2012's Number Is...

Recently a friend of mine said she'd set a goal to read 175 books in 2012, and she had met it in October.  I am astounded by this!  In the early 2000s, I had a goal to read 50 books a year and used to just barely make it.  I stopped counting several years ago, but this 175 books thing got me curious, so through the magic of show notes and Goodreads, I was able to make a list of the books I read in 2012.  Apparently either the podcast or my habit of listening to books most of the time has increased my numbers, because I blew past 50 without even trying!  Here is every book I read in 2012:


  1. Dexter in the Dark by Jeff Lindsay
  2. One Mississippi by Mark Childress
  3. Bossypants by Tina Fey
  4. The Language of Secrets by Diane Dixon
  5. Getting Stoned With Savages by J. Maarten Troost
  6. Florida Roadkill by Tim Dorsey
  7. The Monkey's Raincoat by Robert Crais
  8. The Paris Wife by Paula McLain
  9. The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
  10. The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde
  11. What I Saw and How I Lied by Judy Blundell
  12. The Sense of An Ending by Julian Barnes
  13. Strip Tease by Carl Hiaasen
  14. Ice Cold by Tess Gerritson
  15. Never Enough by Joe McGuinness
  16. Therese Raquin by Emil Zola
  17. This Is Where I Leave You by Jonathan Tropper
  18. The Finer Points of Sausage Dogs by Alexander McCall Smith
  19. Started Early, Took My Dog by Kate Atkinson
  20. Shakespeare's Landlord by Charlaine Harris
  21. Hit By A Farm: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Barn by Catherine Friend
  22. Island of the Sequinned Love Nun by Christopher Moore
  23. Fifty Shades of Grey by E. L. James
  24. Death on the Wolf by G. M. Frazier
  25. The Puppet Maker's Bones by Alisa Tangredi
  26. The Volunteer by Barbara Sissel Taylor
  27. Written in Blood by Diane Fanning
  28. Defending Jacob by William Landay
  29. The Limpopo Academy of Private Detection by Alexander McCall Smith
  30. Deliverance by James Dickey
  31. False Pretenses by Margaret Yorke
  32. The World According to Garp by John Irving
  33. Full Dark, No Stars by Stephen King
  34. Hardly Knew Her by Laura Lippman
  35. Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn
  36. To Have and To Kill: Nurse Melanie McGuire, an Illicit Affair, and the Gruesome Murder of Her Husband by John Glatt
  37. Minding Frankie by Maeve Binchy
  38. The Pastor's Wife by Diane Fanning
  39. Fool by Christopher Moore
  40. Cheer by Leslie A. Gordon
  41. Never See Them Again by M. William Phelps
  42. Ferris Beach by Jill McCorkle
  43. Columbine by Dave Cullen
  44. Twisted by Amity Hope
  45. Let's Pretend This Never Happened by Jenny Lawson
  46. The Anniversary by Amy Gutman
  47. Native Tongue by Carl Hiaasen
  48. Persuasion by Jane Austen
  49. Texas Love Triangle Murder by Kathryn Casey
  50. The Hanged Man by Orson Scott Card
  51. The Goddess of Fried Okra by Jean Brashears
  52. Portuegese Irregular Verbs by Alexander McCall Smith
  53. Holidays on Ice by David Sedaris
  54. Crocodile on the Sandbank by Elizabeth Peters
  55. Restless Souls: The Sharon Tate Family's Account of Stardom, the Manson Murders, and a Crusade for Justice by Alisa Statman and Brie Tate
  56. Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? by Mindy Kaling
  57. And When She Was Good by Laura Lippman
  58. In the Pleasure Groove by John Taylor
  59. Salem's Lot by Stephen King
Of the 59 titles....

  • 12 were Supense/Mystery 
  • 8 were True Crime
  • 15 were Non-Fiction
  • 10 were Humor
  • 3 were Classics
  • 3 were Horror
  • 4 were collections of short stories
  • 30 were written by authors I hadn't read before
  • 7 were books I had read before

So, a pretty good mix.  No goals for the coming year - I like being able to just read whatever floats my boat in the moment.  Have you ever made similar lists?  Do you have reading goals each year?  Discuss.

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