian Flynn
• 50 Shades of Gray, E. L. James (so wish this one wasn't on the list!)
• Ender's Game, Orson Scott Card (book club)
• 50 Shades Darker, E. L. James (another waste of reading time I fully regret!)
• The Maze Runner, James Dashner (book club)
• Stranger In A Strange Land, Robert Heinlein
• Legion, Brandon Sanderson
• Hate List, Jennifer Brown (book club)
• Lucifer's Hammer, Larry Niven & Jerry Pournelle
• The New New Rules: How Everyone But Me Has Their Head Up Their Ass, Bill Maher
• Radical Frugality, Nic Adams (work book club)
• Area 51, Bob Mayer
• Orchids For Lila, September Roberts (my friend from my "other" book club's first published work!)
• One Second After, William Forstchen

Yes, you counted them right... (wait, you didn't count them?  Well I did of course!) That's forty five books in a year.  When two years ago all I could muster was a book club book a month and that was stretching it.  I read a grip of science fiction and remembered exactly why I love that genre so much.  I wasted far too much time on the oh-so-popular drivel otherwise known as 50-Shades.  I discovered I really like character/situation stories like Before I Fall, On the Island, Hate List and Defending Jacob that make you think about what you would do if you found yourself in an unusual situation.  I got to visit Mid World with my favorite Stephen King characters of all time even though I thought he was done writing their stories.  I found I am definitely NOT a Jane Austen fan.  My two favorites for the year were Middlesex and Gone Girl for far different reasons.  And, I'm looking forward to the conclusion of The Wheel of Time just as much now that it's here as I was twelve years ago when I first started reading the series.

How the hell did I read more than double the amount of books this year than I did last?  I have no idea except we took two long road trips that accounted for four of them and a couple of them were short and frivolous audio books that only took a couple of hours.  I don't know how I'll top this year but we'll see what next year brings when it is all said and done.  Here's to another year of happy reading ahead regardless!