Humor will not be tolerated!! -Portia

Goodreads has some stats on the number of books I've read this year. 29, which is my all-time low. My high is 77 for 2008, which is the year I was somewhat miserable working part-time and sitting in on classes when I wasn't technically a student. I think I play more videogames now.

I only read 15 (not counting picture books).

I just got a handy email from Goodreads about this very thing this morning. I read a little over 60, but I'm also a YA book blogger in another internet life.

yeah, I think four of mine were picture books, and another 5 were shortish YA novels.

Aside from re-reading old favorites, the only books I have read this year were about either sex or politics.

I've gone through 79 books this year. 49 of those were audiobooks. I've developed quite a fondness for the format, especially since it gave me something to do while cleaning floors.

I think I am on #26 or so for the year, including five Game of Thrones tomes of 800+ pages each. Not too bad.

Probably 5-6 which is shameful, but I have very little time for reading during the school year. Such is the life of a teacher.

+15 - Wheel of Time and New Spring
+1 - The Book Thief
+1 - Elantris
+3 - reread of Ender's Game and two of the Shadow books
+3 - reread of The Book of Deacon trilogy
+1 - the first Percy Jackson book
24

And I'm pretty sure I'm missing something from the beginning of the year. I started WoT in May and I just know I read something other than the Ender books before that.

18, which is my highest since I joined Goodreads (about 3 years?).

Should we all say what our favorite book from this year was?

Mine is either The Lovely Bones (it was really engrossing), or At the Mountains of Madness.

Hmm I really liked The Painted Veil and Lahiri's Interpreter of Maladies.

So is "Wheel of Time" actually good and worth reading? Like, is it well written? I can only imagine that a series that long has to be full of thick and "have to think through it" kind of writing, whereas I like to read fluff books, because reading is a relaxation activity for me.

Giovanni Schwartz wrote:So is "Wheel of Time" actually good and worth reading? Like, is it well written? I can only imagine that a series that long has to be full of thick and "have to think through it" kind of writing, whereas I like to read fluff books, because reading is a relaxation activity for me.

I will get my boyfriend's opinion, considering his literary monogamy to this series this year. It strikes me as pretty fluffy.

Well, see, the thing is, I can't stand writing like JRR Tolkien. I mean, I respect what he did with the genre and what he made it become. I just can't STAND to read his writing, because it's so dense and unpleasant to look at. I find myself rereading the same page over and over again. (And I've tried to read LotR more than once. I've never even finished the Two Towers, though.)

Giovanni Schwartz wrote:Well, see, the thing is, I can't stand writing like JRR Tolkien. I mean, I respect what he did with the genre and what he made it become. I just can't STAND to read his writing, because it's so dense and unpleasant to look at. I find myself rereading the same page over and over again. (And I've tried to read LotR more than once. I've never even finished the Two Towers, though.)

It's not similar to Papa Tolkien at all, afaict.

Tolkien is the top book on the Time 100 that I have not yet read. (I've read 16 of them.)

And the only two of the sixteen that I gave star ratings to that got five stars were Gatsby and Red Harvest.

I need to update my Goodreads so I can choose my Top 5 of this year. It's less obvious than in years past.

My husband loved The Wheel of Time series, and he's not much for dense, "you have to think about this too hard" writing. Although he thought a couple of the books in the middle weren't as good.

My favorite books from 2013 in general fiction were Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell and Jellicoe Road by Melina Marchetta. For speculative fiction The Girl of Fire and Thorns series by Rae Carson and Scarlet by Marissa Meyer (it's part of a series, though. The first book is called Cinder. They're fairy tale retellings)

thatonemom wrote:The first book is called Cinder.

I just heard of this yesterday, do you like it? Is it worth it? I'm always wary of series and tend to stick to stand alone books, but the premise is really cool.

I think I have pretty different tastes from many here. I read a lot of classics. And non-fiction about the Balkans and stuff. And a lot of books in general.

The one YA book I read was terrible.

My most highly ranked book this year was Hyperbole and a Half, but it kind of doesn't count as a new read because a lot of it is from her blog. Of entirely new reads, I'd say either The Reluctant Blogger or Leviathan (by Scott Westerfeld) is my favorite.