Books Read 2011

Last year I posted a list of all the books I read in 2010 (after reading and enjoying lots of other people's lists) and thought I'd keep up the tradition for 2011.

The following are all the books I read in the past year, except for the picture books—I read a lot of picture books and don't usually remember to add them to my Goodreads list, which is how I keep track of my reading these days. The notation "A" following an item means I listened to the audiobook, and "R" means it was a reread.

I read a lot fewer books this year than last year, partially because I no longer had my MFA program driving me to get a certain number of books read each month and partially because a number of 2011's events left me less time than usual for reading (especially: moving to a new apartment, teaching several writing classes and critiquing student manuscripts, and taking on a new day job). I also probably didn't really *need* to re-listen (again) to so many Bujold books, but they make me so happy that I can't really regret the time spent on those too much. But I do wish I'd gotten to more new books over the year (both newly published and old-but-new-to-me), and will definitely try to get more reading accomplished in 2012.

1. Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen (A)
2. Scrawl by Mark Shulman
3. Podkayne of Mars by Robert A Heinlein (A, R)
4. Dead Until Dark by Charlaine Harris
5. Sense And Sensibility by Jane Austen (A)
6. Living Dead in Dallas by Charlaine Harris
7. The Boyfriend List: 15 Guys, 11 Shrink Appointments, 4 Ceramic Frogs and Me, Ruby Oliver by E. Lockhart
8. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain (A)
9. Club Dead by Charlaine Harris
10. Lord Valentine's Castle by Robert Silverberg (A)
11. Dead to the World by Charlaine Harris
12. Ethan of Athos by Lois McMaster Bujold (A)
13. Bellwether by Connie Willis (A)
14. The Mysterious Affair at Styles by Agatha Christie (A)
15. Thirsty by M. T. Anderson
16. The Inimitable Jeeves by P. G. Wodehouse (A)
17. Dead as a Doornail by Charlaine Harris
18. The Knife of Never Letting Go by Patrick Ness (A)
19. Definitely Dead by Charlaine Harris
20. The Grand Plan to Fix Everything by Uma Krishnaswami
21. Bossypants by Tina Fey (A)
22. All Together Dead by Charlaine Harris
23. How to Say Goodbye in Robot by Natalie Standiford
24. Borders of Infinity by Lois McMaster Bujold (A, partial R)
25. Charlotte's Web by E. B. White (R)
26. Brothers in Arms by Lois McMaster Bujold (A, R)
27. Each Little Bird that Sings by Deborah Wiles
28. Locomotion by Jacqueline Woodson
29. Bat 6 by Virginia Euwer Wolff
30. Frankie Pickle and the Closet of Doom by Eric Wight
31. Lunch Lady and the Cyborg Substitute by Jarrett J. Krosoczka
32. Memory by Lois McMaster Bujold (A, R)
33. From Dead to Worse by Charlaine Harris
34. Komarr by Lois McMaster Bujold (A, R)
35. A Civil Campaign by Lois McMaster Bujold (A, R)
36. Fire by Kristin Cashore
37. Diplomatic Immunity by Lois McMaster Bujold (A, R)
38. Dead and Gone by Charlaine Harris
39. Dead in the Family by Charlaine Harris
40. On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft by Stephen King (A, R)
41. Also Known As Harper by Ann Haywood Leal
42. Everybody Sees the Ants by A.S. King
43. The Book Thief by Markus Zusak (A)
44. Eighth Grade Bites by Heather Brewer
45. Aliens on Vacation by Clete Barrett Smith
46. Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson (A)
47. The Strange Case of Origami Yoda by Tom Angleberger

There were also a couple of audiobooks I started but didn't finish, which I didn't list here.

Reading now (started in 2011, but not yet finished): Outlander by Diana Gabaldon and American Gods by Neil Gaiman (A).

WORD 3rd Annual Holiday Open House - This Weekend!

Come to WORD in Greenpoint, Brooklyn this weekend for their fabulous holiday open house! Authors will be on hand to make book recommendations (their own and their favorites written by other people) and to gift wrap your purchases for you. Oh and of course, signing books, too! :)


I'll be there tomorrow 12/11 at 3pm, but the fun starts today with Sarah MacLean (The Love By the Numbers series), Michael Showalter (Mr. Funny Pants), and Emma Straub (Other People We Married), Michael Buckley (NERDS, The Sisters Grimm), and Fiona Robinson. You can see the full schedule and author lineup here.

Why Picture Books Are Important

My post is up today at http://picturebookmonth.com!


You can read why I think picture books are important here. And if you haven't already, go back and read earlier posts by the other authors and illustrators who have been singing the praises of picture books all month long!

Make November Picture Book Month!

Celebrate picture books every day this month at http://picturebookmonth.com!

Picture Book Month is an international initiative to designate November as Picture Book Month, encouraging everyone to celebrate literacy with picture books. Founder, Dianne de Las Casas (author & storyteller), and Co-Founders, Katie Davis (author/illustrator), Elizabeth O. Dulemba (author/illustrator) , Tara Lazar (author), and Wendy Martin (author/illustrator), are putting together their worldwide connections to make this happen.

Each day, you can see a new post by an author, illustrator, or editor about why picture books are important. Mine will be up on November 23! The site also includes great information and resources about picture books, authors and illustrators, literacy, industry news, kidlit bloggers, and more.

Click here to learn how you can help celebrate picture book month!

Sunday afternoon audiobook musings

I love audiobooks. I listen to them on long walks and short ones, on bus rides, while doing the dishes. A good audiobook is a gift, a treasure, a tiny miracle of story unfolding in your head, courtesy of your own private narrator, reading it just for you. Good audiobooks make boring tasks tolerable and add an extra layer of pleasure to already-pleasant rides and walks and wanderings. Great audiobooks make me go for extra walks and do extra housework so I will have the excuse to keep on listening for a little bit longer. And the best ones, the ones I love like crazy, can sometimes make me just stand there in the middle of my apartment, out of convenient excuses to keep listening but unable to bring myself to remove my headphones.

The problem, of course, is that eventually you listen to everything in your library and have to find some new ones. I love and hate this part. As a reader, the anticipation of starting a new book in any form is always exciting, but choosing a new audiobook often seems more daunting than choosing a new paper book to read. The disappointment factor is higher somehow, and there's the additional challenge of not only finding a good book but one with a good narrator, as well. And I haven't yet come up with a very good system for this. I sometimes buy audio versions of books I've read before to re-experience them in a new way, and when there's a good narrator, this is wonderful fun—Lois McMaster Bujold is my favorite author to re-listen to (and her narrators have been great, especially the fabulous Grover Gardner). But I've already listened to all of those, many more than once, and I'm just about done with my current audio selection—another re-"read"—Stephen King's On Writing. So . . . now what? How do I find the next great book to inspire me to longer and longer walks and marathon cleaning sessions?

I'm feeling extra cautious right now because a recent audio download turned out to be such a disappointment that I couldn't make myself finish it. That rarely happens, that I dislike something that much, but sometimes I just can't bear to stick it out until the end. And so I flit around Audible and Goodreads, reading reviews and trying to figure out if the person who loved the book I'm considering is someone who shares similar tastes to mine, and trying to figure out what kind of book I'm in the mood for anyway, and whether a particular narrator's voice is one I'll want to listen to for eight or twelve or nineteen hours of time. I need to go out and run some errands pretty soon, and my current audiobook won't last long enough to carry me through, and instead of biting the bullet and choosing something I'm writing this long blog post instead.

All right. I guess that's not very productive of me. Back I go. But if anyone reading this has some great audiobook titles to recommend, feel free to post suggestions in the comments, to give me some more options to explore in my selection efforts the next time around . . .

The Trelian sequel has, uh, another title!

Choosing a title for the sequel was so much fun, we decided to do it again! Actually, the sales folks had some good thoughts about keeping "Trelian" in the title to help make the connection clear between the two books, so we decided to tweak it a little. The new title is:

THE PRINCESS OF TRELIAN

Goes quite nicely with The Dragon of Trelian, I think, and one more "of Trelian" title for the third book would make a lovely set all together.

The Trelian sequel has a title!

And it is:

The Dragon Princess: A Novel of Trelian

Calen fans: fear not! There is still a lot of Calen in this book. This story, like the first one, is told from both his and Meg's point of view, and a LOT of things happen to both of them throughout the novel. Exciting and significant things. Some of them are VERY VERY exciting and significant. But I am not going to tell you what they are. You will have to read the book.

And when can you do that, you ask? I will tell you: Spring 2012. When we know the exact month, I will post it here. And when the cover is ready, I will post that here, as well. The story itself is written and complete, but I'm still making little changes here and there. This week I'm reviewing the copyedits and trying to decide once and for all on an important character's name that I keep changing from draft to draft.

In other news, I have other news but I am not allowed to tell you about it yet. But it is GREAT news and I am SO EXCITED!!! I will post it here as soon as I can. For now, you will just have to take my word for it. :)

OK - back to work with me. Hope you all have been having a great summer! I know I've been absent from the blogosphere for a while—crazy-busy as usual and also moved to a new apartment in a new neighborhood (hello, Greenpoint!) which left little time for anything else for a while. Insert my usual promise about blogging more often here. I will try! I will at least try to make sure I post the important things in a timely fashion.

Oh and one last thing: I now have an official Facebook page, so please stop by and "like" me to get updates on new books and book signings and other things like that.