"And to do that, you have to let yourself get hooked."

Beginning in April 2007, I started keeping a list of all the books I'd read the previous year. You can find links to previous years at the bottom of this entry. Without further ado, welcome to 2012-2013, the Year of David Mitchell (or: 26 Books, 17 Authors).

Books
1) Affinity by Sarah Waters
2) The Inner Voice of Love by Henri J.M. Nouwen
3) Lord John and the Scottish Prisoner by Diana Gabaldon
4) Following Christopher Creed by Carol Plum-Ucci
5) The Game of Kings by Dorothy Dunnett*
6) Queens' Play by Dorothy Dunnett*
7) Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking by Susan Cain
8) The Disorderly Knights by Dorothy Dunnett*
9) Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell
10) The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet by David Mitchell
11) Ghostwritten by David Mitchell
12) Black Swan Green by David Mitchell
13) People by Alan Bennett
14) A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle*
15) A Wind in the Door by Madeleine L'Engle*
16) A Swiftly Tilting Planet by Madeleine L'Engle*
17) Many Waters by Madeleine L'Engle*
18) number9dream by David Mitchell
19) Lions and Shadows: An Education in the Twenties by Christopher Isherwood
20) Will Grayson, Will Grayson by John Green and David Levithan
21) Tell the Wolves I'm Home by Carol Rifka Brunt
22) We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson
23) Running the Books: The Adventures of an Accidental Prison Librarian by Avi Steinberg
24) Gettysburg: The Graphic Novel by C.M. Butzer
25) Down There on a Visit by Christopher Isherwood
26) A Dublin Carol by Conor McPherson

*re-reads

I have continued the trend of reading fewer and fewer books since graduating from college. Although only being able to list 26 books here depresses me, there is cause for hope! So far, I am only 3 books behind my 50-book challenge for 2013, and several of these were read as a direct result of the pressure to keep up with that challenge.

It may well be that I chose my books more carefully this year. It was, after all, a year of author binges and re-reads. Looking over this list now, there are only four I would not re-read, given the chance, and none that inspired the kind of dislike I've felt for books on the list in the past. It was also, my mother would urge me to point out, a good year for female authors.

Top Five of the Year, in descending order
Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell
Down There on a Visit by Christopher Isherwood
The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet by David Mitchell
Running the Books: The Adventures of an Accidental Prison Librarian by Avi Steinberg
Tell the Wolves I'm Home by Carol Rifka Brunt

Past years
2011-2012
2010-2011
2009-2010
2008-2009
2007-2008

"And all the books you’ve read have been read by other people."

Beginning in April 2007, I started keeping a list of all the books I'd read the previous year. I got the idea from the girlfriend of the son of some of my parents long-lost Baltimore friends. We were in London at the time. (It's one of those undiagrammable connections.)

Previous installments of the reading list can be found over in the Hall of the Revels, here, here, here, and here.

And so, without further ado, here is the comparatively short list of things I've read in the past year. I blame not being an English major any more. Also all the back issues of New Yorker I've been reading over lunch. Also, if I'm honest, Netflix.

Of the thirty-four books (and one play) I read this year, there were only two that I hated. In general, I try to steer clear of books like that, because I have a compulsive need to finish every book I start. Additionally, only two of these books were re-reads, although in the case of The Westing Game, which I read twelve times at age ten, re-read seems a bit of an understatement.

Books

1) The Spire by William Golding
2) In Search of Respect by Phillippe Bourgois
3) The Secret History by Donna Tartt
4) Life Class by Pat Barker
5) Fire From Heaven by Mary Renault
6) Queen Margot by Alexandre Dumas
7) A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry
8) An Unequal Music by Vikram Seth
9) Dorian: An Imitation by Will Self
10) The Summer of My German Soldier by Bette Greene
11) The Stranger's Child by Alan Hollinghurst
12) The Rebel Angels by Robertson Davies
13) What's Bred in the Bone by Robertson Davies
14) Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann
15) The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga
16) The Spy Who Came In From the Cold by John Le Carré
17) The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers
18) Savage Inequalities by Lawrence Kozol
19) Friendship, Cliques, and Gangs by Greg Dimitriadis
20) The Westing Game by Ellen Raskin
21) Our Kind of Traitor by John Le Carré
22) The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
23) Answered Prayers by Truman Capote
24) War Horse by Michael Morpugo
25) The Beekeeper's Apprentice by Laurie R. King
26) A Neil Jordan Reader
27) The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky
28) Listening is an Act of Love ed. Dave Isay
29) The Marriage Plot by Jeffrey Eugenides
30) Breaking the Code by Hugh Whitemore
31) Blackout by Connie Willis
32) As Meat Loves Salt by Maria McCann
33) The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes
34) Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins
35) Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins


Top Five of the Year, in descending order

The Stranger's Child by Alan Hollinghurst
The Spy Who Came In From the Cold by John Le Carré
The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky
As Meat Loves Salt by Maria McCann
Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins


And an Explanation

I went back and forth over including Catching Fire in the Top Five. I wondered whether I should put The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter in instead. The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter was a re-read, true, but I barely remember the first time I read it, it's a classic, and is far better written than Catching Fire. The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter was the subject of not one but two plays I saw at the Steppenwolf this year (an adaptation and an inspiration), and both moved me beyond words.

With all that being true, why Catching Fire? Ultimately, it had one thing in common with the other books in the Top Five: I couldn't put it down. Indeed, I read it on Cousin R's kindle with Cousin R in the room (she was watching Skins, so it wasn't like I made her go sit in the corner...although she was sitting in the corner). The thing about Catching Fire, and the third book in the Hunger Games Trilogy, Mockingjay, is that it made me feel like a teenage reader again. I was so invested in the story and the characters that I didn't spend too much time picking apart the gaps in logic or the wobbly writing. True, I was a college-educated teen reader, so I reveled in the references to mythology, to climate change, to reality TV, and I gloried in the ambiguous emotions and relationships the main character, Katniss, has. Sure, I see its imperfections and the love triangle made me roll my eyes, but those were things teenage me did too. Not everything has to change.

The Hunger Games series is also significant because of the impact it has had on the kids I work with. Kids who don't usually read are reading it. Boys are reading it, and not despite but because of the female protagonist and how much she kicks butt. I love talking about books at work, because it reminds me of college, and it reminds me of high school, and it reminds me of every part of my life I've enjoyed. And, frankly, it's the reason I was hired.