What are you reading?

I have no idea how many books I've read in my lifetime. Hundreds, maybe thousands? Who knows. I probably have over a hundred sitting on bookshelves at home, all but a small pile of them finished (the rest are in the queue). No, I retract that. My husband has a good number as well, and there are plenty of his that are not in my list of books to read. We have overlapping taste in fiction, but his taste in Sci-Fi/Fantasy is sometimes a little (or a lot) darker than mine. I may get to them in time, though.

I am going to attempt to track for the year what all I'm reading. I've not done this since probably middle school when the recommended book lists were always full of things that I'd finished in elementary school, while I was raiding my mom's bookshelves, hiding some of the off-limits ones under my bed or in desk drawers so she didn't know I was reading them (sorry Mom!). Anyway, it ought to be interesting at the end of the year to review what all I've read. Children's books do not count (though some of the Spanish-language ones I read fall into the juvenile category..but they don't have pictures!). Cookbooks also will not count (though some of mine are more general non-fiction than just recipes--I'll make a judgement call if one like that comes up!).

I will read just about genre of fiction, with only a few exceptions of authors or books that I am not interested enough to finish. I'm not such a big fan of nonfiction, unless it covers something that I'm really interested in. Otherwise it feels like writing a reasearch paper. Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain was a great read--one of the few non-fiction books I've truly enjoyed.

Here's the start of my list for 2008:

Recently Finished:
World Without End by Ken Follet.

In Progress:

• Goodnight Nobody, by Jennifer Weiner


• Ciudad de las Bestias (City of the Beasts) by Isabel Allende--this one is temporarily halted as my copy is defective. A chunk of pages in the middle has been replaced by a duplicate of later pages. I.e. the pages go 1..79 to 279..3xx back to115...to the end (repeating the 279... section). Must remember to call/write the publisher and see if they're willing to send me the missing section or something.


• Children of Hurin by JRR Tolkein. I've stopped on this one for now, can't get into it.

I will have to list my upcoming ones later--I can only remember 2 or 3 of my pile!

Suggestions and comments are welcome