About a year ago, I set myself the goal of reading 100 books in 2012. I ended up reading 80, only counting those I completely finished.
Here’s the breakdown:
- 32 were adult, 13 were young adult, and 35 were children (all of which were at least 100 pages).
- 7 were nonfiction, 1 was poetry, and the rest were fiction.
- 20 were contemporary fiction, 19 were sci-fi/fantasy/paranormal, 15 were historical fiction, and 10 were mysteries.
- 7 were short stories on Kindle (yes, I realize it’s cheating to include those), and 6 were short story anthologies.
- I know the authors of 6 of the books.
- Almost half – 36 – were part of a series (defined here as reading more than one in the series; I didn’t include books where I only read #1).
Best books I read in 2012:
- Going Bovine by Libba Bray: a YA magical realism look at dying.
- The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien: stories about the Vietnam War
- Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson: a YA story about how a high school girl copes with her entire school shunning her.
- I Will Save You by Matt de la Pena: a runaway boy comes to terms with his past while making a new future for himself.
- Final Salute: A Story of Unfinished Lives by Jim Sheeler: a journalist follows the stories of families who’ve lost soldiers in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
- Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk by Ben Fountain: a young soldier back on a publicity tour struggles with why he’s fighting in Iraq and how the country views the war.
- The Solitude of Prime Numbers by Paulo Giordano: two misfits become inadvertent friends and struggle to find how they fit in as their lives progress.
I won’t mention the worst books (there were several I didn’t read more than a couple chapters of), but I will say I read some very popular books that I found horribly overrated – The Hunger Games was a big example of this.
Overall, I’m pretty disappointed in myself for this past year. I didn’t read as many adult or nonfiction books as I would’ve preferred, and many of the children’s books were ones I reread as part of the 2012 Books That Made You Love Reading Challenge. Here’s hoping that in 2013, I have a more diverse list of books.
If you challenged yourself to read a set number of books in 2012, how did you end up doing? What were your favorites? Anything you particularly disliked?
