I read 56 books this year, including 12 rereads (all of the Little House books and the last three Harry Potter books). That’s much higher than last year and I hope to continue reading as much, if not more, in 2012.
I read quite a mix of books this year, from classics to newly published, from plays to autobiographies.
I’m only listing the books that I read for the first time this year. All ratings are out of five stars; within each rating, the books are listed alphabetically by author.
5 stars
The Season: A Candid Look at Broadway by William Goldman
Hamlet by William Shakespeare
4.5 stars
Bossypants by Tina Fey
Act One by Moss Hart
The Railway Children by Edith Nesbit
The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams
4 stars
Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen
Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? (And Other Concerns) by Mindy Kaling
The Painted Bird by Jerzy Kosinski
The Girl Who Played With Fire by Stieg Larsson
The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson
Arrowsmith by Sinclair Lewis
It Can’t Happen Here by Sinclair Lewis
Main Street by Sinclair Lewis
Cinderella Ate My Daughter: Dispatches from the Frontlines of the New Girlie-Girl Culture by Peggy Orenstein
The Dogs of Babel by Carolyn Parkhurst
The Wayward Bus by John Steinbeck
Depths of Glory: A Biographical Novel of Camille Pissaro by Irving Stone
3.5 stars
Laura Ingalls Wilder by William Anderson
Les Miserables by Victor Hugo
Not Since Carrie: Forty Years of Broadway Musical Flops by Ken Mandelbaum
The Long Valley by John Steinbeck
3 stars
Poems of Akhmatova by Anna Akhmatova
Eight Cousins by Louisa May Alcott
Bless Me, Ultima by Rudolfo Anaya
The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins
A Study in Scarlet by Arthur Conan Doyle
Fever: The Hunt for a New Killer Virus by John Grant Fuller, Jr.
The Magicians by Lev Grossman
Exiles: A Novel by Ron Hansen
Islands in the Stream by Ernest Hemingway
Red by John Logan
Patti LuPone: A Memoir by Patti LuPone
Gone to Soldiers by Marge Piercy
Welcome to the Jungle by Hilary Smith
In Dubious Battle by John Steinbeck
Immortal Wife by Irving Stone
Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift
Chekhov’s Sister by W. D. Wetherell
2.5 stars
Spite Fences by Trudy Krisher
2 stars
Time Must Have a Stop by Aldous Huxley
Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer
