I fell woefully short of my goal to read 100 books this year. I’d like to blame it on being busy with a move, new job, anything really, but I think it was just a matter of having too many hobbies: writing, crocheting, working out, napping, building that genealogy website I’ve been working on for three years….
Anyways, here’s what I read. Books marked with an * are ones I didn’t finish, either due to time constraints, lack of interest, or just plain sucky writing *coughcoughJohnNormancough* I use Goodreads to keep track of what I’ve read (if you’re over there, feel free to add me as a friend), and I’ve reviewed most of these books there, if you’re curious as to what I thought of them.
- The War I Always Wanted: The Illusion of Glory and the Reality of War: A Screaming Eagle in Afghanistan and Iraq – Brandon Friedman
- Leaving Las Vegas – John O’Brien
- Marauders of Gor (Gor #9) – John Norman
- Alberta Clipper – John Salter
- Redemption in Indigo – Karen Lord
- The Dogs of War – Frederick Forsyth
- *Spitting Image: Myth, Memory, and the Legacy of Vietnam – Jerry Lembcke
- Aftershock: The Blast That Shook Psycho Platoon – T. Christian Miller
- *Inside School Turnarounds: Urgent Hopes, Unfolding Stories – Laura Pappano
- Losing Graceland: A Novel – Micah Nathan
- Revolutionary Road – Richard Yates
- On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society – Dave Grossman
- *Tribesmen of Gor (Gor #10) – John Norman
- War – Sebastian Junger
- Beautiful Disaster – Laura Spinella
- When Tito Loved Clara – Jon Michaud
- A Hatful of Rabbits – Benjamin Jacobson
- Fluffs – Daniel I. Russell
- The Best American Short Stories 2009 – Alica Sebold
- *Atlanta Nights – Travis Tea
- Hydrofracked? One Man’s Mystery Leads to a Backlash Against Natural Gas Drilling – Abrahm Lustgarten
- Whitechapel Gods – S.M. Peters
- Wrecker: A Novel – Summer Wood
- Boneshaker (The Clockwork Century, #1) – Cherie Priest
- *The Thousand Rooms of Dreams and Fear – Atiq Rahimi
- *The Good Soldier – C.J. Bilbrey
- The Glass Man (Lila Gray #1) – Jocelyn Adams
- Emily of New Moon (Emily #1) – L. M. Montgomery
- Emily Climbs (Emily #2) – L. M. Montgomery
- Emily’s Quest (Emily #3) – L. M. Montgomery
- Love Child: A Novel – Sheila Kohler
- Snitch – Allison van Diepen
- Mexican WhiteBoy – Matt de la Pena
- The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian – Sherman Alexie
- *Light from a Distant Star: A Novel – Mary McGarry Morris
- Overwatch – Allen Gray
- *Sunrise Over Fallujah – Walter Dean Myers
- A Long Way Gone – Ishmael Beah
- The Basketball Diaries – Jim Carroll
- *The Song is You – Arthur Phillips
- The Lords of Discipline – Pat Conroy
- The Outsiders – S.E. Hinton
- A Gate at the Stairs – Lorrie Moore
I also beta read a bunch of novels through a crit site, but as they’re not published yet, I won’t list them here.
And because my background is in statistics, here’s a breakdown of my year:
- I finished 34 books, or 79% of what I read.
- I read an average of 1 book every 12 days.
- 77% was fiction, 21% was nonfiction, and 2% was poetry.
- 10 books (23%) were about war or the military, ranging from Vietnam to Afghanistan to Sierra Leone.
- 9 books (21%) were either children or YA (I didn’t include any of the little kid books I read with my son this year; for the most part none of them are even chapter books).
- 2 of the books (5%) were by local authors, and 3 (7%) were by people I know through writing sites.
- 17 books (40%) were personally recommended to me (not going to tell the breakdown of how many of these I actually finished).
My goal for 2012 is once again to read 100 books, and to actually finish that many as well.
Did you have a reading goal for 2011? Did you make it? Any suggestions for what I should read in 2012?
