December (and 2012) Recap

What a year. Good things happened. Bad things happened. And I read a lot of books. That pretty much sums it up for me. Not going to delve into personal life and 2013 resolutions because, well, I don’t want to.

I don’t say it enough, but thank you to everyone who reads my little spot on the internet. I truly appreciate the amazing people I’ve met over the past 2.5 years and am looking forward to meeting more and interacting with new people in 2013!

I finished all three of my challenges with 30 books and read a grand total of 81 books in 2012. According to Goodreads I read 32,866 pages. I’m not sure how accurate that is, but who cares, I read a lot! My original goal was 60 books, five books a month, and that will stand for 2013. I’m sure I will surpass it again this year, but I will not increase that goal because reading should be about fun and not about numbers. There are definitely other cool facts I could share, but go and explore and find out!

And the photo above, is why I am doing my best to go on a book buying ban for the first six months of 2013.My bookshelf is so far beyond overflowing I HAVE to start clearing it off. This will be difficult as I have over $100 in gift cards to various bookstores, but I can do it! There are only two exceptions to this rule: I can purchase a book (with a gift card) for book group and if the fifth book of The Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel is released in Paperback I can purchase it.  My to-be-read list (physical and Kindle) has surpassed 175 and I need to trim it down. If I read only 50 books a year I’m already looking at 4 years almost on my shelf alone! Not to mention the 275 other books on my dream list to read at some point.

Recent Acquisitions
So hopefully for the last time for a long while this is the last recent acquisition post! Not all of these pictured are recent acquisitions, I was able to bring quite a few up from storage in NC after the holidays, but more are new than should be, of special note are Gone Girl which I won from Rebecca at Love at First Book and The Geeks Shall Inherit the Earth sent to me by my good friend Chet 😀 Click on each photo to see the titles up close. (I’m a little peeved I only just now discovered the gallery feature. Sheesh! It would’ve made the last two monthly updates SO much easier.) Full text list at the end of the post.

In addition I received a few bookish things for my Birthday and Christmas that are just AWESOME and I have to share:

The bag is from my sister and I don’t remember where I found it, but I’m in love with it because it has a pocket inside that’s the PERFECT size for my kindle. The quote is from my best friend Alie and I need to get a nice frame for it to go with all my Boston Book Festival posters. The personal library kit is from my friend Caroline and it’s perfect because I keep lending her loads of books. And Matt, my roommate, got me the Star Wars origami book which I am VERY excited about and can’t wait to try out!

And I wouldn’t be me without closing out the year with a minor complaint. Check this out:

That is the HORRIBLE packaging that single book arrived in. I don’t even know where to begin so I just won’t. Shame on you Amazon, shame on you.

And on that note, Happy New Year! Have a wonderfully joyous, healthy and prosperous 2013!

Books Acquired List (Bolded denotes those moved to Boston from NC)

1. The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood
2. Running with the Demon (The Word & Void Trilogy #1) – Terry Brooks
3. A Knight of the Word (The Word & Void Trilogy #2) – Terry Brooks
4. Angel Fire East (The Word & Void Trilogy #3) – Terry Brooks
5. Oscar and Lucinda – Peter Carey
6. The Perks of Being a Wallflower – Stephen Chbosky
7. The Beans of Egypt, Maine – Carolyn Chute
8. Matilda (en Español) – Roald Dahl
9. The Second Sex – Simone de Beauvoir
10. The Inheritance of Loss – Kiran Desai
11. The Woman Who Walked into Doors – Roddy Doyle
12. Hallucinating Foucault – Patricia Duncker
13. Gone Girl – Gillian Flynn
14. An Introduction (The History of Sexuality #1) – Michel Foucault
15. The Use of Pleasure (The History of Sexuality #2) – Michel Foucalt
16. The Care of the Self (The History of Sexuality #3) – Michel Foucalt
17. The Feminine Mystique – Betty Friedan
18. Winter Birds – Jim Grimsley
19. A Painted House – John Grisham
20. I Served the King of England – Bohumil Hrabal
21. The Remains of the Day – Kazuo Ishiguro
22. To Kill A Mockingbird – Harper Lee
23. The Penguin Book of Gay Short Stories – D. Leavitt & M. Mitchell (Ed.)
24. A Short History of Tractors in Ukranian – Marina Lewycka
25. The Penguin Book of International Gay Writing – Mark Mitchell (Ed.)
26. The Sea, the Sea – Iris Murdoch
27. The Dante Club – Matthew Pearl
28. City of Night – John Rechy
29. The Geeks Shall Inherit the Earth – Alexandra Robbins
30. A Midsummer Night’s Dream – William Shakespeare
31. The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas – Gertrude Stein
32. The Silmarillon – J.R.R. Tolkien
33. The Brontë Project – Jennifer Vandever
34. Brideshead Revisited – Evelyn Waugh