80 of 'em. That's eight up on 2011, although I can't honestly say they're all brand new books I've never read/listened to before, as my Agatha Raisin marathon can attest.
The books I've been most excited about are those of Barbara Pym. I'd never heard of her before this summer and it was only by chance while working at not-my-usual-library that I happened to come across "Excellent Women" (which, several books into Pym's work, still remains my favourite). Love at first paragraph. Her writing reminds me of Stella Gibbons and Winifred Watson and Jane Austen. They're laugh-out-loud funny and bittersweet at the same time. I particularly love how characters from earlier novels crop up as an aside in later ones; everyone is connected to everyone else somehow. Fabulous stuff.
Speaking of laugh-out-loud funny, after loving Mr Fry and Mr Laurie for some time, I actually got around to reading some PG Wodehouse. GENIUS. One of PG's I read was "Something Fresh", the first novel in the Blandings series, which the BBC has just made a adaptation of, to be screened very shortly. CANNOT WAIT.
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