Okay, I was going to start blogging last year but never got to it so I’m going to try it again this year.  I’ll start out with a blog about books.

My Reading in 2012

In 2012 I managed to read 49 books which was down three from the year before.  I wasn’t really overwhelmed by any of the books I read and became frustrated with a few of my favorite authors.  Without further ado, here are some statistics on my reading and my top five favorites and non-favorites of the year.

Number of cookbooks read:  4

Number of new to me authors: 6

Number of books reread: 7-the Harry Potter Series

Non Fiction books:  10-includes the cookbooks

Five Favorite Books:

1. Deception on His Mind by Elizabeth George:  I started reading the Inspector Lynley series last year after having watched the PBS show (which I found through watching the backlist of a favorite actor) and have reconciled myself to the differences between the books and the show.  I really identify with the character of Sgt. Barbara Havers, being a female police officer and single, but I can cook and I don’t smoke.  Oh, and I have a little better fashion sense.  This book really let Havers shine when she goes to help an old friend with a murder case while Havers is on vacation. The case also involves her neighbor and his daughter so things get very complicated and end with Havers’ job on the line. It’s hard to summarize this book if you’re not familiar with the series.  I really enjoyed this one.

2. The Cold Dish by Craig Johnson.  I read this because I became hooked on the    A&E television show Longmire which is based on Johnson’s books which this is the first in the series.  It takes place in Absaroka County in Wyoming where Walt Longmire is the sheriff. His department staff consists of three deputies and a secretary/dispatcher. He also has a daughter and a best friend by the name of Henry Standing Bear, a member of the local tribe on the nearby reservation.  Needless to say the Rez cops and the locals do not get along.  The story is about a series of murders connected to a rape case that Walt investigated.  Good start to a good series.

3. The Millenium Trilogy by Stieg Larsson.  I read the first book at the end of 2011 before I watched both the US and Swedish movies.  I read the other two books this fall and thoroughly enjoyed them.  I’m not saying they were high literature and I did get confused at times with all the characters but the story was engaging if not completely plausible.  Everyone knows what the books are about so I won’t summarize.  I will say that I will read these again because Lisbeth and Mikael are like  old friends you want to visit with from time to time.

4. False Mermaid by Erin Hart. This is the third book in a series about American pathologist Nora Gavin and her lover Cormac McGuire, an Irishman in Ireland. The story is about the murder of Nora’s sister a few years earlier that Nora comes back to solve in St. Paul, MN. The story starts in St Paul but ends back in Ireland. 

5. I Am Half-sick of Shadows by Alan Bradley.  Flavia de Luce is an eleven year old who lives with her two sisters, her widowed father, and her father’s handyman/war friend in the old family estate Buckshaw which belonged to her deceased mother Harriet.  Flavia has a passion for chemistry, getting in trouble, and sleuthing. This book is set at Christmas time and Flavia is working on a trap for Father Christmas while a film crew comes to Buckshaw to film a movie.  Someone is murdered and Flavia goes into action.

Five Least Favorite Books:

1. Crazytown: The Witch Tree by Jon Grilz.  I got this book free for my Kindle and read it because it was set up here in the northland of Minnesota. It started out okay but went downhill fast.  It starts with the FBI investigating an incident at the Witch Tree in Grand Portage, MN.  Next it goes to a small town where a former FBI agent has been demoted without really being told why to a position of police chief in a small northern MN town.  Yeah, you read that sentence right. The story then becomes cliché ridden and very implausible.  The police chief character was interesting but that wasn’t enough to save the story.

2. The Legend of Raven’s Ridge by Nancy Shepard. This one was another free book for my Kindle. The main character is a fifty something freelance female writer who lives out east somewhere (sorry, can’t remember) near the mountains and a nice park. Her mom wants her to get into a new hobby called  letterboxing that is like geocaching but with rubber stamps and log books. She gives it a try but ends up injured after a weird experience in the woods with a raven and old tramp.  There’s something mysterious is going on at Raven’s Ridge and she intends to find out.  The main character soon finds herself with a boyfriend and up to her neck in trouble.  I liked the main character but the bad guy almost had neon signs above his head saying “bad guy” and the ending was very rushed.  I will try another book by this author.

3. The Peach Keeper by Sarah Addison Allen. This wasn’t a bad book by any means but not overly memorable as I can’t remember what it was about.  Allen’s books are nice little romances where there is some magical element to them.  They are rather formulaic because the female usually has a secret/troubled past they’re trying to escape or fix and end up going home to do so where they are confronted with everything from the past. Like I said, this one just wasn’t memorable.

4. The Mark of Athena by Rick Riordan.  This too wasn’t a bad book but not one of my favorites in the Heroes of Olympus series. Too be honest, I didn’t remember much of the last one (Son of Neptune) so I got lost a few times. I didn’t really care about the characters much (except for Leo for some reason) and Percy and Annabeth just didn’t seem to be acting like themselves.  RR also gave us a big cliff hanger ending which isn’t how he normally does things so I was just disappointed.  My friend Kirsten was too so I’m not alone.

5. The Casual Vacancy by J.K. Rowling.  This also wasn’t a bad book per se, more of a frustrating one.  It took a while for me to get all the characters straight. Rowling is good at portraying small town life and the politics of that small town but I felt that some of the characters were just retreads of some of her Harry Potter characters. I also felt like I was being hit over the head with a frying pan with the social statement Rowling was making. I will read her next book.

I realize these are not really good summaries of the books but I hope to do better in the coming year. 

My goals for 2013: read more than last year and read a lot more off my TBR bookshelves.