8 for '11

Provided I finish the book I'm reading before I head to a New Year's Eve party this evening, I will have read and listened to 107 books in 2011. Last year I posted my 10 favorites. This year I read many fantastic books and eight of them stand out from the rest. In no particular order, they are:

The Feminine Mistake: Are We Giving Up Too Much? by Leslie Bennetts
The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
Listening is an Act of Love: A Celebration of American Life from the Storycorps Project by Dave Isay
The White Woman on the Green Bicycle by Monique Roffey
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot
The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows
Empire Falls by Richard Russo
The Postmistress by Sarah Blake

What are your favorite books from 2011, and what do you plan to read in 2012?

Happy New Year!

Remarkable Creatures

Tracy Chevalier's Remarkable Creatures made my top 10 list for 2010. It was fiction based on fact about a pair of female archaeologists in England finding fossils in the early 19th century, the struggle to be a female scientist, and the excitement of scientific discovery. The story takes place in Lyme Regis, the town where Jane Austen's Persuasion took place. I've done a little more research on the area.

Lyme Regis webcam  
Lyme Regis walking tour 
A fossil hunting company 
Lyme Regis Museum
The Natural History Museum in London
The Natural History Museum in London, Mary Anning exhibit
Dorset County Museum
The Dinosaur Museum
Oxford University Museum of Natural History