Shooflypie

My goal for the year was to read 64 books, which would put me at 4 more than last year's 60. I only managed to read 62; I say "only" but that's more than I've read since I started keeping track in 2001. Heck, it's double what I used to read. Sometimes I was reading more than one book at a time but there were also times when I wasn't reading a book. I picked up and put down a bunch of books this year; I mostly chalk that up to the wrong book at the wrong time (one I put down on initial read is one this list). 11 of those 62 were non-fiction, which is probably my highest percentage ever. Regardless of the stats and goals, I found plenty of books to love this year... 1. Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel - I almost stopped reading this book because at its outset it seemed like yet another novel about the apocalypse and at the time, I just couldn't see myself reading another one of those. Luckily, I stuck with it. It's more a novel about what h...

Every month brings new pop culture goodies to enjoy. Here is what I'm most looking forward to this month... The Magician's Land by Lev Grossman (8/5) - This is the final book in Grossman's Magicians trilogy. I liked The Magicians and loved The Magician King the first time around...that's right, I've decided to reread this series in anticipation of the new volume. I don't reread very often; in fact, the last time I reread a series like this was right before the final Harry Potter book was published 7 years ago. I'm finding my reading of the first book has changed my perception of it but that's probably a different post. Spoon/They Want My Soul (8/5) - Spoon is one of my favorite bands, so it's not a surprise I'm excited to listen to this album (you can stream it on iTunes right now but that's not my favorite option). I've liked the 3 songs that have surfaced so far - the classic stomp of "Rent I Pay," the sunny pop of ...

This was an interesting year of reading for me. While I read 46 books this year, I feel like I really didn't read that much. 10 of those books were for my English classes - one focusing on Jane Austen and the other on British novels. I read 7 that weren't fiction, which is actually a lot for me. I also started and stopped many books this year, partly because I had to return them to the library and partly because I had a lot of "not the right book at this time" experiences. In the end, I did really like most of what I read and isn't that the goal? Here are my favorites... The Gone-Away World by Nick Harkaway - This is my favorite novel of the year, period. It came out in 2008 and I heard about it through the Bookrageous podcast. It is inventive, full of amazing sentences, and just flat-out fantastic. It also has a big twist that I was expecting but made perfect sense. I highly recommend this novel and can't wait for Harkaway's new one, which comes out in...

While I've spent the last 3 days tearing through The Cut by George Pelecanos, I'd like to take a few minutes to talk about the previous two books I read (outside of Robinson Crusoe , which we just read in my British Novel class and about which I need to write a paper by Wednesday)... I read Lev Grossman's The Magicians around the time it was published two years ago. In fact, I wrote a little about it here . While I liked the novel and found the ideas to be interesting, I didn't love the main character, Quentin Coldwater. That concern completely disappeared in the just-published sequel, The Magician King . King Quentin has actually matured since the events in the first book and while he isn't perfect, he was much more readable. The new novel also alternates the action in the present with chapters of Julia's story, which runs concurrent with the first book. The Magician King just felt stronger overall and it not only makes me ready for the third book in the s...