Wednesday, December 30, 2009

Reading Year In Review 2009

I read 56 books this year, but I have to admit that when my schedule got heavy, I read lighter fare to enable my “book-a-week” goal. I hope to get back to more literature in the new year. As I look over my list I see that the books that demanded more of me (Need I say they were mostly classics?) were the most rewarding. I apologize to my readers for reading fluff to make my weekly deadlines when one good book read over two or three weeks would have served us both better. I learned my lesson.

Best audio book: Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen, read by Elizabeth Klett

Favorite revisits: The Warden (reviewed here), Persuasion (reviewed here), and Peter Pan (reviewed here)

Classics that I enjoyed for the first time: Return of the Native, Frankenstein and Count of Monte Cristo

Best non-fiction: Elements of Style by Strunk and White, An Experiment in Criticism by C.S. Lewis

The WWII challenge was great, but only one of those books made my favorites list: We Band of Angels (reviewed here and here.)

Hands-down favorite book of 2009:That Distant Land (reviewed here.) Thank you, Carol, for the recommendation!

3 comments:

Anna said...

Thanks for the recommendations. I'm definitely going to have to check out We Band of Angels.

--Anna
Diary of an Eccentric

Vintage Reading said...

Only 56??!!! That's pretty good going. I never get beyond about 50 a year and not even as many as 50 this year. Rather too many weighty 500-pagers this year!

Janet said...

I see some familiar favorites here -- Austen and Trollope and Berry.

C.S. Lewis is a favorite as well, but I haven't read An Experiment in Criticism. Maybe this year. (I'd also like to read his A Grief Observed.)