2012 Book List

Yeah, I know. I typically post my annual list of books somewhere around the first week of January.

And it's April.

The end of April.

But you see, I've been quite busy, and due to the new format (um, this Bookish blog), I neglected to work on the list as I went along, like previous years. Oh! And links! Adding links takes time!

Anyway, after adding a bit to the post here and there for a couple months, it's finally complete.

In 2012, I read 41 books. Not a record but reasonably respectable, methinks. After all, 2012 was a pretty big year for us.

Although no book received a rating of 5, a few did stand out as particularly good: Red Hook Road, My Name Is Mary Sutter, The Uncommon Reader, and Princesses of Iowa were among them.

A couple will probably stick with me more for the circumstances under which I read them. For example, the Crimson Petal and the White was an almost 900-page beast that I read mostly on my iPhone at 3:00 a.m. as I rocked newborn Lorelei. All Souls was read primarily as Lorelei slept on my chest during her early morning nap, when we had the house to ourselves. I read the quite long The Sweet Far Thing in record time to return it to the library before Lorelei was born.

Also, the duds. The Violets of March was on par with a cheesy Lifetime movie and the writing was bland and uninspired. The Story of Beautiful Girl utterly failed to deliver and was quite the disappointment. Finally, The Luncheon of the Boating Party bored me.

So, here's my take. Each link should take you to the book's actual (and sometimes snarky) review.

Enjoy! And I'll try to post next year's 2013 list before Spring 2014.

The Little Giant of Aberdeen County           

Tiffany Baker 

Contemporary Literature (341 pages)     

Rating: 4

My Name Is Mary Sutter       

Robin Oliveira
Historical Fiction (364 pages)     
Rating: 4.25

The Boy Book: A Study of Habits and Behaviors, Plus Techniques for Taming Them       

E. Lockhart    
Young Adult (193 pages)
Rating: 4

A Crimson Warning   

Tasha Alexander        
Mystery (322 pages)     
Rating: 3.25

The Uncommon Reader         

Alan Bennett  
Contemporary Literature (120 pages)     
Rating: 4.5

The Violets of March 

Sarah Jio         
Contemporary Literature (293 pages)     
Rating: 3

Dairy Queen   

Catherine Gilbert Murdock    

Young Adult (274 pages)     
Rating: 3.75

Love and Logic Magic for Early Childhood: Practical Parenting from Birth to Six Years  

Jim Fay and Charles Fay        
Parenting (200 pages)     
Rating: 3

Rumors           

Anna Godbersen        
Young Adult (448 pages)    
Rating: 3.75

The Hottest Dishes of the Tartar Cuisine      
Alina Bronsky
Contemporary Literature (262 pages)     
Rating: 4.25

Balance Is a Crock, Sleep Is for the Weak    

Amy Eschliman and Leigh Oshirak  
Parenting (326 pages)     
Rating: 4

The Hunger Games    

Suzanne Collins         
Young Adult (384 pages)     
Rating: 4.25

The Story of Beautiful Girl    

Rachel Simon 
Contemporary Literature (368 pages)     
Rating: 3

Strange Saint  

Andrew Beahrs          

Historical Fiction (363 pages)     
Rating: 4

Love in a Cold Climate          

Nancy Mitford
Contemporary Literature (256 pages)    
Rating: 4

Mentor: A Memoir     

Tom Grimes   

Autobiography (245  pages)   
Rating: 4.5

Bicycle Days  

John Burnham Schwartz        
Contemporary Literature (253 pages)     
Rating: 3.5

The Thin Man
Dashiell Hammett
Contemporary Literature (201 pages) 
Rating: 4

The Lonely Polygamist          

Brady Udall   
Contemporary Literature (624 pages)     
Rating: 4

Red Hook Road         
Ayelet Waldman        
Contemporary Literature (343 pages)     
Rating: 4.25

The Gospel of Ruth: Loving God Enough to Break the Rules         

Carolyn Custis James 
Religion (224 pages)     
Rating: 4

State of Wonder        

Ann Patchett  
Contemporary Literature (384 pages)     
Rating: 4

The Princesses of Iowa          

M. Molly Backes        
Young Adult (464 pages)     
Rating: 4

When Washington Was in Vogue      

Edward Christopher Williams           

Harlem Renaissance (277 pages)     
Rating: 3.5

The Off Season          

Catherine Gilbert Murdock    

Young Adult (300 pages)     
Rating: 3.5

Catching Fire 

Suzanne Collins         
Young Adult (391 pages)     
Rating: 3.5

Galway Bay   

Mary Pat Kelly           
Historical Fiction (550 pages)     
Rating: 4

The Three Weissmans of Westport    

Cathleen Schine         
Contemporary Literature (292 pages)     
Rating: 4.25

The Pleasure of My Company           
Steve Martin  
Contemporary Literature (176 pages)     
Rating: 4

The Luncheon of the Boating Party  

Susan Vreeland          
Historical Fiction (429 pages)   
Rating: 3

Rebel Angels  

Libba Bray     
Young Adult (576 pages)     
Rating: 4.25

The Sweet Far Thing  

Libba Bray     

Young Adult (819 pages)     
Rating: 4

Book of Shadows      

Alexandra Sokoloff   
Thriller (320 pages)     
Rating: 3.75

The Hangman's Daughter      

Oliver Potzsch
Historical Fiction (448 pages)    
Rating: 3.25

The Leftovers 

Tom Perrotta  

Contemporary Literature (355 pages)     
Rating: 4.25

The Woman in Black 

Susan Hill       
Thriller (164 pages)     
Rating: 4

All Souls        

Christine Schutt         
Contemporary Literature (240 pages)   
Rating: 4

Elizabeth: The Struggle for the Throne          

David Starkey
History (400  pages)    
Rating: 3.75

The Gentleman Poet  
Kathryn Johnson        
Historical Fiction (314 pages)     
Rating: 3.75

How to Talk So Kids Will Listen & Listen So Kids Will Talk         

Adele Faber and Elaine Mazlish        
Parenting (277 pages)     
Rating: 3.75

The Crimson Petal and the White      

Michel Faber  

Historical Fiction (894 pages)     
Rating: 4

Bunheads       

Sophie Flack  
Young Adult (294 pages)     
Rating: 4

Splendor

Splendor
By Anna Godbersen (404 pages)
Published by HarperCollins
Bookish rating: 4

In the fourth and final installment of my guilty reading pleasure, the Luxe novels, our heroines and villains get their plot lines all tied up.

Godbersen keeps the plotting fresh and unpredictable. We briefly get to go to Cuba circa 1900, we still get a fun dose of scandal, and characters remain well-crafted and adequately complex (for the purposes of the genre--this ain't Shakespeare). In short, the entertainment value? Still there.

Now, I'm no prude when it comes to young adult fiction. I'm all for f-bombs, sex, drugs, alcohol, and any other Naughty Thing, so long as the said Naughty Thing adds to the novel (character development, conflict, plot, theme) and isn't just cheaply trying to shock or appear edgy. However, like the previous Luxe book, it IS a tad weird to read about marital dynamics in a book aimed at teens. Ya know? I get Godbersen's dilemma---girls married as teens in 1900! Still, it's . . . strange to me.  

Anyway,  the final book succeeds without losing steam or getting wacky plot-wise. The entire series is well done and embarrassingly entertaining. Have I mentioned how much I enjoyed it?!

Godbersen's next series, Bright Young Things, is set in the 1920s. OBVIOUSLY I'll be reading those.

In the meantime, SIGH. I'm kind of bummed the Luxe series is all over. It's a sad but satisfying feeling---the remnants of plain old good reading.

Unexpectedly, Milo

Unexpectedly, Milo
By Matthew Dicks (352 pages)
Published by Broadway
Bookish rating: 2.5

I realized that this is the first book I've read this year (so far) that was written by a GUY. And the author's last name is, um, Dicks.

Insert middle school snickering HERE.

Anyhoo, in Unexpectedly, Milo, we meet Milo, a home health care worker, who has some form of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) that he has managed to keep secret pretty much forever.

Milo finds some videotapes in the park, watches them, and begins a road trip to find someone mentioned in the tapes.

The plot is thin, but thin plots only bother me when the writing is crappy.

The writing is crappy. Okay, not entirely crappy, but . . . not great.

Dicks is an over-writer. Every sentence, paragraph, and scene feels like he takes it too far--like the reader is to moronic to get the point, or (perhaps more accurately) Dicks's writing is too weak to be particularly compelling, so he must continually drive a point home. With lots and lots of words.

The narration overanalyzes too much, and in a tedious way that is, well, tedious rather than OCD-ish. Backstory and prior events are blatantly retold or excessively reiterated, wasting my time as a reader.

Frankly, the only reason I gave this a 2.5 (and not 2) was due to Dicks's description of Milo's "demands"--his compulsions that made him slightly more interesting.

Overall, a meh sort of novel. Not particularly recommended.