Fiber Fool

Happy New Year Everyone! I hope you all had safe and enjoyable celebrations to ring in the new year. We played Book Lover’s Trivial Pursuit with some friends nearby which makes this post rather fitting. I got my butt kicked because I’m not a pretentious reader and I don’t have a mind for trivia really. Really, everyone there was a reader (some even have related degrees) and we all had a heck of time with the questions. But it was a nice low-key evening. I’ve decided this week will be the week of looking back at 2006. At least the first half of the week anyway. So, this is the first installment. It is rather boring without photos, but I think yesterday’s post probably makes up for that!

Since today marks the first day of 2007 I thought I’d take a moment to recap my reading this past year. I read 48 fiction books, and 20 non-fiction books, give or take a few that I may have forgotten to record or got lost in the shuffle when I closed my typepad blog. That is a total of 68 books in 365 days or an average of 1 book roughly every 5 1/3 days. Since I’m not the fastest reader and I do many other things for enjoyment in addition to reading I’d say that isn’t too shabby. In general I hope to do better than 1 book a week so I guess I made my goal.

As a comparison, last year I read roughly 51 books all together and was short of my usual goal. Though last years list appeared to have a bit more substance overall than my fluff mystery reading that has dominated this year.

See a complete list (as best as I recorded it anyway) of my 2006 reads in order from highest rated to lowest rated. Or read on for a synopsis of my reading habits this year.

I started off 2006 with a study in fiction about small town living, reading a John Sanford, a Richard Russo, and a Jon Hassler. In the summer I did a bit of adolescent reading, returning to my favorite series as I was growing up, Anne of Green Gables. Then I have been on a long stint of mystery reading. I find I enjoy it a lot because it grabs me and successfully diverts my attention from things that may keep my brain whirling and spinning at night. Some of the mysteriers have been from niche categories such as culinary ones by Diane Mott Davidson and Joanne Fluke, while others have been centered around other interests of mine such as the Coffeehouse Series and the Tea Shop series. I’ve discovered several authors this year and returned to a few old favorites whom I had previously forgotten about.

This year I have also rediscovered the joy of the public library. It is wonderful to get to read through all these books and to not need to purchase them. I love books and so does DH and we’re about hitting maximum book capacity. An estimate says the shelves to be built in the living room may already be filled (and that is with all art and fiber books staying in my studio and technical books staying in DH’s office)! With mysteries, in most cases I don’t expect to read them again so it is great to get to just check them out. I am also very thankful for the library’s regional interlibrary loan, Prospector, which allows us to borrow from area libraries with similar check out times and opportunities for renewals.

In the non-fiction realm I did do some reading in the area of art, but I branched out into some other areas for a more varied list of non-fiction reads this year. There were many cookbooks on the list, concentrated heavily in the area of Scandinavian cooking of course, a few books on sewing, and a handful on coffee. I hope to continue to branch out my non-fiction reading a bit. I already have a photography and a sewing book on the nightstand ready to go for 2007!