Laura's Blog: Favorite Reads in 2012

I read 44 books in 2012. Last year I had a hard time picking out my favorites because I read so many great books. This year was a bit easier.

Favorite Nutrition Book I Read in 2012

What's Eating Your Child - Through reading this book I figured out Selena had a zinc deficiency. While supplementing with zinc hasn't completely cured her picky eating it has helped dramatically. The last few years we have had prime rib on Christmas Eve. In 2011 she complained the entire time about how bad the food smelled. She ate specially prepared macaroni and cheese, and even left the room for part of dinner due to not being able to handle the smell. This year she ate mashed potatoes, rolls, a bit of prime rib, and didn't complain about the smell.

Favorite How-to Book I Read in 2012

Getting the Words Right: 39 Ways to Improve Your Writing - Since I'm writing promotional material for Corvid Apps I figured I should work on improving my writing. This book had awesome, easy tips, and was so well written (it should be shouldn't it?)! There were multiple times I was left wondering how I had never learned something.

Favorite Fantasy Books I Read in 2012

Warbreaker - Brandon Sanderson was a new-to-me writer I discovered last year. I am extremely impressed at how tight his writing style is, and enjoy the unexpected plot twists. I tend to not find synopsis' of fantasy books helpful because most stories are pretty bizarre. I usually just want to know if it is good or not, and this one is.

Death of Nnanji - Dave Duncan is my all time favorite author. He says that The Reluctant Swordsman is one of his most successful series. While the series was published quite a long time ago, he decided to add a fourth book to it. I own all the books in the original series, but when I reread them this year I did not remember the story at all. I frequently forget the plot of books I read (which makes rereading stuff more enjoyable) I can usually remember at least one scene.

When I bought the series I was in a Dave Duncan frenzy and had bought about 15 of his books all at once. I think that I must have got confused about which books I had read, and which ones I hadn't, and never actually read them. Either way I really loved this series including the brand new sequel.

Craziest Book I Read in 2012

Bud and Me - The True Adventures of the Abernathy Boys - This book has such a great story, that it makes up for the somewhat lackluster writing style, and horrible formatting of the Kindle version. It is the true story about two brothers who traveled on horseback across the United States, by themselves, multiple times, in the early 1900's. Their first adventure occurred when they were just 5 and 9 years old! It is crazy how different the perceptions of children's capabilities were then compared to now.

Honorable Mentions: