The Amazing Year of 2012- Book Style

Warning: The information you are about to see on this blog may change the way you look at books forever.



This year, I devoured fifty books: 37 fiction and 13 non-fiction. All together, this comes out to over 17,000 pages of hard earned fun. I squeezed in time for reading between the cracks of time that was left for me after devoting most of my time to school and work. On the days I went to school, I had a one hour break between classes and more often than not, another book was slowly being digested. Also, I am lucky enough to have a job where on the days I go to school with the youth, I am able to bring a book to read. In my time spent at the middle school with these youth I was able to finish five Young Adult Novels. I read Young Adult Novels because it is easier for me to concentrate on easier reads while there are distractions all around me. Outside of work and school, I spent a lot of my precious free time reading my precious books.


The graph below shows the comparison between the number of books I read in 2011 and 2012. I found it interesting that I read 27 books in only 5 months of 2011. Before August of 2011 I never would have dreamed of even picking up a book, but for some reason I decided that I would give reading a try, and I became addicted. If I would have read throughout all of the 2011, I would have read about the same amount of books that I read this year. 

My reading list in 2011 was 85% fiction and %15 non-fiction and in 2012 my reading list was 74% fiction and 26% non-fiction.
*Included in non-fiction are self-help and philosophy. One self-help book in 2011; two self-help books and two philosophy books in 2012.

In 2011 there were four books that I started reading and did not finish.
Those books were:
Case Histories by Kate Atkinson 
Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
The Horse and His Boy by C.S. Lewis
Stargirl by Jerry Spinelli

In 2012 there were five books that I started reading and did not finish.
Those books were:
Adolf Hitler Volume 1 by John Toland 
Herzog by Saul Bellow 
Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier 
Eichman In Jerusalem by Hannah Arendt 
Darkness Visible by William Golding

*None of these unfinished books are counted towards my statistics. 

Alright. Now here comes the fun stuff.

I split up each of the books I read by the century in which they were written. I was surprised to see that over fifty percent of the books I read were written in the 20th century. 
Next year I would like to read a little more from the 19th century.





Out of the fifty books I read this year, only 15 of the books were written by females. Out of those 15 books, J.K. Rowling counts for seven of those books. The other eight female authors all wrote fiction. Not one of the 13 non-fiction books I read was written by a female. Interesting. 
35 books were written by males. Out of those 35 books, Jack London and Joseph Conrad count for two of those books each, for a total of four.





On this next graph I only counted the author one time, even if I read multiple books from that author.
I counted British and English authors as one in the same thing, English.






2012 Book Awards: 

Best Fiction:

This was a toss up between Richard Wright's Native Son and Ken Kesey's One Flew Over the Cukoo's Nest. Native Son is an intense novel wrapped around racial issues and One Flew Over the Cukoo's Nest brings the reader straight into the mind of Chief Bromden, a mental patient suffering from schizophrenia. Both novels have elements of issues between control and freedom. Both novels are outstanding in their own right and leave the reader with a different point of view than when the reader started the book. Native Son was by far one of the best books I read this year. But, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest was interesting on so many different levels and I was able to analyzed it more since I am in the field of Psychology, and that is why the winner of best Fiction book of the year goes to One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. 

Best Non-Fiction:

This is going to have to go to Black Hawk Down by Mark Bowden. It is as close as I am ever going to get to experiencing a modern day firefight. Although Mark Bowden was not in the firefights himself, he interviewed countless of soldiers who fought in the Battle of Mogadishu and recreated their accounts into a narrative story of the conflict in Somalia.

Best Personal Account:

Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl was fantastic. His personal account of life in a Nazi Concentration Camp was sobering, his outlook on life was inspiring, and his personal philosophy motivational. 

Best Young Adult:

Harry Potter, hands down. This series is timeless. The best book of the series belongs to Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone because I can't forget the first time I read a Harry Potter book and how much fun it was. The worst book of the series belongs to Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix because that book never stopped. It dragged on forever.

Most Disappointing:

The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas was really disappointing. It is such a famous story about love and revenge that I thought the book would be the epitome of nineteenth century literature, but not even close. This book was even more boring than Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. The writing was dull and the reading was tedious. Trust me, and stick with the movie. 

Most surprising:

All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque was by far the most surprising book of the year besides Harry Potter. I had a paperback of this book chillin' on my shelf so I decided to read it and to be honest, I was not expecting much. I had seen the 1979 TV movie in my tenth grade history class and that left a bad taste in my mouth. But, the book was beautiful and emotionally written, showing honestly real and involved feelings of a group of soldiers stuck in the trenches during World War I. 

Strangest book:

William Golding's Heart of Darkness does not compare with any other book I have read. It is straight up Strange. The feeling in the book is a feeling of melancholy mixed with darkness, combined with veneration and confusion. This is one of the five books I did not finish this year. I would have kept with it but it became a little too sexually explicit for my taste. 
One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez was my first, and hopefully not last, experience with Magical Realism. Magic carpets and dead people still living are just a few of the many unrealistic or magical parts of this otherwise regular story about a family living in Macondo (Made up town, symbolizing Colombia). A little strange? a little, but the writing is appealing and the symbolism is individualistic and intriguing. After finishing it, I did not even understand the half of what the author was trying to say. This book would take a companion book in order to explain everything simply.

Most Epic:

Leo Tolstoy's Anna Karenina is incredibly long and detailed. The reader is brought back to nineteenth century Russia and details the lives of four main characters and their relationships with each other and the world. It's a book that accurately and poignantly shows life as it is, and is it can be. Not only is the book of epic size (800+ pages), but Tolstoy's undertaking of showing real human life devoid of lofty or grandiose plot lines, but showing the basic in-and-out's of everyday life, is truly epic.
Life of Pi by Yann Martel is another book that I consider epic, but not in the same sense. This book's storyline is epic; a kid is stuck out in the middle of the ocean on a life boat with a full-sized, dangerous tiger. Does the kid survive the tiger, does the kid survive the ocean, does the kid survive being lost at sea? This storyline is as epic as they come.

Best writing:

There were so many different choices I could pick from on this. All Quiet on the Western Front with its simplicity of feeling, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest with its ever watchful and descriptive narrator, Barbara Kingsolver's The Poisonwood Bible with its flowing prose, or John Steinbeck's Cannery Row with its beautifully painted descriptions of life on Cannery Row. 

Tough choice but the winner goest to John Steinbeck. John Steinbeck's writing in Cannery Row makes up for its lack of plot. The reader gets a real, life-like look at the lives of individuals striving to survive life's troubles, and the reader gets it from a totally unbiased and empathetic point of view. The writing is descriptive and simply beautiful.

Favorite character: 

I related most with Levin of Anna Karenina. He is just an average guy that is trying to do his best and make the most of what is given him, while figuring out what life is all about. Leo Tolstoy masterfully connects Levin with mankind and hundreds of pages are devoted to Levin's thoughts and actions, showing one of the most in-depth looks at a character I have ever seen.

The most interesting and fun-to-read character was Randle Patrick McMurphy of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. The reader does not know if McMurphy if just a normal wacko guy trying to fake a mental illness to get out of the work farm, or if he has Anti-Social Personality and Conduct disorder. Either way, he is sure fun to read. His ideas are absurd, his actions are without regret, and his personality is dominating. 

Favorite scene:

You do not read fifty books in a year, and not come away with a few favorite scenes from books. It is true that it is hard to remember these scenes looking back on the year, but here are just a few that come to mind most readily. 
*May contain spoilers

In Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 there was a scene that had me greedily turning the pages wanting to find out what would happen. This was when Montag tries to talk to his wife and her two friends while they are in the TV parlor. Bradbury's idea of the TV parlor and how most people spent more time with their "TV family's" than with their real families was ingenious. Anyways, Montag tries to talk to them but they are so focused on the TV that they have trouble talking with him and get annoyed with his insistence. He becomes so frustrated that he whups out his forbidden poetry book and starts reading to them and all the ladies start freaking out. This whole scene was brilliant because it was showing how narrow minded people can get, and was showing the superficiality that there is in the world (the ladies even voted for a president based solely on his looks). This was a page turner because I did not know what was going to happen to Montag.

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest had great scenes but one of my favorites was when McMurphy and Bromden get in a fight with one of the hospital aides. This scene was great because it was a crescendo of feeling that had been building up over time, with McMurphy fighting back against the evil Nurse Ratched, and it reached its zenith point when the hospital aide pushed McMurphy's buttons a little too far and the fight broke loose. McMurphy and Bromden kicked some hospital aide booty. I was pumped and was cheering them on.

Favorite quotes:

These are just a few:

"When you love someone, you love the whole person, as they are, and not as you would like them to be" 
-Anna Karenina

"Gratitude looks to the Past and love to the Present; fear, avarice, lust, and ambition look ahead"
-The Screwtape Letters

“Those who have a 'why' to live, can bear with almost any 'how'.” 
-Man's Search for Meaning

“Men can starve from a lack of self-realization as much as they can from a lack of bread.” 
-Native Son

This wraps up the year of 2012. I am excited to see what books are awaiting me next year!

-Scott

I want to give credit where credit is due. I received the idea for this blog from a fellow reader's blog.