I'm pretty sure that this a not a complete list. It's sad how quickly I forget things if I don't write them down. I did have a good long dry spell for reading the last few months of the year. Every time I sat down to read a book I just felt restless and I couldn't concentrate. But, these are the books that kept my attention and that I still remember that I read.


Digging to America
by Anne Tyler

Tyler is one of my favorite authors and this book is a great example of what I love about her. This is the story of two families whose lives become connected when they both adopt baby girls from Korea. Tyler writes from different family members' points of view and you get to know and care about the characters. This is classic Tyler where you are just given a slice of life without resolutions or endings. Sometimes that's a hard way to leave characters that you want to have happy endings, but this book still satisfies.


The Time Travelers Wife
by Audrey Niffenegger

This is fluffy, escapist science fiction. Which doesn't sound like a book I would be interested in, but it's a wonderful book. It absolutely sucked me in. It's over 500 pages long, but at the end of the book I didn't want the story to end. The story is about a man, Henry, who time travels and his wife Claire. The book begins when they meet. She has known him since she was six years old. He has never met her. The story jumps around in time (Henry is 38, Claire is 10; Henry is 30, Claire is 15) and you piece together things Claire has already experienced and Henry has yet experienced. The author does a very good job of keeping the story cohesive and believable enough. The only thing that got a little old were the descriptions of their intimate life together. Most of these scenes were done well, but from time to time her descriptions were too trite or too graphic or just plain tiresome. Besides that small complaint, this was a great book.


Love in the Driest Season
by Neely Tucker

This is the true story of a couple who move to Zimbabwe and end up trying to adopt an orphan. Although the baby has been entrusted to their care, the authorities don't trust their motives (the father is white and the mother is black and many times they are asked why a white man would be interested in a black child) and the country's general policy is to forbid foreign adoptions. Even knowing that the story has a happy ending (there's a beautiful picture of the family at the beginning of the book), the book is riveting. Tucker does a wonderful job of weaving together the intimate story of their family and the broader story of Zimbabwe and AIDS.


Night
by Elie Wiesel

Fast, powerful read. Eli Wiesel's account of his time as a teenager in Auschwitz was heartbreaking.