the doodle says it all...

There's the school year, the fiscal year, the calendar year, and for me, in my world, the book year. Well, it's not really a year, but for some reason, when I started keeping track of tomes read, October made the mark. So, since somehow we find ourselves just two weeks away from November, I thought I'd share what I've read over the course of the last year. I've tried to organize/keep these lists online (sort of) with halfhearted efforts on shelfari and goodreads, but it is my mini elephant embossed book that gets regular attention and input. In the front go lists of books read, and in the back go the lists of books in line. I make little marks behind some entries - a star (or two or three = I loved!), a check mark (I liked), a squiggle (decent) or an arrow down (boo) - in an effort to separate my favourites from the rest of 'em. No mark = no comment (I suppose). And so, here you go:

The Origin of Species (Nino Ricci)
Dogs and Demons (Alex Kerr)
The Somnambulist (Jonathan Barnes)
The Island of Lost Maps: The True Story of Cartographic Crime (Harvey) ~
The Book Thief (Marcus Zusak) **
Snow Country (Yusunari Kawabata)
The Children's Book (A.S. Byatt) *
Eat, Pray, Love (Elizabeth Gilbert) ~~
The Old Capital (Kawabata) check
The Road (Cormac McCarthy)
The Girls' Guide to Hunting and Fishing (Melissa Bank) arrow down
Wolf Hall (Hillary Mantel) **
Snow Falling on Cedars (David Guterson) arrow down
The BFG (Roald Dahl)**!!
Blink (Malcolm Gladwell)
The Dogs and The Wolves (Nemirovsky) check check check
When You Reach Me (Rebecca Stead)
La's Orchestra Saves the World (Alexander McCall Smith) *
Bloodletting and Miraculous Cures (Vincent Lam) check
The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency (Smith) *
Portuguese Irregular Verbs (Smith) arrow down
Tears of the Giraffe (Smith) check check
Morality for Beautiful Girls (Smith) *
Beatrice and Virgil (Yann Martel) arrow down double
The Kalahari Typing School for Men (Smith)
The Secret Scripture (Sebastian Barry) **
1491 (Charles Mann)
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (Larson) arrow down
The Full Cupboard of Life (Smith) check


Is it obvious that I'm on an Alexander McCall Smith kick? I love Mme Ramotswe and I love that the library just down the block has the remaining six books in the series... yum.



Lighthouse Park, on Thursday...