Saturday, January 01, 2011

A Disappointing Year

Well, this morning I added the book I finished last night to my reading list, and totaled them up.  I knew that I had not read quite as much this year as in the past, but I'm still disappointed with the number.  The major thing I need to focus on for the next year is reading more Juvenile/Young Adult books.  As a Youth Services Librarian I really need to get more intentional about reading books related to my job, and while part of my job also includes facilitating the Adult Book Discussion group, I need to put that on the back burner, with most of the Adult Fiction I read related to that.

So, here is my list for this year, such as it is:
Books Read in 2010
Adult Books:
1. Curse of the Spellmans - Lisa Lutz
2. The End of Overeating - David A. Kessler
3. Noah’s Compass - Anne Tyler
4. Revenge of the Spellmans - Lisa Lutz
5. One Step Behind - Henning Mankell
6. Death of a Valentine - M.C. Beaton
7. Live a Little! - Susan M. Love, Alice D. Dumar
8. Founding Mothers: The Women who Raised our Nation - Cokie Roberts
9. The Simpsons - John Ortved
10. The Leisure Seeker- Michael Zaderian
11. Outliers- Malcolm Gladwell (audio book)
12. Jesus: A Biography from a Believer - Paul Johnson
13. The Wildwater Walking Club - Claire Cook
14. Making Toast - Roger Rosenblatt
15. The Spellmans Strike Again - Lisa Lutz
16. What the Dog Saw - Malcolm Gladwell (audiobook)
17. Dream When You’re Feeling Blue - Elizabeth Berg (audiobook)
18. Mennonite in a Little Black Dress- Rhoda Janzen (audiobook)
19. The Highly Effective Detective - Richard Yancey
20. The Other Family - Jacqueline Carey
21. Mrs. Adams in Winter- Michael O’Brien
22. The Other Family - Joanna Trollope
23. The Gilded Age - Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner
24. The Three Weissmanns of Westport - Cathleen Schine
25. The Weed that Strings the Hangman’s Bag - Alan Bradley
26. Game Change - Heilbroner
27. Bright-Sighted- Barbara Ehrenreich
28. The Age of Innocence - Edith Wharton
29. A Blunt Instrument - Georgette Heyer
30. Leisureville - Andrew Blechman
31. The Rise of Silas Lapham - William Dean Howells
32. The Irresistible Henry House - Grunwald
33. The Facebook Effect - Kilpatrick
34. How Did You Get this Number? - Sloane Crosley
35. I’ll Mature When I’m Dead - Dave Barry
36. Cut, Paste, Kill - Marshall Karp
37. Murder at Mansfield Park - Lynn Shepherd
38. Talking about Detective Fiction - P.D. James
39. Still Life - Louise Penny
40. The Double Comfort Safari Club - Alexander McCall Smith
41. Envious Casca - Georgette Heyer
42. A Reliable Wife - Robert Goolrick

Juvenile/Young Adult Books:
43. Along for the Ride - Sarah Dessen
44. The Case of the Case of Mistaken Identity - Mac Barnett
45. Also Known as Harper - Ann Haywood Leal
46. Lawn Boy - Gary Paulsen
47. My Rotten Life - David Lubar
48. The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate - Jacqueline Kelly
49. Keepers of the School: We the Children - Andrew Clements
50. The Hunger Games - Suzanne Collins (audiobook)
51. Theodore Boone Kid Lawyer - John Grisham
52. Catching Fire - Suzanne Collins (audiobook)
53. The Real Real - Emma McLaughlin and Nicola Kraus
54. Before I Fall - Lauren Oliver
55. When You Reach Me - Rebecca Stead
56. Little Blog on the Prairie - Cathleen Davitt Bell
57. Mockingjay - Suzanne Collins
58. Be a Genie in Six Easy Steps - Linda Chapman
59. Nature Girl - Jane Kelley
60. The Clock without a Face - Barnett, Teplin, Horowitz
61. The Sisters Club - Megan McDonald (audiobook)
62. Lucy B. Parker: Girl vs. Superstar - Robin Palmer
63. As Simple as it Seems - Sarah Weeks
64. They Called Themselves the KKK - Susan Campbell Bartoletti
65. Withering Tights - Louise Rennison
66. Joey Pigza Swallowed the Key - Jack Gantos
67. The Wide-Awake Princess - E.D. Baker
68. My Life as a Book - Janet Tashjian
69. Lost on a Mountain in Maine - Donn Fendler

Books re-read for Book Discussions:
70. That Old Cape Magic - Richard Russo
71. The Pursuit of Alice Thrift - Elinor Lipman
72. The Wednesday Sisters - Meg Clayton
73. The Memory of Running - Ron McLarty
74. No Talking - Andrew Clements (juvenile)
75. The Namesake - Jhumpa Lahiri
76. The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society - Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Burrows

As far as the adult books go, the only one that really made an impression on me was The End of Overeating by David Kessler.  Kessler is a former head of the FDA, and in this book writes about the way that the food industry processes food to build different taste sensations into each bite.  This affects our brain chemistry and in many cases results in overeating and obesity.  Reading that book gave me the impetus to really think about what I eat, resulting in a 30 lb. weight loss.  Another book, not listed, but one that really helped me this year is Eat This, Not That, by David Zinczenko.  I keep it in the car so when we go out I can check it out and make my decision ahead of time.

Hands down, though, the best books I read this year were the trilogy by Suzanne Collins - The Hunger Games, Catching Fire, and Mockingjay.  This dystopic Young Adult series is gripping, thought-provoking and thoroughly entertaining.  I'm not a fantasy person, and I resisted reading this for a long time, but I'm so glad I did.
So that's it for now.  I've already started reading a book to add to my list for 2011.  It's an adult book, Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout, and it's for our Adult Book Discussion next week.  I'm also almost finished with an excellent new biography of Catherine of Aragon by Giles Tremlett.  We've been watching "The Tudors," the Showtime series, and I realized I needed to enhance my knowledge of the people involved.  It's a well-written, readable biography.

Oh, if you're curious about any of the Juvenile books I read this year, I've started writing reviews here: www.cindyschilling.wordpress.com