I'm not on the e-reader bandwagon...yet

I LOVE books.  Actual books.  Not fake pages on a screen that you "flip."  I just can't get into that.  Although I probably will someday.  Sigh.  How long can I resist the iPad when everyone I know is singing its praises?  Craig's had the NOOK (or is it nook?  Or Nook?  I can't tell...) for about a year and is pretty much sold on it, especially when he saw how many books and magazines I hauled around over the holidays to provide myself entertainment.  I think he was a little shocked.  Hmmmm....

I resolve to read at least 30 books in 2011.  And I'm hard at work on this one since that whole "lose 25 pounds" thing is going to test my resolve more than I had hoped.  Sigh again.  So I'll encourage everyone else to get out there and read, too, if for no other reason than it provides an escape from the life of spreadsheets or call center questions or screaming children or whatever it is that's testing you these days.  To that end, here are my suggestions from a selection of the 32 books I read last year.  I kept a list.  That's why I knew how many I'd read.  What, you're shocked?  This is me we're talking about.  Of course there was a list.

I loved these, please read them as soon as humanly possible:

1. Hunger Games trilogy by Suzanne Collins
2. My Life in France by Julia Child
3. Wonder Boys by Michael Chabon
4. Travel Writing by Peter Ferry
5. Naked by David Sedaris
6. The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows

These were pretty good, too, go ahead and add them to your list:

1. Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen
2. The Reader by Bernhard Schlink
3. The Tenth Circle by Jodi Picoult
4. London is the Best City in America by Lori Gottlieb
5. Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
6. Nineteen Minutes by Jodi Picoult

Rereads for me, prompted by vacation and movie-viewing, that you should go ahead and read for the first time if you haven't already read them, or just skip Harry Potter if you have strong feelings about not reading young adult wizard fiction:

1. Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil by John Berendt
2. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J.K. Rowling

Girly books that didn't make toooooo much of an impression on me when I couldn't bring myself to read the books I felt like I should read to enhance my knowledge and bucket of cultural reference but that are probably quiet sufficient for a lazy afternoon on a beach somewhere:

1. The Guy Not Taken by Jennifer Weiner
2. Barefoot by Elin Hilderbrand
3. The Other Woman by Jane Green
4. Firefly Lane by Kristin Hannah

Do not UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES read this crap book:

1. In the Kitchen by Monica Ali