The Sunday Salon: Mid-Year Review and Such

I like what several Salonists are doing for this week's Sunday Salon—evaluating their reading mid-year—and thought I'd do the same.

Books Read January-June (Total: 30)

• A Town Like Alice (Neville Shute)
• Appeal, The (John Grisham)
• Astrid and Veronika (Linda Olsson)
• Beginning, a Muddle, and an End (Avi)
• Birth House, The (Ami McKay)
• Broken for You (Stephanie Kallos)
• Child of My Heart (Alice McDermott)
• Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time (Mark Haddon)
• Fiction Class (Susan Breen)
• Five Love Language of Teenagers (Gary Chapman)
• Flies on the Butter (Denise Hildreth)
• Horizontal World, The (Deb Marquart)
• I Have Lived a Thousand Years (Livia Bitton-Jackson)
• Jayber Crow (Wendell Berry)
• Journal of Callie Wade (Dawn Miller)
• Knitting Circle (Ann Hood)
• Me and Emma (Elizabeth Flock)
• Peony in Love (Lisa See)
• Senator's Wife, The (Sue Miller)
• Stone Diaries (Carol Shields)
• Stop Dressing Your Six-Year-Old Like a Skank (Celia Rivenbark)
• To Kill a Mockingbird (Harper Lee)
• Unaccustomed Earth (Jhumpa Lahiri)
• Way the Crow Flies (Ann-Marie MacDonald)
• We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will be Killed With Our Families: Stories from Rwanda (Philip Gourevitch)
• Winter Wheat (Mildred Walker)
• Without a Trace (Colleen Coble)
• World Before Her, The (Deborah Weisgall)
• Year of Wonders (Geraldine Brooks)

My Favorite Book Ever (multi-reread)
To Kill a Mockingbird (Harper Lee)

Top 5
Year of Wonders (Geraldine Brooks)
Broken for You (Stephanie Kallos)
Unaccustomed Earth (Jhumpa Lahiri)
Winter Wheat (Mildred Walker)
I Have Lived a Thousand Years (Livia Bitton-Jackson)

Challenges
My own Life Books Challenge
Books Around the World Challenge

Where I Play
Booking Through Thursday
Entrecard
Semicolon's Saturday Review of Books
Sunday Scribblings
The Sunday Salon
Weekly Geeks

Last year's total was 69, so I guess I need to pick up the pace in order to meet or surpass last year's list. Dr. H. and our oldest son were gone for the past week doing a week of service with Group Workcamp, and I could have gotten loads of reading done. But...I was so exhausted every evening that I could only read a few pages before falling asleep. Besides taking care of the younger kids and our normal life, at long last, I painted our kitchen. It is so lovely.

If only I had a couch in there, it would be a most perfect place in which to read!


(Do you like to chat about books? You can join The Sunday Salon here and find out what's going on in the world of book lovers across the continents.)