2013 Review

It is worth doing this analysis of the previous year’s reading. The blog itself is useful and I use it to see which books I have read by an author or to choose Christmas gits, but only upon reflection do I realize all the fascinating worlds that opened up to me through my readings.  I did not read any classics and still like historical fiction, contemporary fiction, thrillers, some romance and children’s and young adult books, very little non-fiction. I continued reading Baldacci and Nora Roberts, this year read three Vince Flynn books as he passed away, and have an intention of reading through most of his Mitch Rapp books. Of my favorite authors, I read Tracy Chevalier’s The Last Runaway, one of my favorite books of the year; Khaled Hosseini’s And the Mountains Echoed; Barbara Kingsolver’s Flight Behavior, Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Lowland, and Audrey Niffenegger’s Raven Girl (met the author at a library conference.) My other favorite fiction books were: The Fall of Giants by Ken Follett, Love Anthony by Lisa Genova, The Fault in Our Stars by John Green (maybe my favorite book of the year),and  Orphan Train by Christina Baker Kline. I also discovered Maeve Binchy, a popular Irish writer. In non-fiction I was fascinated by Steve Jobs biography by Walter Isaacson, MSNBC reporter Rachael Maddow’s analysis of our military in Drift, and Will Schwalbe’s End of Your Life Book Club – the ultimate book lover’s book, as well as a look into ending your life gracefully and helping others do so. I also tried to do a bit of regional reading. When heading out to Montana and Wyoming, I tried reading something about the area, and asked people out there what to read that was typical of the area. Ivan Doig and CJ Box were suggested authors. I also tried to read up on the Middle East a bit – both fiction and non-fiction, and am still in the middle of that.