Summing Up 2008, A Year of Reading

2008 has ended up being just about my best year of reading, simply because of the sheer number of books I read and listened to:

Summary: 93 Total
Books Read: 73
Audio Books: 20
Total Pages Read: 25,882
Total Hours Audio’s Read: 222
Average Pages per Book: 355


I read some great books, and hit a few clunkers on the road. My Top Ten books of the year:

Love Walked In by Marisa De Los Santos
Belong to Me by Maria De Los Santos
The Birth of Venus by Sarah Dunant
In the Company of the Courtesan by Sarah Dunant
Blackbird by Jennifer Lauck
The Nature of Monsters by Clare Clark
The Meaning of Night: A Confession by Michael Cox
The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by M. Shaffer & A. Barrows
Billy Collins Live by Billy Collins
The Lincoln Lawyer by Michael Connelly

With the exception of Michael Connelly, who is a perennial favorite, each and every one of these is a new to me author, and that is always so exciting to find new authors to share journeys with. These author's cover a variety of genres- contemporary fiction, historical, fiction, memoir, mystery, legal thriller and - who would've guessed? - poetry. I reviewed each of the books, both here and at Shelfari, so please take a look and see if you might enjoy these books also.

Some of the not so great books I read this year:

The History of the Pink Carnation by Lauren Willig
The Quickie by James Patterson
What I Was by Meg Rosoff

The first two I found the writing sorely lacking. What I Was was plain boring.

The biggest disappointment of the year was Dream When You're Feeling Blue by Elizabeth Berg. An all time favorite author of mine this book felt like a paint by number story with one of the worst endings ever.

I signed up for a number of challenges this year and of the ones I mentioned early in the year I completed only one, the Ontheporchswing challenge. It isn't that I didn't want to complete the challenges, it's that I discovered Shelfari and ended up doing various challenges there, all of them changing every few months. I believe these constantly changing and entertaining challenges are what drove me reading to such heights. So if you'd like some fun and varied challenges check out these Shelfari Groups:

Play Book Tag
The Challenged Reader
Author, Author

For trying to reach a reading goal:

100+ Book Challenge
50 Book Challenge

Also Ontheporchswing at Yahoo Groups is running a new challenge for 2009:

On The Porch Swing Reading Challenge 2009

I also moderate a book group on Yahoo called:

Book A Week

The title is self explanatory. Please note we close membership at the end of February 2009, and only accept new members again starting in January 2010.

So now onto 2009!