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March Summary and Plans for April

I read 16 books in March and managed to get a fair way through a few more. A combination of miserable weather and my family suffering from colds and flu meant that I spent a lot longer than normal in the house. It isn’t nice looking after people who aren’t well, but it did mean that I had a lot of spare time to read while they slept. 

As usual I read a range of book in terms of both in enjoyment and subject matter. I especially recommend When I Was Five I Killed Myself which I am considering promoting to 5 stars! 

Books reviewed in March

When I Was Five I Killed Myself – Howard Buten 

The Blasphemer – Nigel Farndale 

Bonk – Mary Roach stars4

The Woman in the Dunes – Kobo Abe stars4

Buddha Da – Anne Donovan stars4

This is How – M.J. Hyland stars4

Small Island – Andrea Levy stars4

Pocket Notebook – Mike Thomas stars4

Thaw – Fiona Robyn stars3h

Red Dog, Red Dog – Patrick Lane stars3h

The Solitude of Prime Numbers – Paolo Giordano stars3h

My Driver – Maggie Gee stars3h

Black Mamba Boy – Nadifa Mohamed stars3

The Native Hurricane – Chigozie John Obioma stars3

July’s People – Nadine Gordimer stars3

So Much For That – Lionel Shriver stars3

Plans for April

I am going to finish and write reviews for:

Small Wars – Sadie Jones

The Great Perhaps – Joe Meno

The Kindly Ones – Jonathan Littell

Solar – Ian McEwan

Hurting Distance – Sophie Hannah

My Father’s Paradise – Ariel Sabar

The Weight of a Mustard Seed – Wendell Steavenson

Seeing – Jose Saramago

Due to the vast amount of reading I did in March I have actually finished/nearly finished all of the above. I haven’t quite managed to keep up the 50 page a day pace I set on The Kindly Ones, but I have now read 300 pages and hope to finish it this month.

I have a lot of books that I plan to read in April. It wasn’t until I wrote them all down that I realised I had far too many! I’m not sure which ones I’ll get round to reading, but here is my over ambitious plan!

Nights at the Circus – Angela Carter for Claire’s Angela Carter month

The Hiding Place – Trezza Azzopardi

The Love We Share Without Knowing – Christopher Barzak

Marcelo in the Real World – Francisco Stork

Angelology – Danielle Trussoni

The Rehearsal – Eleanor Catton

Good to a Fault – Marina Endicott

The City & The City – China Mieville

The Sound and the Fury – William Faulkner

A Life Apart – Neel Murkherjee

I Do Not Come to You by Chance – Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani

The Temple-goers – Aatish Taseer

The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie – Alan Bradley

The Long Song – Andrea Levy

Even the Dogs – Jon McGregor

Our Tragic Universe – Scarlett Thomas

Which books from my list should I ensure I read?

Do you plan to read any of the same ones?

I hope you have a fantastic April!

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Links I’ve stumbled across this week and Solar winners

Thank you to everyone who entered my Solar give away.

The winner of the signed copy of Solar is: Lu from Regular Rumination

The 3 Solar T-shirts go to: Jane Willis, Natalie Newham and Teresa Majury

Congratulations to the winners! I will get in touch by email soon.

Blogger discussions of the week 

  • Next Read had an interesting discussion about deciding which books to read and review.
  • Regular Rumination wrote a great post about how negative book reviews can make the book more intriguing to the reader.
  • Book Lust discussed falling for book hype.

Elsewhere on the Internet

As a book seller on Amazon I am quite annoyed by their new policy which forces sellers to ensure their books are not cheaper on other selling platforms. Luckily I don’t normally have the same stock for sale on different sites at the same time, but this will have a big impact on some people.

This is a lovely little video about the publishing industry – I thought it was very clever!

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February Summary and Plans for March

I finished 11 books in February. The quality was surprisingly evenly distributed, with a range of fantastic books and a few I didn’t enjoy at all.

If you get the chance then I highly recommend you read Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese and Rupture by Simon Lelic they are both fantastic!

 

Books reviewed in February

Cutting for Stone – Abraham Verghese stars51

Rupture – Simon Lelic stars51

Disgrace – J.M. Coetzee 

The Harlot’s Progress: Yorkshire Molly – Peter Mottley 

Ruby’s Spoon – Anna Lawrence Pietroni stars4

Brixton Beach – Roma Tearne stars3h

Blacklands – Belinda Bauer stars3h

After the Fire, A Still Small Voice – Evie Wyld stars3h

The Girl with Glass Feet – Ali Shaw stars3

The Catcher in the Rye – J.D. Salinger stars2

Dangerous Liaisons – Choderlos de Laclos stars1

Plans for March

I got a bit distracted by the TV Book Club in February, so didn’t manage to read many of the books I planned to at the beginning of the month. Most of my plans are identical to last month – sorry to all those who are waiting for me to read things from this list, I really do hope to get to them soon! 

Small Island – Andrea Levy

The Little Friend – Donna Tartt

The Woman in the Dunes – Kobo Abe

My Father’s Paradise – Ariel Sabar

The Native Hurricane – Chigozie John Obioma

The Hiding Place – Trezza Azzopardi

The Love We Share Without Knowing – Christopher Barzak

I’m going to finish reading:

Bonk: The Curious Coupling Of Sex and Science – Mary Roach

July’s People – Nadine Gordimer

The Blasphemer – Nigel Farndale

I am also hoping to read some of these: 

So Much for That – Lionel Shriver

Pocket Notebook – Mike Thomas

Marcelo in the Real World – Francisco Stork

Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim – David Sedaris

The Solitude of Prime Numbers – Paolo Giordano

My Driver – Maggie Gee

Have you enjoyed any of the books I plan to read in March?

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Other Recommended books

101 Book Group Choices Guaranteed to Provoke Discussion

Choosing a book for a reading group is hard, but I’ve compiled this list of books to help you make that difficult decision. I think the majority of people will enjoy them and, more importantly for any book group, they will create an interesting discussion. This list is a combination of books I’ve read and those that have worked well for other book groups in the past. I hope you find it useful!

My Personal Favourites

Out – Natsuo Kirino
The Ghosts of Eden – Andrew Sharp
The Other Hand – Chris Cleave
Water for Elephants – Sara Gruen
My Sister’s Keeper – Jodi Picoult
The Wilderness – Samantha Harvey
Random Acts of Heroic Love – Danny Scheinmann
The Help – Kathryn Stockett
Notes on a Scandal – Zoe Heller
The Hunger Games – Suzanne Collins
The Strain – Guillermo del Toro
Little Face – Sophie Hannah
Ingenious Pain – Andrew Miller

Award Winners

Disgrace – J.M Coetzee
The Slap – Christos Tsiolkas
The Secret River – Kate Grenville
Oscar and Lucinda – Peter Carey
The Bone People – Keri Hulme
Never Let Me Go – Kazuo Ishiguro
Cloud Atlas – David Mitchell
The Dwarf – Par Lagerkvist
Blindness – Jose Saramago
Middlesex – Jeffrey Eugenides
The Good Earth – Pearl Buck
Olive Kitteridge – Elizabeth Strout
The Reluctant Fundamentalist – Mohsin Hamid
The Fifth Child – Doris Lessing

Long, but Worth It

A Fine Balance – Rohinton Mistry
The Wind-up Bird Chronicle – Haruki Murakami
Stone’s Fall – Iain Pears
Fall on Your Knees – Ann-Marie MacDonald
Cutting for Stone – Abraham Verghese
The Clan of the Cave Bear – Jean Auel
Fingersmith – Sarah Waters
We Need To Talk About Kevin – Lionel Shriver

Books You Probably Haven’t Heard Of

The Myth of You and Me – Leah Stewart
Snow in August – Peter Hamill
Famous Suicides of the Japanese Empire – David Mura
The Blind Side of the Heart – Julia Franck
Under This Unbroken Sky – Shandi Mitchell
The Ginger Tree – Oswald Wynd
The Glass Key – Dashiell Hammett
Stolen Lives – Malika Oufkir
Right of Thirst – Frank Huylar
Touching the Void – Joe Simpson
Cane River – Lailita Tademy
Gap Creek – Robert Morgan
Loving Frank – Nancy Horan

Recent Releases

Ruby’s Spoon – Anna Lawrence Pietroni
Rupture – Simon Lelic
Tender Morsels – Margo Lanagan
The Rapture – Liz Jensen
Legend of a Suicide – David Vann
The Girl with Glass Feet – Ali Shaw
The Island at the End of the World – Sam Taylor
The City & The City – China Mieville
Generation A – Douglas Coupland
Pocket Notebook – Mike Thomas
The Infinities – John Banville
The Housekeeper and the Professor – Yoko Ogawa
Still Alice – Lisa Genova
The Vagrants – Yiyun Li
The Chosen One – Carol Lynch Williams
Rooftops of Tehran – Mahbod Seraji

The Calligrapher’s Daughter – Eugenia Kim
The Unit – Ninni Holmqvist

The Best of the Rest

Eating Air – Pauline Melville
The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind – William Kamkwamba
Ella Minnow Pea – Mark Dunn
The Glass Castle – Jeannette Walls
The World According to Garp – John Irving
Unless – Carol Shields
The Thirteenth Tale – Diane Setterfield
The Seance – John Harwood
Mudbound – Hilary Jordan
The Blood of Flowers – Anita Amirrezvani
The Bell Jar – Sylvia Plath
Flowers For Algernon – Daniel Keyes
Snow Flower and the Secret Fan – Lisa See
The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher – Kate Summerscale
The Behaviour of Moths – Poppy Adams
Year of Wonders – Geraldine Brooks
The End of Mr. Y – Scarlett Thomas
The Devil in the White City – Eric Larson
Uglies – Scott Westerfield
Resistance – Anita Shreve
Nineteen Eighty-Four – George Orwell
The Woman in the Dunes – Kobo Abe
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao – Junot Diaz
Sacred Hearts – Sarah Dunant
Child 44 – Tom Rob Smith
The Book Thief – Marcus Zusak
Q and A – Vikas Swarup
Fun Home – Alison Bechdel
Persepolis – Majane Satrapi
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay – Michael Chabon

The Gargoyle – Andrew Davidson
The Visit of the Royal Physician – Per Olov Enquist
The Luminous Life of Lilly Aphrodite – Beatrice Colin
The Glass Room – Simon Mawer
The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox – Maggie O’Farrell

Which books have worked well at your book group?

Have any of the books in the above list failed to charm your book group?

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January 2010 Summary and Plans for February

January was quite a poor reading month for me, in terms of both quality and quantity. I read 8 books and left a further two unfinished (one is a book I’ve not yet reviewed yet – I’ll leave you to guess which it is!)

The stand-out book was Uglies, something I would never have guessed had you asked me which one I’d enjoy most at the beginning of the month.

Uglies – Scott Westerfeld

Blink – Malcolm Gladwell stars4

Sacred Hearts – Sarah Dunant stars4

The Boat to Redemption – Su Tong stars4

The Infinities – John Banville stars4

The Wind-up Bird Chronicle – Haruki Murakami stars3h

To the Lighthouse – Virginia Woolf stars3

The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing: v. 1 – M.T. Anderson stars3

The Elegance of the Hedgehog – Muriel Barbery stars2

The Age of Innocence – Edith Wharton stars2

Twilight – Stephenie Meyer (Book and Film)  stars1 (DNF)

Plans for February

I am going to finish Cutting for Stone and Ruby’s Spoon, both of which are fantastic so far.

I failed to read these books that I highlighted in January, so they have been added to the list again:

Small Island – Andrea Levy

The Little Friend – Donna Tartt

Buddha Da – Anne Donovan

The Woman in the Dunes – Kobo Abe

I also hope to read some of these books:

When I Was Five I Killed Myself – Howard Buten

Blacklands – Belinda Bauer

The Catcher in the Rye – J. D. Salinger

My Father’s Paradise – Ariel Sabar

The Native Hurricane – Chigozie John Obioma

Disgrace – J.M. Coetzee

The Hiding Place – Trezza Azzopardi

Red Dog, Red Dog – Patrick Lane

The Love We Share Without Knowing – Christopher Barzak

Most of them are quite short, so I’m hoping I’ll be able to manage the majority of the list.

Have you read any of the books that I plan to read in February?

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The Best Posts on Farm Lane Books Blog

I love lists and have had quite a few new subscribers to my blog recently, so for all those who are new here I’ve produced these lists of my best posts:

The Most Popular Posts

  1. The best books for three-year-old boys
  2. The Richard and Judy Book Club 2010
  3. The Necklace – Guy de Maupassant (Short Story)
  4. The Best Books of 2010? Part 1: Authors We Know and Love
  5. The Best Books of 2010? Part 2: Debut/Lesser Known Authors
  6. Is Google Wave Useful?
  7. A Beginner’s Guide to Joining the Book Blogging Community
  8. A Beginner’s Guide to Google Wave
  9. The Best Books of 2009
  10. How to put boxes around your text – an idiot’s guide!

 

The Most Useful Posts

  1. A Beginner’s Guide to Joining the Book Blogging Community
  2. The importance of branding your book blog
  3. A Beginner’s Guide to Google Wave
  4. The Most Useful WordPress Plug-ins for Book Bloggers
  5. How to put boxes around your text – an idiot’s guide!
  6. How to get Links to Appear in Google Reader
  7. Do leaders make better bloggers?
  8. Bloggiesta Mini Challenge: Backing up Your Blog
  9. Ten Blogs with Great Layout Ideas
  10. 8 things to blog about when you haven’t read any books

 

The Biggest Conversations

  1. The importance of honest book reviews
  2. Book dating – is a shared taste in books important?
  3. Is Google Wave Useful?
  4. Do leaders make better bloggers?
  5. Does using Twitter make you a better blogger?
  6. What shape is your rating system?
  7. What do you think of adverts?
  8. Lurkers – What would make you show your face?

I’ve added the list of most popular/most useful posts to the sidebar and will try to keep them updated as they change.

If you’re on wordpress and like to produce a similar list then take a look at the Top 10 plugin.