2012: The Year In Books, Part 1

2012 has been an amazing year for me, book-wise.

I get an uncommon amount of my life pleasure from books.  I know this about myself.  And yet, not since before college have I gone so far out of my way to make reading for pleasure such a major priority in my life.  I am pleased with this change, and wonder just how far I can push it, in terms of increased value in my life.

Most importantly, I discovered audio-books.  So while I also spent the year visually reading the words of more pages per day than my norm, in addition,  I consumed 5 great books that I otherwise wouldn't have experienced.  I suspect that running, slowly, with an audiobook (or slowly using any of the cardio machines at the gym) may be my default "keep-myself-healthy-as-long-as-possible" work-out as I slide toward the comforts of middle age.

Second, I set a goal of 9,000 pages to avoid the short book shuffling I did in 2011.  It worked like a charm.  I'm still closing out the year, but I fit in IQ84 and Reamde without any concern -- Unlike last year, when I was shooting for total books and worried about the 900+ page options.  This year's page count goal made the big bertha books just as attractive as their emaciated cousins.

I've got 9+ days to go and I'm guessing I'll land just short of 12,000 pages with an additional 6 audiobooks.

Reviews for all will come in over the last few days of the year.