Photo taken by moi at the Elmhurst Public Library, IL

Last night I started looking over the books I read in 2013. I managed 55, which is pretty good considering I didn’t have a lot of free time for most of the year. What’s curious is that Goodreads has me as reading 54 books this year, but as I was looking through the list I realized my least favorite read of the year (Fitzgerald’s This Side of Paradise) wasn’t there and it’s clearly listed as read in 2013. How odd. I’m not sure if I’m missing other books, so next year I plan on keeping tabs in my journal like I did in days of old.


The gender divide: 29 by men, 26 by women


Further breakdowns:

• Fiction: 32 (17 by women, 15 by men) 58%
• Nonfiction: 23 (9 by women, 13 by men) 42%
• 2013 releases: 16 (8 by women, 8 by men) 29%
• Audiobooks: 11 (4 by women, 7 by men) 20%
• Memoir: 9 (5 by women, 4 by men) 16%
• DNF: 8 (4 by women, 4 by men) 15%
• YA: 4 (2 by women, 2 by men) 1%
• Short story collection: 3 (1 by a woman, 2 by men) <1%
• Books featuring Princeton: 3* (The Accursed, This Side of Paradise, Wilson) <1%

Favorites:

Best fiction:
The Spare Room by Helen Garner
Snake Ropes by Jess Richards
A Tidewater Morning by William Styron

Best Nonfiction:
Max Perkins: Editor of Genius by A. Scott Berg
The Passage of Power by Robert A. Caro
Wilson by A. Scott Berg

Best audiobooks:
My Life in France by Julia Child
The Greater Journey: Americans in Paris by David McCullough
The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman

Best Memoirs:
Prairie Silence by Melanie Hoffert
My Life in France by Julie Child
Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal by Jeannette Winterson

Biggest surprises (in a good way):
Rosemary’s Baby by Ira Levin for fiction
Max Perkins: Editor of Genius by A. Scott Berg for nonfiction