My Best Of 2012

This is a rather delayed round-up of 2012, but better late than never. I'm sorely disappointed with my reading statistics for 2012 (102 books) and while it's understandable that I hardly had any time to read, I'd like 2013 to be better. Can't see how that's going to happen, but I've set myself a more manageable goal of 100 books for 2013 and it would be a tragedy if I couldn't even manage that.

I found some fantastic authors in 2012 and there's a number of books that have made it to my keepers shelf, so I wanted to take some time to share these with you all. These are by no means all books that were released in 2012, just my favourite of the year, so here goes my top eleven of the past year in the order in which they were reviewed:

1. Sweet Revenge by Nora Roberts (1988) (reviewed 29-4-2012 grade A+)
Given the sheer quantity of books that NR has published (over 200), the fact that I'm close to reading three-quarters of them and her genius at storytelling in general, there's a lot to choose from when picking my favourite. For a long time, Honest Illusions occupied that coveted spot but Sweet Revenge has by the tiniest margin knocked it off - at least, until I can get my hands on the former again for a re-read. Fantastic cast whose protagonists have possibly my all-time favourite occupation for fictional characters (thieves), brilliant writing, dialogue and just a wonderful feel-good story.

Admin update

The Favourite Books tab has been updated a little to include some of the fabulous books and authors I've discovered this year. I have a feeling that I might overhaul it again soon to list alphabetically by author rather than title ... when I have more time.

I've taken the plunge and started NaNo. For the first time ever, I didn't have a detailed plan of exactly what was going to happen and a full list of character names etc and I'm sort of liking it. Even in hte years where I had a plan, there were some areas where I would just let my characters take me where they wanted and that's exactly what I'm doing now. For my whole, 50,000 word novel. Apart from a vague idea about the general plot and where I want Marissa and Josh (my protagonists!) to end up, I have absolutely no idea what's going to happen the next time I open up my NaNo document. And you know what? The thought thrills me. I'll be updating my daily total wordcount on the right between the 'About Me' and 'Blog Archive'. As you can see, I had a brilliant day yesterday with 3,205 words bringing my total to 4921 which is just below on target. Let's see what today brings.