by Sharlene

The 2012 round-up post

Ok so January has been upon us for quite a few days now. But I have an excuse! A week-long roadtrip to Southern California with the family! A great time was had by all – more on that in another post. Meanwhile I’ve been catching up on everyone’s year-end round up posts, and figure that it’s time for my own.

It was a year of discovering new-to-me authors, borrowing heaps of library books and reading a fair amount of translated books.

Total books read: 227 (not counting 7 books I started but did not finish) 2011’s total: 171 

Woah… was not expecting that!

Fiction/literature (by which I mean general literature that doesn’t fit into the more specific genres below): 64 (28.2%) 2011: oddly, it wasn’t on my 2011 round-up post, although of course I had read fiction!
Non-Fiction: 42 (18.5%) 2011: 25 (14.62%)
Comics/Graphic Novels: 36 (15.9%) 2011: 25 (14.62%)
Science fiction/fantasy: 32 (14.1%) 2011: 17 (9.94%)
Mystery/crime: 17 (7.5%) 2011: 9 (5.26%)
Classics: 15 (6.6%) 2011: didn’t count
Young adult/children’s: 11 (4.8%) 2011: 18 (10.53%)
Short story collections: 7 (3.1%) 2011: didn’t count
Poetry: 2 (0.9%) 2011: 1 (0.58%)


 Genre

By Women: 114 (50.2%)  2011: 82 (47.95%)
By Men: 102 (44.9%) 2011: 79 (46.2%)
By Men and Women: 11 (4.8%) 2011: 9 (5.26%)

gender

Longest book: The Forsyte Saga at 912 pages
2011: Vanity Fair at 912 pages

Shortest book: Angel and Faith Volume 1: live Through This at 32 pages
2011: The Night Bookmobile at 40 pages (page numbers taken from Goodreads)

New-to-me authors: 135 (59.5%) 2011: didn’t count

E-books: 65 (28.6%)  2011: 62 (36.26%) 
Library books: 190 (83.7%) 2011: 127 (74.23%) (includes Overdrive e-books)

So fewer e-books (odd considering that 2012 is when I acquired my first e-reader!) and more library books!

Translated books: 39 (17.2%) 2011: didn’t count
Languages translated from: Arabic, Chinese, Dutch, French, German, Hebrew, Hungarian, Icelandic, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Norwegian, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Swedish

Countries I visited: The Arctic, Brazil, Burma, Cambodia, Canada, China, Colombia, Congo, France, Germany, Greece, Greenland, Hungary, Iceland, Indonesia, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Kenya, Laos, Malaysia, Mauritius, Mexico, Nepal, Nigeria, Norway, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Scandinavia, Scotland, Singapore, South Africa, Surinam, The Netherlands, UK, US, Vietnam, and made-up realms and the future.

I’ve been thinking about what my favourite reads of the year were. And boy, is that a difficult task! Because there were so many amazing reads. Of course there were also plenty of DidNotFinish-es and books that were more meh than anything else. So I went down my list of books read in 2012 and just plucked out all those books that stood out. Books that made me cry, made me laugh, made me just so happy to be a reader.

Best fantasy reads
The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms (The Inheritance Trilogy #1) – N.K. Jermisin
China Mountain Zhang – Maureen McHugh

Best graphic novel series
Locke and Key – Joe Hill, Gabriel Rodriguez
The Color series – Kim Dong Hwa

Best translated reads
Out – Natsuo Kirino
To the end of the land – David Grossman
Girl from the Coast (Gadis Pantai) – Pramoedya Ananta Toer

Best short story collection
Married Love: and other stories – Tessa Hadley

For making me think of home
The garden of evening mists – Tan Twan Eng

Starting out right: series to continue reading
The Giver series – Lois Lowry
The Dreamblood series – N.K. Jemisin
The Dr Siri Paiboun series – Colin Cotterill

Because everyone should read something by Sara Wheeler
Too close to the sun: The Audacious life and Times of Denys Finch Hatton – Sara Wheeler

A foodie read: for its intriguing insight into the restaurant business (hidden cameras!)
The Fourth Star: Dispatches from inside Daniel Boulud’s Celebrated Restaurant  – Leslie Brenner

Here’s to many more fantastic reads in 2013! Happy new year!

11 Comments

  1. I really love the idea of doing this sort of chart to review your year in terms of books. and WOW, 227 books in one year. That’s incredible. I completey agree with the quote you have at the top of your blog about paradise being a library. I’ve always fantasized about having a library that looks like Belle’s from “Beauty and the Beast.” I’m glad I found your blog, I will be following along.

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    1. Hi Christine, thanks for stopping by and for following! It was pretty fun looking back at my year in reading and calculating all those statistics. Of course reading isn’t about the numbers, but I like to see where the gaps in my reading are, like trying to read more translated works and more non-fiction.

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  3. 227 books read is awesome, awesome, awesome! Even if I were to read 24 x 7 I don’t think I’ll ever achieve that figure!
    The garden of evening mists – Tan Twan Eng reminds me of home too. Maybe it’s not good. I’m feeling extremely homesick now. 🙂 Happy new year!

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    1. It’s the holiday season isn’t’ it? That’s how it is for me! It helps that my in-laws are here but I keep thinking of those Christmas parties we used to have when I was a kid, my cousins, aunties and uncles and grandparents. I think it might be worse for me when the Lunar New Year celebrations come around!

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      1. I was about to say, while your wee one is still small, do go home during CNY and Christmas… because once they start school, like mine, there is no chance I’ll ever do that until they grow up and leave school 10 years from now! 😦

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      2. I wish we could, but it’s my husband’s busy season at work, and too long a flight to do solo with an under-two! At any rate, definitely not this year (and likely not the next) as I’m expecting kid No. 2 in May!

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