How I Spent 2008

I love book lists. Mostly, I love to read them and see which ones I've read and say, "Yes! That was good!" Your last gift, which I had planned to give you last week before the whole "spend the day on the beach with the kids instead of blogging" decision, is a book list. All the books I read in 2008, in backwards order with Lizzie Bright sneaking in at the last minute on the 3oth.

Interestingly (embarrassingly?), I read two books by many authors, but the only authors from whom I read three books are Carolyn Keene and Stephenie Meyer. I wish I could say, "Oh, and I read six books by (insert name of impressive sounding serious author)," but after the 15 Classics in 15 Weeks marathon, you can see I sort of tapered off into delicious middle grade grade adventures for a while. I did read half of Foucault's Pendulum in there, but I didn't finish it.

Also, I didn't count any books I only read out loud to the kids, even though some of them took us weeks (like Little House in the Very Boring Oh My God Is He Cleaning the Gun Again? Woods). I was tempted to because it would have put me over 100, but...

In any case, enjoy. Comments welcome.

1. Lizzie Bright and the Buckminster Boy (Gary D. Schmidt)
2. P. S. I Love You (Barbara Conklin)
3. Shakespeare Wrote for Money (Nick Hornby)
4. Artemis Fowl (Eoin Colfer)
5. The Bungalow Mystery (Nancy Drew #3, Carolyn Keene)
6. The Popularity Plan (Sweet Dreams Series #2)
7. The Luckiest Girl (Beverly Cleary)
8. The Bobbsey Twins of Lakeport (Laura Lee Hope)
9. The Hidden Staircase (Nancy Drew #2, Carolyn Keene)
10. The Secret of the Old Clock (Nancy Drew #1, Carolyn Keene)
11. The Book of Lost Things (John Connolly)
12. Fahrenheit 451 (Ray Bradbury)
13. Chains (Laurie Halse Anderson)
14. Identical (Ellen Hopkins)
15. Cordelia's Honor (Lois McMaster Bujold)
16. On Writing (Stephen King)
17. Size 12 Is Not Fat (Meg Cabot)
18. How I Live Now (Meg Rosoff)
19. Standard Hero Behavior (John David Anderson)
20. The Adoration of Jenna Fox (Mary E. Pearson)
21. Up and Down the Scratchy Mountains (Laurel Snyder)
22. Dune (Frank Herbert)
23. Peak (Roland Smith)
24. Evolution, Me & Other Freaks of Nature (Robin Brande)
25. Faust (Johann Wolfgand von Goethe)
26. Breaking Dawn (Stephenie Meyer)
27. Eclipse (Stephenie Meyer)
28. Light in August (William Faulkner)
29. Leaves of Grass (Walt Whitman)
30. Once Upon a Time in the North (Philip Pullman)
31. Freak Show (James St. James)
32. The Underneath (Kathi Appelt)
33. Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist (Rachel Cohn & David Levithan)
34. Clay (David Almond)
35. The House of the Seven Gables (Nathaniel Hawthorne)
36. Savvy (Ingrid Law)
37. I Am the Messenger (Markus Zusak)
38. The Good Soldier: A Tale of Passion (Ford Madox Ford)
39. The Divine Comedy: Volume 1: Inferno (Dante Alighieri)
40. Blood Meridian: Or the Evening Redness in the West (Cormac McCarthy)
41. The Hundred Dresses (Eleanor Estes)
42. Swann's Way: In Search of Lost Time, Vol. 1 (Marcel Proust)
43. Pale Fire (Vladimir Nabokov)
44. Book of a Thousand Days (Shannon Hale)
45. New Moon (Stephenie Meyer)
46. Jane Eyre (Charlotte Brontë)
47. Moby-Dick: or, The Whale (Herman Melville)
48. My Mother the Cheerleader (Robert Sharenow)
49. East of Eden (John Steinbeck)
50. Silas Marner (George Eliot)
51. Don Quixote (Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra)
52. The Canning Season (Polly Horvath)
53. Lock and Key (Sarah Dessen)
54. Pride and Prejudice (Jane Austen)
55. Then We Came to the End (Joshua Ferris)
56. Love In The Corner Pocket (Marlene Perez)
57. Rats Saw God (Rob Thomas)
58. If You Come Softly (Jacqueline Woodson)
59. The Wednesday Wars (Gary D. Schmidt)
60. After Tupac and D Foster (Jacqueline Woodson)
61. Reincarnation (Suzanne Weyn)
62. Deadline (Chris Crutcher)
63. Looks (Madeleine George)
64. The Squad: Perfect Cover (Jennifer Lynn Barnes)
65. Arkansas (John Brandon)
66. Our Man in Havana (Graham Greene)
67. 13 Little Blue Envelopes (Maureen Johnson)
68. Things Hoped For (Andrew Clements)
69. Waiting for Normal (Leslie Connor)
70. Little Friendly Advice (Siobhan Vivian)
71. Making Waves (Randi Reisfeld)
72. The Tale of Despereaux (Kate DiCamillo)
73. Prom (Laurie Halse Anderson)
74. Runemarks (Joanne Harris)
75. Divisadero (Michael Ondaatje)
76. The Golem's Eye (The Bartimaeus Trilogy, Book 2, Jonathan Stroud)
77. Confessions of a Triple Shot Betty (Jody Gehrman)
78. Little Secrets #1: Playing With Fire (Emily Blake)
79. The Opposite of Invisible (Liz Gallagher)
80. The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane (Kate DiCamillo)
81. The Amulet of Samarkand (The Bartimaeus Trilogy, Book 1, Jonathan Stroud)
82. Dairy Queen (Catherine Gilbert Murdock)
83. Letters from the Corrugated Castle: A Novel of Gold Rush California, 1850-1852 (Joan Blos)
84. Secrets of My Suburban Life (Lauren Baratz-Logsted)
85. How I Saved My Father's Life (and Ruined Everything Else) (Ann Hood)
86. A Great and Terrible Beauty (Libba Bray)
87. The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian (Sherman Alexie)
88. Shooting the Moon (Frances O'Roark Dowell)
89. A Crooked Kind of Perfect (Linda Urban)
90. The White Darkness (Geraldine McCaughrean)
91. A Curse Dark as Gold (Elizabeth C. Bunce)
92. Thirteen Reasons Why (Jay Asher)
93. The Land of the Silver Apples (Nancy Farmer)
94. The Bermudez Triangle (Maureen Johnson)
95. Letters from Rapunzel (Sara Lewis Holmes)
96. Elijah Of Buxton (Christopher Paul Curtis)
97. The Name of this Book is Secret (Pseudonymous Bosch)

Edited to add: Thor reminds me that I read Lizzie Bright earlier; it was John Green's Paper Towns that I read all night on the 30th. A worthy #98.