#bookquest

With the Fire on High by Elizabeth Acevedo

With her daughter to care for and her abuela to help support, high school senior Emoni Santiago has to make the tough decisions, and do what must be done. The one place she can let her responsibilities go is in the kitchen, where she adds a little something magical to everything she cooks, turning her food into straight-up goodness. Still, she knows she doesn’t have enough time for her school’s…

After a few years of being too busy to read much of anything, I decided to jump back in by diving off the deep end. Basically, I joined a few Read-a-thons. These are Boyband-a-thon, Get Sh*t done Readathon, #AYEARATHON, Book Quest, and Swiftathon. I have to admit that I’ve never participated in one before, so I don’t know if it’s cheating but some of the books on my TBR are going to be for more…

― Charles Dickens, David Copperfield

In 2009, I read 52 books.

This year, I read 18.

But two of them (“Team of Rivals” and “Game of Thrones”) while both excellent, were hefty suckers. Although I didn’t set a reading goal like I did in 2009, I continued to jot down the title of every book I read and every movie I saw during the year. After my 2009 Bookquest, I renewed my magazine subscriptions and re-fueled Google Reader, which was kind of like going back to the boyfriend and forgetting why you broke up in the first place. So, in sum, I highly doubt I'm reading half as much as I did last year. 

I tend to read multiple books at a time, so “Cleopatra,” “Elia Kazan” and “The Hero with a Thousand Faces” won’t be reflected here since I’m still devouring. Some of these titles, like last year’s list, were suggested by my book club (still going strong!), others from readers and friends, others have been sitting on my shelf for a painfully long time and driving me crazy.

Here, for no particular reason, are the books I read in 2010.

BOOKS READ IN 2010:

“Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Boy on Earth” by Chris Ware 1/24/10

“Music for Chameleons” by Truman Capote 1/30/10

“Game Change” by John Heilemann and Mark Halperin

“The Big Short” by Michael Lewis 3/21/10

“The Glass Castle” by Jeannette Walls 3/24/10

*“In Cold Blood” by Truman Captoe 5/12/10

“Let the Great World Spin” by Collum McCann 5/26/10

“Kaddish for a Child Not Born” by Imre Kertesz 7/3/10

“Dead End Gene Pool” by Wendy Burden 6/24/10

“The Girl Who Played with Fire” by Steig Larsson 7/25/10

“Olive Kitteridge” by Elizabeth Strout 8/4/10

“Toyland” by Sydney Ladensohn Stern and Ted Schoenhaus 8/8/10

“Team of Rivals” by Doris Kearns Goodwin 9/19/10

“Freedom” by Jonathan Franzen 10/10/10

“Never Let Me Go,” by Kazuo Ishiguro

“The Finkler Question” by Howard Jacobson 11/14/10

“A Game of Thrones” by George R.R. Martin 12/12/10

“What is the What” by Dave Eggers 12/27/10

 *notes reread

And keep the recommendations coming!