2013 was an interesting year. It was a year of health scares and hospitals. A year we lost our last grandparent and gained a tiny new member of the family. A year my sisters all became friends again. A year we went Down Under and I went back to school. A year the government shut down for 2 weeks and I loved every minute of it.
I read 64 books this year and reviewed 50. You can see the full list here.
Of the books I reviewed this year:
Classics: 10, although occasionally I stretch the definition a bit. I struggled this year with Mansfield Park, Daniel Deronda, and On the Road but loved The Wind-Up Bird Chronicles and A Tree Grows in Brooklyn.
Nonfiction: I read only 3 nonfiction works: The World’s Strongest Librarian, Let’s Pretend This Never Happened, and What is the What. It’s 4 if I count On the Road because even though it’s technically a novel, it’s really about the life of Kerouac and his friends. For that matter, What is the What is classified as fiction too, but that’s mostly a technicality. Favorites: What is the What, Let’s Pretend This Never Happened
Historical Fiction: I’m counting 10 books I reviewed as historical fiction, including one set in the 50’s and one during the Vietnam War. Favorites: Life After Life, Rose Under Fire, How Angels Die, At Drake’s Command, The Beekeeper’s Apprentice
Science Fiction, Fantasy, or Dystopian: I read a lot in these categories, 16 books. I also don’t always know how to differentiate between the three. Favorites: Life After Life, Fortune’s Pawn, The Best of All Possible Worlds
Children or Young Adult: 8 (again, not always easy to classify). Favorites: Eleanor & Park, The Hero and the Crown
And for the truly geeky, here are a few more stats:
Books for Challenges: 26
New to Me Authors: 29 (a surprisingly high number this year)
NetGalleys or Author Requests: 14 (this was a great year for NetGalley and author requests! Thanks to authors S.R. Wilsher, David-Michael Harding, Michelle Granas, Katie O’Rourke, and David Wesley Hill for sharing their fantastic books with me.)
Books in Series: 10, which is low, but nearly all of the books I didn’t review were series books. I didn’t count Doctor Sleep or Huckleberry Finn as series books, even though they share characters with other books.
Debut Novels: 6
Published in 2013: 28 (also a surprisingly high number for me)
Followers: 332 email, WordPress and Twitter followers (thank you thank you!)
If you’re interested, here’s how most of these stats compared to last year. Surprising to me, the numbers are nearly identical.
Up next in the Countdown: Best Books of 2013
