2012 Reading Roundup

So, I didn't come close to my goal of blogging about every book I read last year, but here they are:

Title                                    Author         Date Completed
How to Talk to Anyone, Anytime, Anywhere    Larry King    1/8/2012
The Swerve: How the World Became Modern    Stephen Greenblatt    1/16/2012
Dune    Frank Herbert    1/30/2012
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep    Philip K. Dick    2/22/2012
Foundation    Isaac Asimov    3/10/2012
Life Itself    Roger Ebert    3/25/2012
A Quiet Revolution    Leila Ahmed    4/28/2012
Hunger Games    Suzanne Collins    5/6/2012
Catching Fire    Suzanne Collins    5/12/2012
Mockingjay    Suzanne Collins    5/13/2012
Space Chronicles    Neil Degrasse Tyson    5/22/2012
Einstein's Dreams    Alan Lightman    5/28/2012
Fifty Shades of Grey    E.L. James    6/2/2012
Fifty Shades Darker    E.L. James    6/15/2012
Illusions    Richard Bach    7/22/2012
Interview with a Vampire    Anne Rice    8/20/2012
Anne of Windy Poplars    L.M. Montgomery    9/5/2012
Anne of Ingleside    L.M. Montgomery    9/7/2012
The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich    Timothy Ferriss    11/10/2012
A Concise History of the Middle East    Arthur Goldschmidt Jr. Lawrence Davidson    11/21/2012
Jonathan Livingston Seagull    Richard Bach    11/25/2012
Blink: The Power of Thinking without Thinking    Malcolm Gladwell    11/25/2012
The Dictator's Learning Curve    William Dobson    12/2/2012
The Poetry of Robert Frost    Robert Frost    12/31/2012

That's 24 books: 7 sci-fi/fantasy, 7 other fiction, 4 socio-political, 1 memoir, 2 history, 1 poetry anthology, 2 pop-sci. Given that the last few years' reading was almost exclusively fiction, I'm very pleased with that.

I shoot for an average of one book every two weeks. I fell a bit short this year, as I usually do, but not by too much. And these books averaged longer and more dense than most years. (Notice the spike in November when I swore off Reddit for the month :-)

The highlights were: The Swerve, Life Itself, Hunger Games (my favorite new fantasy of the year - was also impressed with the movie, The 4-Hour Workweek (a scam, an instruction manual on how to run scams, and a deeply thought provoking book on what's important in life - all rolled in one), The Dictator's Learning Curve (a fascinating examination of how repressive regimes are getting more technologically and socially savvy), and The Poetry of Robert Frost (my first foray into poetry - inspired a new fascination with the genre).

I'd love to lend any of them to you, assuming you don't mind my notes in the margins!