Because I used to be a mathematician, there are charts.
I read 108 books in 2013, mainly novels.
In 2012, I read over 150 books, so this was a slower year for me. I plead that I read both Swann’s Way and War and Peace and that took up much time.
I stuck to English a lot.
When I did venture out of English, I did as below.
In terms of gender:
In terms of Canadianess, which is rather vague, basically encompassing a wide variety of born Canadian, chosen Canadian, living in Canada, etc.
Ratings from zero to five, although I’m pretty sure that you can’t give a zero on librarything so maybe from 0.5 to 5, not that there were any 0.5 rankings in 2013.
And here is a list of the 4.5 and 5 star books I read in 2013 (alphabetically).
- Life After Life by Kate Atkinson
- HHhH by Laurent Binet
- The Orenda by Joseph Boyden
- World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War by Max Brooks
- Drunk Mom: A Memoir by Jowita Bydlowska
- The Rotters’ Club by Jonathan Coe
- The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
- The Lightning Field by Heather Jessup
- The Vanishers by Heidi Julavits
- The Bean Trees by Barbara Kingsolver
- Wedding Night by Sophie Kinsella
- Bobcat and Other Stories by Rebecca Lee
- Anastasia Again by Lois Lowry
- Now We Are Six by A. A. Milne
- When We Were Very Young by A. A. Milne
- Little Children by Tom Perrotta
- The Wives of Bath by Susan Swan
- The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt
- Ru by Kim Thúy
- The Story of Lucy Gault by William Trevor
- By Blood by Ellen Ullman
- The Pale King by David Foster Wallace
- Sorry Please Thank You: Stories by Charles Yu
Awards!
Best novel (in English): The Rotters’ Club by Jonathan Coe. I’ve read this book before and I still love it. I could just wrap myself up in it forever.
Best novel (in translation): HHhH by Laurent Binet. I’d previously thought The Kindly Ones was the contemporary Holocaust novel. I was wrong, and Binet completely savages The Kindly Ones as well (Houellebecq does Nazism).
Best novel (Canadian): The Lightning Field by Heather Jessup. Just such a kind-hearted novel with a formica tabletop within.
Best short story collection: Bobcat and Other Stories by Rebecca Lee. Every story was perfect. I am jealous.
Best not-a-fiction-book: Drunk Mom: A Memoir by Jowita Bydlowska. I read lots of books about flawed parents. Then I feel better/worse/the same/everything all at once.
I’m hoping for 125 books in 2014. We’ll see. Hopefully I can steer away from the stack of Solzhenitsyn sitting on my shelf, whose reading would slow me down to a snail’s crawl.