my challenges

Sunday, January 6, 2013

2012 Year End Round-Up

My apologies for my long absence from posting on this blog.  Unfortunately that's what happens when you have bronchitis, followed directly by pnumonia, followed by a two-week visit from the in-laws, followed by a sinus infection, followed by your boss' retirement and the holiday season.  But I am back now and will be more diligent in posting.  And I assure you the absence was merely from posting, not from reading!!!!  So how'd I do this year?  62 books.  Not all of them have reviews on here, but many do, and I will endeavor to post reviews for the remainder, either full or mini-reviews, over the next couple of days.  So what did I read this year?

1. The Man in the Rockefeller Suit - Mark Seal (non-fiction)
2. Watching the Door: Drinking Up, Getting Down, and Cheating Death in 1970s Belfast – Kevin Myers (non-fiction)
3. Quest for Justice: Defending the Damned – Richard S. Jaffe (non-fiction)
4. Blackberry Winter – Sarah Jio
5. Haunted Places – Hans Holzer (non-fiction)
6. Ironfire – David Ball
7. At Midnight in a Flaming Town – Lorraine Bateman and Paul Cole
8. Riding with Reindeer: A Bicycle Odyssey through Finland, Lapland, and Arctic Norway – Robert M. Goldstein (non-fiction)
9. Swiss Watching – Diccon Bewes (non-fiction)
10. The Hemingway Book Club of Kosovo – Paula Huntley (non-fiction)
11. The Queen’s Soprano – Carol Dines
12. In Search of the Elusive Peace Corps Moment: Destination Estonia – Douglass Wells (non-fiction)
13. White Truffles in Winter – N.M. Kelby
14. Codex 632 – Jose Rodrigues Dos Santos
15. The Search for God and Guinness – Stephen Mansfield (non-fiction)
16. Bullets on the Water – Ivaylo Grouev (non-fiction)
17. The Pieces from Berlin – Michael Pye
18. Small Wars – Sadie Jones
19. Apples are from Kazakhstan – Christopher Robbins (non-fiction)
20. The Bielski Brothers – Peter Duffy (non-fiction)
21. The Journey Home – Olaf Olaffson
22. Lost Wife – Alyson Richman
23. Daughters of War – Hillary Green
24. Wildflowers of Terezin – Robert Elmer
25. The Flower Reader – Elizabeth Loupas
26. Katarina – Kathryn Winter
27. Postcards from No Man’s Land – Aidan Chambers
28. Pope Joan – Donna Cross
29. Confessions of Catherine de Medici – C.W. Gortner
30. Between Shades of Gray – Ruth Sepetys
31. Under a Red Sky – Haya Leah Molnar (non-fiction)
32. The Hidden Diary of Marie Antoinette – Carolly Erickson
33. When Christ and his Saints Slept – Sharon Kay Penman
34. Alice I Have Been – Melanie Benjamin
35. Madame Tussaud – Michelle Moran
36. Forgotten Fire – Adam Bagdasarian (non-fiction)
37. The Lost Crown – Sarah Miller
38. Once & Then – Morris Gleitzman
39. Reign of Madness – Lynn Cullen
40. The Cellist of Sarajevo – Steven Galloway
41. Band of Angels – Julia Gregson
42. Vienna Prelude – Bodie & Brock Thoene
43. The Italian Woman – Jean Plaidy
44. Off Balance – Dominique Moceanu (non-fiction)
45. The Unthinkable: Who Survives When Disaster Strikes and Why – Amanda Ripley (non-fiction)
46. Below Stairs – Margaret Powell (non-fiction)
47. The Children’s Blizzard – David Laskin (non-fiction)
48. It’s So Easy – Duff McKagen (non-fiction)
49. Triangle: The Fire That Changed America – Dave Von Drehle (non-fiction)
50. The Last Train from Hiroshima: The Survivors Look Back – Charles Pellegrino (non-fiction)
51. Heart of a Champion: The Dominique Dawes Story – Kim Washburn (non-fiction)
52. After the Fog – Kathleen Shoop
53. Echoes of Distant Thunder – Frank Slaughter
54. How Angels Die – David-Michael Harding
55. Tales from Michigan Stadium – Jim Brandstatter (non-fiction)
56. The Wolverines : A Story of Michigan Football – Will Perry (non-fiction)
57. Image in the Looking Glass – Jacquelyn Cook
58. Yellow Crocus – Laila Ibrahim
59. The First Responders: The Untold Story of the New York City Police Department and September 11, 2001 – Anthea Appel (non-fiction)
60. Heads in Beds: A Reckless Memoir of Hotels, Hustles, and So-Called Hospitality – Jacob Tomsky (non-fiction)
61. Embracing the Elephant – Lori Hart Beninger
62. Merely Dee – Marian Manseau Chatham


If I have counted correctly, 38 of those books were read for the European
Reading Challenge.


36 books were fiction, 26 were non-fiction.  43 were books checked out of the local library, 5 were books I purchased, and the remaining 14 were ARCs.  Given that this is my first year as a blogger, and that my original goal for the year (before I started my blog) was 30 books, I think I did pretty well for myself!

So how did you do this year?

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