Book Sleuthing Pays Off: Post-Christmas Shopping

For Christmas, my boss gave me an Amazon gift card with the note: Buy some fiction or non-fiction, on me. And I intend to do just that. I've already put two books in my cart, but I have room for one more and I'm having a hard time choosing. Please help me?

Currently in the cart: 

Last Call: The Rise and Fall of the Prohibition by Daniel Okrent

Legend of a Suicide by David Vann

Can't choose between: 

The Postmortal by Drew Magary

Rules of Civility by Amor Towles

Paradise Lust by Brook Wilensky-Lanford

Portrait of a Marriage by Nigel Nicolson

-or-

How the Garcia Girls Lost their Accents by Julia Alvarez

Has anyone read any of these? Can you help me choose? 

Book Sleuth: Ready Player One

Found via: Baby Got Books

Published by: Crown Publishing

Purchase Now from Amazon: Ready Player One

Book Sleuth: Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage: Stories

Found via: The Rumpus
Published by: Knopf

Purchase Now from Amazon: Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage: Stories

I Propose - A Book Club

I read a total of 22 books this year. Which is good - but not great. It's a sad, small number compared to what I'm usually able to produce. But, my life also changed a lot this year. And it's a blessing I got any reading done at all.

Things have pretty much settled for me now and so I thought it was time to set myself a reading goal for 2012. My goal for 2012 is to double the number of books I read in 2011, for a grand total of 44.

My question for you is - does anyone want to join me in the effort to read more in this coming year or to maintain the number they currently have? I've been quite the inactive Shelfari member for quite a while now, but I could start a small group for us to share our goals and talk about the different books we're reading. Perhaps we could even read one or two together?

Happy Reading!

Top Ten Books for 2011

I wish I had read more this year. It's my goal for next year to read more. And get some quality non-fiction in. Not just celebrity memoirs. Surprising though, for the so few books that I've read, there are three books that I read this year that stand out as clear favorites. I'm going to have a hard time choosing which one is the ultimate favorite of 2011. And books 9 - 5 are also pretty equally seeded.  But, I'll give it a go:

10. The Elephant to Hollywood - Michael Caine
9.  The Invention of Hugo Cabret - Brian Selznick
8. Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children - Ransom Riggs
7. The Jane Austen Book Club - Karen Joy Fowler
6. Thirteen Reasons Why - Jay Asher
5. Life Among the Savages - Shirley Jackson
4. The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society - Mary Ann Schaffer & Annie Barrows
3. Of Mice & Men - John Steinbeck
2. A Northern Light - Jennifer Donnelly
1. Geek Love - Katherine Dunn

It was so hard to choose between A Northern Light and Geek Love! I loved them both so much. But I think Geek Love was very clearly my favorite book of this year, especially with its tie-ins to last year's favorite book of the year.

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