Welcome to 2012 and a good Sunday to you all!
I am grateful for what I have, for the company of Mr. G and the lovely Cassandra, for friends and family and for those who visit Page247. I am also grateful for the wonderful community of book lovers out there who share their thoughts, start important conversations about books and literature , and introduce me to new authors and new books.
I managed to read 128 books in 2011 and reviewed 77 of them. There were fewer 5-star reads in 2011. I’m not sure why that happened. Maybe I’m becoming pickier as I age.
Plans for 2012 include the TBR Double Dare, Orange January/July and the 2012 Speculative Fiction Challenge, along with some read-alongs and seasonal events. I’d like to read some Dickens and read and write about poetry. We’ll see if that happens.
Here are reviews of my favorite books from 2011. Thanks for stopping by!
Annabel by Kathleen Winter
Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter by Tom Franklin
Agaat by Marlene Van Niekerk
Kamchatka by Marcelo Figueras
The Disappeared by Kim Echlin
The Anthologist by Nicolas Baker
The Birthday Boys by Meryl Bainbridge
Stone Arabia by Dana Spiotta
Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer
Salvage the Bones by Jesmyn Ward
The Sojourn by Andrew Krivak
Bohemian Girl by Terese Svoboda
And to make it and baker’s dozen I finally read the whole of War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy. The translation by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky is brilliant, dense and rich. I loved it.
