What I Read in 2013

I thought I’d write a wrap-up post before 2013 ended, but then I spent a chunk of the evening of December 31 curled up on the couch finishing reading Scarlett Thomas’s The End of Mr. Y, so I didn’t. (And then we went to see/hear the steam whistles at Pratt, and then we walked from Church Ave to Brighton Beach, and then we didn’t get home until 6 am.)

Anyhow: I read 38 books in 2013 (including a few picture books and several kids’ books).

The breakdown:
Picture books: 3
Other kids’/YA books: 5
Fiction (for grown-ups): 24
Non-fiction: 4
Poetry: 2

Works in translation: 6

Favorites: Picture Me Gone by Meg Rosoff – definitely the best YA book I read in 2013 (not that I read that many!), mostly because of the really engaging narrator. Where’d You Go Bernadette? by Maria Semple – I do love epistolary or semi-epistolary novels, and this one was both funny and sweet. The End of Mr. Y and Our Tragic Universe, both by Scarlett Thomas – smart and fun and concerned with story/language/meaning in interesting ways. Artful by Ali Smith – smart and satisfying mix of fiction and lit crit.

Books I expected to like more than I actually did:The No Variations by Luis Chitarroni, which I found pretty overwhelmingly obscure. The Reverberator by Henry James, which I wanted to have more long descriptive sentences. The Stockholm Octavo by Karen Engelmann and Buddhaland Brooklyn by Richard C. Morais, both of which I wanted to be less plot-driven than they were.

In general: In 2013 I read more collections of short stories and fewer collections of poetry than usual, which was neither a good thing or a bad thing, just a different thing. As usual, I read more novels than anything else. I finally got around to reading multiple books by Scarlett Thomas, whose work I’ve been curious about since an acquaintance mentioned PopCo years ago. As usual, I somehow managed to read more library books than books from my own shelves.

Plans for 2014: I don’t have any specific reading plans this year. More poetry? And maybe this will be the year I finish reading Proust’s In Search of Lost Time?