Bookish Rants or Raves: What happened with my 2012 anticipated books?

Filed in Bookish Rant or Raves , featured , The Rocket Lover Posted on January 3, 2013 @ 7:00 am 9 comments

gmail_scrshot_smLists are fun. Unless they are lists of housekeeping chores, and then, well, never mind. (Move along, nothing to see here)

Book lists are fun. How many “best books of 2012” lists have you checked out? If you haven’t gotten your fill yet, Largehearted Boy is collecting every “best of 2012” book list he can get his virtual hands on. The list is positively ginormous, and guaranteed to do major damage to your wish list and/or TBR pile.

As I created my own “best of 2012” list at Reading Reality, I did a couple of other things. The natural thing is to create the accompanying list of “most anticipated books for 2013”, which yes, I also did.

Then I had this horribly guilty flash. How many of 2012’s most anticipated books did I actually read? Oops. I didn’t do very well. Actually, I sucked.

220px-Quartz_crystalI’m not saying the books sucked. I’m saying that I don’t know. What I did a truly lousy job at was predicting what I’d actually get around to reading this year.

Of course, I also originally predicted I’d read 400 books in my Goodreads challenge, and I had to knock that down to 250. My crystal ball is seriously cracked.

But about those anticipated titles. The ones I actually read were J.D. Robb’s Celebrity in Death, John Scalzi’s Redshirts, Jean Johnson’s An Officer’s Duty, and Nalini Singh’s Tangle of Need.  (I still detest the U.S. cover of Tangle of Need. I’m also really annoyed about the game-playing about the next book in the series. Yes, I know, I’m on a digression. Again.)

redshirtsI was right about all of them. They were definitely at least good. Some were better than good. But except for the copy of Redshirts, which I got by begging at the Tor booth at ALA Annual, these are books I had to buy. As a blogger, the sheer number of review books that are available to me, especially from NetGalley, seems to be pushing the books that I just plain want to read out down to the bottom of my TBR pile.

Even when that pile is virtual.

I say that because I did actually buy some of the other books on that anticipated list. When Maidens Mourn by C.S. Harris, and Dana Stabenow’s Restless in the Grave both popped up on my radar because the next book in both those series is coming out this winter, and I didn’t get around to last year’s. The reviews were awesome, so it’s not that I skipped something awful. I ran out of time.

At least with Simon R. Green’s The Bride Wore Black Leather, I think I pushed that one down the TBR pile because the reviews did turn out to be kind of “meh”.

I somehow managed to miss two of Jayne Ann Krentz/Amanda Quick’s Arcane Society titles last year; the contemporary Copper Beach and the Victorian Crystal Gardens. And now there are sequels to both.

Layout 1I bought all of these. They are waiting for me on my iPad. I just never got around to them.  Or Lee and Miller’s Dragon Ship, or Alex Grecian’s The Yard (no excuse for this one, I have a print ARC) or Lindsey Davis’ Master & God.

When I looked at this list in early December, I thought about trying to finish it before the end of the year, and just went ARRGGHHH!

How do you feel about anticipated book lists? Do you do them? Do you get the books on them read? Or do other books, newer books, more tempting books, push them out of the way?

About Marlene


Marlene is a librarian, ebook advocate, science fiction fan, and RPG fan who lives in the Atlanta suburbs. She and her husband are owned by four cats, just ask them. She's a geek and a nerd and proud of it. She's also an avid reader of everything, including the back of the cereal box, and has been blogging since April 2011 at Reading Reality and is a reviewer at Library Journal as well as active on Goodreads. She is also the publisher of Ebook Review Central.

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9 Comments

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  • Maria D. January 3, 2013 at 10:49 am

    I’ll be honest – I’m not that big of a list girl – I know…the horrors….lol
    My biggest problem is that I buy way more books than I can read – my goal this year on Goodreads is to read 200 books – my problem is that I’ll probably buy 200-300 books at the same time…sigh

  • Readsalot81 January 3, 2013 at 12:08 pm

    I’m very much a list girl 🙂 However, I didn’t really start reviewing until midway through 2012.. So I didn’t have much of an anticipated list. I had my eye on *certain* books I had to have (ie : Cold Days by Butcher or Gunmetal Magic by Ilona Andrews).. but no real organized list. 🙂 There are quite a few that I’d like to read this year, but keeping the # low (as in 5 on my most anticipated list of 2013) helps open the door for new books to make their way in.. and push other books to the back of my mind.. where I pretty much forget about them until I find out they’ve been released. Then it’s WOOHOO, forgot about that book, time to read it. Which is a little gift in itself.

  • Draconismoi January 3, 2013 at 12:23 pm

    Nah, I don’t do Anticipated Books Lists. Only to preserve my sanity. Because I obsess. And the more I obsess, the more disappointed I am when I actually get the book.

    As will be noted in my review of Scent of Magic. A book I DESPERATELY needed. But did not love. 🙁

  • JenM January 3, 2013 at 1:28 pm

    I do keep a “top of the TBR pile” list, but I still don’t get to at least half of the books on it. I guess it’s just human nature to constantly be tempted by the newest and shiniest things.

  • aurian January 3, 2013 at 3:07 pm

    Great post Marlene! I make a list of the new books each month I want to read / have to buy. The ones I do buy, get read, but not always that same month. And yes, I cannot possibly read all the books I want to read. And buy.

  • Marlene January 3, 2013 at 10:26 pm

    I joke that I’m on the reading equivalent of a seafood diet. The old joke about I “see food” and I eat it? I see books and I want to read them! I’ll never be able to read all the books I want to. And I still buy them anyway.

  • Lily January 4, 2013 at 11:55 am

    I am a new blogger and have not done lists. At the moment I am still trying to catch on to the books I have not read and recently there has been A lot of them, so thats been keeping me busy. I do try to get a few new books of that year in as well to keep up with the others 🙂 but netgalley books have also been keeping me busy.

  • Tin January 6, 2013 at 5:43 am

    I’d still love to read your most anticipated list — ^_^

    I’ll probably do one for this January and see how many of those books I’ll actually read. (It would be a fun revelation at the end of the year. ^_^)

    • Marlene January 6, 2013 at 2:32 pm

      If you want to read it, it’s linked in the post under “most anticipated reads of 2013”. Or at Reading Reality under “13 for 2013”. I couldn’t resist the Baker’s Dozen idea.

      And I’ve already read one of them. 😉

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