2012 books

[slemslempike]

In 2012 I read 144 books, of which 12 were rereads. (And one book I read twice within the year.) This comprised 8 non-fiction books, 62 adult fiction books, and 74 children's books. Here are previous years, for comparison:

2011 - 92, 1 reread
2010 - 184, 13 rereads
2009 - 123, 23 rereads
2008 - 126, 17 rereads
2007 - 133, 3 rereads
2006 - 224, 35 rereads
2005 - 244, 26 rereads

So working back up again after a very low 2011. However, quite a few of these books were from the Sweet Dreams series, which are very short and readable, and indeed only took me my half hour lunch break. But then this year I didn't finish any books at all in November, mostly because I was studying for an exam and being uncharacteristically diligent about that. My favourite books of 2012 were The Gender Delusion, the Elfrida Vipont series starting with Lark in the Morn, The Crow Road (though I've since read another Iain Banks that was very similar and makes me a bit hmm), Balthasar's Odyssey and A Long Way from Verona.

At the end of last year I said that I wanted to get back into writing monthly book posts again (in 2011 I kept track but mostly made larger dumps with fewer write-ups), which I am pleased to have mostly done. There were several months when I wrote and posted late, but it was all done. I would like to keep doing that in 2013. I would like to finish at least one book in French. I would like to read at least 30 books that I already own and have not yet read. (I orignally had that as 50, but I thought I would be realistic.) I'm packing up quite a lot of books to take to Brussels, and looking forward to reading Binny for Short, which is the new Hilary McKay book, and Wolf Hall, which is by that DREADFUL woman who DARED to criticise a beautiful princess. I had steered clear of Wolf Hall because the title made me think it might be set in a school or similar institution, and I was cross that it wasn't. (I had a similar prejudice against The Finkler Question whose cover looked to me like a checked schooldress hanging under a straw hat.) Also I am not hugely big on historical fiction, but several people who like books I like have raved about it, so I'm going to give it a go.

Comments

[nineveh-uk.livejournal.com]

Now you're making me want to read a Wolf Hall/Chalet School crossover.

[slemslempike.livejournal.com]

Isn't Elizabeth the Gallant the right time frame (ish?). If only that wasn't a turgid lump of prose.

[antisoppist.livejournal.com]

There is a new Hilary McKay book??!! I am reading the children the Cassons series and we are up to Caddy Ever After and the five year-old thinks I need a shed (which is worrying).

[slemslempike.livejournal.com]

There is! I have a copy in my room, and I'm trying to make myself save it until I get to Brussels as a treat.

[sam-t.livejournal.com]

There seems to be a bit of a Marmite reaction to the prose style of Wolf Hall. Personally I like it, but some other people I've spoken to didn't get on with it at all (but were clear it was a preference, not a judgement of quality), so I think it's possibly worth sneakily reading a bit in a bookshop/downloading a sample first, in case you get marooned somewhere with it and hate it.

[slemslempike.livejournal.com]

I have already plunged! Otherwise that would have been very good advice. Oh well, if I read it and hate it, I can already give it to someone else.

[antisoppist.livejournal.com]

It irritated me but mostly because I kept trying to analyse what it was about it that was irritating me and that distracted me from reading the story. At first I thought it was because it was first person but then I realised that I was reading something else simultaneously that was first person and that wasn't bothering me at all. I just spent the whole time going "why is she doing that and is it having the effect on me that she wants it to? Clearly not if I am spending this much time thinking about it." There were individual sentences I liked though :-)