2008: The Year in Reading

SOME NUMBERS

Books I read in 2008: 186.
That's 15.4 books per month on average, or .506 books per day.

Of those books, 89 were for reviews and 97 were for fun.
Of those, 47 were nonfiction and 50 were fiction. (Of the review books alone, 39 were nonfiction and 50 were fiction.)

I read 79 books from January to June and 107 from July to December.
Best month for reading: TIE, August and November, 20 books. Of August I don’t have the faintest guess, but with November it was probably all the travel.
Worst month for reading: February, 9 books.

59 of the books I read were library books -- I love the New York Public Library!
At the end of 2008 I had 3 books checked out of the library.
I mooched 59 books and gave away 98 books on BookMooch.
I read 13 of the 59 books I mooched this year (and started but didn’t finish 2 others).

2008 SUPERLATIVES

Best Fiction I Read in 2008
Elizabeth Hay, LATE NIGHTS ON AIR
Junot Diaz, THE BRIEF WONDROUS LIFE OF OSCAR WAO
Ed Park, PERSONAL DAYS
Richard Yates, REVOLUTIONARY ROAD
Amanda Boyden, PRETTY LITTLE DIRTY
Erin McGraw, THE SEAMSTRESS OF HOLLYWOOD BOULEVARD
Shawna Yang Ryan, LOCKE 1928

Best Nonfiction I Read in 2008
Jennet Conant, THE IRREGULARS
Rick Perlstein, NIXONLAND
David Simon, HOMICIDE: A YEAR ON THE KILLING STREETS; David Simon and Edward Burns, THE CORNER
Sloane Crosley, I WAS TOLD THERE’D BE CAKE
David Hajdu, THE TEN-CENT PLAGUE
Laura Claridge, EMILY POST

Nonfiction subgenre: Best memoirs
Mike Walsh, BOWLING ACROSS AMERICA
Alison Bechdel, FUN HOME
David Gilmour, THE FILM CLUB

Best Page Turners Of 2008
Cormac McCarthy, THE ROAD

Sara Paretsky, BURN MARKS
John Niven, KILL YOUR FRIENDS

Best discovery of 2008
REVOLUTIONARY ROAD. Of course! In 2009 I would like to read the rest of Richard Yates’ works.

Modern Library of Awesome
Jean Rhys, WIDE SARGASSO SEA (#94)
Sherwood Anderson, WINESBURG, OHIO (#24)
Ford Madox Ford, THE GOOD SOLDIER (#30)
Max Beerbohm, ZULEIKA DOBSON (#59)
Joseph Conrad, THE SECRET AGENT (#46)
49 read, 51 unread at the end of the year.

Best book with a devastating ending
Jennifer Weiner, CERTAIN GIRLS

Overrated books
Keith Gessen, ALL THE SAD YOUNG LITERARY MEN
James Frey, BRIGHT SHINY MORNING. Sigh.
And… I know it’s a cliché, but as long as I have to see people reading Elizabeth Gilbert’s EAT, PRAY, LOVE on the subway, it’s overrated. (Filmbook entry scheduled for 2010?)

Underrated books
Ford Madox Ford, THE GOOD SOLDIER
Jancee Dunn, DON’T YOU FORGET ABOUT ME (featured on "Talk of the Town")

Ed Park, PERSONAL DAYS
Jay McInerney, BRIGHT LIGHTS, BIG CITY (a Filmbook entry)

Rated exactly where it belongs, actually
Joseph O’Neill, NETHERLAND
Kathleen Kent, THE HERETIC’S DAUGHTER
Sloane Crosley, I WAS TOLD THERE’D BE CAKE -- and yes, I realize putting it here is tantamount to calling it underrated because there was a lot of hype around this book. But I really, really enjoyed it. So what can I say? Read it for yourself.