Skip to main content

Reading report for January 2010

January has ended and in addition to the 22 books I have finished I have read enough short stories to fill a volume or two.

In the challenges, I reduced the TBR challenge stack by 11 books and read 2 Top Mystery Challenge books. What was unusual this month was that none of the challenges overlapped – the top mysteries were ones I acquired less than a year ago and so didn’t qualify for the TBR challenge.

I only managed to read 1 Icelandic book, but have plans to do better in February.

9 books were non-challenge (counting the Icelandic book, which didn't qualify for the TBR challenge), mostly books I knew I wouldn’t read at all if I didn’t finish them soon, books I took a peek at and got pulled in by, and one I started on the flight home from India and had been savouring for nearly 2 months.

I went on a Ngaio Marsh mini-glom and read 4 of her Roderick Alleyn books. I think I may very well finish the series before the end of the year. As to genres, I read my usual dose of mysteries, several romances and the usual smattering of various other genres.

I’d say this is a pretty good start to my reading year ;-)

I started working again at the beginning of last week after nearly 4 months of no work. The nature of the job is such that I will be attentively reading, proofing and translating all day long, so I may not have much energy left for fun reading when I get home, at least until I fall into a routine. We will have to see.

The annual reading report for 2009 is in post-production and should be finished soon.

The Books:
Lydia Adamson: Dr. Nightingale comes Home Mystery, murder
Alice Albinia: Empires of The Indus Travelogue, history
Belle de Jour : The Intimate Adventure of a London Call Girl Memoir, prostitution
Bjarni Thorarensen : Kvæði (Ísl. úrvalsrit) Poetry
Tom Clancy: The Hunt for Red October Thriller
Albert B. Feldstein: The Portable Mad Humour
Lori Foster: The Winston Brothers, Wildand Say No to Joe? Romance (modern)
Julie Garwood: Shadow Dance Romantic thriller (modern)
Georgette Heyer: False Colours Romance (historical); Why Shoot A Butler? Mystery, murder
Ngaio Marsh: Hand in Glove; Dead Water; Death at the Dolphin, and Clutch Of Constables. Mystery, murder, police
Sister Carol Anne O‘Marie: Death takes up a Collection Mystery, murder
Sharyn McCrumb: If I'd Killed Him When I Met Him Mystery (including murder), legal
Naomi Novik: Temeraire: The Throne of Jade Fantasy, alternative reality, historical
Jane Sullivan: The Matchmaker's Mistake Romance (modern)
Josephine Tey: The Franchise Affair Mystery
J.R.R Tolkien & various artists: Hugarlendur Tolkiens Fantasy art and illustration
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Book 40: The Martian by Andy Weir, audiobook read by Wil Wheaton

Note : This will be a general scattershot discussion about my thoughts on the book and the movie, and not a cohesive review. When movies are based on books I am interested in reading but haven't yet read, I generally wait to read the book until I have seen the movie, but when a movie is made based on a book I have already read, I try to abstain from rereading the book until I have seen the movie. The reason is simple: I am one of those people who can be reduced to near-incoherent rage when a movie severely alters the perfectly good story line of a beloved book, changes the ending beyond recognition or adds unnecessarily to the story ( The Hobbit , anyone?) without any apparent reason. I don't mind omissions of unnecessary parts so much (I did not, for example, become enraged to find Tom Bombadil missing from The Lord of the Rings ), because one expects that - movies based on books would be TV-series long if they tried to include everything, so the material must be pared down
Post a Comment
Read more

Icelandic folk-tale: The Devil Takes a Wife

Stories of people who have made a deal with and then beaten the devil exist all over Christendom and even in literature. Here is a typical one: O nce upon a time there were a mother and daughter who lived together. They were rich and the daughter was considered a great catch and had many suitors, but she accepted no-one and it was the opinion of many that she intended to stay celebrate and serve God, being a very devout  woman. The devil didn’t like this at all and took on the form of a young man and proposed to the girl, intending to seduce her over to his side little by little. He insinuated himself into her good graces and charmed her so thoroughly that she accepted his suit and they were betrothed and eventually married. But when the time came for him to enter the marriage bed the girl was so pure and innocent that he couldn’t go near her. He excused himself by saying that he couldn’t sleep and needed a bath in order to go to sleep. A bath was prepared for him and in he went and
Post a Comment
Read more

List love: 10 recommended stories with cross-dressing characters

This trope is almost as old as literature, what with Achilles, Hercules and Athena all cross-dressing in the Greek myths, Thor and Odin disguising themselves as women in the Norse myths, and Arjuna doing the same in the Mahabaratha. In modern times it is most common in romance novels, especially historicals in which a heroine often spends part of the book disguised as a boy, the hero sometimes falling for her while thinking she is a boy. Occasionally a hero will cross-dress, using a female disguise to avoid recognition or to gain access to someplace where he would never be able to go as a man. However, the trope isn’t just found in romances, as may be seen in the list below, in which I recommend stories with a variety of cross-dressing characters. Unfortunately I was only able to dredge up from the depths of my memory two book-length stories I had read in which men cross-dress, so this is mostly a list of women dressed as men. Ghost Riders by Sharyn McCrumb. One of the interwove
Post a Comment
Read more