Spring ahead, look back: 1st-Quarter Reading Reflections (Weekly Geeks 2011-12)

Despite the fact that I'm part of the Weekly Geeks blog team (I do recaps for the site every few weeks), I'm a rather inconsistent Weekly Geeks participant. But this week I'm joining in, as Wendy presents us with a change-of-(reading)-seasons opportunity to take stock:

Spring has sprung...the flowers are coming up, baby animals are being born, everything is green and new. Many of us are spring-cleaning or organizing, rethinking and pondering changes...and so I thought it might be fun to look back on the first quarter of 2011 in books, as well as our anticipation for the beginning of the second quarter of the year. Write about any or all of the following:

• The best books you've read so far in 2011
• Books published in 2011 you've read that have lived up or NOT to the hype
• Something new or different you've added to your blog
• Organizing books - do you have a new system, new bookcases, or are you simply getting rid of things to make room for the new?
• Changes you are making from the first part of the year to the second part of the year
• Most anticipated book releases in April, May and June 2011
• How your reading changes from the winter months to the warmer days of spring
• Is there a book you've read in the first three months of the year which you think will make your top ten list for the year? Share it with us!

I've reviewed 12 books so far this year, which is a very good pace for me. I'd like it to continue, but I have my doubts considering how the last week or so has gone - I do hope the 24-Hour Readathon coming up this weekend will help a bit, though!

It's also been a high-quality reading year to date, which is gratifying. I do use a rating system with my reviews, and I haven't given any book I've read this year less than a 3.5 out of 5 score. One-third of the books I read scored a somewhat frustrating 3.75/5 - almost, but not quite, four-star reads (which is what I assigned them in LibraryThing; their system allows half-star ratings but not quarter-stars, so I usually round up the stars and record the real rating as a tag).

Thanks to my January reading as a Non-Fiction judge for the Indie Lit Awards, I've had an almost even split between fiction and non-fiction so far this year, and I expect that to continue into April - most of the books I have designated as "planned" reading for this month are memoirs, so the scale may even tip to the NF side for a short time.

I felt that there'd been a slight shift in the ration of female/male authors in my reading, but the numbers don't seem to support that so far. I usually do skew significantly toward women writers, and it looks like that really hasn't changed much after all - it's still 75% women/25% men. I'm curious to see how that holds up as the year continues, though.

Thanks to the fact that my convalescence from shoulder surgery made it a challenge to read with two hands for six weeks, I've read quite a bit more than usual from my Kindle, which turns out to be easier to manage one-handed than print books are. Since I've really cut back on review books, most of the new (2011 pub date) books I've read this year were e-books, and I've read more of them than I usually have by this point in the year. There was one I didn't love quite as much as the rest of the book-blogger world seems to, but none have been real disappointments either. And while it was originally published in 2010, I read it in January, and I will be very surprised at myself if Isabel Wilkerson's award-winning (National Book Critics Circle and Indie Lit Awards) The Warmth of Other Suns is NOT one of my Non-Fiction Books of the Year for 2011.

I haven't thought too much about books I'm anticipating in the next few months - because I'm really not as attentive to pub dates as, perhaps, I should be - but I am looking forward to Jennifer Haigh's new novel, Faith, which I'm scheduled to review for TLC Book Tours in May (although I haven't received my copy yet).

I'll be an Indie Lit Awards judge again for 2011 - this time, for the new category of Biography/Memoir - which means I won't be allowed to make any nominations, but I'm hoping to get in a nice chunk of reading in my category so I can recommend books that the rest of you can nominate!

If you're looking back at your reading year so far and contemplating what's coming next, why not link up your post at Weekly Geeks and join us this week? Or just share your thoughts here - I'd love to know!