What I Read – 2013

This is the closest I’ll get to any sort of “2013 in Review” type post. What better way to look back at a year than to see what I read in those 365 days?

Several I reviewed here (click the title to read the review), but many I didn’t, so I’ve listed every book I read in 2013, roughly according to how much I enjoyed them.

My favourite reads of 2013:

1. Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann

2. This is the Story of a Happy Marriage by Ann Patchett

3. Abolition of Man by C.S. Lewis

4. A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving

5. Lacuna by Barbara Kingsolver

6. Oscar and Lucinda by Peter Carey

7. The Golden Mean by Annabel Lyon

8. The Red Tent by Anita Diamant

9. The Man Who was Thursday by G.K. Chesterton

10. News of a Kidnapping by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

11. Bossypants by Tina Fey

And the rest:

12. Zoli by Colum McCann

13. Chemistry of Tears by Peter Carey

14. This Cake is for the Party by Sarah Selecky

15. Telegraph Avenue by Michael Chabon

16. Seven Storey Mountain by Thomas Merton

17. Galore by Michael Crummey  (This one probably wins most beautiful book cover though!)

18. Travels in the Scriptorium by Paul Auster

19. An Abundance of Katherines by John Green

20. Gargoyle by Andrew Davidson

21. The Keep by Jennifer Egan

22. The Blondes by Emily Schultz

23. The Casual Vacancy by J.K. Rowling

24. Better Living Through Plastic Explosives by Zsuzsi Gartner

25. Clear Skies, No Wind, 100% Visibility by Theodora Armstrong

26. Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Jamie Ford

27. Valley of the Dolls by Jacqueline Susann

28. Reality Boy by A.S. King

29. The Girls Who Saw Everything by Sean Dixon

30. The Roaring Girl by Greg Hollingshead

31. The Secret Daughter by Shilpi Somaya Gowda

32. *The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald* (This one is added with an asterisk because it was a re-read while travelling in Europe when I ran out of books. Hopefully it goes without saying that The Great Gatsby is brilliant and I love it. This year wasn’t my first re-read. Therefore, I don’t feel like I can rate it against other books that I read for the first time in 2013.)

Conclusions:

• I read 32 books in 2013. To be honest, this number surprised me. I thought it would be more. 32 seems kind of low to me. I think I can do better in 2014.
• 84% of the books I read were Fiction. No surprise there.
• 36% of the books I really enjoyed were Non-Fiction. It did surprise me to look at my top picks list and see how many were Non-Fiction. I didn’t read as much Non-Fiction but it would appear that I enjoyed all of the Non-Fiction I did read. (Perhaps I’m choosier over my Non-Fiction?)
• 31% of the books I read were written by Canadian authors.
• I reviewed 37% of the books I read here. I hope to increase that percentage in 2014.
• Apparently, I find it easier to review books I didn’t like than books I liked a lot.
• The book that took me the longest to finish was Seven Storey Mountain.
• The book I finished the fastest was Zoli. (Long train rides in Europe helped!)
• Colum McCann was my best new (to me) author find of 2013. Let the Great World Spin was an excellent read and I plan to read more of him in 2014. I’m happy to put him in my first place
• The Secret Daughter in last place seems right to me. While an easy read, I didn’t find the writing, the characters, or the plot compelling and I downright disagreed with much of the novel’s conclusions.

Have you read any of my 2013 reads? What was the best book you read in 2013?