Books I've read in 2011

One of my new year's resolutions was to read more in 2011. I've got an incredible backlog of titles to get through, and more stuff is being published that I have my eye on (like the forthcoming The Art of the Hobbit by Tolkien scholars Wayne G. Hammond and Christina Scull, authors of the highly recommended J.R.R. Tolkien: Artist and Illustrator and The J.R.R Tolkien Companion and Guide) that I despair of ever making any real progress. As I've said before, there's too much to read in the world and not enough time to do it.

I started out averaging a book a week this year, but have fallen off a bit, in part due to a week-long business trip in which I had almost no time to read (See? I'm already making excuses). In truth I'm a slow reader. I'm also prone to fits of stopping and jotting down notes that I later use in my reviews (this creates a very real problem when I'm driving in the car and listening to a book on tape when I'm hit with a flash of inspiration). I also surf the web too damn much, reading everyone else's interesting blogs when I could be reading books.

So here's the meagre list:

Roots and Branches, Tom Shippey
Legend, David Gemmell
The Sword of Rhiannon, Leigh Brackett
Grails: Quests of the Dawn, Richard Gilliam, Mercedes Lackey, Andre Norton (editors)
God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything, Christopher Hitchens
The Burning Land, Bernard Cornwell
No Country for Old Men, Cormac McCarthy
The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrun, J.R.R. Tolkien
Resolute Determination: Napoleon and the French Empire (The Modern Scholar)
The Company They Keep, Diana Glyer
The Desert of Souls, Howard Andrew Jones
The Brothers Bulger, Howie Carr
Phantastes, George MacDonald
Tolkien and the Invention of Myth, Jane Chance (editor)

The best one of the bunch so far? No Country for Old Men.