2011 - the year by numbers...

...with maybe a few pictures thrown in for good measure!

53 - the number of books I read this year

42 - the number of days I spent in England

1 - the number of days I spent in Paris <3

5 - the approximate number of journals I filled up

8 - the number of classes I took this year

323 - the number of pennies it takes to buy my latte at starbucks

6.7.11 - the day I met Miss Ida

221 - the number connected with one of this year's biggest obsessions ;-)

10 - the number of people in my growing familia

03:00 - the hour I got up to watch a wedding

21 - the number of years I've been dreaming

294 - the number of blog posts I had this year

3 - the number of Shakespearian plays I saw this year

5 - the number of times, as of this year, I've read Pride and Prejudice

2 - the number of cricket matches I attended

13 - the number of British spiders I sent to Hades

4 - the number of films I saw at the cinema

countless things in 2011:

dreams fulfilled

new friends

smiles

Here it is! As promised, here's the list of books I've read this year. I've been really excited about it because I honestly don't know how many I've read this year--all I know is it felt like a lot. I purposely have not added them up yet, so this is as much a surprise to me as it is to all of you.

So here it goes, the list, in order of completion:

1. Caleb Williams - William Godwin
2. Wieland - Charles Brockden Brown*
3. Radical - David Platt
4. Letter's from an American Farmer - J. Hector St. John de Crevcoeur*
5. Charlotte Temple - Susanna Rowson*
6. The Spy - James Fenimore Cooper
7. Through a Screen Darkly - Jeffrey Overstreet
8. Aurelia's Colors - Jeffrey Overstreet
9. Cyndere's Midnight - Jeffrey Overstreet
10. Raven's Ladder - Jeffrey Overstreet
11. The Ale Boy's Feast - Jeffrey Overstreet
12. Northanger Abbey - Jane Austen*
13. Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen*
14. Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen*
15. Mansfield Park - Jane Austen*
16. Emma -Jane Austen*
17. Persuasion - Jane Austen*
18. Sanditon - Jane Austen
19. Manalive - G. K. Chesterton
20. Picture of Dorian Gray - Oscar Wilde
21. A Jesuit Off Broadway - Father James Martin
22. The Age of Innocence - Edith Wharton
23. Dandelion Wine - Ray Bradbury
24. A Study in Scarlet - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
25. A Mercy - Toni Morrison
26. Frankenstein - Mary Shelley
27. Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
28. Agamemmnon - Aeschylus*
29. Room - Emma Donoghue
30. Eumenides - Aeschylus*
31. The Road - Cormac McCarthy
32. Seven Against Thebes - Aeschylus
33. The Sound and the Fury - William Faulkner
34. Prometheus Bound - Aeschylus*
35. Fun Home - Alison Bechdel
36. Oedipus Tyrannos - Sophocles*
37. Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte*
38. Antigone - Sophocles
39. Philoctetes - Sophocles
40. History of Love - Nicole Krauss
41. Hippolytos - Euripides*
42. Medea - Euripides*
43. The Gangster We're all Looking For - Le Thi Diem Thuy
44. Alcestis - Euripides
45. Bacchae - Euripides
46. A Gesture Life - Chang-rae Lee
47. Frogs - Aristophanes
48. Hard Times - Charles Dickens*
49. Loneliness as a Way of Life - Thomas Dumm
50. Surprised by Oxford - Carolyn Webber
51. The Hunger Games - Suzanne Collins
52. Catching Fire - Suzanne Collins
53. Mockningjay - Suzanne Collins

Key: 
*re-read
___ read for school


Aside from obvious favorites by Austen and the Bronte's, a few of these I'd recommend are:

• History of Love - A "beautifully sad," multiple-narrator novel about an aged and lonely holocaust survivor named Leopold Gursky and the lives his writing unknowingly changed--including his own.
• Room - The story of Jack, a precocious 5-year-old, who lives with his mother and has never been outside the Room he was born in. Told in his 1st-person, present tense perspective, this intense and gripping narrative reveals the beauty of a mother's love.
• Manalive - G. K. Chesterton's hilarious novel about Innocent Smith--a man who defies religion and convention. Chesterton masterfully demonstrates that to do the truly right thing in modernity, we have to "break the law."
• and Surprised by Oxford - The memoir of a grad student studying English at Oxford, who found herself swept into the deepest Romance she could possibly imagine. Carolyn Webber's original imagery, constant literary allusions, and brilliant prose would be reason enough to read this--the setting and story make it magical.

I'd love to hear what you read this year and here's to many more books in 2012 =)