Total Books read: 100+ (and yes, I read all the short little ones to make it to this century mark!)
Pages read: 27,952 ………………………………2021: 29,419 Average pages per book: 274……………………………..241 Average pages per day: 77……………………………….81
Hours listened: ~240 Audiobooks count: 33
My TOP 22 in the year 2022:
Top Ten: City of Girls, Brown Girl Dreaming, Autumn, Lucy by the Sky, Lessons in Chemistry, Five Tuesdays in Winter, Dinosaurs, The Sentence, Trust, This Time Tomorrow
I’m so pleased that these hit many different genres and categories!
Random Stuff:
29 FIVE SLICES OF PIE
53 FOUR
16 THREE
3 TWO
0 ONE
(These are spookily similar to last year!)
Books read that were over 400 pages: 13
REALLY ODD to me that I didn’t read any true chunksters (>500) this year. #Shrug
Female to Male Ratio: 72 / 26 (~12 of that 26 being US or Brit white dudes…) Total Books by New-to-Me Authors = 42 (compared to 72 last year) Repeat Authors = 34 Total Books by Authors of Color/LGTBQ+ = 26 (best guess estimate – didn’t do thorough research into backgrounds, assumptions might have been made)
Oldest Book: 1850 – Sonnets from the Portuguese by EBB
Number of Books Pub’d in 2022: 32 (and 27 pub’d in 2021!, 67% pub’d in the last 3 years!!!) Books over 25 years old = 10 – over 50 years old = 7
Hardcovers 22 eBooks 19 Audiobooks 33 Tradeback 26 paperback 1 . . . . . . . . also spookily similar to last year.
Genres Total Adult Fiction Books Read = 46 Total YA Fiction Books Read = 1 Children’s = 2 Total Memoir Books Read = 12 Total Nonfiction Books Read = 22 Short Story / Essays = 3 Poetry = 5 Mystery/Thriller = 2 Translated = 2 Fantasy = 1 SciFi = 1 Historical Fiction = 8 Cookbooks = 0 Adventure = 0 Business = 1 Graphical = 1
Number of debuts: 10 (best guess) Best debut: Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus
Number of books read on the list of 1001 Books to Read Before You Die: 2 The Optimist’s Daughter Giovanni’s Room (this is a very low count for me. eeeek)
Interesting Coincidences – How many time the word TOMORROW was in the book titles this year! This Time Tomorrow by Emma Straub, Tomorrow Will Be Different by Sarah McBride, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin
Books that mentioned pie: 47
And… the Care’s Books & Pie 2022 Pie in Literature Award goes to:
Four books vie for the title this year, let me explain.
The Disreputable History of Frankie-Landau Banks by E.Lockhart. has considerable space devoted to a cross-country adventure eating at pie shoppes along the way. Who wouldn’t LOVE that? However, it wasn’t til I had completed the book that I realized that Lockhart was an author of a book I loathed. (We Were Liars. UGH)
True Biz by Sara Novic has a bit about a character wearing a Miss Sweet Potato Pie costume!
The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek has multiple mentions of pie and also features a town dance where eligible young ladies bring a tempting pie to attract a future husband. Pivotal pie plot point, methinks.
The Rabbit Hutch features a diner that has a pie theme – but not any old pie theme: Avant Garde pie: new and unusual — which is ME! and how I came into my pie passion.
drum roll, please
.
.
.
And the winner goes to The Rabbit Hutch! weird pie wins hands down, all day every day. I only wish we could have had more descriptions.
Best Pie Quote:
“I left a slice of pie in my desk drawer,“ she said mournfully. “It’s probably halfway to the moon by now.”
Total Books Read = 122 Average Books Read Per Month = 10 Best Reading Month = July 15 or April 14 Worst Reading Month = Jan or Nov
Total Pages Read = 29,419 Average Pages Per Book = 241 Average Pages Read Per Day = 81
Total Chunksters (400+ pages) Read = 14
Genres Total Adult Fiction Books Read = 36 Lighter Contemporary Fic = 5 Total YA Fiction Books Read = 6 Children’s = 4 Total Memoir Books Read = 12 Total Nonfiction Books Read = 24 Short Story Collection = 1 Poetry = 8 Mystery/Thriller = 2 Translated = 5 Fantasy = 5 SciFi = 9 Historical Fiction = 8 Cookbooks = 2 Adventure = 1 Business = 2 Graphical = 1
Formats Total Audio Books “Read” = 29 Total Ebooks Read = 28 Total Hardcover Books = 26 Tradeback/Paperback = 39
Ratings ★★★★★ = 37 ★★★★ = 57 ★★★ = 21 ★★ = 6 ★ =
Authors Total Books By Women = 77 Total Books By Men = 45 Total Books by New-to-Me Authors = 72 Repeat Authors = 26 Total Books by Authors of Color = 33
Miscellaneous Total Graphic Novels Read = 0 Total Books Reread = 0 Total “Classics” Read = 15 Total Books Read for Book Club = 6
Oldest book: The Epic Gilgamesh Longest book: 856 JS&MN Shortest book: 18 Pumpkin Pie
Longest book title: A Bound Woman Is a Dangerous Thing: The Incarceration of African American Women from Harriet Tubman to Sandra Bland
Shortest book title: Jack
Debuts: 17 On List of Books to Read Before You Die: 4 Book to Movie: 3, Book to Play: 1, Book to TV Miniseries: 1
Books with Pie: 58
Care’s 2021 Pie in Lit Award goes to…. The Resisters!
I read more books than I ever have in one calendar year. Yet, I didn’t have any standout amazing reading experiences. BUT WAIT! I do NOT mean to say I didn’t have a great reading year because I did! I had many tremendous 4 & 5 star reads and if I were to really look at the list, some of those fives would drop to 4 and some of those 4s would elevate to a 5 and so I’m NOT going to look.
I’m going with what I set when I recorded in my spreadsheet and blog. I did pretty good on blogging reviews this year, though that last few months were a disappointment. That’s OK, it’ll be OK. Get back up if you fall down; no need to dither/dather over spilt milk and attempt to go back in time to fix. Nope.
♦ Classics — One True Thing by Anna Quindlen 1994 Historical Fiction — The Cold Millions by Jess Walter and Everyone Knows Your Mother is a Witch by Rivka Galchen Mystery — Swann -or- Long Bright River Literary Fiction — Top 3: The Promise by Damon Galgut, Luster by Raven Leilani, Oh William by Elizabeth Strout Nonfiction —These Precious Days by Ann Patchett Fantasy —The Spindle Splintered by Alix Harrow Poetry – It Shouldn’t Have Been Beautiful – Lia Purpura and Jeanne Griggs Postcard Poems! Science Fiction — Martha Wells Murderbot Series YA — Alone with the Stars by David Graham
♦ Books You Were Excited About & Thought You Were Going To Love More But Didn’t? The Book of Form and Emptiness by Ruth Ozeki, Skippy Dies/Paul Murray and Shuggie Bain by Douglas Stuart
♦ Most surprising (in a good way) book you read? Stephen Florida. It is a DEBUT.
♦ Book You “Pushed” The Most People To Read? n/a
♦ Best series you started in 2021? Murderbot
♦ Favorite new author you discovered in 2021? Anna Quindlen and Raven Leilani
♦ Best book from a genre you don’t typically read/was out of your comfort zone? (I can’t think of anything to fit this…)
♦ Most action-packed/thrilling/unputdownable book of the year? I can’t think of anything to fit this either. The most memorable “unputdownable” book that comes to mind is the opposite of action-packed! Whereabouts by Lahiri
♦ Book You Are Most Likely To Re-Read Next Year? Goodness, um NONE? Maybe These Precious Days. I rarely reread and certainly not so quick in time. (OK, that isn’t quite true… I read Milkman twice in the same year and I read Duchess Goldblatt, twice in the same year, too! #shrug)
♦ Favorite cover of a book you read in 2021? Everyone Knows Your Mother is a Witch or Euphoria by Lily King or The Resistors by Gish Jen
♦ Most memorable character of 2021? Narrator of My Year of Rest and Relaxation or Narrator in The Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison or Konstance in Cloud Cuckoo Land .
♦ Most beautifully written book read in 2021? The Soul of Kindness by Elizabeth Taylor
♦ Most Thought-Provoking/ Life-Changing Book of 2021? Did That Just Happen?!
♦ Book you can’t believe you waited UNTIL 2021 to finally read? Oranges are Not the Only Fruit (and Anne Frank and Housekeeping and Fun Home and Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell) (And Alice in Wonderland.)
♦ Favorite Passage/Quote From A Book You Read In 2021?
♦ Shortest & Longest Book You Read In 2021? You’re My Little Pumpkin Pie (18 pages) by Natalie Marshal and Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell (865 pages) by Susanna Clarke
♦ Book That Shocked You The Most? Effin Birds by Aaron Reynolds (LOL)
♦ Favorite Couple? Caroline & Tom Donohoe in The Radium Girls. True love.
♦ Favorite Non-Romantic Relationship of The Year? Murderbot and ART?
♦ Favorite Book You Read in 2021 From an Author You’ve Read Previously? The Green Mile by SK, These Precious Days by AP
♦ Best Book You Read In 2021 That You Read Based SOLELY On A Recommendation From Somebody Else? Yoga Pant Nation maybe. Or… wait for it. Murderbot!
♦ Newest fictional crush from a book you read in 2021? no idea. I can’t keep answering with Murderbot, can I?
♦ Best 2021 debut you read? Luster by Raven Leilani
♦ Best Worldbuilding/Most Vivid Setting You Read This Year? The House in the Cerulean Sea by TJ Klune
♦ Book That Put A Smile On Your Face/Was The Most FUN To Read? Murderbot
♦ Book That Made You Cry in 2021? These Precious Days
♦ Hidden Gem Of The Year? The Tenth Muse by Catherine Chung (probably the book that had the least chatter in my world…)
♦ Book That Crushed Your Soul? The Trees by Percival Everett
♦ Most Unique Book You Read In 2021? Several People Are Typing! by Calvin Kasulke
♦ Book That Made You the Maddest? Detransition, Baby (that so many people argued about Torrey Peters being eligible for the Womens Lit Prize)
♦ Best Audiobook? Cloud Cuckoo Land / Anthony Doerr and Black Gold by Theresa Edwards
♦ Best Book to Film Adaptation? One True Thing & Housekeeping
Tis the time of year to think fondly upon the end of the current year and all the amazing books that moved us in some way. Tis also the time to set goals for the upcoming year.
But all that stuff takes time and thought and sifting through data to make pie charts….
FIRST! We must pick that one book we will read or start on the first day, January 1.
Having begun the consideration list for the 2022 What’s in a Name Challenge, I’m going to pause my mad dash at the TOB Short List and read what I hope will be a fast feel-good tale by an admired author.
(I have a dear friend who did not give it high marks on goodreads but that now only makes me more curious.)
Explore the Goodreads > Groups –> Tourney Folder HERE <– (not sure if you have to join? I don’t recall how that works but I think it is set to public-view)
I’m so excited!
So far, Pachinko advances over The Animators, Skippy Dies defeats Idaho, Version Control over Girl.Woman.Other (I *hate* commas in book titles), and Homegoing wins over There.There!
That was last week.
This week, so far, A Tale for the Time Being triumphs over Never Let Me Go and The Tsar of Love and Techno narrowly escapes over Nothing to See Here‘s Fire Kids.
This is getting GOOD. All of the judgments have been wonderful to read and cheer for. I can’t argue with any of them. According to my favorites in order (see below), I should be a bit disappointed but let’s remember – -these are FAVORITES! so I can’t be upset.
(Honestly? I had forgotten that I had place Tsar the top of the top. I made this list before the bracket was announced.)
The Tsar of Love and Techno, Milkman, Life After Life, Version Control, A Tale for the Time Being, Nothing to See Here, Homegoing, The Animators, Pachinko, Idaho, Never Let Me Go, Girl♥Woman♥Other, Stephen Florida, Skippy Dies, Exit West, There♠There
For the rest of the week, I hope Life After Life prevails and Milkman conquers.
*** Updated: Stephen Florida wins over Life After Life.. 10/20/21
*** Updated: Milkman is selected over Exit West 10/21/2021
Then… we’ll just have to see what happens! My vote for top 8:
Which is your favorite?
Are you going to drop everything once the TOB Long List is announced for 2022?!?!?! I will…
What It’s About: Ellen is young and ambitious, making her father proud. But then her Mom gets sick and her father basically orders her to quit her job – her career – her life to move home and care for Mom. She does but she does it to prove a point to her dad more than because she even slightly wants to do it.
But her Mom is the smartest and the bestest of them all. Ellen has to figure it out the hard way.
Your father was better at it. Much better,” she looked at me and added, “I’m sorry.”
That’s all right, I said, a little mystified because I was not sure what the apology was for. For so long I thought about myself as a girl who walked away from her mother’s life, that it would be a long time before I would start to think about the other part of the bargain, how easily she’d let me go.
Thoughts: Wow – what a story! Heart-wrenching. Not only does Mom die a horrible death by cancer but then Ellen is accused of murdering her. She spends a night in jail because . . . apparently Dear Dad didn’t even know about the arrest. The trial, the aftermath, the reconnection. Just wow.
I loved it.
Thank you Trish of Love Laughter Insanity for sending this book to me in 2012.
Rating: __5__slices of pie. Cherry once and pumpkin twice!
I cooked and cleaned and read; I simmered casseroles and made pies.
This year, I read my 6th Shirley Jackson. I read a 5th book by Elizabeth Strout. Four authors, I read for the 3rd time: James McBride, Wallace Stegner, Drew Rozell, and Toni Morrison. The rereads included an author that was both a first for the year and then read it with my ears for its second intake: Becoming Duchess Goldblatt. I reread The Sellout for the TOB Super Rooster and I read two poetry collections by Billy Collins. I read 4 authors for the second time: read another by Ta-Nehisi Coates but the second was fiction. I read the next in a series to catch my second by Hilary Mantel. Michael Pollan’s Caffeine was my second of his.
Classics: didn’t have the patience to figure this out; oldest book The Picture of Dorian Gray 1890. Only 2 books published before 1900. Books published in 2019 = 20, in 2020 = 23.
Shortest book: Not figuring this out because I read so many poetry collections that were < 100 pages and plenty of novellas, and I couldn’t decide how to handle exceptions to not. Plus I read a lot of kids books.
Longest book: Ducks, Newburyport at 1020 pages. Took me months.
Longest Audiobook: Ok, here’s where I admit that I didn’t keep track this year. And more truth is that last year, I created my track sheet in December! So, it is just not going to happen where I present all the stats and show pretty pie graphs. Maybe 2021. Maybe.
The longest audiobook was likely We Ride Upon Sticks by Quan Barry, at 14 hours and 44 minutes. And it was too long. Fun! but too long. Not typical that I didn’t have any chunkster audiobooks! You might suggest it would be lack of a commute and thus no listening while driving time? But I rarely listened to my audiobooks on commute to work. Not sure…
LIke last year, I took advantage of Audible’s monthly freebies quite often.
This is last year’s pie chart just because this post needs some color. LOL
Comparing… THIS YEAR, I upped my 5 star givings to 34%! Four stars were given to 33 %, three stars to 38%, and 4% got 2 stars. No ratings of 1 star.
Which is interesting… Because I don’t feel like I had a really tremendous feel-good reading year. Maybe this actually supports that I can’t quickly think of my top reads? Too many?
Favorite poetry: Mad With Yellow by Lisa J. Starr
I didn’t do any readalongs. I didn’t do any reading projects. (Tho, @Bybee might think different?)
WAIT! not true. My poetry was a personal reading project and it was wonderful. I succeeded beyond my wildest dreams to read a poem every day. Did it change my life? Maybe. Maybe…
I did do the Super Rooster and am quite pleased with myself.
My blogging could be described as “fits of bursts”; I’m okay with what I managed to post.
I read 4 (2 to completion) books in 2020that were on the 1001 Books To Read Before You Die: Tender is the Night, Club Dumas, Cry the Beloved Country, Treasure Island.
My first time to read 100+ books but I feel like I cheated, to be honest. Yea, yea, I know that the book police ain’t out to get me or anything but the challenge to make it doesn’t sit right with me. I honestly have taken that last 3 weeks off. I can feel it in my brain that I’m not reading — yet I can’t seem to sit and READ. It’s such the weirdest thing.
Hoping the flip of the calendar page, will truly bring a renewed motivation and thrill with reading. But yowza, I hate to DNF.
Finally, PIE:
and, drumroll please for the 2020 Pie in Literature Award, the WINNER of my best book with pie for this year is Ducks, Newburyport by Lucy Ellman!
The fact that it’s important not to despair though when you’ve got pies in the oven, …, the fact that you have to have mercy on your pies, be there for your pies, and in return they will be good dutiful pies and serve you, …
Honorable Mentions: Oh, goodness. I read so many more pie-themed books this year! I read a pie cookbook (wait, I do that every year, don’t I?). I sought out pie-themed books, truth.
I hail Ladybird, Collected (and NO – not just because it mimics Ducks with that comma) but because I want everyone to read it and have it get picked up for national distribution. Please visit HERE or HERE to get your copy.
I bring to your attention to We Ride Upon Sticks – some good pie mentions; make me smile just to think on. And well, sure, of COURSE: Summer of a Thousand Pies, Enemy Pie, and Midnight at the Blackbird Cafe.
Finally, the pies I made yesterday and today!
Harvey Wallbanger Pie for Dad’s birthday and the Spinach Ham Gouda Quiche made today for Happy New Year!!
Be kind, be readin’, give me a book rec. Let’s chat this year, yes?
It’s no small thing, feeling that we matter, that we couldn’t just be any diner and it couldn’t just be any pie. – Ladybird, Collected
Time for another Spin! – I love these so much. It’s one of the reasons I joined the Classics Club in the first place.
Click the image above to go to the announcement post.
“Before Sunday 22nd November 2020, create a post that lists twenty books that remain “to be read” on your Classics Club list.”
This is my Spin List:
1
The Postman Always Rings Twice – JM Cain
2
Twelve Years a Slave – Solomon Northup
3
Confederacy of Dunces – JKToole
4
the Counterfeiters – A. Gide
5
Eileen Chang’s Love in a Fallen City
6
A Few Green Leaves – B. Pym
7
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep – PK Dick
8
Under the Greenwood Tree – Hardy
9
The Big Sleep – Raymond Chandler
10
At the Mountains of Madness – Lovecraft
11
The Three Musketeers – Alex Dumas
12
Giovanni’s Room – James Baldwin
13
Gravity’s Rainbow – Thomas Pynchon
14
Steppenwolf – Hesse
15
Death Comes for the Archbishop – W.Cather
16
Rabbit, Run – Updike
17
All Passion Spent – Vita Sackville West
18
The Way We Live Now – Trollope
19
The King Must Die – Mary Renault
20
Jude the Obscure – Hardy
Here’s hoping all of these are immediately available at the library and that the spin number result is a few-page-count title! Please. GOOD LUCK EVERYONE!
by E.Lockhart. has considerable space devoted to a cross-country adventure eating at pie shoppes along the way. Who wouldn’t LOVE that? However, it wasn’t til I had completed the book that I realized that Lockhart was an author of a book I loathed. (We Were Liars. UGH)
by Sara Novic has a bit about a character wearing a Miss Sweet Potato Pie costume!
has multiple mentions of pie and also features a town dance where eligible young ladies bring a tempting pie to attract a future husband. Pivotal pie plot point, methinks.
features a diner that has a pie theme – but not any old pie theme: Avant Garde pie: new and unusual — which is ME! and how I came into my pie passion. 
A Bound Woman Is a Dangerous Thing: The Incarceration of African American Women from Harriet Tubman to Sandra Bland 
Copyright © 2007-2022. Care’s Online Book Club aka Care’s Books and Pie. All rights reserved. This post was originally posted by Care from Care’s Online Book Club aka BkClubCare. It should not be reproduced without express written permission.
Care’s Books and Pie also known as and originally created as Care’s Online Book Club. All rights reserved. This post was originally posted by Care. It should not be reproduced without express written permission.
Care's Books and Pie 