A Year in Books

As I posted previously, I now use LibraryThing to keep track of the books I read.

I read, by my count, 26 books this year...although I feel like I am missing a couple.

Here's the list:

Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
Bel Canto by Ann Patchett
The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
The Best American Short Stories edited by Stephen King
The Book Thief by Marcus Zusak
The Dark Tower (Books 1-7) by Stephen King
The Golden Notebook by Doris Lessing
The Lord of the Flies by William Golding (for the third time)
March by Geraldine Brooks
The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco
People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks
The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver
Rebecca by Daphne de Maurier
Snow by Orhan Pamuk
Stanger in the Forest: On Foot Across Borneo by Eric Hansen
Three Cups of Tea: One Man's Mission to Promote Peace, One School at a Time by Greg Mortensen
The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera
Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen
A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier by Ishmeal Beah
The Monsters of Templeton by Lauren Groff


I just started to list my favorites of the year and I realized I was going to copy half of the list. I really enjoyed almost all of the books I read this year.


If you haven't read it, you MUST read The Poisonwood Bible. It's haunting.

Bel Canto is a great tale, as is Water for Elephants.

The Golden Notebook was fabulous, as was The Name of the Rose. I loved Umberto Eco's style of writing and the historical aspect of the story.

I actually read more non-fiction than normal this year. Stranger in the Forest I read before we took our trip to Malaysia and I loved it. What a great tale of travel and immersion in another culture. I wish I was as brave as the author is when it comes to just letting it all go and living a totally different life. Three Cups of Tea was fascinating and made me realize how much more I could be doing to help change the world. Inspiring.


What did you read this year? What would you recommend?

Feel free to check out my library over at LibraryThing.com.

My New Favorite Thing

Earlier this year, Stephanie and I discussed books we had read in 2007.

As always when I talk about books with anyone, I started to feel guilty that I hadn't kept up better with books I have read.

I always tell myself I should keep track of the books I read, along with when I read them and what I felt about them. I even have more than one empty journal taking up space in my cluttered office for doing just that. The key word there is empty. Despite my best intentions, I never write anything in those stupid journals.

This year, I started to keep an Excel spreadsheet with the books I read and I even blogged about it in my very first post on this blog....until I found this.

This is my new best friend. It's called librarything and it rocks my world.

Seriously, it is awesome. I have archived most of the books that are on my overflowing bookshelf (although I haven't tackled any of the ones in the boxes in my closet) and I have lists for each year.

You can apply tags to the books that you enter that help you keep track in various ways. For example, I have "Books I read in 2007" and "Books I read in 2008" and "Books read more than once" tags. I also have a "Favorite" tag.

The other really nice thing is that you can see how many people have the same books that you do and you can peruse other people's libraries.

In other words, I am in love with LIbrarything. Check it out. And you can find my lists with my username: acardin11.

Happy perusing.

Here We Are...

I guess we'll join the craze. I don't know how interesting it will be, but at least all of you far away (which, let's face it, is everyone) can keep up with what we are getting ourselves into.

Like Stephanie, I thought I would post a list of the books I read in 2007.


· Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
· Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky
· House of God by Samuel Shem M.D.
· Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen
· Suite Francaise by Irene Nemirovsky
· Drowning Ruth by Christina Schwarz
· The World According to Garp by John Irving
· The Birth of Venus by Sarah Dunant
· Nine Parts of Desire: The Hidden World of Islamic Women by Geraldine Brooks
· A Wedding in December by Anita Shreve
· Lisey's Story by Stephen King
· I Knew a Woman by Cortney Davis
· Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J.K. Rowling
· Charming Billy by Alice McDermot
· 1408 Everything's Eventual by Stephen King
· House of Leaves by Mark Danieleski
· Local Girls by Alice Hoffman
· More than Enough by John Fulton
· Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert
· On the Beach by Nevil Shute
· A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
· Sisterhood is Powerful: An Anthology of Writings from the Women's Liberation Movement edited by Robin Morgan
· The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time by Mark Haddon
· Saving Fish from Drowning by Amy Tan

Standouts were Eat, Pray, Love, The World According to Garp, and Suite Francaise. (Click on the books if you want to see more...)

My first book of 2008: Anna Karenina, which I struggled to get through and finally finished a few days ago.

What did you read last year?