Recap of 2011 and Looking to 2012

It has been interesting to surf around the book blogging world to see the Top 10 lists of other bloggers.  My list is going to be a bit different as I am in the 33rd month of my grief/reading journey and want to think about the continued significance that books bring to my recovery. 

These candid memoirs by accomplished writers have been very helpful:

• A Grief Observed by C.S. Lewis
• The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion
• A Widow's Story by Joyce Carol Oates
• Blue Nights by Joan Didion
• My Brother by Jamaica Kincaid

Tandem memoirs - I've read two sets. one by a father/daughter and one by two friends.  They really should be read one after the other. 

• Darkenss Visible by William Styron and Reading My Father by Alexandra Styron
  
• Autobiography of a Face by Lucy Grealy and Truth and Beauty by Ann Patchett

I've read a number of books that support the Thomas Jefferson quote: I cannot live without books.

• A Reading Diary by Alberto Manguel
• Leave Me Alone, I'm Reading by Maureen Corrigan
• How Reading Changed My Life by Anna Quindlen
• The Book That Changed My Life ed by Roxanne Coady
• So Many Books, So Little Time by Sara Nelson
• A Passion for Books ed by Harold Rabinowitz and Rob Kaplan
• My Reading Life by Pat Conroy

I've gotten into the habit of listening to audio courses while in the car and have completed the following classes.   The bibliographies have greatly added to my Wish List and Mount TBR.

• The Art of Reading by Prof. Timothy Spurgeon
• Classics of British Literature by Prof. John Sutherland 
• Foundations of Western Civilization II by Prof. Robert Buckholz
• The English Novel by Prof. Timothy Spurgeon
• Shakespeare: The Seven Major Tragedies by Prof. Harold Bloom

Books that have profoundly affected me:

• The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien
• The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger
• Fear of Flying by Erica Jong
• Anne Frank: The Diary of A Young Girl 

Books that I REALLY liked:

• The Help by Kathryn Stockett
• The Hours by Michael Cunningham
• The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
• In Cold Blood by Truman Capote
• To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee
• their eyes were watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
• Anne of Green Gables by L. M. Montgomery
• Persuasion by Jane Austen
• Possession by A. S. Byatt

I have participated in one read-a-long which was an enjoyable way to read a long book:

• Villette by Charlotte Bronte

What do I look forward to in 2012?

• Participate in another read-a-long and become more involved in the book blogging world
• Tackle Shakespeare
• Slowly read through a newly bought anthology of contemporary poetry on the subject of grief and healing
• Read half the novels in Prof. Timothy Spurgeon's The English Novel.  The time period he covers is from 1740 to WWII.  I will star the ones that have been read.  Here is the list:

1740 - Pamela by Samuel Richardson

1747 - 1749 - Clarissa by Samuel Richardson

1749 - Tom Jones by Henry Fielding

1759 - 1767 - Tristam Shandy by Laurence Sterne

1778 - Evelina by Frances Burney

1794 - The Mysteries of Udolpho by Ann Radcliffe

1813 - Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen*

1814 - Waverley by Sir Walter Scott

1815 - Emma by Jane Austen*

1826 - Last of the Mohicans by James Fenimore Cooper (American)

1836 - 1837 - The Pickwick Papers by Charles Dickens

1837 - 1843 - Lost Illusions by Honore de Balzac (French)

1847 - Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte*

1847 - Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte

1847 - 1848 - Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray

1849 - 1850 - David Copperfield by Charles Dickens

1851 - Moby Dick by Herman Melville (American)

1852 - 1853 - Bleak House by Charles Dickens

1857 - Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert*

1860 - Mill on the Floss by George Eliot

1860 - 1861 - Great Expectations by Charles Dickens

1865 - 1869 - War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy

1871 - 1872 - Middlemarch by George Eliot

1875 - 1877 - Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy*