Best Superlatives of 2007

Best Fiction I Read in 2007
Min-Jin Lee, FREE FOOD FOR MILLIONAIRES
Tom McCarthy, REMAINDER
Paullina Simons, THE GIRL IN TIMES SQUARE
Dawn Powell, THE LOCUSTS HAVE NO KING
Michael Chabon, THE YIDDISH POLICEMAN'S UNION
Critic choice: Thomas Mallon, FELLOW TRAVELERS

Best Nonfiction I Read in 2007
Francine du Plessix Gray, THEM: A MEMOIR OF PARENTS
Sean Wilsey, OH THE GLORY OF IT ALL
Rob Sheffield, LOVE IS A MIX TAPE
Buzz Bissinger, A PRAYER FOR THE CITY

Best Page Turners Of 2007
Stephanie Klein, STRAIGHT UP AND DIRTY
Jen Lancaster, BRIGHT LIGHTS, BIG ASS
Cormac McCarthy, NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN
Critical choice: Yannick Murphy, SIGNED, MATA HARI

Best books about New York City
Gail Parent, SHEILA LEVINE IS DEAD AND LIVING IN NEW YORK
Cheryl Mendelson, LOVE, WORK, CHILDREN
Dawn Powell, A TIME TO BE BORN

Best discovery of 2007
Dawn Powell, where have you been all my life?!

Most depressing reads of 2007
Patricia Marx, HIM HER HIM AGAIN THE END OF HIM
Mary Childers, WELFARE BRAT (entry here)
Critical choice: Abigail Jones and Marissa Miley, RESTLESS VIRGINS

Modern Library of Awesome
James M. Cain, THE POSTMAN ALWAYS RINGS TWICE (entry here)
Booth Tarkington, THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS

A book for conspiracy theor...hey, who's at the...
Alexandra Robbins, SECRETS OF THE TOMB (entry here)

Why did I finish this?
Seth Margolis, CLOSING COSTS (entry here)
Louis Bagley, MATTERS OF HONOR
Cecily von Ziegesar, THE IT GIRL

Saddest series ending
J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter series.

Series that probably should have ended a few books ago
Cecily von Ziegesar's Gossip Girl series.

Most overrated books
Joshua Ferris, THEN WE CAME TO THE END (entry here)
Dana Vachon, MERGERS AND ACQUISITIONS
Jessica Cutler, THE WASHINGTONIENNE

Most underrated books
Jeannette Walls, THE GLASS CASTLE
Sally Koslow, LITTLE PINK SLIPS
Rachel Kadish, TOLSTOY LIED: A LOVE STORY
Cornelia Read, A FIELD OF DARKNESS

Rated exactly where it belongs, actually
Cormac McCarthy, NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN

2007 Reading By The Numbers

Books I read in 2007: 151.
That's 12.58 books per month on average, or .41 books per day.
My running average since 2001 is about 104 books per year; this has been

Of those books, 42 were for reviews and 109 were for fun.
Of those, 49 were nonfiction and 102 were fiction. (Of the review books alone, 8 were nonfiction and 34 were fiction.)
Of those, two were self-help books (SHOULD I DO WHAT I LOVE? and THE FOUR-HOUR WORK WEEK).

I read 87 books from January to June and 64 from July to December.
Best month for reading: March, 18 books (followed by February and April, with 17 each). My theory for this: I was the most broke during those three months, the months immediately following my move to New York City, and library books are free! Or very cheap if you return them late.
Worst month for reading: October, 7 books. No idea.

72 of the books I read were library books -- I love the New York Public Library!
At the end of 2007 I had 8 books checked out of the library. Right now I have 11, plus 2 DVDs... I'm aiming to keep these to 5, for reasons I'll explain in a future post.

I lost track of how many books I bought in 2007 (shame!), but I read 5 books that I purchased in '07.
On the other hand, I read 16 books that I mooched on Bookmooch this year, out of 50 mooches.
While I was mooching those, though, I also gave away 51 books. Not shabby!

Books I had to look up because I couldn't remember whether they were fiction or nonfiction, or anything about them really: 1; Margaret Atwood, MORAL DISORDER. Guess that won't make tomorrow's list of my favorite books of the year. Stay tuned...