For about 10 years I’ve kept a list of what books I read each year. It would be handier if I actually remembered to write down every book I did in fact read, but it’s a better source than me answering the question, “What have you been reading lately?”
I’ve bolded my favorites. 2012 looked like this:
Blue Nights (I know it’s wrong to say, but ugh.)
Behind Enemy Lines ( a children’s book we’ve had + insomnia)
Church Hill Train Tunnel
Richmond’s Unhealed History (highly recommend)
Handbook for Lightning Strike Survivors (this and the next 2 for a JRW panel I moderated–enjoyed the first two)
Good Humor Man
Mom in the Making
Devil’s Highway ( quite a shift from the Christian romance I had to read for the panel)
Richmond Receipts (this and the next one were crucial for Dinner & Dames info)
The Virginia Housewife
Street Gang (about Sesame Street)
Lewis Ginter
Home (Witold Rybczynski)
Power of Habit (Didn’t change my life, alas)
Come August, Come Freedom ( Written by a friend. Immensely powerful and beautiful.)
The Girl Who Silenced the Wind (Written by another friend. Searing and sage.)
Home (Toni Morrison)
Some snooze of a marketing book from Constant Contact
Making Babies (enjoyed it more than I’d expected)
Animal, Vegetable, Miracle (wrote about it here.)
Wild
Blink (Yes, I’m slow!)
Black Potatoes (post-Ireland trip. Hard to complain about bowel prep reading this.)
McCarthy’s Bar (re-read it post-Ireland. Didn’t think as much of it this time.)
Thread Across the Ocean (Bought in Ireland–a family connection to the story.)
Have Mother, Will Travel (hated–didn’t finish)
Team of Rivals (slow start, but never wanted it to end)
At Home (Bill Bryson)
The Heart and the Fist (From a friend whose son is a SEAL )
A Jane Austen Education (better to read her books again)
Official Book Club Selection (couldn’t resist when I saw it in a sister’s closet)
Stuart Little (soothing to re-read ahead of surgery)
Holidays on Ice (David Sedaris– a tad too mean for the holidays if you ask me)
Three Dog Life (need to read more of Abigail Thomas)
No Ordinary Time (more DKG to love. Think we never got to WW II in school.)
The Reader (can’t imagine anyone going to the movie unless to see naked Kate W.)
Forgot these 2:
Thee, Hannah (an oldie that my mother loved as a child)
Treat Your Own Back (I’ll recommend it in a few months if my back gets better.)
So that was what I remember to write down, and as I was typing this I remembered another. Here’s hoping 2013 is full of good books to sit down with. God knows there are plenty of good ones sitting around this house.