After a short break — Happy New Year and Happy 12th Day of Christmas. Today is Epiphany Sunday.
Each year I list the books I have read over the past year and in 2012 I read 9 novels. Wanting to re-read a classic I chose The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald. As I read I made notes and marked good sentences. (“I like large parties. They’re so intimate. At small parties there isn’t any privacy.”)
Three novels were young adult genre, The Killer’s Tears by Anne-Laura Bondoux, A Boy at War by Harry Mazer and Out of the Dust by Karen Hesse (a Newberry Award Winner). If you want a quick, clean read that is often also an excellent story, I suggest young adult novels.
The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows and Another View by Rosamunde Pilcher were both delightful stories set in England, where I have always wanted to visit.
Sold by Patricia McCormick is the story of a young girl from a small village in Nepal who is sold into prostitution because her family is starving. I chose it from the United Methodist Women’s reading list and it is a very heart-wrenching story.
One of my favorite writers is Jodi Picoult and this year I read her Sing You Home. She has written many books I have not read, because I usually allow myself only one of her novels a year. I love her voice and I fear if I absorb myself in it I could lose my own.
The last novel I snuck under the wire before the year ended was Call of the Cadron by Arkansas writer Freeda Baker Nichols of Clinton. This book was published earlier this year by my friend and fellow critique group member who is also an award-winning poet. It’s the story of Jordan Maxey, a young woman who struggles to find herself and her path in life while she feels the pull of tradition, family loyalties and responsibilities, and her own wants and desires.
For more information about Call of the Cadron and Freeda Baker Nichols click on the link under Places of Interest on the right of this page. That will take you to her blog.
Next week I will review the non-fiction books I read in 2012.
Dot, I admire you for all the reading (and writing) that you do. Thanks for reading my book, again, after it was “glued” together in its binding.(published) Thanks for mentioning it here on your blog. The best to you in the New Year. Glad you are my friend.
Good list! Of those, I have read The Great Gatsby, Out of the Dust and Call of the Cadron. I also have some Jodi Picoult titles as yet unread. I stayed up New Year’s Eve to finish Charles Frazier’s (Cold Mountain) Nightwoods. Not as good as Cold Mountain, but it took only two nights to read.Looking forward to your non-fiction list.
If you’re looking for a good read for 2013, you should really read The Hunger Game series. They are quick, easy reads, but so full of symbolism–it gives you something to chew on for awhile. 😉