My shelf life: 2011

Alright. The year is quickly coming to a close, so it only makes sense to bare my 2011 reading list to the world. Let's all pretend you care for just a moment.

I'm not sure how to label myself as a reader. I plowed through 32 books and a total of 11,358 pages this year. That puts me at just over 31 pages per day. In other words, I'm a piker compared to other book bloggers, and a veritable reading machine compared to the general public. Given everything that's on my plate, I'd give myself a grade of "not too shabby" for 2011.

Here's the complete list, in the order I tackled them, along with their respective page counts (top 10 reads are in bold):

1. Blue Heaven, C.J. Box   352
2. On Writing, Stephen King   288
3. The Red Dancer, Richard Skinner   272
4. A Brief History of Time, Stephen Hawking   248
5. All the Pretty Horses, Cormack McCarthy   301
6. The Lost City of Z, David Gann   352
7. King Solomon’s Mines, H. Rider Haggard    320
8. Ender’s Game, Orson Scott Card   324
9. Our Town, Thornton Wilder   112
10. The Road, Cormack McCarthy   256
11. Trojan Oddyssey, Clive Cussler   480
12. Smoke From This Alter, Louis L’Amour   75
13. The Collected Short Stories of Louis L’Amour, Vol IV   672
14. Grapes Of Wrath, John Steinbeck   619
15. Crime and Punishment, Fyodor Dostoevsky   480
16. The Associate, John Grisham   434
17. Cry, The Beloved Country, Alan Paton  256
18. The Appeal, John Grisham   384
19. Animal Farm, George Orwell   128
20. 2666, Roberto Bolano   912
21. The Chosen, Chaim Potok   284
22. A Mercy, Toni Morrison   176
23. Don Segundo Sombra, Ricardo Guiraldes   212
24. Fathers and Sons, Ivan Turgenev   226
25. The Shadow of the Wind, Carlos Ruiz Zafon   565
26. 1984, George Orwell   326
27. The Elements of Style, Strunk & White   176
28. Death in Venice & Other Tales, Thomas Mann   476
29. As I Lay Dying, William Faulkner   288
30. A Room With A View, E.M. Forster   321
31. Lord Jim, Joseph Conrad   451
32. Angle of Repose, Wallace Stegner   592

As you can see above, I'm not a complete book snob, though my favorites tended overwhelmingly to be classics or high literary fiction. All told, that's 17 so-called classics, 7 works of commercial fiction, 2 short story collections, 2 non-fiction reads, 2 books on writing, 1 poetry collection and 1 play. Continuing on the assumption that you care, here is the breakdown by page count:

It's kind of interesting to take a look back and see how you spent your reading life in the past year. What about you? What did you read this year? What were your favorites? What stunk? What should I pick up in 2012? Show us your cards...