Compiling ye olde reading list

Yes, ye socks, it's that time of year. Yours truly is crafting his reading list for the next 365 days.

One of the tools I use for this is the New York Times best seller list. (IMHO the only reason to peruse said "newspaper.")

A whopping 36 books topped the list last year, which doesn't say much for their staying-power and tells me there's a lot of pulp fiction out there that probably wouldn't appeal to me.

In fact, more than half the books were just the latest in a series.

And, the overwhelming majority seem to fall into one category of crime story or another.

All in all, this is a pretty stinging indictment of our country's literary taste, no?

Anyway, getting back to my own list, I decided only to add the "outliers," those books that didn't fall into the crime series formula . . . or, if they did, only those who topped the list for more than just one week. This is what I came up with, in no particular order:

1. Handle With Care, by Jodi Picoult. The tale of a child with a peculiar disability.

2. South of Broad, by Pat Conroy. A family drama set in Charleston, South Carolina.

3. The Last Song, by Nicholas Sparks. A teenager moves to Wrightsville Beach, North Carolina, after parents divorce.

4. The Lost Symbol, by Dan Brown. Symbologists shift their focus from the Vatican to DC.

5. Ford County, by John Grisham. A collection of short stories about a fictional Mississippi town.

6. Under the Dome, by Stephen King. A glass dome descends on yet another fictional town, this one in Maine.

7. U is for Undertow, by Sue Grafton. The 21st, yes 21st, in a murder mystery series. I only added it because it managed to stay atop the list for 5 whole weeks.

Plenty of spots still availble on the list if ye socks have any suggestions . . .