Friday, January 3, 2014

Books of 2013

I'd say I did pretty well with my reading this year despite two fairly large obstacles. The first six months of the year I was in Australia where the price of books (and everything else for that matter) is quite high. Luckily, during our last three months we lived down the road from an excellent used book store. I was able to buy books at decent prices and get a few dollars back when I finished. 

My second obstacle occurred when I moved to Morocco in August. Not only was my life consumed by my new job, there is also a dire lack of English reading material here. Thankfully, I've been able to borrow books from friends and check out a few books from the school library. A definite perk of working at a K-12 school is the Upper School reading material. I'll need to keep that in mind for the future.

As always, my goal for 2013 was to read more books than I did in 2012. That meant I needed to read 36 books. And yep! I did it. I managed to finish my last book on December 30th with one day to spare. 

Without further ado, here's what I read this past year:

1. The Book Thief by Markus Zusak (550)
2. The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out of a Window and Disappeared by Jonas Jonassson (387)
3. The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern (512)
4. Seaworthy: Adrift with William Wallace and the Golden Age of Rafting by T.R. Pearson (304)
5. Picnic at Hanging Rock by Joan Lindsay (200)
6. Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez (424)
7. Wedlock: How Georgian Britian's Worst Husband Met His Match by Wendy Moore (512)
8. Dirt Music by Tim Winton (480)
9. Everything I Knew by Peter Goldsworthy (304)
10. The Laughing Clowns by William McInnes (195)
11. The Slap by Christos Tsiolkas (511)
12. My Uncle Oswald by Roald Dahl (204)
13. The Getting of Wisdom by Henry Handel Richardson (260)
14. Praise by Andrew McGahan (279)
15. Seven Little Australians by Ethel Turner (192)
16. Jasper Jones by Craig Silvey (394)
17. Eucalyptus by Murray Bail (255)
18. Cloudstreet by Tim Winton (425)
19. Let's Explore Diabetes with Owls by David Sedaris (275)
20. Summer Crossing by Truman Capote (139)
21. Stolen Lives: Twenty Years in a Desert Jail by Malika Oufkir and Michele Fitoussi (291)
22. Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail by Cheryl Strayed (311)
23. Wildwood by Colin Meloy (541)
24. The Family Fang by Kevin Wilson (309)
25. A Separate Peace by John Knowles (204)
26. Hector Finds Time by Francois Lelord (235)
27. Dreams of Trespass: Tales of a Harem Girlhood by Fatima Mernissi
28. Letters from Skye by Jessica Brockmole (287)
29. Jamrach's Menagerie by Carol Birch (344)
30. Secret Son by Laila Lalami (274)
31. Tales of the Alhambra by Washington Irving (314)
32. Tender is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald (315)
33. Tiger Eyes by Judy Blume (217)
34. A Walk in the Woods by Bill Bryson (274)
35. Lulu in Marrakech by Diane Johnson (307)
36. The Bean Trees by Barbara Kingsolver (246)

I'm halfway through my current book, so here's hoping I make it to at least 37 in 2014.