My Favorites of 2011

  With a little more than a week left of the year, I've read 123 books in 2011.  Yes, it's a lot, but it's a bit short of my goal of 140 books.  I read an eclectic mix of fiction and non-fiction, books published this year and books that have been sitting on my TBR shelf for a while.  I've enjoyed most of them, loved a lot of them, and surprisingly disliked very few.

  Rather than making a list, I thought I'd highlight some of my favorites of the year:

  Favorite fiction published in 2011:  The Submission by Amy Waldman
  Favorite fiction published before 2011:  Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese
  Favorite non-fiction published in 2011:  Man Seeks God by Eric Weiner (I just finished this and have yet to write about it, but it is a great book.)
  Favorite non-fiction published before 2011:  The Great Typo Hunt by Jeff Deck and Benjamin D. Herson
 
  I'd also like to mention the most pleasant surprises of the year:

• Something Missing by Matthew Dicks
• Looking for Salvation at the Dairy Queen by Susan Gregg Gilmore (I'm not sure why I didn't write about this one)
• The Revenge of the Radioactive Lady by Elizabeth Stuckey-French
• The Bee-Loud Glade by Steve Himmer
• The Reservoir by John Milliken Thompson

  These are all books that I discovered thanks to the Books on the Nightstand Readers' Retreat I attended in April (best weekend ever).  I am pretty sure I would not have selected any of these on my own and I definitely would have missed out, because these are all original novels that were a pleasure to read.   I'll be attending their retreat again in 2012(in Oxford, Mississippi) and I cannot wait to see what gems they have for me this time around.