I started keeping a running tally on my website last January but I soon got sloppy with it and fell behind. I think this is most of my booklist for the year:

Last summer I got one of those ubiquitous freebies from Amazon, a mystery from Kate Kingsbury centered on a small hotel on the southeastern coast of England in 1906. Just as Amazon figured, it backfired on me because I liked it so much I went back to buy ten more in the series at full price.

So far I've read
Room with a Clue
Do Not Disturb
Service for Two
Eat, Drink, and be Buried
Check-Out Time

Then there is

Around the World in Eighty Days - Michael Palin
A BBC film crew follows the author in an attempt to duplicate the Jules Verne feat in 1989.

The Angola Horror - Charity Vogel
The last two coaches of the Buffalo & Erie New York Express derailed and burned in Angola, New York on December 18, 1867 in the worst railroad disaster up to that date.

Narrowboat Dreams: A Journey North by England's Waterways - Steve Haywood
In the 1970s, England spent millions of pounds restoring canals built before America was a nation. The author takes his 7 x 70 foot narrowboat the length of one of the more scenic routes

Mr. Angel Comes Aboard - Charles C. Booth (currently unavailable at Amazon)
A WWII spy/mystery novel I bought after watching the movie it inspired on TCM.

Bloody Crimes: the Chase for Jefferson Davis and the Death Pageant for Lincoln's Corpse - James L Swanson
The book switches back and forth in the stories of the chase for Davis and the progress of the Lincoln funeral train as it made its way back to Springfield.

In an interesting note, every scrap of memorabilia from the Davis library was lost when Hurricane Katrina destroyed the plantation an admirer had given him upon his release from prison.

Knoxville: This Obscure Prismatic City - Jack Neely
A collection of Secret History articles well worth the reading.

Desperate Hours: The Epic Story of the Sinking and Rescue of the Andrea Doria - Richard Goldstein

Abandoned Ship: An Intimate Account of the Costa Concordia Shipwreck - Benji Smith
Not only was the sinking of the Costa Concordia a harrowing experience but, according to the author, treatment of the survivors by the cruise line was really shabby. The author seems to be a bit over whiny, though.

Let the Faggots Burn: The Upstairs Lounge Fire - Johnny Townsend
The title is from a comment made by a firefighter on the scene of the 1973 French Quarter fire that killed 32. This one brought back some bad memories and pissed me off.

J.K. Rowling:
Harry Potters and the Sorcerer's Stone
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Askaban
I have been borrowing these, one per month, through the Amazon Prime lending library.

Tip and the Gipper: When Politics Worked - Chris Matthews
I'm about 1/3 through this one. I got to the point where he starting a Reagan bio and I abandoned it for the Angola Horror. I'll come back to it eventually unless something else catches my eye.

Shipwreck: The Strange Fate of the Morro Castle - Max Morgan Watts & Gordon Thomas
I saw a documentary on the SS Morro Castle years ago on HBO. According to the book, she was running guns to Cuban revolutionaries when she was torched and ran aground on the Jersey Shore in 1934.

Enola Gay: Mission to Hiroshima - Max Morgan & Gordon Thomas
One of the best books on the preparation and execution of that raid and its part of the Manhattan Project that I've read.

A bit of trivia: When Curtiss LeMay firebombed Tokyo, he relied on an old ally he had met a few years before in order to get accurate weather estimates over the target. That ally was Mao Tse-Tung.

The Yellowstone Conundrum (Is This the End?) - John Randall
What do we do when the Yellowstone Super Volcano erupts? Maybe the author knows what he's talking about but one nit I have to pick with him is where the GPS in the hero's SUV fails because there is an earthquake. I failed to see how an earthquake could disturb geosynchronous satellites. Maybe it's just me.

Voyage of the Damned - Gordon Thomas
The plight of more than 900 Jewish refugees aboard the SS St. Louis who have been promised safe haven in America (but with a 'temporary' sojourn in Cuba) in 1939.

The Final Days - Carl Bernstein & Bob Woodward
The last 100 days of the Nixon Administration. "People have gotta know whether or not their president's a crook. Well, I'm not a crook."

Sleeping Murder: Miss Marples' Last Case - Agatha Christie

Sparkling Cyanide - Agatha Christie

Elephants Can Remember - Agatha Christie

A Journey to the Interior of the Earth - Jules Verne

I'm pleased we were able to obtain 17 of our books this year from the library. Probably could have borrowed more, will try harder next year.

My favorite for the year was probably "A Land Remembered".

The scariest were "The Circle" and "Cyberstorm".

I've been trying to read "The Bully Pulpit: Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and the Golden Age of Journalism", Doris Kearns Goodwin. So far, I am not a fan.

In addition to many (but not all) on the Mr.'s list, I've also read:

Night Over Water, Ken Follett. People fleeing England on the Pan Am clipper early in WWII. Pretty good book. Not exactly what I expected, a little too romance novel for me.

Winter of the World: Book Two of the Century Trilogy, Ken Follett. Can probably read this one again. Takes you back to the 1930s and 1940s. Follett admits he chose the book's title to "capture the notion that my characters are desperately trying to survive a bigger kind of winter - one whose storms include Stalin's purges and Hitler's holocaust."

Travels with Charley in Search of America, John Steinbeck. Really enjoyed this book. Steinbeck travels the country with his poodle, Charley.

...urban fantasy, and science fiction on my Kindle. The best sci fi story I read on Kindle this year was probably "Wool", by Hugh Howey. I recommend it highly.

Don't do Kindle, and my reading for pleasure took quite a hit fall semester, but I did read some good books this year. Here's two:

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, by Rebecca Skloot. It's the story of the woman who contributed (unknowingly) the HeLa cancer cells used for study the world round. The book is about her story, her family's story after she died, genetic & medical research, and how medical ethics keeps up (or fails to) with technology.

Maybe the best novel I read was Life After Life by Kate Atkinson. When I tell you the plot is about a woman who lives her life over and over, it sounds like ordinary science fiction. But the writing is quite wonderful, the characters are well realized, and the chapters on London during War World II are simply amazing. I don't think I ever quite realized what it was like to live through (and with) the Blitz before I read this book.

Both highly recommended.

I'm currently reading Cadillac Desert, something I've meant to read for ages and somehow never got around to.

Fascinating study shows the effects of reading on the brain's connectivity.