A Year in Books: 2008

In 2008, I read (or listened to) and reviewed 161 new books, and re-read (or re-listened to) 24 books. Among just the new books, that works out to:

• One book finished every 2.3 days
• 48,106 pages (or about 132 pages per day) ( = 131 books at an average of 367 pages per book)
• 15 days, 0 hours, 8 min of audiobook listening ( = 30 audiobooks)

Considering my goal for the year was 150 new books, I’d say that’s not too shabby!

Check it:

If you want your own fun statistics and pretty graphs, you can download my reading tracking spreadsheet here (now updated for 2009). You just enter your goal for the year, the date you finish the book, the number of pages (or length of the audiobook), et voila! Nerd central.

Oh, and back to my personal stats – I also cleared 77 books from my TBR pile… but added 170. Oops. :)

Best Books of 2008
Although it seems like my reading has occasionally been a bit lackluster in the past few months, in retrospect, I’ve read a lot of great books and a lot of really good books this year. (Check out my 4.5 stars and 4 stars categories.) I’d just like to call out a few that aboslutely blew me away, knocked my socks off, and made me want to skip work and read.

• Black Ships by Jo Graham
  This was a LibraryThing Early Reviewer book, and it was heads and tails above what I was expecting. I’m not entirely sure it would stand up to a re-read (I’m sure it would still be good, but maybe not socks-knocking good), but at the time, the language and the story were exactly what I was in the mood for, and quite literally took my breath away in parts.
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• Inkspell and Inkdeath by Cornelia Funke
  Inkheart was enjoyable, but not fantastic – I thought it was too long, a little too draggy in parts, and aimed a little too young to be really great. However, I am so glad I decided to stick with the series… Books 2 and 3 of the trilogy were fantastic, full of a fantastic world populated by incredible characters, that really do seem to live even when you close the covers.
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• The Mistborn Trilogy by Brandon Sanderson
  I’d read Sanderson’s Elantris in 2007, and thought it was very good, but Mistborn took all of the best parts of Elantris and added on the most well-thought-out, original, logically consistent, and inventive magic system that I’ve ever come across in fantasy. Just superb.
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• Talyn by Holly Lisle
  Another revelation. This was a SantaThing gift from last year, an author I’d never heard of, and not quite what I normally read, but it was just brilliantly dark, twisted, well-written military fantasy. It’s not nearly as well-known as it deserves to be.

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What about you, readers? Read any good books lately? :)

Also, here’s wishing everyone a happy, healthy, and book-filled 2009!