Relevance to greater issues: None. But other folks do these and I find them mildly interesting, and in late 2010 I started keeping a spreadsheet of books read–mostly so I wouldn’t accidentally take out the same book a second time (it’s happened).
So…
Books read in 2012
Fortynine. [49]
Ahead of my low bar (3 books in each 28-day period, or 39 in all), behind my unstated goal (a book a week, or 52 in all).
Way behind 2011, when I read 64.
Actually, the real number should be books completed in 2012–and that’s only 45, since I abandoned four books.
If you’re interested, the four books I abandoned–all from the library–were:Bozo Sapiens by Kaplan & Kaplan, Imagining Atlantis by Richard Ellis, Autumn of the Moguls by Michael Wolff and English MusicĀ by Peter Ackroyd
I should have abandoned a fifth one: The Hunt for Zero Point by Nick Cook.
Books most enjoyed (not in any order)
Zoe’s Tale | John Scalzi |
The Android’s Dream | John Scalzi |
The Florabama Ladies’ Auxiliary & Sewing Circle | Lois Battle |
Outwitting History | Aaron Lansky |
Fuzzy Nation | John Scalzi |
Storyville | Lois Battle |
Runners-up
The Canterbury Tales | Chaucer & Ackroyd |
Gone for Good | Mark Childress |
Snuff | Terry Pratchett |
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay | Michael Chabon |
The Canceled Czech | Lawrence Block |
The Final Solution | Michael Chabon |
Deadly Decisions | Kathy Reichs |
Hominids | Robert J. Sawyer |
War Brides | Lois Battle |
Summerland | Michael Chabon |
Those are books I rated as “A” or “A-.” Sixteen more books rated “B+” or “B”–ones I enjoyed, but not quite as much.
That’s a pretty good year. One book rated a “B-,” six rated “C+,” four rated “C”–and one, which I might also have been better off giving up on–rated a “C-“: The Information by James Gleick.
By the way, while I’m obviously a fan of facile writing, I’m not necessarily a pushover for Scalzi: The God Engines only got a C. But that’s me.
Curiosity of genre assignment: I usually get three books at a time–one nonfiction, one “mainstream” fiction, and one genre, the last alternating between science fiction/fantasy and mystery. Kathy Reichs’ books, the basis for Bones, are shelved at Livermore Public in mainstream fiction, not mysteries.
The other curiosity here: There’s one book that, it turned out, I had read previously–a decade ago, when it was serialized in Analog. That was Hominids by Robert J Sawyer, and I recognized it about 50 pages in (yes, the copyright page notes the prior publication)–but I read it again because I decided I wanted to read the trilogy it begins–the Neanderthal Parallax–and it made sense to freshen up on the start. Currently being read: Humans, second in the trilogy.