Confessions Of A Bookaholic
Mesmerizing. I only knew of Padma Lakshmi due to her work on Top Chef, but that was enough to get me to buy and eventually read this book. In it, she paints the story of her life beautifully, even during the worst of tragedies. This is a very well told autobiography, even if you’ve never heard of her before. Very highly recommended.
This review of Love, Loss, and What We Ate by Padma Lakshmi was originally published on April 22, 2018.
2018 was going to be a big year in books for me from the start. At the end of 2017, I realized I had averaged more than 70 books in each of the last two years, so I set myself what I saw as an ambitious goal: 108 books. It started out as a specific list of books, with the acknowledgement that I would add the occassional Advance Reader Copy (ARC) and would probably end the year at 120 or so – still nearly double my recent average. I distinctly remember even 53 books being very difficult in 2008, but my life had also been much different at the time, as a new person in my day job profession, new husband, and driving 100 miles one way to work for over half of that year. 2018 was going to be much easier – I was working a fairly easy job in a settled position in my career, married to the same lady from 2008, and working just 15 minutes from home.
I started the year with a couple of 19th century philosophical works, Civil Disobedience by Henry David Thorau and On Liberty by John Stuart Mills. Those would be the oldest books I read this year, and the only books published before the current Millenium. Over the course of the year, I would find many amazing books, a few duds, march through my mountain of a TBR (while adding even more, peril of a bookaholic), joined several more book and author groups, started a book blog, and overall surprise myself in a couple of ways:
1) I surpassed my original goal of 108 books in *October*. I closed the year at 156.
2) I didn’t realize it until counting yesterday, but of those 156 books, 46 of them turned out to be ARCs!
But let’s take a brief look at some “best of 2018”, shall we? I believe we’ll break it down by month before finally picking from those selections for the annual award.
Continue reading “2018: My Year In Books”