So that was 2009

So that was 2009.

It was a pretty mixed bag of a year both personally and in a reading sense and while it did have some high spots I can't say I'll be sorry to see the back of it. 2010 is already looking like it will be exciting and so I shall look forwards not back.

Well I will once I've listed my top books of 2009!

Now like many book bloggers out there I am going to cheat horribly on this. I have two Top 5 lists, one for books aimed at adults and one for books aimed at teenagers! Some of them I have bogged about already, some of them I read before I started blogging. Thank heavens I've kept a reading diary though!

Norfolkbookworm's Top 5 Adult Books (in no particular order)

Click on the authors' names to be taken to their homepage or a review of the book

American Wife - Curtis Sittenfeld



American Adulterer - Jed Mercurio



19th Wife - David Ebershof



The Rights of the Reader - Daniel Pennac



The Lord Edward Corinth Mysteries - David Roberts


Norfolkbookworm's Top 5 Books (ostensibly) for Children

Again click on the author name to be taken to either a review of the book or an author website.

Revolver - Marcus Sedgwick



Love, Aubrey - Suzanne LaFleur


Stolen - Lucy Christopher



Saving Raphael - Leslie Wilson


Devil's Kiss - Sarwat Chadda

So there it is, my top 10 books of the year. A mixed bag. My top non fiction titles had to be Sisters in Arms, Paradise Lost: Smyrna, It's a Dons Life and Pompeii.

Well I suppose that as it has taken me well over 3 hours to go through my reading diary and narrow my choices down 2009 can't have been such a bad year book wise. Here's hoping that 2010 will be just as good!

All I Want for Christmas...

...is my reading 'mojo' back.


Sometimes it takes a blog post from someone else to highlight a problem, and my friend Sam over at Books, Time and Silence has really hit the nail on the head. Leaving book retail has really changed my reading habit.

I've been keeping a reading diary for nearly 10 years - incidentally the only diary I've managed to keep - and on average I've tended to read about 350-400 books a year. Many of them were children's books (although I never counted picture books), lots of them were books I'd re-read but many of them were new books for that year. I am blessed with the ability to read fast (this can be a curse on journeys and holidays when my luggage is always twice as heavy due to the sheer quantity of reading matter) but even with that quantity of books I do retain the plots. Ask my husband he has tested me!

However this year I left the world of book retail, okay I now work in a library, but like Sam I no longer see the book on its journey from publisher's catalogue to customer's hand. I am now a browser not a hunter. This year I've read a scant 250 and many of them were comforting rereads at times when life has been more stressful. I know that this still seems an awful lot of books to have read, but for me it is a significant drop and I am having to remind myself frequently of the rules and I am trying not to feel guilty about this. It isn't even as if I have Sam's reason that the books I have read have been 'harder' than usual and have slowed me down.

Oh well my Christmas list was full of book requests and we have recently treated ourselves to this which I am rapidly filling with books so hopefully in 2010 I will rediscover my reading mojo and a whole heap of new authors!

And yes I will be jumping on the blog bandwagon and be posting my books of the year soon!