2010 Book Report: Third Quarter

The quest continues to read 100 books in 2010; I was one behind halfway through the year, so did I catch up during a lazy summer, or get slowed down by the crazy fall? Here's my list of this quarter's reading.

Key: C: Children's; F: Fantasy; H: Historical; Hr: Horror; M: Mystery; MG: Middle Grade (ages 8-12); NF: Nonfiction; P: Poetry; SF: Science Fiction; SS: Short Stories; YA: Young Adult (age 13+); *not in the last ten years at least; ^read for work.

07/02/10: David Almond, Skellig (YA, 2)

07/03/10: Walter Dean Myers, Monster (YA, 1)

07/03/10: Lois McMaster Bujold, The Sharing Knife: Beguilement (F, 4)

07/04/10: Bujold, The Sharing Knife: Legacy (F, 4)

07/05/10: Bujold, The Sharing Knife: Passage (F, 3)

07/07/10: Bujold, The Sharing Knife: Horizon (F, 2)

07/08/10: Ellen Wittlinger, Hard Love (YA, 1)

07/09/10: Louise Rennison, Angus, Thongs, and Full-Frontal Snogging (YA, 1)

07/11/10: Carol Plum-Ucci, The Body of Christopher Creed (YA, M, 1)

07/12/10: John Green and David Levithan, Will Grayson, Will Grayson (YA, 1)

07/13/10: Lois McMaster Bujold, The Curse of Chalion (F, 5)

07/16/10: Bujold, Paladin of Souls (F, 4)

07/17/10: David Brin The Practice Effect (SF, 5 or 6*)

07/19/10: Chris Lynch, Freewill (YA, 1)

07/21/10: Peter Dickinson, The Ropemaker (YA, F, 1)

07/21/10: Virginia Euwer Wolff, True Believer (YA, 1)

07/22/10: An Na, A Step from Heaven (YA, 1)

07/24/10: John Joseph Adams, editor, Federations (SF, SS, 1)

07/25/10: Terry Trueman, Stuck in Neutral (YA, 1)

07/27/10: David Almond, Kit's Wilderness (YA, 1)

07/29/10: Virginia Euwer Wolff, Make Lemonade (YA, 1)

07/31/10: Garret Freymann-Weyr, My Heartbeat (YA, 1)

08/03/10: Sara Zarr, Story of a Girl (YA, 1)

08/05/10: Nancy Farmer, House of the Scorpion (YA, SF, 3)

08/07/10: Jack Gantos, Hole in My Life (YA, memoir, 1)

08/09/10: Aidan Chambers, Postcards from No Man's Land (YA, 1)

08/13/10: Lois McMaster Bujold, The Hallowed Hunt (F, 3)

08/14/10: Carolyn Mackler, The Earth, My Butt, and Other Big Round Things (YA, 1)

08/18/10: Jennifer Donnelly, A Northern Light (YA, 1)

08/21/10: K. L. Going, Fat Kid Rules the World (YA, 1)

08/22/10: Angela Johnson, The First Part Last (YA, 1)

09/02/10: Simon Winchester, A Crack in the Edge of the World (NF, 1)
09/03/10: Allan Stratton, Chanda's Secrets (YA, 1)
09/16/10: Suzanne Collins, Mockingjay (YA, SF, 1)

Total for the quarter: 34 books, mostly read in July and August—so I've had both the lazy summer and the crazy fall. With 83 books total through three quarters, I'm definitely on target for 100 for the year, although I'll have to do a lot better than September's 3-book pace or I'll fall short. Most of the books I read this quarter were young adult novels, for my Printz Award project, although I did sneak in a couple of series by my favorite author as well as a lone nonfiction work.

So what was my favorite book for the quarter? Looking back over the list, there isn't one that strikes me as amazing or life-changing, but there was one I greatly admired as a writer, and that was Chris Lynch's Freewill. The more I think about his experiment with the second-person narrator ("you look around and see..."), the more impressed I am with its execution. He took something that could have been tiresome and experimental and made it integral to the plot and characterization. I think anyone curious about writing techniques should read it.

Check back in three months for my year-end survey, to see whether I made my 100-book goal.