2012 was an interesting reading year for me.  I started off thinking I was going to participate in the Chick Lit Plus reading challenge, and also Bookish Resolutions. My resolution was to read a book from my backlog each month. Almost immediately, I was faced with a desire to not read… .and then in May I started a program for a certification in Holistic Nutrition Consulting.  My time to read for fun was limited.  So I didn’t get to read everything I wanted to this year. But I still had a few standouts.

The first of these is Catfish Alley. This is the book that The Help, as good as it was, could have been.  It stayed with me long after I finished it, and it took me a few days to be able to write the review.

I was able to participate in a number of blog tours throughout the year. I enjoyed all of the books, but two still stand out to me.  Erik Atwell’s Thank You For Flying Air Zoe was humorous with an atypical heroine.  Kathleen Long’s Chasing Rainbows is the other one I adored.  As I mentioned in the review,  at times I felt Kathleen had written parts of my story.  I really enjoyed this one.

One of my favorite authors, Debora Geary, was quite prolific this year and published a number of books.  I’ve never read a Geary book I didn’t like, and I’m still hard pressed to say which of these was my favorite, but I’m going to with Witches In Flight as my favorite Debora Geary read of 2012.

My favorite thriller/mystery read for 2012 is Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl.  Everyone I know who has read this book has had strong opinions about it and the characters.  I’m looking forward to reading more of Flynn in 2013.

I didn’t read as much non-fiction this year as I normally do, although I did get through a few books.  One stands out beyond all the others for me this year: Shannon Moroney’s Through The Glass. This is another one that has continued to stay with me and has changed me and how I judge- or don’t judge- people and situations.  Rachel Thompson’s Broken Pieces is a close second because of the stark honesty in the essays.

I started a new column on the blog this year, My Author Crush. Meredith Schorr ,  Laurel Osterkamp, and Rachel Thompson get a shout out here for being wonderful partipants in this.  I really enjoyed getting to know more about each of them and sharing it with readers.  I’m putting together the list of authors I’d like to include in the 2013 Author Crush segments, and I can’t wait to continue this column.