2014 Wrap Up Post

This was the year of a significant Reader’s Block for some reason or another, and so my numbers have been a bit lower than usual. (Haven’t been below 100 for quite some time now.) However, it’s not for the numbers that I keep reading so it’s all good. Just interesting to reflect back and consider how the year went, reading-wise.

Notable Reads for 2014:

Top Five Fiction:

• Felicia’s Journey – William Trevor (1995)
• Stoner – John Williams (1965)
• The President’s Hat – Antoine Laurent (2012)
• The Hen who Dreamed She Could Fly –  Sun-mi Hwang (2014)
• Indian Horse – Richard Wagamese (2012)

Top Five Non-fiction:

• Ten Years in the Tub: A Decade of Good Reading – Nick Hornby
• Anything by Robert Lacey
• Hiroshima – John Hersey (1946)
• Blue Latitudes – Tony Horowitz (2003)
• The Boy who Harnessed the Wind – William Kamkwamba (2009)

Total number of books read in 2014: 90. (Previous 2013: 119)

Total number of pages read: 21,104 pages (av. 251.2).

Fiction/Non-Fiction:  48 F and 32 NF (Other included were 1 play, 1 poetry book, and 2 graphic novels.) This year was also notable for the # of DNF’s: 4. (I rarely used to have a DNF, but this year, I decided to go for it and clear out some titles off my bookshelves at the same time.)

Library books vs. books I owned (and thus removed from the home abode):  27 library books and 39 owned books.  7 electronic books (mostly Project Gutenberg or its related siblings).

Classics (as defined according to the Dictionary of Me 🙂 ):

• The Cricket on the Hearth and Other Stories – Charles Dickens (1845)
• Some Isabella Beeton (1861)
• The Ladies’ Paradise – Emile Zola (1883)
• The Death of Ivan Ilyich – Leo Tolstory (1884)
• Sister Carrie – Theodore Dreiser (1900)
• Fraulein Schmidt and Mr. Anstruther – Elizabeth von Arnim (1907)
• Ethan Frome – Edith Wharton (1911)
• The Thirty Nine Steps – John Buchan (1915)
• Patricia Brent, Spinster – Herbert Jenkins (1918)
• The Magnificent Ambersons – Booth Tarkington (1918)
• Snowy Nights in the Woods – Robert Frost (1923)
• The Wind – Dorothy Scarborough (1925)
• Giants in the Earth – O. E. Rolvaag (1927)
• Dangerous Corner – J. B. Priestley (1932)
• Mrs Parkington – Louis Bromfield (1942)
• Hiroshima – John Hersey (1946)
• Of Love and Hunger – Julian McClaren-Ross (1947)
• Period Piece – Gwen Ravarat (1952)
• Charlotte’s Web – E. B. White (1952)
• Gift from the Sea – Anne Morrow Lindbergh (1955)
• As I Went Out One Midsummer Morning – Laurie Lee (1969)
• True Grit – Charles Portis (1969)

And so, we look to the future for good friends, great reading, and lots of fun.