Sunday, December 30, 2012

2012 Year End Book Review

My biggest claim for 2012 is reading a grand total of 155 books, a vast improvement from 2011 when I read 102 books, this is the breakdown:

Fiction - 147 books
Non-Fiction - 8 books

By format:
Audiobooks - 72
eBooks - 41
Graphic Novels - 34
Books - 8

All the audiobooks and most of the graphic novels have been borrowed/downloaded from the San Diego Public Library. The eBooks and Books have been purchased new from any number of sources, mainly Amazon and Comic-Con. 

Before I get to my reading highlights of the year, I want to say Farewell to one of the best story-tellers of our time Maeve Binchy (Evening Class, Tara Road, Minding Frankie and so many others) I was reading her second novel Echoes the day she died and felt very sad that there would be no more new stories from her. Not only did I felt like I lost her, but I also felt like I lost contact with Nora and Aiden, the people at Quentin's, Father Flynn, Anya and so many more of her characters that did cameos in each of her books. It was like catching up with them. Good-bye and Thank You.



# 3 - Graphic Novels

I belong to two Graphic Novel book clubs, one through a San Diego Meetup group and one on Goodreads. Both have opened my eyes to so many authors and artists, for many years all I had in my collection was The Sandman and Sin City, now my collection is increasing and I spent more time at the comics section at Comic-Con. I re-discovered my love for Transmetropolitan (the relationship between Spider Jerusalem and his weird cat is the best!) and Lucifer (so cunning!), both are series from Vertigo comics long ago ended, but still cherished and discussed in book clubs. Lucifer is now out of print so it is harder to get the collection but very much worth it if you do.




Another author I am now a big fan of is Craig Thompson, author of Blankets, Habibi, Carnet de Voyage and Good-Bye Chunky Rice. I read Chunky Rice for one of my book clubs and I am so glad I read Blankets first, otherwise I would never have read anything written by Craig Thompson. We read Chunky Rice six months ago and we are all still traumatized by it, and every month we meet we still discuss it, it is one of the saddest stories about relationships, loss and loneliness I've ever read, don't be fooled by the cute cover. This man is a black hole of despair, he's awesome!





# 2 - Indie Writers

Where to begin? Now that authors are no longer constrained by the traditional publishing industry, there has been an avalanche of great - and not so great - indie authors. Self-published is no longer a dirty word and since I do eBook Formatting I've been able to work with the best ones!

The following are a few of my favorite authors, in no particular order, whom I've met either through Goodreads or Twitter:

Susan Buchanan / Chick Lit
This girl is Marian Keyes good! From Scotland, it's been such a treat to read about life in the land of kilts, unintelligible accent and bad weather. She's also a world traveler and incorporates all that into her stories. So far she's written two novels Sign of the Times and The Dating Game and is working on her third novel...give it up for Sooz!!


J. Joseph Wright / Horror
So far I've read only his short stories (Gramma's Freezer, Brain Food, Cemetery Planet) and they are great! Very twilight-zone-ish, it usually happens that I impulse-buy one of his short stories to read later, take a tiny quick peak and become so engrossed that I devour the story right then and there. He is now a staple on my to-read list.



Jay Finn - up and coming
Irish author, he self-published two eBooks (Beneath the Darkness and Looking Back) and several of us in the Twitter world are waiting for a novel. I've read a chapter on something he's working on and it is very enticing. He has a rich style and I love the way he describes the interactions between his characters....keep on writing Jay!



Hardit Singh - Detective
This guy is Michael Connelly good! His short stories bring very rich characters that need a full length novel and the one novel I've read Traffic still haunts and makes me think. British author, Hardit's books have been published in 2011 and 2012 and I'm sure 2013 will bring more gut wrenching detective stories.


Maria Savva - Psychological thrillers
I met her not long ago thanks to Susan Buchanan and so far I've only read her latest novel, Haunted, which will be the next book to be reviewed in this blog. I'm very impressed with her style and depth in her story and in the next few weeks I'll be talking more about her.



And I can mention so many more like Nancy Warren (romance, chick lit), Johnathan Culver (weird), Diana Douglas (period romance), Jo Michaels (young adult), Yolanda Sfestos (paranormal romance), Andy Holloman (suspense thriller), Anne Allen (women's fiction) but you will be hearing about them in the months to come.

As reader etiquette, if you like a story, please leave a review on Amazon, Goodreads or wherever you bought the book. This helps the authors enormously not only by getting better rankings and sales, but also it encourages them to keep on entertaining us!

#1 - A Song of Ice and Fire
George R.R. Martin - May he have a long life and swift pen.

'nuff said.













2 comments:

  1. Nice list & impressive number of books. I'm also impressed with your variety of genres and formats. Nice! Thanks for posting.

    Mark

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    Replies
    1. Thank You Mark, I noticed you are following me on Twitter I look forward in reading your books as well.

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