I read on someone’s blog that you should write down the books you read in order to see the gaps/bias in your reading. I’ve kept a list of books from 1993, but have never used it for that. My reading is directed by what people donate to charity shops, what’s on my sister’s shelves (marked S below) and recommendations from friends (marked F below). Because I am inordinately lazy, please let me know what glaring omissions I’m making in my reading and I’ll try and pull some in in 2017/18. 
Skip to the end for my book of the year, but in chronological order, the books I’ve read this year are: 

June

Wolf Hall Hilary Mantel (S)

The Stories of English David Crystal

July

The Periodic Table Primo Levy (F)

The Red House Mark Haddon

The Last Shot Hugo Hamilton

Happy To Be Here Garrison Keillor

August

Bring Up the Bodies Hilary Mantel

Walden and Other Writings Henry David Thoreau

September

How the Dead Live Will Self

The Wolves of Willoughby Chase Joan Aiken

Bastard Out of Carolina Dorothy Allison

The Taxidermist’s Daughter Kate Mosse

The Birds and Other Stories Daphne Du Maurier

One Hundred Years of Solitude Gabriel Garcia Marquez

October

The Second Book of Modern Women’s Short Stories

The Summer Before the Dark Doris Lessing

The Girl on the Train Paula Hawkins (F)

November

The Innocents Abroad Mark Twain

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn Mark Twain

December

The Life of Charlotte Bronte Elizabeth Gaskell

The Norfolk Mystery Ian Sansom

The Call of Cthulhu and Other Weird Stories H.P. Lovecraft

We Have Always Lived in the Castle Shirley Jackson (S)

January

Ways of Seeing John Berger

The Siege of Krishnapur J.G. Farrell (S)

A Confederacy of Dunces John Kennedy Toole

Journey by Moonlight Antal Szerb

February

A Sicilain Romance Ann Radcliffe

So Many Ways to Begin Jon McGregor

Joan Eardley A Sense of Place

The Blithedale Romance Nathaniel Hawthorne

Ten Years in an Open Necked Shirt John Cooper Clarke

March

My Life as a Fake Peter Carey

A Fine Balance Rohinton Mistry

We Should All Be Feminists Chinamanda Ngozi Adiche (F)

April

Jamaica Inn Daphne Du Maurier

Father and Son Edmund Gosse

Carhedral Raymond Carver

Everyday Use Alice Walker

Midnight and I’m Not Famous Yet Barry Hannah

The Wind in the Willows Kenneth Grahame

Injury Time Beryl Bainbridge

The Life you save may be your own and Good country people Flannery O’Connor

Peter Abelard Helen Waddell

The Haunted House and other Stories Wilkie Collins

May

Homegoing Yaa Gyasi (F)

Navajo Night Chant, Chippewa Songs, Ghost Dance Songs

Impressions of an Indian Childhood Gertrude Simmons Bonnin, Zitkala Sa

Book of the year 2016/17
I knew from the moment I started reading it, it was going to be Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantell, but then it wasn’t, it was A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry.

2017/18 has started with The Mabinogion

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(picture theme – the weather. Inspired by https://bookreveries.com/2016/05/15/words-the-amount-and-the-impact/)

Forty-four books were read in total.

Traipsed to the library for a couple:
Boswell’s Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson
A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland, Samuel Johnson

Two were recommended:
The Black House, Peter May (Boo)
The Poisonwood Bible, Barbara Kingsolver (Yay)

Some non-fiction snuck in there:
Into the Crocodile Nest, Benedict Allen
Deserted Villages, T Rowley and J Wood

There’s always room for favourites: Homage to Catalonia, George Orwell
The Lady in the Lake, Raymond Chandler
Little Black Book of Stories, A S Byatt The Honourable Schoolboy, John Le Carre

But, it was a close run in for first place. Running a very close second was Midnight’s Children, Salman Rushdie, but ducking its head to cross the finish line, after sitting on my bookshelf for years, a non fiction of all things, the 2015/16 book of the year is:

The Children of Sanchez, Oscar Lewis

16/17 has started with Wolf Hall, Hilary Mantel and I can’t get this not to be in italics!

The full list:
June
Boswell’s Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson
Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices, Wilkie Collins and Charles Dickens
A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland, Samuel Johnson
July
Sidetracked, Henning Mankell
Girlfriend in a Coma, Douglas Coupland
Night Listener, Armistead Maupin
Master Georgie, Bertl Bainbridge
Started Early, Took my Dog, Kate Atkinson
August
Into the Crocodile Nest, Benedict Allen
Kafka on the Shore, Haruki Murakami
September
The Black House, Peter May
Hawksmoor, Peter Ackroyd
The Reader, Bernard Schlink
The History Man, Malcolm Bradbury
Homesickness, Murray Bail
October
Little Black Book of Stories, A.S. Byatt
November
Sybil, Benjamin Disraeli
The Subtle Knife, Phillip Pullman
Mr Norris Changes Trains, Christopher Isherwood
Marianne, George Sand
Catriona, R.L.Stevenson
December
The Honourable Schoolboy, John Le Carre
Beautiful Ruins, Jess Walter
Malgudi Days, R.K. Narayan
Journey’s End, R.C. Sherriff
January
Delta of Venus, Anais Nin
Homage to Catalonia, Georhe Orwell
Breakfast at Tiffany’s, Truman Capote
February
The Children of Sanchez, Oscar Lewis
The Pope’s Wedding, Edward Bond
The Bell, Iris Murdoch
The Doll and Other Short Stories, Daphne du Maurier
March
Tipping the Velvet, Sarah Waters
The Poisonwood Bible, Barbara Kingsolver
Mrs Miniver, Jan Struther
Demian, Hermann Hesse
April
Deserted Villages, T. Rowley, J. Wood
Midnight’s Children, Salman Rushdie
The Lady in the Lake, Raymond Chandler
May
Iris, John Bayley
Timothy ans the Two Witches, Margaret Storey
The Storytellers Two, compiled by Roger Mansfield
Selected Prose and Poetry, Edward Thomas
The Little Disturbances of Man, Grace Paley

End of the book year

June 1, 2013

Well it all started back in June 2012 with The Longest Journey by E M Forster and finished with The Coral Thief by Rebecca Stott and we finally finished the ‘A Series of Unfortunate Events’ series taking 13 months reading at night. 55 books in all, a record since children came along and including my first e-book Jean DesJardins by fellow blogger Tom Simard (go and read it), but what were the highlights?

A Winter’s Book by Tove Jannson in June
Mr Pye by Mervyn Peake in July
The Enchanted April by Elizabeth Von Arnim in August
The Facts Behind the Helsinki Roccamatios by Yann Martel in October
According to Queeney by Beryl Bainbridge in January

It was also the year I eventually read Rousseau’s Confessions that have been on my shelves for years and fitted in some exercise carrying The Life of Samuel Johnson to work for weeks.

There were, how should I put it? Less than highlights, but I’ll only mention one The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafron in September.

Book of the year 2012/3 is ……..

2013-05-31 22.16.36

Twenty Thousand Streets Under the Sky by Patrick Hamilton

I know it’s 3 books in 1, so if you are forcing me to choose – The Plains of Cement.

The whole trilogy is exquisitely painful.

Right, back to the first book in the 2013/14 year – Threepenny Novel by Bertolt Brecht – started in May, to be finished in June ( May/June counts as next year, you know the rules).

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