Biggest Surprise of the Year - I Loved This Book!
So Big by Edna Ferber; published in 1924
Top Three Non-Fiction Books That Were Entire Educations in Themselves:
At Home by Bill Bryson; How to Live, Or A Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer by Sarah Bakewell; The Island of Lost Maps by Miles Harvey
Top Three Fiction Books (not mysteries):
The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster; Equilateral by Ken Kalfus; Dandelion Wine by Ray Bradbury.
Author Most Read:
Donald Westlake - Six of his Dortmunder capers
Most Delightful Reread:
Counting My Chickens... by The Duchess of Devonshire
Brothers I Would Most Like to Meet:
Reggie and Nigel Heath of The Baker Street Letters, The Brothers of Baker Street, and The Baker Street Translation by Michael Robertson
Best Foreign Location:
Out of Africa by Isak Dinesen and West With the Night by Beryl Markham
Most Laugh-Out-Loud Dysfunctional Family:
The Spellman Files and The Curse of the Spellmans by Lisa Lutz
Dreamiest Tale:
The Frozen Thames by Helen Humphreys
Best Road Trip:
The Lost Continent - Travels in Small-Town America by Bill Bryson
Mystery Writer I Am So Glad I Found:
Peter Lovesey - The Last Detective, Diamond Solitaire, The Summons, and Bloodhounds.
As If I Needed More Reasons Not To Go On A Cruise:
A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again by David Foster Wallace.
Proof That The South Shall Rise Again:
Mama Makes Up Her Mind by Bailey White.
Authors I Have Met and Their Books I Read This Year:
Duffy Brown (Killer in Crinolines), William Zinsser (The Writer Who Stayed), and George S. McGovern (Abraham Lincoln)
