2013: The Year In Books

2013books

With another year coming to an end, it is time to take a look back at the 18 books I read over the past year, 6 overall less than last year but the same total if you exclude the graphic novels.  Of those 18, 5 were non-fiction and, of the 13 novels, 5 were TV show tie-ins.  Only 3 of the books came from the “to-read” drawer, and 7 were e-books, which was a new category for me last year.

 

A majority of the books I read this year were by authors I’ve never read before.  The 11 authors that I read for the first this year were:
Alan Sepinwall
Joe Hill
Rebecca Forster
Sarah Silverman
Kimberly McCreight
Andrew Gross
Ben Mezrich
Tina Fey
Ron Rapoport
David Mack
Dustin Diamond

The ghost writer for Richard Castle was the only author I read multiple times in 2013.

The five books that I read this year that were released this year were Richard Castle’s Deadly Heat, Kimberly McCreight’s Reconstructing Amelia, Brad Meltzer’s The Fifth Assassin, Warren Ellis’ Gun Machine, and From Black Sox to Threepeats, edited by Ron Rapoport.

Finally, the breakdown by month.  Being off again for most of December certainly helped pad the total a tad bit.

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Book 16 (of 52) – Deadly Heat

Deadly Heat - Richard Castle

Deadly Heat – Richard Castle

The latest novel from Richard Castle, played as always by Nathan Fillion on the show Castle, picks up right after the previous one, with Nikki Heat learning the identity of her mother’s murderer but not knowing why she was killed.  In this followup, Heat, the novel version of Stana Katic’s Kate Beckett character, gets the closure she has been looking for while tracking down a serial killer that has targeted her.

These novels have been an intriguing marketing tool for the television show, as they are written by the character and featured in the show’s narrative.  It would be easy for these to be trashy, but someone is obviously trying to put out a product worthy of the best selling author.  One can only hope that the story of Nikki Heat and Jameson Rook hasn’t ended with the closure of Heat’s mother’s case.