I read or listened to 39 books in 2012. What will 2013 bring? The format I used last year was a table which turned out to be very difficult to add to. This year, I will be using a free-form format and counting along the way. I've created a template to use to keep track.
Number. Name of Book
Author:
Read or Listened?
Fiction or NonFiction?
Description and comments:
=======================================================
1. Girl Gone
Author: Gillian FlynnListened
Fiction
Description and comments:
A woman is missing and it looks like her husband is to blame. The story is told both by the husband and wife. Unfortunately, neither one is a very good person. It's a mystery, but there are too many obvious holes and the ending is deeply unsatisfying.
=======================================================
2. Cigarette Girl
Author: Carol Wolper
Read (iBook)
Fiction
Description and comments:
A 20-something screenwriter in Los Angeles and her life around her work and the business. The main character comes off smart and examples of her screenwriting are through the book. It was light, too much love and sex but satisfying.
========================================================
3. Eat and Run: My Unlikely Journey to Ultramarathon Greatness
Author: Scott Jurek and Steve Friedman
Read or Listened? Listened
Fiction or NonFiction? Nonfiction
Description and comments:
Scott Jurek is a champion ultra-runner and a vegan. Many people have said that he could not run long distances on plant material alone, but he proved them wrong. The book is interesting, but there is very little about his marriage. He always seems to be running with his male friends. It's not even clear if his wife even runs or goes to any races with him. This makes sense in the middle of the book when his wife divorces him. His relationship with his father never seems to develop either. He was kicked out of the house in college and it seems like he never reconnected with his father. In the audio version, the reader reads the recipes in the book which is REALLY BORING.
============================================================
4. The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl
Author: Timothy Egan
Read or Listened? Listened
Fiction or NonFiction? Nonfiction
Description and comments:
A history of the region of the country now known as the Dust Bowl and how the people survived years of drought and no crops in the Oklahoma-Texas-Colorado area during the Depression. I would recommend it.
========================================================
5. Fall of Giants: Book One of the Century Trilogy
Author: Ken FollettRead or Listened? Read
Fiction or NonFiction? Fiction
Description and comments:
Very long book about the early 1900s and World War I in Russia, England and the United States. All the characters interact in the book. With a book with so many characters, there are some that just seem to get focus and then disappear. I learned things about that era in Russia and the Bolshevik revolution and woman's suffrage in England. I probably won't read the next one very soon.
========================================================
6. More than You Know
Author: Penny VincenziRead or Listened? Listened
Fiction or NonFiction? Fiction
Description and comments:
The book starts in 1958 with the main character a headstrong girl who becomes a "career girl" before marrying and starting a family with a man who is opposed to women working outside the home which she acquiesces to until she doesn't. There are side stories of other woman, other career girls, an Italian countess and the main character's brother. The main story just seemed to be a lot of miscommunication and noncommunicable between the characters until they divorced.
========================================================
7. The Tie that Binds
Author: Kent HarufRead or Listened? Read
Fiction or NonFiction? Fiction
Description and comments:
An extremely dysfunctional two generation family in the Colorado plains farm town of Holt. I like Kent Haruf because his characters are often kind and against stereotype. This book was just mean and bitter.
========================================================
8. Maybe This Time
Read or Listened? Listened
Fiction or NonFiction? Fiction
Description and comments: A beach read. Predictable, but some parts of the story is unexpected. Good and diverse characters. This is the second book by this author that I have read this year.
========================================================
9. Without Reservations
Author: Alice Steinbach
Read or Listened? Read
Fiction or NonFiction? NonFiction - travel memoir
Description and comments:
A 50ish woman and reporter takes a sabbatical and goes to Europe by herself. She goes to Paris, London, Italy and meets people along the way. Its a really good book about travelling by ones self and how to enjoy being with people.
========================================================
10. The Casual Vacancy
Author: JK RowleyRead or Listened? Listened
Fiction or NonFiction? Fiction
Description and comments:
The lives of a small English town and various people in it after a citizen died and left a "casual vacancy" on the parish council.
========================================================
Read or Listened? Listened
Fiction or NonFiction? Fiction
========================================================
11. 14
Author: Peter Clines Read or Listened? Listened
Fiction or NonFiction? Fiction
Description and comments:
A man moves into a cheap LA apartment building, starts meeting the neighbors, and notices some strange things going on in the building. It was good and light with fun characters and unexpected twists.
========================================================
Read or Listened? Listened
Fiction or NonFiction? Fiction
========================================================
Read or Listened? Listened
Fiction or NonFiction? Fiction
========================================================
Read or Listened? Listened
Fiction or NonFiction? Fiction
========================================================
Read or Listened? Listened
Fiction or NonFiction? Fiction
========================================================
Read or Listened? Read
Fiction or NonFiction? Fiction
========================================================
Read or Listened? Listened
Fiction or NonFiction? Fiction
========================================================
Read or Listened? Read
Fiction or NonFiction? Fiction
========================================================
Read or Listened? Listened
Fiction or NonFiction? nonfiction
========================================================
Read or Listened? Listened
Fiction or NonFiction? Fiction
========================================================
Read or Listened? Listened
Fiction or NonFiction? Non-fiction, memoir
========================================================
Read or Listened? Listened
Fiction or NonFiction? Fiction
========================================================
Read or Listened? Listened
Fiction or NonFiction? Nonfiction
========================================================
24. Justice Hall
Author: Laurie R. King
Read or Listened? Read
Fiction or NonFiction? Fiction
========================================================
25. S is For Silence
Author: Sue Grafton
Read or Listened? Read
Fiction or NonFiction? Fiction
========================================================
26. Night Work
Author: Laurie R. King
Read or Listened? Read
Fiction or NonFiction? Fiction
========================================================
27. Lit
Author: Mary Karr
Read or Listened? Read
Fiction or NonFiction? Memoir
========================================================
28. The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets Nest
Author: Stieg Larsson
Read or Listened? : Listened
Fiction or NonFiction? Fiction
========================================================
29. Code Name Verity
Author: Elizabeth Wein
Read or Listened? : Listened
Fiction or NonFiction? Fiction
========================================================
30. Where'd you Go Bernadette ?
Author: Maria Semple
Read or Listened? : Read
Fiction or NonFiction? Fiction
========================================================
31. Snow White Must Die
Author: Nele Neuhaus
Read or Listened? Listened
Fiction or NonFiction? Fiction
========================================================
33. The Light Between Oceans
Author: M.L. Stedman
Read or Listened? Listened
Fiction or NonFiction? Fiction
Description and comments:
Australian book set after World War I. A war vet gets a job as a lighthouse keeper on a desolate island off Australia. He marries, but his wife is unable to have children. A boat washes up one day with a dead man and a small baby.
========================================================
12. Orphan Train
Author: Christina Baker Kline Read or Listened? Listened
Fiction or NonFiction? Fiction
Description and comments:
Dual stories about a modern-day girl in the foster care system and an Irish girl who was put on the orphan trains from New York City to be adopted in the midwest. Some predictableness, but it was good historical fiction.========================================================
13. Calculated in Death
Author: J.D. RobbRead or Listened? Listened
Fiction or NonFiction? Fiction
Description and comments:
Futuristic detective story. Very light and easy to listen to. A perfect light novel. I believe this book was the middle of the series.========================================================
14. Star Island
Author: Carl Hiassen Read or Listened? Listened
Fiction or NonFiction? Fiction
Description and comments:
A drugged-out pop singer in Florida with her enabling entourage including a double that gets kidnapped by a paparazzo. Hiassen's great odd ball characters, but they were a little too over the top in this novel.========================================================
15. NOS 4A2
Author: Joe HillRead or Listened? Listened
Fiction or NonFiction? Fiction
Description and comments:
A haunted bridge, a haunted car, missing children and a girl/woman who can find things. Very dark and ugly. I don't think I would recommend this book. ========================================================
16. The Red Tent
Author: Anita Diamant Read or Listened? Read
Fiction or NonFiction? Fiction
Description and comments:
Fictional story of biblical story of Dinah, daughter of Jacob. It took me so long to read that I just didn't get into it.========================================================
17. The Winter Sea
Author: Susanna Kearsley Read or Listened? Listened
Fiction or NonFiction? Fiction
Description and comments:
A woman who writes historical fiction goes to her ancestral Scottish lands and finds that instead of fiction, she has the memories of her ancestor. This is two books in one. Good history, but overall kind of a boring book.========================================================
18. The Painted Veil
Author: W. Somerset MaughamRead or Listened? Read
Fiction or NonFiction? Fiction
Description and comments:
Short, but really well written. It was never quite clear where the book was headed even at the very end. Its been a few years since I have read Somerset Maugham, but I will have to read more.
Short, but really well written. It was never quite clear where the book was headed even at the very end. Its been a few years since I have read Somerset Maugham, but I will have to read more.
========================================================
19. American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer
Author: Kai Bird, Martin J. SherwinRead or Listened? Listened
Fiction or NonFiction? nonfiction
Description and comments:
Probably a little long, but it was amazing how Oppenheimer grew up and evolved over time. The number of famous people he encountered was incredible. Lots of sadness and drama in his life caused by Hoover and others during the red scare. ========================================================
20. How to Bake a Perfect Life
Author: Barbara O'NealRead or Listened? Listened
Fiction or NonFiction? Fiction
Description and comments:
Really light book about a woman who owns a bakery, her pregnant daughter, her daughter's stepdaughter and her family. The woman bakes bread so there are sides about how to make bread and how making bread is therapeutic. The characters were all too nice and kind of one-dimensional. It was very predictable. I liked it as a light read, but I wouldn't recommend it. ========================================================
21. The Glass Castle
Author: Jeanette Wells Read or Listened? Listened
Fiction or NonFiction? Non-fiction, memoir
Description and comments:
Very powerful book about a girl growing up with two self-centered parents who couldn't seem to be bothered to earn money and put food on the table. She had to go through garbage cans to get food to eat. She and her siblings got out as soon as they could, but their parents followed them. Her mother, especially, seemed all about being an artist that couldn't see that her children were starving and she could do something about it. ========================================================
22. The Book Thief
Author: Markus Zusak Read or Listened? Listened
Fiction or NonFiction? Fiction
Description and comments:
A book narrated by the devil set in Germany during World War II. I think it is a "young adult" novel, but it reads well. Descriptions are beautiful. The reader really makes it. A girl is left by her mother in the care of foster parents just before the war starts. And these are coarse, but good-hearted foster parents who genuinely love her and take care of her.========================================================
23. Strength in What Remains
Author: Tracy Kidder Read or Listened? Listened
Fiction or NonFiction? Nonfiction
Description and comments:
A book about an African, Burundi immigrant to New York City and how he meets people, makes a life and finishes college and medical school. The book goes into the civil war and the history of Burundi and the differences between Tutsi and Hutu clans.========================================================
24. Justice Hall
Author: Laurie R. King
Read or Listened? Read
Fiction or NonFiction? Fiction
Description and comments:
Sherlock Holmes and his wife investigate a very wealthy family and who should inherit the estate. Also involved is a court-martial and execution in World War I.========================================================
25. S is For Silence
Author: Sue Grafton
Read or Listened? Read
Fiction or NonFiction? Fiction
Description and comments:
Good and light mystery novel. Time shifted back and forth on a cold case.========================================================
26. Night Work
Author: Laurie R. King
Read or Listened? Read
Fiction or NonFiction? Fiction
Description and comments:
Lesbian mystery novel set in modern-day San Francisco. There are sub-pieces about a biblical play and a feminist godess thesis that I just had to skip over. By the end there were so many characters I had trouble keeping track of them all. ========================================================
27. Lit
Author: Mary Karr
Read or Listened? Read
Fiction or NonFiction? Memoir
Description and comments:
Her third memoir. This one is the account of her as an adult getting married, having a child and a really big drinking problem. She stops drinking, begins AA as her lifestyle and converts to Catholicism. And she makes a lot of money with her first book. Her husband really seemed to be out of the picture during most of the marriage. Was she protecting him or was their marriage that poor? The book made me mad, but also hit some personal notes along the way as well.========================================================
28. The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets Nest
Author: Stieg Larsson
Read or Listened? : Listened
Fiction or NonFiction? Fiction
Description and comments:
Third in the "Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" series. Its been a while since I listened to the last one and it was difficult remembering the characters. This one had a whole bunch of new characters too. It was good and had good twists and turns and the courtroom scenes were very good.========================================================
29. Code Name Verity
Author: Elizabeth Wein
Read or Listened? : Listened
Fiction or NonFiction? Fiction
Description and comments: Two girls in their 20's in England during World War II. One is a pilot, the other a spy. They meet, become best friends and one is captured and tortured in France. The story is told from both points of view. It may be "young adult", but it is a good novel about women making it on their own terms.
========================================================
30. Where'd you Go Bernadette ?
Author: Maria Semple
Read or Listened? : Read
Fiction or NonFiction? Fiction
Description and comments:
A woman who we later learn was a genius architect goes a little crazy raising a child in Seattle while her husband is a Microsoft genius. She escapes on a cruise to Antarctica. The story is told through emails and from the point of view of the 15-year-old daughter. Very quick read, but interesting plot twists. ========================================================
31. Snow White Must Die
Author: Nele Neuhaus
Read or Listened? Listened
Fiction or NonFiction? Fiction
Description and comments:
Set in a German town (book was translated) after a man who was convicted of murder 10 years before gets out of prison. The whole town is turned upside down. Secrets come out. There are many characters and you learn the life story of many of them. It gets confusing at first, but at the end is very satisfying.
========================================================
32. Vertical Burn
Author: Earl Emerson
Read or Listened? Read
Fiction or NonFiction? Fiction
Description and comments:
A good firefighter seems to have bad luck and two partners die. This is definitely a mans book. It was good light reading, but I am not sure I will read another by this author soon. Set in a German town (book was translated) after a man who was convicted of murder 10 years before gets out of prison. The whole town is turned upside down. Secrets come out. There are many characters and you learn the life story of many of them. It gets confusing at first, but at the end is very satisfying.
========================================================
32. Vertical Burn
Author: Earl Emerson
Read or Listened? Read
Fiction or NonFiction? Fiction
Description and comments:
========================================================
33. The Light Between Oceans
Author: M.L. Stedman
Read or Listened? Listened
Fiction or NonFiction? Fiction
Description and comments:
Australian book set after World War I. A war vet gets a job as a lighthouse keeper on a desolate island off Australia. He marries, but his wife is unable to have children. A boat washes up one day with a dead man and a small baby.
No comments:
Post a Comment