Something else I like to at the end of every year is make a
record of the books I read during the year. I've decided that 50 books
is a good goal for me to read in a year. The first year I worked at
Logos, I guess I read more than I do now because I read nearly 80 books that
year. Last year I read 56 books. I didn't make it to 50 this
year, but 43 is closer than last year (and if you combine the two
years....). It was a total of 11,788 pages, vs. 18,746 last year.
(Don't you love data bases?)
Of the books I read,
16 were "real" books -- 11 of those were read at Logos
16 were on the Kindle
11 were audio books
16 were on the Kindle
11 were audio books
A bit more evenly divided than last year. I am finding
that I prefer to read on the Kindle these days because my eyesight has
deteriorated this past year (eye appt. coming up in February) and I can
change the type size on the Kindle.
Breaking the 43 books into genres,
15 of those fit into the crime category, the bulk of those
(8 of them) by Harlan Coben. I finished Coben's Myron Bolitar series,
upset that we had seen the end of Myron and his friend Win, so in
desperation I read Coben's young adult series featuring Myron's nephew, then
some stand alone Coben books and finally, thrilled that Coben was bringing
Myron back, read his latest, "Home." It was a Harlen Coben kinda year,
guess.... and "Home" is, I think, my favorite of all he Coben books I read.
13 were non-fiction, including 4 autobiographies, and 2
books by Bill Bryson, which I guess are a combination of humor and travel.
There were 7 animal themed books, 3 about elephants, 2 about dogs, 1 about a
parrot and 1 about a guy who trains animals for Broadway. Two of the
non-fictions were collections of essays.
The scariest of the autobiographies was "We
wish to inform you that tomorrow we will be killed with our families," which
was an in-depth account of what happened during the Rwanda genocide in 1984,
written by a reporter who interviewed the survivors on both sides after
peace had settled in for awhile. I finally learned the difference
between the tutsis and hutus, and more than I ever wanted to know about who
did what to whom during the worst part of the slaughter.
The most fun, perhaps was a
toss up between the story of the guy who trained animals for Broadway, and
the story of a grey parrot named Alex. "After
his death, he was mourned all over the world, a full page obituary ran in
the (either the New Yorker or New York Times, I can't remember). He had
been called "the smartest bird in the world," but work with him just proved
that animals are thinking more than we may think they are."
An interesting, but strange sort
of book was "With a Feather on My Nose," which was actress Billie Burke's
autobiography, but not at all your typical Hollywood story. Anybody
hoping to gain some insights about filming The Wizard of Oz will be
disappointed that she gives it short shrift...but the book was written in
1949, before Oz became the cult classic that it is today.
Mostly she talks about her co-stars and her costumes, and especially husband
Flo Ziegfeld, very little about herself in Hollywood, though more about her
years performing on the stage in England.
And I loved the two elephant books, written by women who had
each spent years living with elephants and observing their behavior.
Elephant Memories: 13 Years in the Life of an
Elephant Family" by Cynthia J. Moss was my favorite. It seems strange
to think that a book like this is "dated" but she spent a bit of book on
poaching, but since the last edition of the book was 1999 and so much has
happened with laws about the exportation of ivory that it really isn't that
relevant any more
11 were fiction, including my
friend Alec Clayton's "Return to Freedom," which I've been meaning to read
for a long time. It's the second book in a trilogy and now I have to
find the other two.
"The Gravity of Birds" by Tracy
Guzeman was such a compelling read that I read it most of the night and
finished at 5:30 am. I later met Guzeman at a discussion with the book
club I was part of then. She was a delightful woman.
The most disappointing of the
books was "Brooklyn," which I'd wanted to read for a long time, but it
droned on and on and on. It I read it as an audio book or I probably
would not have finished it at all. Good potential plot boringly
written.
I even read a "chick lit" book,
"Finding Frasier," just because it was about a woman searching throughout
Scotland looking for her own Jamie Frasier (from the "Outlander" series).
It was as i expected ... chick lit that I was embarrassed to be reading.
Amazingly I only read two
dementia-themed books this year. I must have reached saturation with
information about books on dementia and Alzheimers.
In all the questions I answer on
here about books it is often asked how often I read and I always answer that
I read at least something every doy, but I actually have not read anything
for the past couple of weeks. Now that all the holiday hoop-la is
over, I am looking forward to getting back to the several books I was in the
middle of reading when it all started.
I spent the afternoon with a Hitchcock marathon and then I
cooked short ribs with my new Copper Chef cookware (thanks, Laurel and Tom!)
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