2010 in Retrospect

In 2010, I read 135 books, including audiobooks and chapter books for children, teens, and adults. This is less than last year (156), but I was also working significantly more hours for the second half of the year, so all in all I'm pleased with that number.

I also kept track of picture book reading, which totaled 61.

Here are some of my memorable reads for the year, with links to my reviews (month finished in parentheses):

Fiction

• Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky (Feb)
• Doomsday Book by Connie Willis (Mar)
• Major Pettigrew's Last Stand by Helen Simonsen (Apr)
• The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins (Aug)
• Bury Your Dead by Louise Penny (Sep - this entire series was a standout for me, but this was the of the best)
• Savvy by Ingrid Law (Oct)
• Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson (Oct)
• Persuasion by Jane Austen (Nov)

Nonfiction

• The Lexicographer's Dilemma by Jack Lynch (Apr)
• At Large and At Small by Anne Fadiman (Jun)
• The Essays of E.B. White by E.B. White (Aug)
• The Library at Night by Alberto Manguel (Sep)

Poetry

• Native Guard by Natasha Trethewey (Apr)

I feel like I should at least mention that this is my only poetry book of the year, but even so it would still make my memorable reads list. Clearly I should be reading more poetry, but in all honesty picking a book of poetry and reading it intimidates me more than Shakespeare's plays.

Because I Want To Awards:
Most memorable but not best loved - Montana 1948 by Larry Watson (Aug)
Left me panting for the next one - Incarceron by Catherine Fisher (May)
Most surpassed my expectations - Cranford by Elizabeth Gaskell (Oct)
Most fun to recommend - Soulless by Gail Carriger (Mar)

Musings

I half expected most of my memorable reads to be early in the year, and be sort of the early great reads that I used as a measuring stick for the rest, but the numbers do not bear that out at all. April and October are tied for most-memorable-reads-in-a-month, with three a piece. Interestingly, January, July, and December reads did not make the cut. I'm not surprised by January: I only finished four books that month. The others are a bit of a mystery to me.

Here's to even more great reading in 2011! I'll be trying to keep clearer stats this year to determine how many children's, teen, and adults books I'm reading as well as the total, and posting monthly sum-ups as well.