Here’s the post that has become the traditional first of the new year, one which reflects on the year just past.  This is the seventh year in a row in which I enumerate and categorize the books I read and the movies I saw, and then attempt some kind of spotlight on select titles.

In 2013, I read 48 books and saw 32 movies.  It was a record year for books!  In terms of categories, I read twice as much fiction as non-fiction, 33 to 15.  Fiction genres ranged from the standard novel to sci-fi/fantasy to mystery/thriller to poetry.  The non-fiction books included history, biography/memoir, science/medicine, statistics, and psychology.  The movies I watched included drama, comedy, sci-fi, animated, musical, and documentary.

It’s become progressively harder for me to pick a top five or six titles as  Best of, so this year I’m again doing something a bit different for both books and movies.

These are the books I thought deserved their glowing reviews:

• 1493
• Cloud Atlas
• Midnight’s Children
• Orlando Furioso
• Wolf Hall and Bring up the Bodies

These are the movies I did not expect to really like but did:

• Arbitrage
• Chocolat
• The Heat
• Lincoln
• The Way

Click here for the complete lists.  Happy reading and happy viewing.