My 2008 reading

I didn't have nearly as good a reading year in 2008 as I had hoped. I finished just 14 books - not even half of my 2007 total. Most of my reading came in spurts - in March, July and the final four months of the year. I picked up a lot of books that I just could not finish. My attention wandered, or the books themselves were not that good.

I have plans to help myself refocus on reading in 2009, including joining a couple of challenges I'm anxious to start.

Of those books I did finish, I enjoyed the vast majority of them immensely. I finished only one book I truly despised: The Sixth Wife by Suzannah Dunn, which turned Katherine Parr's story into a piece of really bad chick lit.

The best book I read all year was Good Masters! Sweet Ladies! Voices from a Medieval Village by Laura Amy Schlitz - a wonderful collection of children's monologues that took me back in time to the Middle Ages. Other favorites include Ariana Franklin's two historical thrillers, Mistress of the Art of Death and The Serpent's Tale, and Georgette Heyer's sparkling Regency romance, The Grand Sophy.

Read in 2008:

1. Mistress of the Art of Death by Ariana Franklin
2. Good Masters! Sweet Ladies! Voices from a Medieval Village by Laura Amy Schlitz
3. Silent in the Grave by Deanna Raybourn
4. The Sixth Wife by Suzannah Dunn
5. The Bad Seed by William March
6. The Sugar Queen by Sarah Addison Allen
7. The Uncommon Reader by Alan Bennett
8. My Lady of Cleves by Margaret Campbell Barnes
9. The Serpent's Tale by Ariana Franklin
10. Her Royal Spyness by Rhys Bowen
11. A Stir of Bones by Nina Kiriki Hoffman
12. The Ghost Writer by John Harwood
13. We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson
14. The Grand Sophy by Georgette Heyer