• On Reading

I'm a reader, always have been ever since my sainted mama taught me to read the year before I entered kinnygarten, yes it's true. One more reason why I got beat up as a kid: nobody likes a smartypants. During high school, or should I say high schools (there were three), I read a huge amount, especially the year I was in the New York area. I had few friends, so I powered my way through as many great books as I could (Dickens, Dostoyevsky, Shakespeare, Austen, et. al.) as well as every novel on the NY Times Bestseller List that I could get my hands on. Literally. It was the year of Franny and Zooey, Ship of Fools, The Tin Drum. I read them all, usually into the wee hours of the night.

And so, now, the tradition continues, with a few differences. I listen to audiobooks in the car, which in Los Angeles means I consume a LOT of books. I read e-books on my iPad, and even on my iPhone. The Classics have mostly been edged out by the guilty pleasure of reading mysteries.

I love a good mystery, who doesn't? I started with the Hardy Boys (read them all) and Nancy Drew, moved on to Perry Mason, and then notched off the classics of the genre: Doyle and Poe, Hammett, Chandler, Macdonald. I'm now addicted to Donna Leon, James Lee Burke, Michael Connolly, Henning Mankell and am on the hunt for many others. I tend to read a new find in a clump, which is reflected in this year's list.

For the past two years I've been faithfully recording all of my reading pleasures on the excellent website Goodreads Click the link and you can read my capsule reviews, and, if you like, friend me. This year I discovered that I can easily export my entire database, which includes all of the fields captured by an entry, into an Excel spreadsheet that allows me to view and manipulate my reading history.

This is a nifty function (not available on my current movies app, Flixster, I note with some irritation), enabling me to provide you with those books I read (or otherwise consumed) that were rated most highly (5) and nearly as high (4).

The One from the Other (Bernard Gunther, #4)	Philip Kerr	5
The Redbreast (Harry Hole #3)	Jo Nesbo	5
Nemesis	Jo Nesbo	5
The End Of Alice	A.M. Homes	5
The Book Thief (audio)	Markus Zusak	5
Winter's Bone	Daniel Woodrell	5
The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest	Stieg Larsson	5
The Imperfectionists	Tom Rachman	5
Guards	Ken Bruen	5
American Subversive: A Novel	David Goodwillie	5
The Thousand Autumns of Jacob De Zoet: A Novel	David Mitchell	5
Angle of Repose (audio)	Wallace Stegner	5
The Help (audio)	Kathryn Stockett	5
Anansi Boys (audio)	Neil Gaiman	5
By Nightfall	Michael Cunningham	5
The Bell (Penguin Twentieth-Century Classics)	Iris Murdoch	5
Just Kids	Patti Smith	5
The Glass Rainbow (audio)	James Lee Burke	4
Shanghai Girls (audio)	Lisa See	4
The Pale Criminal (Bernard Gunther, #2)	Philip Kerr	4
The Bell Jar (audio)	Sylvia Plath	4
A Quiet Flame (Bernie Gunther, #5)	Philip Kerr	4
Shalimar the Clown (audio)	Salman Rushdie	4
The Mistress's Daughter	A.M. Homes	4
If the Dead Rise Not (Bernard Gunther, #6)	Philip Kerr	4
About Face (Guido Brunetti Series #18)	Donna Leon	4
Blood Meridian: Or the Evening Redness in the West	Cormac McCarthy	4
Lay Down My Sword and Shield (audio)	James Lee Burke	4
Hollywood Crows (audio)	Joseph Wambaugh	4
The Fortress of Solitude	Jonathan Lethem	4
4 hour work week	Tim Ferris	4
The Velvet Rage	Alan Downs	4
Zero History (Bigend, #3)	William Gibson	4
The Fourth Man	K.O. Dahl	4