You do it three times, and it’s a tradition.
(I’m doing this early, though, because — if all goes well — we should be driving back from Texas today. So the numbers aren’t quite exact. But that doesn’t really matter, does it?)
Presenting my best of list for this year.
By the Numbers:
Middle Grade Fiction: 78
YA Fiction: 69
Graphic Novels: 11
Non-Fiction: 20
Fiction: 41
Grand Total: 219 (I made it past 200 this year! Woot!)
Challenges Completed: 9
Gotta do my awards…
Best Adult Fiction: People of the Book or Sweetness in the Belly. I couldn’t decide.
Best YA book: Speak
Best Middle-grade book: Anything But Typical
Best Fantasy: Lips Touch Three Times and When You Reach Me
Best Sci-Fi/Distopian: The Stand (Hunger Games is a really, really close second.)
Best Graphic Novel: Tales from Outer Suburbia (with Babymouse: Dragonslayer coming in a close second.)
Best Non-Fiction: My Life in France
Best Romance: Poison Study (Valik still makes me swoon.)
Best Mysteries: Perhaps I should say best mystery writer? The Woman in White and The Moonstone.
Best Jacket Flap: The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks
And in other categories…
Books I should have read AGES ago: Tess of the D’Urbervilles, The Screwtape Letters, The Stand, The Wee Free Men, Fire and Hemlock, Speak, and My Life in France.
Favorite Reviews: Bee Season, The Darcys and the Bingleys, Devilish
Theme(s) that inadvertently manifested themselves: Women’s bodies (Intuitive Eating; Perfect Girls, Starving Daughters; Artichoke’s Heart; Models Don’t Eat Chocolate Cookies); Baseball (The Brooklyn Nine, All the Broken Pieces, The Girl Who Threw Butterflies); Jane Austin (The Darcys and the Binglys; Pemberley by the Sea, Jane Austen Ruined My Life, Becoming Jane Austen); Darwin (The Adventures of Charley Darwin; The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate; Why Darwin Matters; I didn’t get to Charles and Emma, but I wanted to…).
Writing Style/Genre I Discovered I liked: steampunk (Leviathan), zombie books (The Forest of Hands and Teeth)
Genre I’m getting tired of, finally: Vampires.
The Wink-Wink, Nudge-Nudge book: Pemberley by the Sea
Best Interviewee: Aaron Reynolds and Neil Numberman, followed closely by Shannon Hale.
Favorite Challenge (that wasn’t hosted by Carl): End of the World II
Best main character: Katsa
Book for in-person book group I liked best: Garden Spells
Book for on-line book group I liked best: Fifth Business
Books I didn’t feel the love for: Atonement, Chocolat, Bee Season, Fragile Eternity
Number of Shakespeare plays I read: 1 – The Tempest (and that was as a Manga Shakespeare; I totally cheated this year!), and I only saw 1 (Romeo and Juliet; the guy playing Romeo did him kind of Emo, and it totally worked.)
Number of Fantasy books I read: 57. Choosing the “best” was REALLY hard this year!
Books that Made me Laugh the most: The Tiffany Aching series, Order of the Odd-Fish, Whales on Stilts!, Leaving the Bellweathers
Authors everyone else loves that I discovered I liked: Terry Pratchett (fave: A Hat Full of Sky), Sarah Dessen (fave: Lock and Key), Elizabeth Scott (fave: Something, Maybe), Georgette Heyer (fave: The Talisman Ring).
Best Book from an author I previously didn’t care for: The Trouble Begins at 8 (Sid Fleischman and I haven’t gotten along in the past…)
First-time authors I’d love to see more from: Rosanne Parry (Heart of a Shepherd); Kathryn Fitzmore (The Year the Swallows Came Early); Ann Haywood Leal (Also Known as Harper)
Books I read the fastest: Hunger Games and Catching Fire
Favorite book from a series: The Last Olympian (Alas, what will I do without Percy Jackson? At least the movie is out in February!)
Newbery Books I read: The Graveyard Book. Pathetic. I need to get back to reading those again.
Books that made me want to go out and do something: Operation Yes (cheer!); My Life in France (cook! Visit the Smithsonian!); Sweetness in the Belly (read more about Africa!); Mission Control, This is Apollo (visit NASA in Houston!);
Books I abandoned: I finally became bold in my book abandoning: there too many this year to list! (25, half of which were Cybils reads.)
Here’s to another great year! What were your favorites this year?
The Book Nut 
What a great list of books! I haven't read a lot of them. I'll have to add some to my TBR list.
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Wow, I love how detailed this is! I really need to read LIps Touch Three Times.
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What a list! I can't even think of one half of the books to make up the list like you did. I'm glad to see The Stand on the list of books you liked. it is my favorite dystopian book.
Happy New Year to you and your loved ones Melissa!
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Thanks for the props on “The Order of Odd-Fish”, Melissa! I'm proud to join such distinguished company. (Lips Touch was my favorite too.)
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What a wonderful way to organize your reading! I love the topics and plan to come back with pen and paper in hand and add more books to my TBR pile.
I hope you have a Happy New Year!
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That is such a great list -very precise, too! I love how you categorized all of your reading. I haven't read many titles on this list, but it definitely gives me more ideas : I really want to read the Percy Jackson series, Garden Spells and The Graveyard Book.
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So concise, so readable, so encouraging, so fun!! How cool to be a more enriched person than you were only a few months ago because of your reading!! Keep it up. I may start looking at my goals like this too….
Great lists!!Thanks for sharing!
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Congratulations on a spectacularly successful year. There are some awesome reads here (as you know Hunger Games and Catching Fire are way up there for me). Best wishes for an equally spectacular 2010!
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Very organized post! Lots of books on here I either loved too or I am looking forward to reading!
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Awesome how you break down your list. I think I will try again and post another time on how the genre's break out.
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This was SUPER fun. I bumped some books up on my list and added a couple also. WAHOO for an amazing year for you!
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I adore the Stand. And I would agree that it edges out The Hunger Games. I actually re-read it every few years. And I'll be a Gary Sinese fan forever b/c of the miniseries.
I also love how themes “inadvertently manifest themselves” some years.
Must read the Tiffany Aching books sometime…
Not sure about favorites for this year, though Fire, Catching Fire, Forest of Hands and Teeth, and Shiver all stand out. But that's off the cuff – there are many, many that I loved.
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