Lies, damned lies, and...

Yesterday, this blog officially turned one year old. In honour of the anniversary, I have decided to indulge my love for "interesting" statistics.

Here are some highlights of the past year here at Literary Afterthought.

Number of books I blogged about: 105
Average number of books read per month: 9
Number of books I rejected without finishing them: 9
Author whose books I read the most of: Alexander McCall Smith
Month that I read the most books: November 2005

Five best novels:
1. The Sea Road by Margaret Elphinstone
2. Bel Canto by Ann Patchett
3. Can You Keep a Secret? by Sophie Kinsella
4. Amsterdam by Ian McEwan
5. The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen

Best new discovery: Sophie Kinsella
Best humorous novel: Divorcing Jack by Colin Bateman
Best children's/young adult book: City of Ember by Jeanne DuPrau
Best non-fiction book: Twilight children by Torey L. Hayden
Runner-up:
An Embarrassment of Mangoes by Ann Vanderhoof

Worst book: Dark Tort by Diane Mott Davidson
Runners-up:
The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown
In the Skin of a Lion by Michael Ondaatje
Sons and Lovers by D. H. Lawrence

Biggest disappointment: Whitethorn Woods by Maeve Binchy

Keeping this blog has been incredibly fun, and it has changed the way I read books. Thanks to everyone who read and especially to those who took the time to leave comments! I look forward to sharing more discoveries and disappointments here in the coming year.

still here, honestly

I have not forgotten about this blog, I'm just suffering from a prolonged bout of low mental capacity that seems to be making it impossible for me to do much more than sit in front of the television. Also known as the FIFA World Cup.

Well, I can't really blame the World Cup for my lack of reading. If I can gobble up 2-3 books a week even when I'm studying for final exams, I can certainly read in between 2 or 3 soccer games a day. I'm not really sure what the problem is. I've got some great books in my stack here, and absolutely no interest in picking them up. Let's hope this turns around soon. Meanwhile, please enjoy some of the links in the sidebar.

housekeeping

I'm doing some work this week to "polish" the look of this blog. Please leave a comment and let me know what you think of the new template!

My personal library...?!

Yesterday after several hours of studying, I needed a break and decided to weed out and reorganize our entire book collection. Two hours later I found myself with one bookshelf unit entirely devoted to books I have bought or borrowed and not yet read. I hadn't realized that I had quite so many books in this category... the middle shelf in the unit has a double row of paperbacks since I needed the bottom shelf for photo albums and yearbooks and old issues of the Star Trek Communicator.

Someone tell me to stop using the library and for goodness sake, to stop buying more books until I've worked my way through some of these.

What's "literally" on my shelf 

Turning over a new page

So, back in March of 2003, inspired by a site whose address I have long since lost (but which consisted of a wonderful archive of every book the site owner had read over the previous four years) I started this blog where I could keep track of every book I read, with comments on each one. I never posted to it. I've decided to give it another shot here, because the original blog seems to be permanently broken - I can't change the template or put a title on any new posts (which seems a shame).

I'll start with the books I read over the weekend and hope for the best. If I can manage to keep this up, I guess I'll share the site with friends.