First Lines Meme

I've borrowed the First Lines Meme from Melanie. The idea is to reproduce the first line from the first post of each month from the past year and to thereby create a collage that represents your blogging year. I altered it a little by skipping over posts that were quotations and also, after the first one, my ubiquitous library loot posts. If I included all of the latter the result would be awfully repetitive and you would be left with the impression that I spent the entire year lugging enormous stacks of books home from the library. Oh, wait, that's exactly how I spent the year. No matter, on with the slightly revised meme…

January
I stopped in at the library on my way home today and found a tantalizing haul awaiting me on the hold shelf.

February
Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life is part memoir, part treatise/meditation on sustainable agriculture and ethical eating.

March
George Orwell's Books v. cigarettes is a recent volume in Penguin's "Great Ideas" series.

April
It's a good thing that so many people raved to me about Stieg Larsson's The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo; otherwise, I might not have persevered beyond the first thirty pages.

May
I'm stealing a moment from my end-of-term grading to pop in here and give a quick heads up to fellow North American fans of Henning Mankell's Kurt Wallander novels.

June
I fear that Penelope Fitzgerald and I are not meant for one another.

July
I'm off on a pilgrimage to Mankato (aka Deep Valley), Minnesota to attend the Betsy-Tacy Convention.

August
My jaunt to Sweden began with five days in Uppsala and continues with five days in Stockholm.

September
The first book listed by Nancy Pearl in her recent NPR feature on “Mysteries You Might Have Missed Along the Way” is Jedediah Berry's The Manual of Detection.

October
With the release last week of new double-volume editions of the final six books in the series, all of Maud Hart Lovelace's Betsy-Tacy books are back in print.

November
I count myself among the L.M. Montgomery fans who feel a great sense of kinship with Anne Shirley but little or no affinity for Anne Blythe.

December
I began my grand Nancy Drew reread with a visit to the bookstore and, I confess, I felt my heart beat a little faster at first sight of the row of familiar yellow hardbacks on a shelf in the children's section.

The exercise presents an altogether accurate picture of my year in reading, beginning with a focus on food, ending with ambitious rereads of childhood favourites, and covering much else in the middle but with an emphasis on Swedish crime fiction⎯and of course, the summer highlights of my attendance at the Betsy-Tacy Convention in Mankato in July, and my trip to Sweden in August. A good year!

If you're a fellow blogger, why not have a go at the meme and see what it reveals about your reading year?