Does anyone ever keep track of all the books they read in a year or even a certain time period? For the past couple years, I wrote down all the titles/authors of the books that I read during a school year…and these were only books read for fun and not for school.
Anyway, I found the list for my Junior year of High School in my room last night and figured it would be fun to show what books I read then. If you’ve read any of these, let me know what you thought, and if you haven’t…but want too…feel free to ask what I thought (if I can remember, I’ll try and let you know!)
1. Prep-Jake Coburn
2. The Perks of Being a Wallflower-Stephen Chbosky
3. Running with Scissors-Augusten Burroughs
4. How to be Good- Nick Hornby
5. America- E. R. Frank
6. A Clockwork Orange- Anthony Burgess
7. Holidays on Ice-David Sedaris
8. High Fidelity-Nick Hornby
9. Hey Nostradamus!-Douglas Coupland
10. The Picture of Dorian Gray-Oscar Wilde
11. My Sister’s Keeper- Jodi Picoult
12. The Lovely Bones- Alice Sebold
13. Will’s Choice-Gail Griffith
14. The Pact- Jodi Picoult
15. Hairstyles of the Damned-Joe Meno
16. All Families are Psychotic-Douglas Coupland
17. School Shooter: In Hiw Own Words-Mark Frye
18. On the Road- Jack Kerouac
19. Survivor-Chuck Palahniuk
20. King Dork-Frank Portman
21. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time-Mark Haddon
22. Magical Thinking-Augusten Burroughs
23. Possible Side Effects-Augusten Burroughs
24. The Tenth Circle-Jodi Picoult
25. Post Office- Charles Bukowski
26. Equus-a play by Peter Shaffer
27. Keeping Faith-Jodi Picoult
Seems like you read a lot of Jodi Picoult. I love her. Lemme see which titles you went through …
My Sister’s Keeper is one of her most popular books, but I don’t think it was her best. Certainly good, yeah, but Picoult’s finest.
The Tenth Circle was a complete downfall, as well Nineteen Minutes. I didn’t really enjoy either — the topics were blah, the plots were blah, etc. (19M dealt with high school shootings, so it’s a sensitive issue, but the book was just not captivating.)
The Pact and Keeping Faith are my favorite Jodi Picoult books. ! What did you think of them??
Have you read Second Glance, Plain Truth, or Vanishing Acts? Loved those. Also really liked Salem Falls and Perfect Match.
OH and Lovely Bones was quite good too. Though I read it two years ago and can’t find my copy anymore, so I don’t know if I’d still like it. Books I loved from two years ago that I recently reread turned out not to be so magical after all…
Wowww, I made this one long. Sorry 😛
Steph
Hey Steph!
Yeah, I think that was my year for all her stuff…I still need to read more of her work, especially some of the older books, but I just haven’t gotten around to it. I own Nineteen Minutes, but need to read it…I’ve heard different stuff about it, so I suppose I’ll have to see what I think.
The Pact was great, I really loved it and fell in love with the guy (forget his name at the moment). Keeping Faith was also really awesome. The premise was very interesting.
Nope, I haven’t read any of those…but I do have either Second Glance or Salem Falls (I’m blanking which..) at my house so I need to find the time to read that.
I tend to like most books that i liked in the past, even if I reread them later, but I get what you mean. Lovely Bones was a really good story though, and I’m excited about the movie…not sure when it comes out though.
haha it’s quite alright! I liked seeing what you thought about the books.
And like you said in the beginning, I DO love Jodi Picoult. I like how she deals with big issues and writes the books from multiple points of views. 🙂
-Lauren
I’ve read a lot of those and they’re all great books. The two that stand out in my mind are “The Curious Incident…” and “The Lovely Bones.” If you liked TLB you should check out a book in verse called “Dead On Town Line.” Very similar.
Brenna: Never heard of that book…but I did like the lovely bones a lot, so I’ll have to look into it. Thanks for the idea.
And The Curious Incident…was definitely a great book! 🙂
-Lauren
I also keep track of what books I read. I started doing that in first grade, lost track of doing that for a LONG time and started up again in 2004. I keep it all in a spiral bound notebook in a cabinet in the hutch on my desk. I keep track of the title, author, and number of pages in the book. And starting this year, I started keeping track of the date that I finished the book, too; just so I could see how fast or slow I was reading them.
I don’t think I have read any of those books, but the Jodi Picoult ones sound good.
~Meredith
I love keeping a list of my books… I have a list from the beginning of eighth grade, and then every book I’ve read since then. It’s an ongoing list, and I plan on continuing it either until I stop reading (ha. ha. ha.) or until I get too lazy to keep up with it (which is unlikely because it’s so easy to just write down the name and author.)
I like Jodi Picoult as well, although I haven’t read as much of her work as I’d like. But I’ve read enough to know that pretty much anything she writes I’ll like.
Except The Tenth Circle. I just did not like that book.
Haha you should know that two/three years ago, I was, what, twelve? So my taste has WAY changed since then. I gather it stabilizes the older I get, but these past few years have been very weird in terms of my tastes. I've done a complete 180!
Let's see, let's see… Her older stuff wasn't that great, IMO. I couldn't even start the Whale book (her debut) — very different than the Jodi I know and love now. Picture Perfect was also blech — couldn't get through it either. If I'm not mistaken, I began reading, got bored, skipped ahead, landed on the EXACT page of the first sex scene, read that, read on until I found on what happened to the couple (several sex scenes followed. OOOO RAUNCHY! :P), got bored once again, put it down. I have both of those books here, still untouched, still unread. (For the most part…)
YOU NEED TO READ SECOND GLANCE. It was the hardest JP book to get in to for me (aside from the ones I mentioned above) but also one I really, really enjoyed. The twists are JP at her best. (Though I still like The Pack and Keeping Faith better.)
The Pact = literary perfection. It was her best work to date, methinks. I understood Emily completely even with all her enigmas. And Chris… he was a sweetie. Poor guy. I cried at the end of that one. His life will never be the same again. >.<
…and yet again a long winded post. 😛
Steph
I have read:
3. Running with Scissors-Augusten Burroughs
4. How to be Good- Nick Hornby
6. A Clockwork Orange- Anthony Burgess
9. Hey Nostradamus!-Douglas Coupland
10. The Picture of Dorian Gray-Oscar Wilde
12. The Lovely Bones- Alice Sebold
16. All Families are Psychotic-Douglas Coupland
18. On the Road- Jack Kerouac
21. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time-Mark Haddon
Of those I liked the Coupland and Clockwork Orange the most.
Meredith: That’s an awesome way to keep track…I should really start writing down all the books I read again…I just haven’t this summer yet, but maybe once it’s over.
I really do enjoy Jodi’s stuff, so it’s worth checking out for sure!
chelsie: I hope you keep it up then! seems like you’ve been going for a little while now, and I agree that it doesn’t take too long to write down the name and author.
See, I actually liked The Tenth Circle…but it looks like a lot of you didn’t. I believe they made that one into a Lifetime movie but I have yet to see it.
Steph: How has your tastes changed? And mine….I think I started reading a lot more YA books again…as you can see from this list….most of the stuff falls under the Adult category.
I heard her older stuff wasn’t that great. I suppose I could just stick to the more newer books. Alright! Looks like Second Glance should be my next Jodi book then. 🙂
I agree that The Pact was really good, and I understood Emily as well…right right! Chris was the name. Poor guy…I did feel very sad for him.
Lenore: A Clockwork Orange was really hard for me to get into at first b/c of the slang, but eventually I remembered what certain words meant or was able to figure out in the context…and then the story also picked up as it went on (less slang towards the end of the book too, if I believe…). And anyway, I ended up really enjoying the book!
-Lauren
I love Perks of Being a Wallflower. That is the book I was reading when I went to New York city. It traveled the city with me in my purse!
wonderlandchick: That’s awesome! I really hope to read it again sometime soon. It’s definitely one of my favorites.
-Lauren