Bibliophile (2009)
Well, we're only a week into the new year, so I'm being almost timely in making my annual book post! (Usually this happens at the end of January...)
I am interested to note that my numbers have been in a steady decline since I started keeping track: this year, I managed to complete (only) 70 books**, down from 74, 85 and 102 in previous years. What I did do this year was increase the proportion of first-time reads: 45 of my 70 were new to me, and I've gotten some new favorite authors out of the deal. Of the new-to-me authors, Elizabeth Bear, Louise Penney, Ysabeau Wilce and Charlaine Harris*** were my favorites.
This year, I also encountered quite a few books in which I read well more than 50 pages before giving up (per Nancy Pearl's advice), though in some cases I got much further before stopping in disappointment, despair, boredom or simply running into a library due date. Those don't count here, though: if I didn't finish it, it's not on the list.
In presenting the list, I've decided to stick with last year's format and begin with the breakdown of new reads and re-reads before presenting the whole list with commentary for those who care to read it.
**I was a bit lax about keeping track of my reading this year, so it's entirely possible that I left a book or two out when I neglected this list for months...
***I was given the first Sookie Stackhouse book for Christmas last year, and kind of chewed through the entire series by the end of September.
Books read for the first time this year:
- Dava Sobel - Longitude
- Elizabeth Bear - Blood & Iron
- Barbara Delinsky - Family Tree
- Sherry Thomas - Delicious
- Isaac Mizrahi - How to Have Style
- Mary Balogh - Lord Carew's Bride
- Jo Walton - Tooth and Claw
- Charlaine Harris - Dead Until Dark
- Catherynne Valente - Palimpsest
- Lois McMaster Bujold - The Sharing Knife: Horizon
- Haven Kimmel - Something Rising, Light and Swift
- Michael Chabon - The Yiddish Policeman's Union
- Charlaine Harris - Living Dead in Dallas
- Charlaine Harris - Club Dead
- Charlaine Harris - Dead to the World
- Christopher Moore - Fluke
- Mary Balogh - Then Comes Seduction
- Charlaine Harris - Dead as a Doornail
- Charlaine Harris - Definitely Dead
- Haven Kimmel - The Used World
- Pamela Dean - Juniper, Gentian, and Rosemary
- Charlaine Harris - All Together Dead
- Mary Kingsley - Scandal's Lady
- Jincy Willett - Winner of the National Book Award
- Laurie R. King - A Monstrous Regiment of Women
- Sherrilyn Kenyon - Fantasy Lover
- Susan Krinard - Secret of the Wolf
- Holly Black - Tithe
- Anne Stuart - Ice Blue
- Simon Green - Hawk & Fisher: Winner Takes All
- Simon Green - Hawk & Fisher: The God Killer
- Charlaine Harris - From Dead to Worse
- Ysabeau Wilce - Flora Segunda
- Holly Black - Valiant
- Holly Black - Ironside
- Tanya Huff - Blood Bank
- Charlaine Harris - Dead and Gone
- Sherry Thomas - Not Quite a Husband
- Thomas More - Utopia
- Susan Elizabeth Phillips - What I Did for Love
- Tanya Huff - Relative Magic
- David Drake - Starliner
- Louise Penney - Still Life
- Louise Penney - A Fatal Grace
- Linda Howard - Burn
Books re-read this year:
- Mary Balogh - A Counterfeit Betrothal
- Laurie King - Folly
- Laurie King - The Beekeeper's Apprentice
- Robin McKinley - Beauty
- Linda Howard - Now You See Her
- Susan Wiggs - The Charm School
- Marian Keyes - Sushi for Beginners
- Andrew Doughty - Maui Revealed
- Haven Kimmel - The Solace of Leaving Early
- Emma Holly - Beyond Innocence
- Mary Balogh - The Secret Pearl
- Emma Holly - Beyond Seduction
- Anne McCaffrey - Sassinak
- Simon Green - Hawk & Fisher
- C.S. Lewis - Prince Caspian
- C.S. Lewis - Voyage of the Dawn Treader
- David Weber - On Basilisk Station
- David Weber - the Short Victorious War
- David Weber - the Honor of the Queen
- Tanya Huff - Blood Trail
- Mary Balogh - Simply Love
- Tanya Huff - Blood Lines
- Tanya Huff - The Fire's Stone
- Eloisa James - Potent Pleasures
- Robin McKinley - Sunshine
Books started (and read for the first time), but not finished in time to count:
- Margaret Atwood - After the Flood
The Complete List - with contemporary commentary
- Mary Balogh - A Counterfeit Betrothal (01/02 - 01/03) - a goofy little regency about new love, lost love and Big Misunderstandings. Not her best, but amusing.
- Dava Sobel - Longitude (01/03 - 01/31) - An excellent story for the history nerd, but this took a long time to read for such a tiny book!
- Laurie King - Folly (01/04 - 01/07) - Re-read because it was sitting on my bedside table find; this is a dark book, but an excellent one.
- Laurie King - The Beekeeper's Apprentice (01/08 - 01/13) - It's been a decade or more since I read this - it's even better now than it was when a college student! Will continue with series...
- Robin McKinley - Beauty (01/10 - 01/11) - This was recently re-released, so I'll have to buy it. It's one of my favorite fairy tale retellings from McKinley, and my favorite of her two Beauty and the Beast stories.
- Elizabeth Bear - Blood & Iron (01/15 - 5/11)I keep hearing about Elizabeth Bear, and bought the second book of this loose duology from Half-Price books. This was amazing and completely absorbing, but got a little depressing for me in the middle, so I paused... and then I sat on it for about 3 months, before finishing it the day it was due (on its 4th renewal). Amazing. I'll have to buy it.
- Barbara Delinsky - Family Tree (01/18 - 01/20) - Book club book. Not my favorite, but actually very good discussion fodder! (Even if it is insipid.)
- Sherry Thomas - Delicious (02/02 - 02/08) - Okay, this is aptly named - a delicious romance novel. Sherry Thomas writes like a happy cross between Judith Ivory and Susan Johnson; I LOVE her (now two!) books and will keep buying them.
- Isaac Mizrahi - How to Have Style (02/06 - 02/08) - This horrified Jim for its insidious fashion-insiderness. Despite the shallowness of it all, there were a few good tips I took away. Good fluff reading while at the hospital.
- Mary Balogh - Lord Carew's Bride (02/16) - A very, very fast read of one of Balogh's regencies. Apparently part of a small series, but easy to pick up in the middle. Popcorn book.
- Linda Howard - Now You See Her (02/16) - As I was sorting the bookshelves I snagged this for a re-read. Fluff, but fun.
- Susan Wiggs - The Charm School (02/17 - 02/19) - I suddenly wanted to re-read this, one of my favorite Wiggs books. Still fun, if a little unrealistic. A nice ugly duckling story.
- Jo Walton - Tooth and Claw (02/12 - 02/19) - Read after Cat Valente's recommendation. EXCELLENT BOOK! A wonderful play on Trollope and fantasy together, a delicious comedy of draconian manners. May have to buy this one.
- Marian Keyes - Sushi for Beginners (02/22 - 02/25) - Re-read inspired by upcoming trip to Ireland. Still good.
- Charlaine Harris - Dead Until Dark (2/27 - 03/02) - Darnit Maureen! Your gift of the first book in the series has hooked me and thoroughly. I find it fascinating a book with a smart author and slightly dumb heroine. (Read en-route to and in Ireland.)
- Catherynne Valente - Palimpsest (03/03) - An amazing, passionate, emotional book.(Read on the flight home. DEVOURED.)
- Lois McMaster Bujold - The Sharing Knife: Horizon (03/07 - 03/18) - the conclusion to the whole series, at last. It's not my favorite, but it's satisfying in the way that it pulls together so many loose threads and resolves a puzzle I thought unsolvable in one book.
- Haven Kimmel - Something Rising, Light and Swift (03/12 - 03/15) - Reading this was like solving a puzzle, decoding a secret message, learning somebody's secrets, and all of it in the most powerful, straightforward prose. (I'm not doing it justice here. It was amazing.)
- Michael Chabon - The Yiddish Policeman's Union (3/17 - 3/27) - Book club book for March. I didn't love it, but I appreciated the complexity of it all.
- Charlaine Harris - Living Dead in Dallas (sometime in April) - I had $100 in expiring Borders certificates to spend and the store shelves were barren. And so I bought the entirety of the Sookie Stackhouse series, to book 8. What fun!
- Charlaine Harris - Club Dead (sometime in April) - Pretty violent, Charlaine. Still, despite the disturbing aspects (and really, what should I expect from a vampire book?), quick and fun read.
- Charlaine Harris - Dead to the World (sometime in April) - Oh, Amnesiac Eric, you're such a sweetheart. One of my favorites so far. (I'm forcing myself to hold off on the rest until my next trip... they should make great beach reads.)
- Christopher Moore - Fluke (05/19 - 06/02) - I read almost all of this between May 19th and 20th, but didn't actually finish it until we returned from Hawaii. My favorite Christopher Moore so far, a genuinely funny, good read.
- Mary Balogh - Then Comes Seduction (5/23) - Airplane book. Quick and fluffy, but a fun read.
- Andrew Doughty - Maui Revealed (5/21 - 5/27) - Read cover to cover while in Maui, this is always a good resource.
- Charlaine Harris - Dead as a Doornail(5/24 - 5/28) - Beach reading! (Well, pool reading.) Lots of men, lots of violence, lots of weirdness. Good times!
- Charlaine Harris - Definitely Dead(5/29 - 5/31) - Another Sookie Stackhouse! This one was irritating because there was clearly backstory that I did not have. It turns out that a short story provided that critical backstory, but it would have been NICE TO KNOW.
- Haven Kimmel - The Used World (6/01 - 6/05) - Another amazing book from Haven Kimmel. I think this may have beaten out the Solace of Leaving Early for my favorite of hers, but perhaps they should just sit together on the list.
- Pamela Dean - Juniper, Gentian, and Rosemary (6/05 - 6/08) - An odd, opaque but compelling YA book from Pamela Dean. Beautiful language, and full of literary allusions I occasionally failed to follow.
- Haven Kimmel - The Solace of Leaving Early (06/08 - 06/12) - Re-reading this in preparation for book club. Still great. Still hard to read.
- Charlaine Harris - All Together Dead (06/17 - 06/19 / 06/20 - 6/26) - A hectic, chaotic book. Too many subplots, lots of characters, and a few assumptions that the reader has knowledge of events not in the previous books. Sookie acts surly, irrational and childish, and there's no real relationship development among her supes. I actually re-read it immediately after finishing it, because I finished the first time going "what the...?"
- Emma Holly - Beyond Innocence - (06/19 - 06/21) - A re-read of an okay-but-sweet erotic romance. Completely unbelievable, but a fun read.
- Mary Kingsley - Scandal's Lady (06/20 - 06/26) - A pretty dreadful Regency. Our heroine has a Big Secret, our hero turns idiotic just to force a Big Misunderstanding, nobody behaves appropriately to the era... But I slogged through, nonetheless.
- Jincy Willett - Winner of the National Book Award (06/28 - 09/27) - Oh my God, FINALLY FINISHED. A very well written book, but so mean that I had a hard time reading it.
- Mary Balogh - The Secret Pearl (sometime in July) - I can't remember when I read this, but it was a quick re-read.
- Emma Holly - Beyond Seduction (sometime in July) - Another quick re-read of an evening
- Laurie R. King - A Monstrous Regiment of Women (sometime in July) - Fantastic. I once started to read this but inexplicably never finished it. An excellent, excellent mystery.
- Sherrilyn Kenyon - Fantasy Lover (sometime in July) - Posessed of a completely ridiculous plot, this actually proved to be a surprisingly enjoyable read.
- Susan Krinard - Secret of the Wolf (sometime in July) - Another far-fetched plot, this one was a little painful to get through. Too much overwrought and angsty conversation for me.
- Holly Black - Tithe (sometime in July) - The first of Holly Black's Faery tales for YA. Very dark. Quick read, very good. But VERY DARK.
- Anne McCaffrey - Sassinak (sometime in July) - Why did I love this book so when I was younger?? Disjointed isn't even the word!
- Anne Stuart - Ice Blue (08/01) - Very quick read, highly implausible, but very enjoyable.
- Simon Green - Hawk & Fisher (08/01) - I read this first one once upon a time, but not the next two. Not Simon Green's best, but comfort reading about characters I know. Bought and read in the French Quarter.
- Simon Green - Hawk & Fisher: Winner Takes All (08/02-08/03) - I'm not sure why I had so much time to read while in NOLA, but I did finish this pretty quickly. Not a happy book, really...
- Simon Green - Hawk & Fisher: The God Killer (08/03 - 08/08) - Started at SIGGRAPH, finished when home again. Not great, not bad. Quite bleak, but better than the second one!
- Charlaine Harris - From Dead to Worse (08/07-08/08) - Begun on the plane ride home, and devoured. Popcorny! Pretty good, too.
- Ysabeau Wilce - Flora Segunda (08/09 - 08/13) - What a fun book! Great YA coming of age story of a girl in a military society. Lovely language games, complex plot... I'm looking forward to a sequel. Thanks to Kyle Cassidy, who doesn't know me, for the recommendation.
- Holly Black - Valiant (08/14 - 08/18) - A quick read, but read in little nibbles. Again, very bleak, very adult issues for a YA book. Compelling read, though.
- Holly Black - Ironside (08/22 - 08/23) - The third in the series. Another quick read, very dark but good. I'm thinking there's got to be a sequel, though, since there were a lot of unresolved issues.
- Tanya Huff - Blood Bank (08/27 - ??) - A collection of Henry and Vicki short stories that I had not, amazingly, read before. (Well, a couple of them were familiar.) Very enjoyable revisit to the world.
- Charlaine Harris - Dead and Gone (09/03 - 09/10) - A library book, read on breaks at the office. I didn't mean to read the whole thing at work, but I kind of devoured it. VERY DARK, Charlaine. Kind of an extreme bummer.
- Sherry Thomas - Not Quite a Husband (09/04 - 09/06) - Another fantastic read from Sherry Thomas. Somewhat improbable, but extremely well-researched and wonderfully well-written. Unfortunately based on the Big Misunderstanding, but a great book nonetheless!
- Thomas More - Utopia (09/04 - 09/17) - begun, resentfully, for Book Club. Then I started to enjoy it! Then the Book Darts came out. A surprisingly enjoyable read!
- Susan Elizabeth Phillips - What I Did for Love (09/11 - 09/25) - Another office-read library book. I do like SEP, but this was sort of mid-range for me: I liked the characters, disliked the plot. Now there's a conundrum... but I'm glad I read it. It redeemed her from some of the football player books for me.
- Tanya Huff - Relative Magic (09/11 - 09/28) - Another Tanya Huff short story collection, with some really fun little stories in it. Doled out as bedtime reading.
- C.S. Lewis - Prince Caspian (9/29-?) - Re-read as an ebook while in Japan.
- C.S. Lewis - Voyage of the Dawn Treader(early October) Re-read as an ebook while in Japan.
- David Drake - Starliner (early October) - eBook: Conflicted about this one: on the one hand, It was certainly creative. On the other, it was full of misogynistic crap! In the end, I was compelled to find out how it all ended.
- David Weber - On Basilisk Station (early October) - An ebook re-read of one of my teenage favorite space operas. It's actually still good! And great for travel reading.
- David Weber - the Short Victorious War (sometime in mid-October) - I got the swine flu. I needed comfort re-reading, since my attention span was shot.
- David Weber - the Honor of the Queen (mid-October) - Swine flu. More re-reading the Honor Harrington series.
- Tanya Huff - Blood Trail (mid-October) - Swine flu. The Tanya Huff books on my bedside sent me in search of the Henry & Vicki stories.
- Mary Balogh - Simply Love (mid-October) - Swine flu. Comfort reading!
- Tanya Huff - Blood Lines (late-October) - more Henry & Vicki. I was feeling better, but wanted to re-read more of the series.
- Tanya Huff - The Fire's Stone (late-October) - Still Comfort Reading! This stand-alone novel is one of my favorite Tanya Huff stories.
- Eloisa James - Potent Pleasures (early November) - random re-read of the story. Oh, god, the TSTL (Too Stupid to Live) heroine! Argh, gack!)
- Louise Penney - Still Life (11/22 - 11/29) - so my mother has been recommending these Canadian mysteries to me, so I finally got them. Fantastic! Really nice character development, plot and attention to detail. Also, helpfully, we were actually in Quebec briefly, adding to the ambience
- Louise Penney - A Fatal Grace (11/30 - 12/05) - the second of Three Pines mysteries, a little less delightful, but still fabulous! I'll definitely be reading more.
- Linda Howard - Burn (early December) - Library book, thank goodness. This was the dumbest plot ever, and the characters weren't great either. Saving grace? A very fast read.
- Robin McKinley - Sunshine (12/11- 12/16) - re-read because I gave the book as a gift to somebody else, and fell in love all over again.
- Margaret Atwood - After the Flood (12/24 - 01/01) - I kept seeing mentions of this one in reviews, so snagged it from the library. I'm always conflicted about Margaret Atwood: I love her dry voice and yet hate her misanthropy and her misogynistic male characters. This was probably one of my favorite books from her, but it's telling the same story as Oryx & Crake (from a less-stupid perspective.) Does this mean that I have to revisit effing Oryx & Crake to get the whole picture? Gah! *snarl*