2013 final notes

I was looking at other library blogs yesterday at work, looking for possible topics for our own.  One of the things I found were book bloggers recapping their year.  It has been a few years since I counted my annual reading list, so here it is.  It's depressingly short: I would have guessed the number a bit higher.  (These numbers do not include picture books, primarily because I don't really write them down.)

books started: 106
books finished: 69 (65.1%)
finished books that were fiction: 55 (79.7%)
finished books that were nonfiction: 12 (17.4%)
finished books that were graphic novels: 2 (2.9%)
finished books by female authors: 48 (71%)
finished books by male authors: 20 (29%)

Several people who were counting their stats included "books I liked" and "books I didn't like."  I didn't do that because if I didn't like it, generally I didn't finish it!  (I would estimate there were about 5 books that I started and really enjoyed, but either my download expired, or I lost it under a stack of books and couldn't jump back in when I uncovered it.  There were also a few books that I judged for last year's IBPA awards that I didn't like, but finished anyway; again, fewer than 5.)

These two are recent reads that I didn't write down at the time but also count toward 2013:

Little House in the Big Woods by Laura Ingalls Wilder.  I read this to my boy and a good time was had by all.

Eruption by Harry Turtledove.  Like other Turtledove books, there is an interesting sci-fi story in here, if you can get to it.  I'm not able to truly enjoy most of his books because
1.  There are way too many characters.  There were several characters who didn't seem to add anything to the story at all and we could have done just as well without them.
2.  Much of the dialogue, and particularly most of the cursing, feels stilted, unnatural, or otherwise awkward.