Friday, January 1, 2010

My favorite reads of 2009

Happy New Year everyone! Hope you all had great celebrations - ours was quiet at home since I can't really do much, being as huge as a whale... :-) although we like spending our evenings at home these days anyway so it's not like we would have been out partying if I wasn't pregnant.

Here are my favorite books of the year, in no particular order. If you want to read my thoughts about them, all the links are on this page.

Fiction:
Life as We Knew It by Susan Beth Pfeffer
Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi
Out by Natsuo Kirino
The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton
The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows
Kindred by Octavia E. Butler
The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood
The Vanishing of Katharina Linden by Helen Grant
Garden Spells by Sarah Addison Allen
A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini
Her Fearful Symmetry by Audrey Niffenegger
American Born Chinese by Gene Luen Yang
Fables volume 1 - Legends in Exile by Bill Willingham
A Break With Charity by Ann Rinaldi

Non-Fiction:
The Good Women of China by Xinran
Night by Elie Wiesel
Waiting for Daisy by Peggy Orenstein
Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer

Special mention:
The Shopaholic series by Sophie Kinsella
The Southern Sisters mystery series by Anne George
The Undead series by MaryJanice Davidson
Anything Buffy-related :-)

I had a great reading year and for the first time ever actually got past the 100-book-mark.

Books read: 107
Audiobooks: 7
Graphic Novels: 8
New-to-me authors: 70
Non-Fiction: 13
Classics: 19

I completed 30 challenges and didn't finish 29. Hmm... that's interesting, half-half! I guess I can keep signing up for challenges, but I do want to put less pressure on myself this year, as I think that my reading time will be more limited with a newborn in the house! I'll be off to look at what I want to sign up for in the next few days, I'm sure.

Thanks blogging friends for a wonderful reading year and for making this community so special. Although I missed out on whole chunks of time this year due to life stuff, I'm still so very happy to have found all of you. I assure you that I'll be sticking around, even if my participation continues to be patchy.

All the best for 2010 - may all your dreams, big and small, come true!!!

9 comments:

Unknown said...

It is great to see Out on your list as it is one of my favourites too.

Have a great 2010!

Anonymous said...

Like you, I read Out and Handmaid's Tale this year, and loved both of them. Both were terrifying in their own right.

Congratulations on a great reading year. Hope 2010 supersedes it.

Anna said...

You had a great year! I liked Guernsey and The Handmaid's Tale, too.

Wishing you all the best in 2010!

--Anna
Diary of an Eccentric

Melody said...

You've a great reading year, Joanna! Let's hope this year will be even better for all of us! :)

Kailana said...

I am glad I am not the only person that had a hard time limiting my favourites to only a couple. :)

joanna said...

Jackie - yeah, that was a great one, glad you liked it too!

anothercookie - indeed, it's terrifying when you can actually imagine unimaginable things happen!

Anna - both are bound to be classics, I think!

Melody - indeed, always have to strive to achieve more! ;-)

Kailana - to be honest, I didn't even try! :-)

Emma (the Expat) said...

Hi there- I was just wondering, what's your review policy? (If it's up there and I missed it, my apologies!)

joanna said...

Chutzpah - I don't really have one, I just read a lot and post my thoughts, all very informal!

Iliana said...

Happy New Year (a bit late!) :)

Looks like you had a really good reading year. Here's wishing you lots of good reads this year too!