March has been quite a strange month reading-wise. I seem to be finding it easier to give up on books and so the number of ones that I’ve failed to finish has ballooned. I am finding that I am enjoying the books that I do decide to finish a lot more and so am spending an increasing amount of time reading – although this may also be due to the fact that my television is broken at the moment!

Book of the Month

Books Reviewed in March

The Report by Jessica Francis Kane 

This Blinding Absence of Light – Tahar Ben Jelloun  

In The Woods by Tana French 

The Secret Lives of Baba Segi’s Wives by Lola Shoneyin 

The 13 1/2 Lives of Captain Bluebear by Walter Moers 

When God Was a Rabbit by Sarah Winman  

Whatever You Love by Louise Doughty 

Annabel by Kathleen Winter 

Portrait of the Mother as a Young Woman by Friedrich Christian Delius 

Great House by Nicole Krauss DNF

The Swimmer by Roma Tearne DNF

The Tiger’s Wife by Téa Obreht DNF

Grace Williams Says it Loud by Emma Henderson DNF

The London Train by Tessa Hadley DNF

Singing in the Shrouds by Ngaio Marsh DNF

Snowdrops by A D Miller DNF

The Lotus Eaters by Tatjana Soli DNF

The Still Point by Amy Sackville DNF

The Financial Lives of the Poets by Jess Walter DNF

Boxer, Beetle by Ned Beauman DNF

Tony and Susan by Austin M. Wright DNF

Plans for April

The Orange Prize has dominated my reading for the past few weeks and will continue to do so during April. I only have six books left to sample, but am now waiting for copies of these to arrive at the library. I’m lucky that my library system has decided to order copies of the entire Orange longlist, but I don’t know how long it will take them to arrive.  I haven’t had much luck with the Oranges this year and so am in no rush to complete them – I’ll just try them as and when they turn up at the library.

I have also found it difficult to stick to reading just one or two books at a time. I am currently reading four different books:

The World According To Garp by John Irving  

The Periodic Table by Primo Levi

Moby-Dick by Herman Melville

Serious Men by Manu Jospeh

Hopefully I’ll be able to get this situation under control so that I’m back to reading just one or two books at once.

I also hope to read some of these books in April:

The Story of Forgetting by Stefan Block

The Ground is Burning by Samuel Black

How I Became a Famous Novelist by Steve Hely

Empire Of The Sun by J.G. Ballard

The Feast of the Goat by Mario Vargas Llosa

Message from an Unknown Chinese Mother by Xinran

Autism Awareness Month

April is Autism Awareness Month and so I hope to put together a page of all the best books about autism. I also plan to read a few more books containing people who have the condition – starting with The Horse Boy by Rupert Isaacson.

I hope that you have a wonderful April!

The quality of the books I’m reading is continuing to improve. I’m giving up on an increasing amount of books and finding that I’m putting them down much earlier than before – some are hitting the library return pile after just a few pages. I’ll have another Read or Reject post up soon, but I think I’ll have to avoid mentioning books I gave up on quickly as otherwise that post would be enormous!!

I don’t think I’ve read three 4.5 star books in one month before! These three books are very different, but all have that special magic that makes them memorable. I highly recommend that you give them a try.

Books reviewed in February:

Leviathan – Philip Hoare 

The History of History – Ida Hattemer-Higgins 

Independent People – Halldor Laxness 

We – Yevgeny Zamyatin 

Three Sisters – Bi Feiyu 

Chess – Stefan Zweig 

Caroline – Cornelius Medvei 

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks – Rebecca Skloot (Audio Book) 

‘They’ – Rudyard Kipling 

Light Boxes – Shane Jones 

The Unit – Ninni Holmqvist 

Plans for March

The Orange Prize long list will be announced on 15th March and so the second half of the month will involve my investigations into the list. I’m hoping that I’ll already have read many of them (otherwise my Orange longlist prediction post will make me look silly!), but I’m also hoping to be introduced to a few wonderful new authors.

I’m also planning to read:

Serious Men by Manu Joseph
The Nobodies Album by Carolyn Parkhurst
Moby-Dick by Herman Melville
In the Woods by Tana French
The Tiger’s Wife by Tea Obreht
When God Was a Rabbit by Sarah Winman
The Story of Forgetting by Stefan Block
This Blinding Absence of Light by Tahar Ben Jelloun
The Periodic Table by Primo Levi

I hope you have a wonderful March!

Favourite Books of December/January:

Books Reviewed in January:

Year of Wonders – Geraldine Brooks  

Peripheral Vision – Patricia Ferguson 

Wolf Totem – Jiang Rong 

Lonesome Dove – Larry McMurtry 

One Day – David Nicholls 

The Facility – Simon Lelic 

The Hand That First Held Mine – Maggie O’Farrell 

The Spider Truces – Tom Connolly 

The Way Things Look to Me – Roopa Farooki 

Books Reviewed in December:

The Road – Cormac McCarthy 

Born on a Blue Day – Daniel Tammet 

Player One by Douglas Coupland 

Hand Me Down World – Lloyd Jones 

The Harmony Silk Factory – Tash Aw 

Fordlandia – Greg Grandin 

The Spy Who Came in from the Cold – John Le Carré 

Finch – Jeff Vandermeer 

At the beginning of January I decided to change the way I read. I wanted to be quicker to give up on books that were failing to entertain me and concentrate on reading fantastic books. So how is it going? Really well! The quality of the books that I read in January was a big step up from previous months. I’m still learning, but I have just read three 4.5+ star books in a row (reviews coming soon!) and I don’t think that has ever happened to me before. I really hope that my run of amazing books will continue for as long as possible.

Plans for February 

The Lotus Eaters – Tatjana Soli

The Unit by Ninni Holmqvist

We by Yevgeny Zamyatin

Chess by Stefan Zweig

‘They’ by Rudyard Kipling

The Story of Forgetting by Stefan Block

The History of History: A Novel of Berlin by Ida Hattemer-Higgins

Portrait of the Mother as a Young Woman by Friedrich Christian Delius

This Blinding Absence of Light by Tahar Ben Jelloun

Tony and Susan by Austin M. Wright

The Periodic Table by Primo Levi

Boxer, Beetle by Ned Beauman

I hope that you have a wonderful February!

I finished 10 books in November, which I thought was OK considering the fact that it included most of The Dark Side of Love. I managed to finish reading the Richard and Judy Winter Reads and am working my way towards completing the 2010 Orange long list – I am hoping to complete it in Orange January.

Book of the Month

Books Reviewed in November:

The Dark Side of Love – Rafik Schami  

Haweswater – Sarah Hall  

The Wilding – Maria McCann  

Star Gazing – Linda Gillard  

The Snowman – Jo Nesbo  

The Well and the Mine – Gin Phillips  

All My Friends Are Superheroes – Andrew Kaufman  

No and Me – Delphine de Vigan  

Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim – David Sedaris (Audio Book) 

Sister – Rosamund Lupton  

A Place of Secrets – Rachel Hore   (DNF)

Plans for December

I’d really like to finish Lonesome Dove this month. I’m only at page 250 (out of nearly 1000) and am finding it slow going. It is OK, but it has no forward momentum and so I find that I always prefer to read something else. It has the potential to be a wonderful story, but I think I just need to make a big effort to pick it up and hope that it grabs me soon. At what stage does the action start happening?

I don’t like to read more than one chunkster at a time and so I’m afraid Wolf Totem by Jiang Rong has been neglected this month. I really hope that I can make it to the end of Lonesome Dove soon so that I can start on this one.

Other books that I hope to read in December:

The Harmony Silk Factory – Tash Aw 

Hand Me Down World – Lloyd Jones

The Lotus Eaters – Tatjana Soli

The Awakening – Kate Chopin

Finch – Jeff VanderMeer

Player One – Douglas Coupland

Born on a Blue Day – Daniel Tammet

The Way Things Look to Me – Roopa Farooki

The Spider Truces – Tom Connolly

Have you enjoyed any of these books?

I hope that you all have a wonderful December!

October was a slow reading month for me. I completed nine books, but they were almost all short, light reads. A lot of the books were quite disappointing, which might be another reason for my slower progress.

Book of the Month

Books reviewed in October

The Cuckoo Boy – Grant Gillespie 

Solo by Rana Dasgupta 

Paprika – Yasutaka Tsutsui 

The School of Essential Ingredients – Erica Bauermeister (Audio Book) 

How Late It Was, How Late – James Kelman 

Stone in a Landslide – Maria Barbal 

Operation Mincemeat – Ben Macintyre 

Tinkers – Paul Harding 

Stonehenge – Bernard Cornwell 

The Crying Tree – Naseem Rakha 

Pretties – Scott Westerfeld  

Plans for November

I’m still working my way through The Dark Side of Love. I’m really enjoying it, but level of detail means that it is slow going. I’m going to make a big effort to finish it this week so that I can start on My Friend Amy’s Lonesome Dove readalong. Hopefully I’ll be able to catch up with them and finish in time to compare notes at the beginning of December.

I’m also going to try to read a few of these books:

Wolf Totem – Jiang Rong

Star Gazing – Linda Gillard

Fordlandia – Greg Grandin

The Road – Cormac McCarthy

The Harmony Silk Factory – Tash Aw

Hand Me Down World – Lloyd Jones

The Wilding – Maria McCann

The Well and the Mine – Gin Phillips

The Snowman – Jo Nesbo

The Lotus Eaters – Tatjana Soli

Let’s hope we read some fantastic books in November!

September was a very slow reading month for me. I had several weekends away and I was so busy with various other projects that the month just flew by. I only managed to finish 9 books, which I think is a record low for me. I did manage to get a fair way through a few chunksters though, so hopefully my October tally will be larger.

Book of the Month

Books Reviewed in September:

Never Let Me Go – Kazuo Ishiguro

Bad Karma – David Safier 

Young Hitler – Claus Hant 

Palace Walk – Naguib Mahfouz 

Choo Woo – Lloyd Jones 

Forgetting Zoë – Ray Robinson 

The Elephant’s Journey – José Saramago 

In a Strange Room – Damon Galgut 

Corrag – Susan Fletcher 

The Finkler Question – Howard Jacobson   (DNF)

Waiting for Columbus – Thomas Trofimuk   (DNF)

 

I failed to make much of an indent on my September plans and so most have the books have been transferred straight from that list to this one:

Tinkers – Paul Harding

Solo – Rana Dasgupta

Stonehenge: A Novel of 2000 BC – Bernard Cornwall

Paprika – Yasutaka Tsutsui

Wolf Totem – Jiang Rong

All My Friends are Superheroes – Andrew Kaufman

Stone in a Landslide – Muriel Barbal

I plan to join My Friend Amy’s Lonesome Dove readalong. I’ve had this chunkster on my shelf for far too long so it will be really nice to share the reading experience with lots of other bloggers. 

I’m also currently working my way through The Dark Side of Love which is 800+ pages long. It is fantastic so far, but its length means that it will dominate my October reading.

On top of these I will also be working my way through a few more of Richard and Judy’s book choices.

There is no way I’ll be able to complete all these books in October, but I’ll have fun trying. I better get back to the reading……