Year in Review

I read a total of seventy novels last year and I managed to review fifty-three of them. I wanted to dedicate a little bit of space for a few top fives (no particular order, these are just listed as they came to me):

Best All Around:

The Fellowship of the Ring – J.R.R. Tolkien

The Poisonwood Bible – Barbara Kingsolver

Cloud Atlas – David Mitchel

Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy

All the Pretty Horses – Cormac McCarthy

Best New Release:

Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore – Robin Sloan

The Orphan Master's Son – Adam Johnson

The Fault in Our Stars – John Green

Philida – Andre Brink

Red Thread Sisters – Carol Peacock/Keeping Safe the Stars – Sheila O'Connor (tie)

Best Middle Grade/YA:

The Hunger Games trilogy – Suzanne Collins

The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian – Sherman Alexie

Because of Winn Dixie – Kate DiCamillo

The Red Thread Sisters – Carol Peacock

The Invention of Hugo Cabret – Brian Selznick

Best World Book Night:

Kindred – Octavia Butler

The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao – Junot Diaz

The Namesake – Jhumpa Lahiri

The Poisonwood Bible – Barbara Kingsolver

The Things They Carried – Tim O'Brien

And a gratuitous chart of the gender ratio in my reading year, which I think is interesting because while the literary world is said to be male dominated I tend to read pretty evenly along gender line (though I seem to favor female authors over male authors especially in middle grade and young adult lit). World Book Night lines up right along with me as well.