I read too few books this year, down considerably — laughably, even — from last year. I’d be tempted to blame the longer novels on my list for eating into my time, and they did, but I also saw my attempts to zip through a pile of very short books from the library backfire. (Seriously, a couple of those two-hundred-pages-or-fewer books seemed to take me forever.) There was also some re-reading, listening to audio books of the first four Dark Tower novels, and submissions to Kaleidotrope that also ate into the final count, but whatever the cause I reader fewer books than I wanted to this year.
With a good fair-sized helping of comics and graphic novels, I managed to get the count up to fifty. Of those, these were probably my favorites:
My own “best books of the year” post is yet to come, but The Ocean at the End of the Lane and Gone Girl will definitely both be on there.
Ocean was maybe my very favorite book of the year, though The Thousand Autumns was also pretty terrific.
Ocean probably gets my nod as top book of the year, too.
I’ve got The Thousand Autumns somewhere on my vast To-Read Shelves. I really must get around to it sooner, rather than later.
In a comment to Betty’s blog, you mentioned that you hadn’t read as many books as she. Well, how many of us can? Seriously, I read a lot more books because I don’t have cable, satellite, or internet TV, so my free time is spent reading. You watch a lot more TV and movies, so think about how culturally aware you are compared to me.