Horror Aficionados discussion

How was your year (bookwise)

So 2012 is coming to an end (yeah I know it's only november, and no apocalypse puns here), and I was thinking about my the 2012 reading challenge.
How did 2012 turn out to be for you guys? Did you exceed your goals? Or perhaps you set the bar a tad too high this year?

For myself I can say that it's been a great year literary. I set out with the very much conservative hope of reading 35 books over the course of the year, last year I read 38 books, and so I though that 35 was realistic... but so far I've already far exceeded this. At the moment I'm at 54 books (a staggering 154 % according to goodreads), and a handful more will be added before the year is over I'm sure.

In number of pages the statistics is clear too. My bookcount of 54 books totals 25110 pages or 465 pages per book.
The genre I've been reading the most is by far fantasy, with more than half of my total books being in this genre. It's followed by Horror>Sci-Fi>Biographies....

As I can see on my rating statistics, this year have offered quite a few books I loved too. I've awarded no fewer than 22 books with the maximum of 5 stars (I still think the rating system on Goodreads could be more nuanced though), and 16 books have gotten 4 stars from me.

I would like to mention a few of the books on my list too. My reread of The Wheel of Time: Boxed Set has been very entertaining, although I'm not quite done with it yet (I still have 1½ months to read the rest).
Also I've at long last begun reading The Dresden Files by Jim Butcher ... And I absolutely love it!
This year has also introduced me to Brandon Sanderson ... and I've loved everything I've read of his.
I've been trying to read some of the Science Fiction classics I've missed over the years, and that they've all proven to be worth the hype (It's Roadside Picnic , Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? , Ender's Game and Flowers for Algernon which has all been more than just enjoyable)
2012 did offer some dissappointments for me, mainly 1Q84 , The Night Circus , The Passage and World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War )

So what am I blabbering on about? I would just like to share my thoughts on the books I've read this year, and maybe be inspired by what you've read and what you think about this year's literary offerings.

The Best Book I Read This Year: The Way of Kings

Suprise of the year: Boy's Life

Dissappointment of the year: 1Q84

Great thread, Mummi. Unfortunately I have to go pick up my son from school, but when I have time I'm going to check my 2012 read list and give my thoughts on what I liked and didn't liked and what surprised me.

I started with a modest goal of reading one book every two weeks (26 books for the year) and blew through that pretty quickly and moved the goal to one book a week (52 books) and have been running at a slightly faster pace than that.

In terms of number of pages read, I am showing 14998 pages or roughly 300 pages per book. I think this number might be a bit low as I remember a book or two that did not show the number of pages in GR.

As usual my reading list was heavy on Sherlock Holmes pastiches and horror with a few Hercule Poirot mixed in here and there. Surprisingly absent from this year's list was WWII fiction.

There were a couple of surprises among my reads for the year. Namely,
Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter by Seth Grahame-Smith and The Witches by Roald Dahl. (See my reviews.)

The biggest disappointment for me this year was The Italian Secretary: A Further Adventure of Sherlock Holmes by Caleb Carr. (Again, see my review.)

I was also introduced to a couple of series that I will be visiting again in 2013, The Dexter series by Jeff Lindsay and the Nightside series by Simon R. Green.

I also pushed most of the rest of the way through The Last Apprentice series by Joseph Delaney and the Felix Castor series by Mike Carey. I will certainly be wrapping up both of those series in 2013.

In summary:

Best book and surprise of the year: Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter.

Biggest disappointment of the year: The Italian Secretary: A Further Adventure of Sherlock Holmes.

This is a great topic!

This has been a wonderful year of reading for me. My goal was 150 and I have already surpassed it. However, there are a lot of shorts and novellas in there. But I'm keeping them because they balance out the few monster-sized books I have read.

The longest: The Wise Man's Fear at 994 pages.

The Best: (I have a few):
Lonesome Dove
The Hoard
The Bleeding Season
When We Join Jesus In Hell
We Need to Talk About Kevin


The Worst:
The Ouijers
Darkhouse

This has been a really great year for me. I haven't read a lot of books that totally bombed. I started out my reading goal at 60, then it got bumped to 80, then bumped to 100. I'm about 4 books shy of my goal right now. I'm sure by the end of the year I will have surpassed my goal of 100.

5 star books - 29
4 star books - 44
3 star books - 14
2 star books - 05
1 star books - 04

The majority of my reading was paranormal romance and horror.

According to my stats, the longest book I read this year (so far) has been The Strain which was 585 pages. Overall, I've read 96 books and 19,495 pages.

My favorite book read this year is a split between Horns and Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter.

The worst book of the year, without a doubt, was Salem 1692: What Devils Made Them Do It?.

I set my goat at 55; five more than last year. I only have 3 more to go. I should be able to finish now that I have Dramamine & can read on the morning & evening commute.

According to GR, I've read 18,009 pages but I know that's off. Some of the books didn't have number of pages and some on GR were under what the actual page count was.

I seem to have read a good smattering of everything this year. Horror, sci-fi, YA, paranormal, fiction, blah blah blah.

Worst book of the year: The Vampire of New York

I'm not sure which is the best book. Ready Player One or Leviathan Wakes. And there's always Evil Dark or City of Women

This year has been great for me. I got back into reading after severely lacking for the past few years only reading a book here and there. I ran into a lot of great new authors this year. (Thank you, Jon, Charlene, Tressa and others at HA who pointed out some great reads!)

My favorite authors that I have found this year are, Kealan Patrick Burke, Lee Thompson, Alan Ryker, Gillian Flynn, and Greg Gifune.

I read 66 books so far this year on my goal of 52. I must say that I read more books this year than the past 3 combined. (sad)

5 Stars – 7
4 Stars - 41 (About 5 or 6 of these I think are 4.5)
3 Stars – 16
2 Star – 2
1 Star – 0 *There were however several books that I just had to put down and walk away from that I may (or may not) try to read at another time. Hard to say where they would end up star wise, but I guess if they were looking to be higher stars to begin with I probably would have finished them.

15,796 pages read. The longest being 11/22/63 at 849 pages

The Best Book I Read This Year: Tie between When We Join Jesus In Hell and Kin

Surprise of the year: Sharp Objects

Disappointment of the year: Blood Meridian, or the Evening Redness in the West (with all the 5 star reviews, I was so jazzed to read this one and sadly it fell flat for me and I was unable to finish it)

That's awesome, Bill!

It's been an excellent year for me from a book angle. I ended up finding more sources for buying books, feeding my ridiculous habit more, and ended up massively growing my Urban Fantasy series collections. Found some series I've fallen in love with, and also reached my goal of 100 books on Goodreads. Read some classics for the first time that impressed as well, and also tried to keep kind of diverse with the genres I've been sampling.

I've been trying to read some of the Science Fiction classics I've missed over the years, and that they've all proven to be worth the hype (It's Roadside Picnic , Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? , Ender's Game and Flowers for Algernon which has all been more than just enjoyable)"

Flowers for Algernon blew me away. Found it stunning.

So far I've knocked down 30 books/11000 pages). Considering I play hockey three times a week, jam once a week, practice guitar every evening (oh, and bought a set of electronic drums for other musical fun on the side), work, and maintain a relationship, I'm doing alright :)

There is no way I'll pressure myself on the reading front. I'll read what I can whenever I can.

It's been a fantastic year so far, bookwise. I've rated 11 books 5 stars: 11/22/63 is still holding ground as the read of the year, followed closely by The Devil All the Time, and Gillian Flynn's excellent Gone Girl and Sharp Objects (which rates as the Surprise of the Year, as this was her debut.)

Mo Hayder's Ritual was the biggest disappointment, only because Birdman and
The Treatment (last year's reads) were so stellar.

Other five-stars were Horns, and his dad's Full Dark, No Stars which I didn't realize was so great. It was excellent.

So, many great reads this year. Very happy!

I'm a newcomer to Goodreads, so actually tracking what I read is a new and novel (no pun intended) experience.

Oddly enough, up until the past few months I haven't read much in the way of fiction. Discovering groups such as this one and The Sword & Laser has made me aware of a great many new authors I had no prior experience with.

In terms of non-fiction, standouts include Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain and the one I'm very close to finishing, Too Big to Fail: The Inside Story of How Wall Street and Washington Fought to Save the Financial System from Crisis — and Themselves, as well as Origins of the Specious: Myths and Misconceptions of the English Language.

So far as fiction goes, The Shadow of the Wind probably leads the pack.

Next year the list should be longer.

The Best Book I Read This Year: Abrahan Lincoln: Vampire Hunter (A book with a silly premise blew me away with the perfect melding of vampire lore and American history. I absolutely love this book and recommend it to everyone.)

Suprise of the year: 11/22/63 (Went in expecting to not like this book, but couldn't put it down. Thought the politics would put me off it, but when I realized how silly and idealistic the idea of how wonderful the world would be by preventing JFK's death was, I rolled with the time travel part of the story and enjoyed it immensely.)

Dissappointment of the year: Mockinjay (For a series that started off strong, I thought it came up lame with the third book. I got impatient to finish it and found myself speed reading through it to find out how it ended.)

Other books I enjoyed this year:

Steve Jobs (Fantastic and detailed autobiography of this innovative man who was a big part of my life in the same odd way he was part of everyone else's life. I just assumed he'd be there forever, mesmerizing people with his oratory skills and the products you didn't know you wanted but he did. I'm very sad about his passing.)

The Devil All the Time (What a story! Serial killers; orphans; bastard children; knocked up dimwits; crooked lawmen; sinning preachers, and more. Ugh, I know, but Donald Ray Pollock weaves a fantastic tale with all these low lives.

Wolf Hunt (I expected to enjoy this, but had no idea I'd enjoy it as much as I did. A wonderful black comedy about two bungling thugs who find themselves transporting a caged werewolf to a crime lord when he escapes and all hell breaks loose. Violent and funny.)

Gone Girl (This story about a missing wife and her suspect husband had me guessing up to the very end what was really happening and how it could possibly end. Told through the missing woman's diary, it shows how we come to assume too much with too little evidence. I can't recommend this great book highly enough.)

Mummi, Ender's Game is one of my all time favorite books. I even have a "What would Ender do?" bumper sticker on my car.

Charlene, so glad you loved Lonesome Doves, a novel I think is the Greatest American Novel ever written. I read We Need to Talk About Kevin in 2011 or else it would be on my 2012 list as one of the best I had read for the year. A marvelous book that ensures lots of stimulating discussion.

Teawench, I loved Ready Player One.

Bill, while I enjoyed The Ritual, I was somewhat disappointed in it, too. It could have been great but fail a little short.

Trees, I loved Ender's Game as well!
I thank you again for the rec of Lonesome Dove. Just thinking about it makes me contentedly sigh. : )

Sorry I mistyped your name! I'm only good typing on the computer plus I can't figure out how to edit on here.

LOL, Charlene. I didn't notice it at first. I've been called much worse; trust me on that.

Hell, I called Lonesome Dove "Lonesome Doves" and I wasn't even on my phone. I hate surfing and posting on my phone. Too tedious.

I haven't read nearly as much as I usually do this year. While I don't track my reading on goodreads, I know that I fell far short of my usual thirty or so boks a year. I read a few Star Trek novels, reread Needful Things, The Long Walk, and From a Buick 8, and a few random books I happened to pick up here and there. But, as anyone who has followed any of my posts the past few months knows, this was a crazy year for me. Besides, I spent much more time writing than reading this year, which I think was slightly more productive. I read and reread every one of my books and stories, so add ten to that list and I guess I did pretty good.
Best book this year: The Long Walk.

This has been a rather hefty year of reading for me, not all of it for pleasure. I feel like I got interrupted a lot by having to read various fiction for different classes.
According to my GR bookshelves, the final count of children's books I read for ONE CLASS was 92. I think I threw in at least 4 more children's books because they were written by Neil Gaiman and I was trying to figure out which to read aloud for a podcast assignment.
I also read 5 YA books for a YA Materials class I planned to take over the summer and dropped due to being burnt out. My favorite of these was either The Book Thief, which is just a great story or Zombies Vs. Unicorns, which I actually listened to on audiobook. I recommend audiobooking this collection of funny and entertaining stories that are either about zombies or unicorns. The inros between the stories are done by the editors and are campy silliness.
For the Reader's Advisory Class I'm finishing up now, I had to read a mystery, a horror novel (well, speculative fiction, I chose the horror novel), an urban fiction novel and a romance novel. I actually really enjoyed 3 out of 4 of these novels. The mystery , Bury Your Dead, was interesting enough to hold my attention and had characters that make me want to read Penny's other books. I also enjoyed the romance suspense novel, One Scream Away, but I found the serial killer character more captivating than the romance. I read Ghost Road Blues because it had been on my TBR for a while and I love Maberry. I'm really glad others wanted to read it with me and discuss it, made homework more fun. The only book I didn't like was the urban fiction novel, A Hustler's Wife: A Nikki Turner Original. I found the main character too superficial and the book was filled with grammar and spelling mistakes.
The rest of my books were either textbooks (this reminds me, I should add the rest of my textbooks) or fiction books that I read for my own enjoyment. I think my favorites this year were Ready Player One and Come Closer. I would reread both of these books for very different reasons. Come Closer is probably the best possession story I've ever read. Maybe I'll feel differently after I get to the Exorcist. :)
I still find it funny that I changed my goal twice this year because of class and now I probably won't make it to 150 books. I thought all those children's books provided me a big enough buffer to reread The Stand yet again, but now I doubt it. Hoping to finish that and Dead Man's Song before the end of the year. I didn't really start 21st Century Dead yet (just read the intro) so that might be my first book of the new year.
I have one more semester of classes (two classes and a practicum) to complete before I graduate so the beginning of this year will be very busy. Maybe I'll catch up when I'm unemployed...

Ardy wrote: "I haven't read nearly as much as I usually do this year. While I don't track my reading on goodreads, I know that I fell far short of my usual thirty or so boks a year. I read a few Star Trek novel..."

Ardy, are you going to the Star Trek TNG at the movies on Thursday? I am, can't wait!

Rachel wrote: "This has been a rather hefty year of reading for me, not all of it for pleasure. I feel like I got interrupted a lot by having to read various fiction for different classes.
According to my G..."

Rachel, I may look up that Louise Penny book. I have heard great things about her writing.

Her writing was pretty good. I liked how she combined a fictional story with facts about Quebec and its history. I also really liked the lead detective character, which is why I may seek out more of Penny's novels featuring that character. Also, I got the impression that some of the events mentioned as being in the past in Bury Your Dead are events in their own titles.

Charlene wrote: "Ardy wrote: "I haven't read nearly as much as I usually do this year. While I don't track my reading on goodreads, I know that I fell far short of my usual thirty or so boks a year. I read a few St..."

Don't think so. Too broke. Sadly, the only time I've been to a movie theater all year was to see a certain vampire movie (which shall remain nameless, because had I been seen there it could have ruined my writing career) because I've been dragged by my little sisters to every movie in the franchise. The next movie I plan on seeing is Zombie Love.
However, I do have many ST episodes on DVD and a collection of over a hundred Star Trek novels. I won't be deprived.

Rachel, The Exoricist is not as good as Come Closer, IMO.

Then I guess I'm not missing anything :)...except I do need a copy of Come Closer.

I had a great year book-wise.....I also had a nice blurb typed when GR sucked it into outer space with that rocking chair bitch *sigh*.

Let me start with some surprises......
Seed turned out to be a good book.....I really liked the story. I only read the original and not the one with additional stuff. Another surprisingly good book was Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter.....I have to say I did not expect this to be a good book....I thought it would be cheesy, BUT it turned out great. The author really wove the vampire tale into the historic story. He did a good job with Lincoln's character.

Now to the books that were awful: You Don't Sweat Much for a Fat Girl: Observations on Life from the Shallow End of the Pool...this book was on the racist side....not something that appeals to me especially in non-fiction supposed to be humor. I was fine when she was making fun of herself, but I think she overstepped. Also, Exit to Eden turned out to be a love story....I was more than disappointed. I thought there would be more whips, chains and torture and this was my first Rice book.

Miracle at St. Anna was a good story......I have not seen the movie and I am debating on whether I watch it or not.

I normally do not read YA, but I read two YA books this year that were both good:
The Book Thief and The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, both were full of detail and told a good story. The Book Thief was told by Death which gave an interesting take on a well told story. The ATDoaPI turned out great....it is a banned book and I cannot imagine any parent censoring this book. It is about a kid who really tries hard for himself.

I still hope to get a few more books done this year.....After school finishes.

I've read a lot of stuff the last couple of months. In September, I had a birthday, and not surprisingly, I got a lot of books. Some of them were more academic in nature, but the ones that kind of touched on themes here were pretty nice:



I also got the updated Limited Edition S&N version of Blood and Thunder by Mark Finn. They only have links to the old paperback (which I have and is going for a pretty hefty price on the used market for such a new book). This one is almost twice as long, with only 150 copies printed. Unfortunately, it has the same banal intro by Lansdale. Maybe one day I'll drive up to Nac. and get him to sign the intro...then kick his ass for writing it.

I also got 'So Far The Poet' by Tevis Clyde Smith.

and further 'The Collected Letters of Dr. Isaac M. Howard.'

Info on these can be seen at: http://www.rehfoundation.org/category...

19,835 pages according to Goodreads, with eleven 5-star and two 1-star ratings. I enjoyed reading quite a bit Jeff Strand, thanks to many thumbs up from this group (haven't read anything by him yet? Get to it!) and also enjoyed a few re-reads from favorite authors and checked out some new and self-published authors.

Overall, a good reading year. I hope 2013 is as fun and engaging. I will have less reading time which means I won't be as tolerant enduring books that are less than three stars.

This has been a very prolific reading year for me. Owning to exsessive amounts of free time, I read more than I ever have before. I've worked my way through our free library's horror selection. I've read more non horror books than I normally do and I've completed my resolution of reading at least one nonfiction book per month. I've discovered some excellent authors this year such as Paul Auster, Jim Knipfel, Daryl Gregory and Glen Krisch and I've read as many books of theirs as I could. I've posted a list of my 2012's favorites, tops 3 that come to mind now are .
Read some crappy books too, but not that many. Was dissapointed by a couple of post apocalyptic classics. Read some terrific graphic novels. Read John Connolly's Charlie Parker series, which are just awesome and this is from someone who doesn't normally care for series.
This is also the year that I finally started reading in all formats, I now listen to audio books and read on Kindle. The latter now has a terrific collection of free horror, thanks to our amazing Nikki and her thread on HA. I'm trying to make more of an effort to only read books I am really excited about and to streamline my book collection accordingly.
Just did my year's total count, 268 books out of which 183 novels/anthologies, 9 novellas, 66 graphic novels and some short stories and plays.