2014 Reading Recap

I can't believe I read 96 books this year. By about November, I realized how close I was getting and really wanted to get to 100 (which has seemed like this mythical number that I've never been able to cross over the last few years), but it turned out that moving mid-December and traveling for Christmas proved too much for me and I just could not do anything more. So I will be proud of my 96 books for this year and realize that I probably will not read more than that for a very long time.

Without further ado, here are some of my favorite books from this year. I can't narrow it down any more than this and some of the categories overlap, but I don't have to worry about that because this is my own blog.

Best Quick Reads: On the Fence, Blackmoore, Virtuosity

Best Fiction: Dear Mr. Knightley, Crossing to Safety, Eleanor and Park, Where'd You Go, Bernadette

Best History: Mornings on Horseback, One Summer: America, 1927

Best Nonfiction: 168 Hours

Best Mystery: In the Woods

Best Memoirs: Lots of Candles, Plenty of Cake, Truth and Beauty

I have been putting off this annual review of my books for a while now (I am writing this on January 6, although posting it so that it will still show up in December 2014). For some reason, I haven't been looking forward to it like I usually do, and I think it is because I didn't love love many books I read this year. There were plenty that I enjoyed, but I think that I didn't give myself time to savor them (trying to reach 100!) and that I read a lot of books that weren't necessarily very noteworthy (particularly towards the end of the year). I want to change this for myself for 2015. I want to read books that I really love and to not rush through them in order to check them off a list. My reading goal for 2015 is the opposite of last year's--I'd like to focus on reading a few GOOD BOOKS in hopes that I love them and find some new favorites.

This is my classic book list (all of which I haven't yet read) that I'm hoping to tackle in 2015:

• Middlemarch by George Eliot
• Waverley by Walter Scott
• The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
• Moby-Dick by Herman Melville
• Walden by Henry David Thoreau
• Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
• Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
• One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
• Clarissa by Samuel Richardson
• Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe
• David Copperfield by Charles Dickens
• On the Road by Jack Kerouac
• The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
• The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James

There are only 14 on here because I know I'm going to find many other books I want to read throughout the year too. But if I can read these I will feel like I've accomplished something this year, and I know I'll enjoy it and get something deep out of reading these.