...I counted. It was 8 books. Only one of them was for class, so we'll start there.
Jenny Han's The Summer I Turned Pretty
Meh. I think I'd have been more on board with this book if I had actually been reading it during the summer, because it has a lazy, summery style wherein nothing really happens. There are a few actual problems simmering under the surface of a seriously lightweight romance, but I almost wish there hadn't been - they seemed unnecessary. I didn't care much about any of the characters, except Conrad, who (even knowing his motivations) was really unlikable. I never understood why the narrator, Belly, was still carrying a torch for this guy, especially since Jeremiah was obviously more likable and actually liked Belly. Ugh. That is making it sound like I was invested in this book when really, I was meh about this book.
Rebecca Stead's When You Reach Me and Liar & Spy
(I haven't read The Diviners yet, but I really want to.) I liked both of these books a lot. I was always going to like When You Reach Me because it references A Wrinkle in Time frequently, and Madeleine L'Engle is one of my favorite authors. I figured out the ending pretty easily, but it was still a delightful book (and totally worthy of the Newbery). Liar and Spy was also charming and, like When You Reach Me, deceptively simple with surprising depth.
Susan Beth Pfeffer: Life as We Knew It; The Dead & The Gone; This World We Live In
OMG, such a depressing bunch of books to read over Christmas. I suppose any book that takes place immediately post-apocalypse is going to be, but seriously. The first two books at least end with a little tiny bit of hope, despite being incredibly bleak (and compellingly readable), but the third book was just pure bleak, horrible, depression. Apparently Pfeffer is working on a fourth book...I don't know if I can handle it.
Lauren Oliver's The Spindlers
This was a much-needed breath of fresh air. I don't know if I've mentioned yet how much I really love Lauren Oliver's YA books (I do); now I'm also a fan of her children's books (I'll have to obtain a copy of Liesl and Po sometime soon). I love the world she created here, the characters are wonderful, the Spindlers (not to mention the many other villains Liza encounters on her travels through Below) are terrifying (I don't like spiders)...I just dug it. It's something to be read alongside Alice in Wonderland and the Narnia books.
Veronica Rossi's Under the Never Sky
I really hate this cover. But I really enjoyed this book. Seriously, there are so many cool things you could do with this cover...that should never have happened. I had a little trouble getting into this book at first, but after the first hundred or so pages, I was pretty hooked. It's a fairly standard dystopian story: girl lives in controlled environment, raised on stories of the terrifying Outside, which she of course winds up on her own in, where she of course meets a boy who grew up in the Outside, who of course wins her heart and shows her how much more real and amazing the Outside is. I always wonder, as I read these books, if kids really get that message, that the real world is so much better than the virtual world that they spend more and more time in. Rossi does a great job of selling nature (it reminded me quite a bit of Lauren Oliver in Delirium) - I hope that message actually gets through to other readers the way it did to me (I've been wanting to run around outside since setting the book down and, while the bone-chilling cold stopped me yesterday, today I may not be able to resist).
Okay, even with 8 books, that took longer than I expected. So, to finish my 2012 wrap-up:
In 2012, I read 90 books. 62 were children's or young adult books (mostly young adult). So 28 were grown-up books. 11 were non-fiction. About 6 were classics (that being a difficult category to define).
In 2013, I'm aiming for 100.
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