2014 Year in Review: Bookworm Edition

By | December 31, 2014

I fully accept that I’ll never be as good as Liz at book reviews, but I want to do better in 2015 than I am in 2014 which is five finished reviews and 27/30 Tumblr drafts that were unfinished book reviews. So for 2015 I’m “stealing” Sally’s year end template and will keep that as a working draft.

In the mean time, here’s my look at 2014

Books read: 54

Unfinished books: 9

Currently reading: 7 (one truly active, three semi active, three that likely need to go to the dead letter file)

I’m thrilled with those and already looking forward to my 2015 challenge. Will I read 54 again? No. Will I complete the A-Z challenge and then some? I think so. One of my 2015 resolutions is more time reading and I look forward to that.

Some more thoughts:

  • In breaking it out as I did below, I realized two things:
    • I’m missing a few titles. Ill try to edit the post when I find them
    • My non fiction/fiction splits weren’t as bad as I feared. That said, I read too much crap
    • Those I didn’t finish had about the same genre splits, but some interesting reasons:

FOOTBALL

  • Against Football– that wasn’t a book, it was a poorly written and edited rant
    NON FICTION

    • All the Centurions – good stories, not a good writer. Got bored
    • Christmas Miscellany – nothing new here, got bored quickly despite reading in December
    • Happy Hour is for Amateurs – don’t remember
    • Inside the Dream Palace – tried to read too many about the Chelsea in too short a time.  Not a binge subject
    • The Social Employee – don’t remember
    • Wedding Babylon – don’t remember
  • FICTION
  • Brooklyn Noir – don’t remember at all
  • Chasing the Dime – no idea as I love Connelly, but I tried this one 3x

On to those I did read, with notes in bold….

Non – Fiction

        • Bear in the Back Seat: Adventures of a Wildlife Ranger in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park (Volume 1)
        • Hidden Treasures: What Museums Can’t or Won’t Show You (actually reviewed this one)
        • The Hotel: A Week in the Life of the Plaza (actually reviewed this one)
        • Jeneration X: One Reluctant Adult’s Attempt to Unarrest Her Arrested Development; Or, Why It’s Never Too Late for Her Dumb Ass to Learn Why Froot Loops Are Not for Dinner
          • so bad. So stubborn to finish this. For some reason I spent time reviewing it.
        • Legends of the Chelsea Hotel: Living with Artists and Outlaws in New York’s Rebel Mecca (actually reviewed this one together with This Ain’t no Holiday Inn, which I read in 2013)
        • Medicine Men: Extreme Appalachian Doctoring
        • Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil: A Savannah Story
          • great one to read after a trip to Savannah. Would have been better before
        • The Museum Effect: How Museums, Libraries, and Cultural Institutions Educate and Civilize Society
        • NYC Basic Tips and Etiquette
        • Onward: How Starbucks Fought for Its Life without Losing Its Soul
        • Say What? The Weird and Mysterious Journey of the English Language
        • Tinsel: A Search for America’s Christmas Present (actually reviewed this one)

Football

    Dixieland Delight

Travel

        • 100 Places You Will Never Visit (actually reviewed this one)
        • Ghostly Encounters: True Stories of America’s Haunted Inns and Hotels
        • Pretty Good Number One: An American Family Eats Tokyo
        • River-Horse: The Logbook of a Boat Across America
        • What I Was Doing While You Were Breeding: A Memoir

    Weight Loss

        • …then just stay fat.
        • Food Rules

Fiction

        • Eye for an Eye (Dewey Andreas)
          • terrible,and I hated the narrator. But we almost finished it in the car and I needed to know how it ended. Rare I root against “hero”
        • Terminal City
        • The Heist (Gabriel Allon)

James Patterson

        •  Burn (Michael Bennett)
        • NYPD Red 2
        • Private L.A. (Jack Morgan)
        • Unlucky 13 (Women’s Murder Club)

Michael Connelly

        • Mystery Writers of America Presents The Blue Religion: New Stories about Cops, Criminals, and the Chase
        • The Safe Man
        • The Scarecrow
        • Void Moon

Harry Bosch

        • Angels Flight
        • Angle of Investigation: Three Harry Bosch Stories
        • The Black Box
        • The Black Echo
        • The Black Ice
        • The Burning Room
        • City of Bones
        • The Closers
        • The Concrete Blonde
        • A Darkness More Than Night
        • The Drop
        • Echo Park
        • The Last Coyote (A Harry Bosch Novel)
        • Lost Light
        • The Narrows
        • Nine Dragons
        • The Overlook
        • Trunk Music

Lincoln Lawyer

      • The Brass Verdict
      • The Fifth Witness
      • Gods of Guilt
      • The Lincoln Lawyer
      • The Reversal

One thought on “2014 Year in Review: Bookworm Edition

  1. Pingback: 2015 Home Stretch: Reading | travellingcari.com

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