2011 in Review

Another good year for reading books. Thank goodness for audio books, or I would never find the time to go through the five books per month that I continue to average. OK, nine of them were kids books, but I always include those in my numbers. My favorite genre continues to be historical fiction, though looks like I only read seven of those this year. Thirteen of the books were non-fiction, a good thing, as my goal was to read more non-fiction. The most powerful one of those was Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks and I also continue to follow Thomas Friedman with his latest - That Used to be Us. I am happy to say I only read four Nora Roberts or J.D. Robb books this year, and a couple of Baldacci ones. Among my favorite authors, Geraldine Brooks came out with Caleb's Crossing, Ann Patchett with State of Wonder, and Susan Vreeland with Clara and Mr. Tiffany. All of them made my best of the year list, but only Clara was on my best of the best list. I also returned to Clarissa Pinkola Estes, but she no longer spoke to me as she once did. I discovered local author Bonnie Jo Campbell and Brazilian author Paulo Coelho, and want to read more from both of them. I was on a Paris kick after visiting the city recently, plus I was helping a friend do research on Paris of the 30's, so I read about five books about Paris.  One of my other goals was to read more classics, non-contemporary books. Well, I read Walpole's Hieroglyphic Tales from 1785, an Edgar Rice Burroughs SF book from 1917, Hemingway's Sun Also Rises from 1926, and A Tree Grows in Brooklyn from 1943. Otherwise 17 books were from this year, 26 from 2000-10, 10 from the 1990's and one 1978. Looks like none were from the BBC 100 list, but there is always next year.