I had dedicated this year to re-reading, but I decided not to record all the things I was going through for the second time, which may have been a mistake because I’m not sure that I remember them all. I know I re-read the Harry Potter series and the Dark Tower series. I also re-read The Blind Assassin, Bag of Bones, and Watchmen, which were all just as good the second time around. Bag of Bones actually may have been better. I feel like there are a couple that I’m missing, which isn’t a terribly big deal. There were also a couple I thought about re-reading, but eventually the weight of the books I wasn’t getting to became too pressing.
So here are the books I read for the first time this year:
| Stieg Larsson | The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo |
| Robert Ferrigno | Prayers for the Assassin |
| Howard Jacobson | The Finkler Question |
| David Cristofano | The Girl She Used to Be |
| John Hart | The Last Child |
| Stieg Larsson | The Girl Who Played with Fire |
| Stephen King | Full Dark, No Stars |
| Stieg Larsson | The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest |
| Steven Levy | In the Plex |
| Peter Sheahan | Flip |
| Peter Sheahan | Making It Happen |
| Robert Lewis | Raising a Modern-Day Knight |
| Dan Brown | The Lost Symbol |
| Harlan Coben | Live Wire |
| Suzanne Collins | The Hunger Games |
| Courtney E. Smith | Record Collecting for Girls |
| Ian McEwan | Solar |
| Graham Swift | In the Light of Day |
| Ransom Riggs | Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children |
| David Brooks | The Social Animal |
| S.J. Watson | Before I Go to Sleep |
| Patrick deWitt | The Sisters Brothers |
| Suzanne Collins | Catching Fire |
| Julian Barnes | The Sense of an Ending |
I’m getting more in the habit of writing reviews on goodreads than recording them here, but there are a few things I notice when reading through the list. I finally got caught up to speed on two popular series – the Millenium and Hunger Games trilogies. I can see why they are so popular – I enjoyed them both quite a bit (even if I wasn’t quite able to finish Gabe’s Hunger Games books and will now have to resort to placing another hold at our library).
I’m a little surprised at the variety on the list. I would have guessed that I leaned a little towards quick reads throughout the year, but I have some non-fiction (though none that I was particularly fond of) and some more serious books on here. As far as favorites, things really picked up at the end of the year. I enjoyed The Light of Day, my favorite book of the year (and maybe the past couple years) was Before I Go to Sleep, and The Sense of an Ending was also very solid.
Even though I obviously didn’t stick exclusively to re-reading this year, I still have a feeling of being behind on things. If I stopped to think about it, I could probably come up with 10 books that I would love to get to next year, and that’s without spending any time digging around for some things that are off my radar screen. With Kate’s swim schedule, there’s a decent amount of time fo reading, so I expect I’ll have another decent list to talk about next year.
