Success! 50 books in 45 weeks!

I've done it! I've accomplished my goal of reading 50 books in one year; in fact, I've finished weeks ahead of time. Here are the last 15 or 16 books from my list:

The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
Truth and Beauty by Ann Pachett
Harry Potter and the Deadly Hallows by J.K. Rawling
Holy Cow by Sarah MacDonald
Olivia Joules and the Overactive Imagination by Helen Fielding
Shakespeare's Wife by Germaine Greer
The Art Thief by Noah Charney
Awkward and Definition by Ariel Schrag
Born Standing Up by Steve Martin
Basic Christianity By John Stott
Discovering an Evangelical Heritage by Dayton
Crazy for God by Frank Schaeffer
Dreams from My Father by Barack Obama
Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory by Randall Balmer

Italicized means it I read it for school, although the titles kind of give them away. Combined together, I read 14,474 pages with Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows being the longest at 759 and the shortest being Awkward/Definition by Ariel Schrag at 84 pages (it's a graphic novel). Women authors made a fairly impressive showing at 21 strong, and although they mostly wrote the fiction books I read, with some exceptions. I'm not too sure on the racial makeup of the authors, but I'm fairly certain most of them are white. I know that Cornel West (Democracy Matters), Khaled Hosseini (A Thousand Spendid Suns), Judith Weisenfeld (Hollywood Be Thy Name), and Barack Obama (Dreams of My Father) are people of color, but I'm not sure of any others. I'm also unsure of the sexual orientation of my authors - unless they state it specifically, I really don't know. Last year I had Dan Savage and Emilie Townes on my list, but I'm not sure about this year. I also had 26 women authors last year, which is more representative of the gender breakdown in society.

So goals for my next 50 books - more diversity in general including, but not limited to, racial, ethnic, gender and sexual orientations.

Huzzah!

When I listen to The Current (Minnesota Public Radio's alternative station), I write down songs that I like, and I kept writing down Yeah Yeah Yeahs songs. Finally yesterday or the day before I bought their latest album and the single Maps, both of which are amazing. I'm in love with Phenomena, Cheated Hearts, Gold Lion and Honeybear. Pretty much everything they have, actually.