December 2015:
- Ms. Marvel, Vol. 2: Generation Why, G. Willow Wilson with art by Adrian Alphona and Jacob Wyatt
- The Blue, Lucy Clarke
- The Girl With a Clock for a Heart, Peter Swanson
- The Thinking Woman’s Guide to Real Magic, Emily Croy Barker
- Eleanor & Park, Rainbow Rowell
- The Snowman, Jo Nesbo
- Wolf in White Van, John Darnielle
I read 43 books this year, up slightly from last year’s 38, an average rate of about 80% of a book each week.
Nine books got five-star reviews this year: The Snowman, Station Eleven (which I read twice this year), The Water Knife, The Secret Place, Americanah, Ms. Marvel Vol. 1: No Normal, Heartless, and Death Comes to Pemberly. Looking at this list, I’d recommend Station Eleven, The Water Knife, and Americanah to pretty much anyone. Compelling stories, all very well told. And all good choices for a book club – in fact, two of those were book club books this year.
This fall, Handsome replaced my nook with a Kindle Paperwhite, which I have very much enjoyed. The two readers are similar in terms of form factor; the Kindle has a little bit of lighting you can use, which has been helpful in a few situation. The main difference is that it’s way faster and easier to load library books – just a few clicks on my iPad through the library & Amazon, and it’s delivered to my Kindle wirelessly. No more struggling with Adobe’s Digital Editions for me! This also means that I can still download library ebooks while I’m traveling, a huge plus for me.
Now for some breakdowns:
- 38 ebooks
- 32 works of fiction
- 28 books by female authors (65%)
- 27 library ebooks, mostly from DCPL
- 8 nonfiction books
- 5 books for bookclubs
- 2 volumes of comics, plus one book about a comic strip
- 2 re-reads – Station Eleven, and a novel in the Harry Hole series I’d accidentally read out of order last year
- 2 books of short stories
Monthly breakdowns
- 7 books: December
- 6 books: October
- 5 books: November, May
- 4 books: April
- 3 books: June, February, January
- 2 books: September, August, July
- 1 book: March