2011 Reading Recap

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 50/50 category.  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 the Bulge, 1944

Stanley Weintraub

Santa Clawed: A Novel (Mrs. Murphy Mysteries)

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 Classics Deluxe Edition)

Graham Greene

Homer & Langley

E.L. Doctorow

The Tortilla Curtain: A Novel (Penguin Ink)

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 Spark Diversity 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 Linus Story

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 and How They Changed America 1789-1989

Michael Beschloss

The Red Leather Diary: Reclaiming a Life Through the Pages of a Lost Journal (P.S.)

Lily Koppel

I Am Charlotte Simmons: A Novel

Tom Wolfe

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society

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 Wicked Years

Gregory Maguire

Mornings on Horseback: The Story of an Extraordinary Family, a Vanished Way of Life and the Unique Child Who Became Theodore Roosevelt

David McCullough

The Shack (Special Hardcover Edition)

William P. Young

American Creation: Triumphs and Tragedies in the Founding of the Republic

Joseph J. Ellis

The Acts of King Arthur and His Noble Knights: (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 by Patton Oswalt

Patton Oswalt

My Life in France

Julia Child

Unaccustomed Earth: Stories (Vintage Contemporaries)

Jhumpa Lahiri

Things I Overheard While Talking to Myself

Alan Alda

The Help

Kathryn Stockett

Boom!: Talking About the Sixties: What Happened, How It Shaped Today, Lessons for Tomorrow

Tom Brokaw

Suite Francaise

Irene Nemirovsky

Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity 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 Jefferson Davis 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 and Sex

Mary Roach

The Witches of Eastwick

John Updike