It seems everyone is blogging about their 2010 reading, and since I actually read TWO BOOKS PER MONTH this past year, I feel compelled to do the same. Twenty-Four books in a year is a paltry number, but I read less in 2009. I don’t remember 2008, though I imagine it was a similarly spare number. In 2006 and 2007, I read a-plenty because I was working the receptionist desk at the day job where I had done accounting for fifteen years, and reading and writing were allowed to help pass the slow times.
So here’s my breakdown:
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1 Non-fiction / Memoir
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703 by Nancy Makin
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1 Historical Romance
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Deadly Love by Brenda Joyce
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1 Romantic Suspense
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After the Night by Linda Howard
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1 Women’s Fiction
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The Secret to Everything by Barbara O’Neal
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1 Horror
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Swan Song by Robert McCammon
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1 Literary / Non-Genre
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Secrets of Eden by Chris Bohjalian
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3 Young Adult
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The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
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Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins
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Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins
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15 Suspense / Thriller / Mystery
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212 by Alafair Burke
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A Fistful of Rain by Greg Rucka
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Caught by Harlan Coben
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Dark Places by Gillian Flynn
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Down Among the Dead Men by Robert Gregory Browne
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Forty Words for Sorrow by Giles Blunt
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Ice Cold by Tess Gerritsen
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In The Woods by Tana French
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Live to Tell by Lisa Gardner
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Nemesis by Jo Nesbo
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The Hundredth Man by Jack Kerley
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The Murderer’s Daughters by Randy Susan Meyers
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The Redbreast by Jo Nesbo
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Tripwire by Lee Child
As we can easily surmise, thrillers are my favorite genre to read. The fifteen that I managed to fit in ran the gamut from literary to the ongoing characters to present day stories with plotlines from Vietnam and WWII. New to me this year were Alafair Burke, Gillian Flynn, Giles Blunt, Tana French, Jo Nesbo, Jack Kerley, and Randy Susan Meyers.
Most interesting to me is that only three of the books were in print. The rest I read using the Kindle app on my iPod Touch and my Blackberry Bold. When the devices are behaving (and lately the BB is not), the books will sync between the two and I can read on either one. If I’m out and about it’s on the BB because it’s also my phone and with me always. The iPod Touch requires WiFi, so I leave it at home most of the time!
As you can see from my sidebar, I’ll be adding more thrillers to my 2011 reading, but I’m determined to read more romance this year as well. I love writing romance, and because of that I find it harder to read. Since I don’t writer thrillers, I can lose myself as a reader, rarely reading with the critical eye that peers mercilessly into romance. ;)
Also on the sidebar are links to my reading list. Some go are to the reviews I did, most of them little mini-reviews, if you’d like to see what I thought about the stories. I didn’t get all of them reviewed, but want to remedy that with what I read this next year!
As far as what my favorite read was for 2010, I’d have to say The Hunger Games trilogy which I read back to back in a week. Those books have stayed with me longer than any of the others, though the Jo Nesbo books run a close second. I love his main character, Harry Hole, and in fact have come to realize that my favorite books to read are those with recurring characters, like Jack Kerley’s Carson Ryder and Giles Blunt’s John Cardinal. I think that’s why I do read more suspense because of the ongoing crimesolving teams. Sequels and series just don’t work the same in romance because main characters move into secondary roles instead of getting new adventures.
