Books I've Read 2010

Books in bold are ones I've especially liked:

1. The Penelopiad, Margaret Atwood
2. Futurama: The Time Bender Trilogy, Matt Groening
3. Interview With a Vampire, Anne Rice
4. Her Fearful Symmetry, Audrey Niffennegger
5. The Lovely Bones, Alice Sebold
6. Serenity, Vol. 2: Better Days, Joss Whedon
7. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, Michael Chabon
8. Shades of Grey, Jasper Fforde
9. Heat Wave, Richard Castle
10. The Help, Kathryn Stockett
11. Confections of a Closet Master Baker, Gesine Bullock-Prado
12. A Widow For One Year, John Irving
13. If You Come Softly, Jacqueline Woodson
14. Shiver, Maggie Stiefvater
15. If I Stay, Gayle Forman
16. Scarlett Fever, Maureen Johnson
17. Marcelo In The Real World, Francisco X. Stork
18. The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows
    
19. Mountains Beyond Mountains: The Quest of Dr. Paul Farmer, A Man Who Would Cure the World, Tracy Kidder
20. The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, Stieg Larsson
21. The Clock Without a Face, Eli Horowitz
22. Day After Night, Anita Diamant
23. The Shipping News, E. Annie Proulx
24. Prodigal Summer, Barbara Kingsolver
25. Little Bee, Chris Cleave
26. The Red Pyramid, Rick Riordan
    
27. Wizard's First Rule, Terry Goodkind
28. Stone of Tears, Terry Goodkind
29. When You Reach Me, Rebecca Stead
30. The Swan Thieves, Elizabeth Kostova
31. Monsters of Men (Chaos Walking, Book 3), Patrick Ness
32. Blood of the Fold, Terry Goodkind
33. Will Grayson, Will Grayson, John Green & David Levithan
34. Beautiful Creatures, Kami Garcia & Margaret Stohl
35. The Necromancer (The Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel: Book 4), Michael Scott
36. This is Where I Leave You, Jonathan Tropper
37. Artemis Fowl: The Atlantis Complex (Book 7), Eoin Colfer
38. Superior Saturday (Keys to the Kingdom), Garth Nix
39. The God of Animals, Aryn Kyle
40. She's Come Undone, Wally Lamb
41. Mockingjay, Suzanne Collins
42. Only the Good Spy Young, Ally Carter
43. The Bedwetter: Stories of Courage, Redemption, and Pee, Sarah Silverman
44. The Maze Runner, James Dashner
45. The Mockingbirds, Daisy Whitney (ARC)
46. Incarceron, Catherine Fisher (ARC)
47. Reckless, Cornelia Funke
48. How to Talk To a Widower, Jonathan Tropper
49. The Bean Trees, Barbara Kingsolver
50. The Secret Life of Bees, Sue Monk Kidd
51. It Is Right to Draw Their Fur, Dave Eggers
52. Knives at Dawn: America's Quest for Culinary Glory at the Legendary Bocuse d'Or Competition, Andrew Friedman
53. Serenity: The Shepard's Tale, Zack Whedon
54. The Scorch Trials, James Dashner
55. Dead Until Dark, Charlaine Harris
56. The Color of Magic, Terry Pratchett
57. Olive Kitteridge, Elizabeth Strout

News from the Joss-verse

In the mood for some fantastic, hot-off-the-presses news? The Syfy channel has cast Felicia Day to star in a re-telling/re-imagining of Little Red Riding Hood called Red. The bad news? We have to wait until 2011 to watch it.

To Be Read

I usually post about the books I've already read, but I have such a back log of unread books on my shelf, I'm going to post about the books I want to read during the remainder of the year. There is no rhyme, reason or theme to these books other than they have been sitting on my shelf unread for months or even years. Books 1-6 were borrowed from friends, and as such will be the first I tackle. I'll update this post as I make my way through the list. Forty-one books in ten months...Should be do-able!

1. A Widow for One Year, John Irving
2. The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, Stieg Larsson
   
3. What She Saw, Lucinda Rosenfeld
4. Capote: A Biography, Gerald Clarke
5. Veronica, Nicholas Christopher
6. Mountains Beyond Mountains: The Quest of Dr. Paul Farmer, a Man Who Would Cure the World, Tracy Kidder
7. Zeitoun, Dave Eggers
8. Peter and the Sword of Mercy, Dave Barry
9. The God of Animals, Aryn Kyle
10. Day After Night, Anita Diamant
11. The Nazi Officer's Wife, Edith Beer
12. Me Talk Pretty One Day, David Sedaris
13. Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books, Azar Nafisi
14. A Million Little Pieces, James Frey
15. The Orchid Thief: A True Story of Beauty and Obsession, Susan Orlean
16. A Spot of Bother, Mark Haddon
17. Animal Farm, George Orwell
18. Ethan Frome, Edith Wharton
    
19. Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand
20. A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens
21. Just So Stories, Rudyard Kipling
22. The Castle, Franz Kafka
23. Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy
24. Slaughterhouse Five, Kurt Vonnegut
25. Anne of Ingelside, L. M. Montgomery
26. Rainbow Valley, L. M. Montgomery
27. Rilla of Ingleside, L. M. Montgomery
28. She's Come Undone, Wally Lamb
29. A Wizard of Earthsea, Ursula K. Le Guin
30. The Tombs of Atuan, Ursula K. Le Guin
31. The Farthest Shore, Ursula K. Le Guin
32. Tehanu, Ursula K. Le Guin
33. Underworld, Don DeLillo
34. Last Chance to See, Douglas Adams
35. The White Tiger, Aravind Adiga
36. Arkansas, John Brandon
37. Fever Chart, Bill Cotter
38. The Wild Things, Dave Eggers
39. Winter Wood, Steve Augarde
40. The Shipping News, E. Annie Proulx
41. The Secret Life of Bees, Sue Monk Kidd

Judging a book by its cover II

I'm not generally a fan of merchandise tie-ins to movies or television series, but I am going to make an exception for a book published by Hyperion in 2009, Heat Wave by Richard Castle. Richard Castle is a fictional bestselling mystery writer in the eponymous ABC show Castle. The show is fantastic. Richard Castle is played by Joss Whedon alumnus Nathan Fillion of Firefly and Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog fame. This would likely be enough to endear me to Castle, but the writing is funny and clever, and it's a real pleasure being entertained by Fillion
for an hour each week.

Back to the book. I'm sure it is not the first of its kind, but it really tickled me to be able to hold the book published in the television series in my hands. The details are perfect, from the back cover picture of Fillion and the mini-biography on the back flap, to the dedication. It all just makes me happy.

I haven't gotten around to reading it yet and honestly am not expecting great things. For me, the actual substance of the book doesn't matter much since the execution of the idea is just so much fun.

In which I display my geekiness

I present Figure 1, an homage to my geeky tendencies, where I plot data on the books I've read since I started keeping track four years ago. This is actually two plots, the first of which is a bar graph showing the total number of books read by year, and the second a line graph showing the percentage of those books that were written for adults.

Figure 1. The books I've read.

The first thing you will notice is that there is a sharp drop-off in books read from 2007 to 2008. This is easily explained if you know that I met my husband in the first half of 2008, and I suddenly found myself happily distracted. The second is that a very large percentage (>=60%) of the books I have been reading these past four years were not written for adults, but rather teens, young adults and middle readers.

Now there is nothing wrong with this; I count a number of those books among my favorite of all time. However, for the past couple of months I've found myself wanting to reverse this trend and get caught up again in the world of adult literature. I feel there are a great number of fantastic books I've missed out on along the way. So, if you wouldn't mind, please help me by leaving a comment on your favorite books that have been published since 2006 (OK, they can be books published before 2006 as well. Go crazy!).

Books I've read: 2009

Books in bold are ones I've especially liked:

1. Anansi Boys, Neil Gaiman
2. Owl in Love, Patrice Kindl
3. Lock and Key, Sarah Dessen
4. The Two Princesses of Bamarre, Gail Carson Levine
5. Vegan Virgin Valentine, Carolyn Mackler
6. The Singing, Alison Croggon
7. Inferno, Robin Stevenson
   
8. Special Topics in Calamity Physics, Marisha Pessl
9. City of Glass, Cassandra Clare
10. The Last Days, Scott Westerfeld
11. Guyaholic, Carolyn Mackler
12. Alanna, Tamora Pierce
13. In the Hand of the Goddess, Tamora Pierce
14. The Woman Who Rides Like a Man, Tamora Pierce
15. Lioness Rampant, Tamora Pierce
16. Trickster's Choice, Tamora Pierce
17. Trickster's Queen, Tamora Pierce
18. The Last Olympian (Percy Jackson and the Olympians), Rick Riordan
19. Impossible, Nancy Werlin
20. Brisingr, Christopher Paolini
21. The Sorceress (The Secrets of Nicholas Flamel: Book 3), Michael Scott
22. Revelations, Melissa de la Cruz
23. The Forest of Hands and Teeth, Carrie Ryan
24. Watchman, Alan Moore
25. The Arrival, Shaun Tan
26. Wintergirls, Laurie Halse Anderson
27. A Homemade Life, Molly Wizenberg
28. Pretty Monsters, Kelly Link
29. Good Girls, Laura Ruby
30. Queste (Septimus Heap, Book 4), Angie Sage
31. Ender's Game, Orson Scott Card
32. The Knife of Never Letting Go, Patrick Ness
33. The Secret of Lost Things, Sheridan Hay
34. Kiki Strike: The Empress's Tomb, Kirsten Miller
35. Along for the Ride, Sarah Dessen
36. Heroes of the Valley, Jonathan Stroud
37. Catching Fire, Suzanne Collins
38. People of the Book, Geraldine Brooks
39. Light on Snow, Anita Shreve
40. Three Junes, Julia Glass
41. Nation, Terry Pratchett
42. Secrets of My Hollywood Life: On Location, Jen Calonita
43. The Lost Symbol, Dan Brown
44. Commencement, J. Courtney Sullivan
    
45. Secrets of My Hollywood Life: Family Affairs, Jen Calonita
46. Secrets of My Hollywood Life: Paparazzi Princess, Jen Calonita
47. The Boy Book, E. Lockhart
48. The Treasure Map of Boys, E. Lockhart
49. The Van Alen Legacy, Melissa de la Cruz
50. Don't Judge a Girl by Her Cover, Ally Carter
51. Liar, Justine Larbalestier
52. Forest Born, Shannon Hale
53. Interworld, Neil Gaiman
54. Fire, Kristin Cashore
55. Vendetta, Chris Humphreys
56. The Ask and the Answer (Chaos Walking, Book 2), Patrick Ness
57. Front and Center, Catherine Murdock
    
58. Sacred Scars (A Resurrection of Magic, Book 2), Kathleen Duey
59. The Overlord Protocol (H.I.V.E.), Mark Walden
    

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