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

Icelandic folk-tale: The Laughing Merman

Icelanders not only believed in the existence of selkies, but also in mer-people. The mermaids were said to be very beautiful, while the mermen were supposed to be ugly as sin but very wise and able to see things others did not. O nce upon a time a farmer went out fishing and pulled up a merman. He tried to get the merman to talk to him but he would not answer, except to beg him to release him back into the sea, but this the farmer refused to do. The farmer rowed back to land, taking the captive merman with him. When he pulled up the boat on the shore, his wife came to him and greeted him with tenderness and kisses, which he received with pleasure. This made the merman laugh. Then the man’s dog came to him and greeted him tenderly in the way of dogs, by jumping up to him, but the farmer hit the dog. Again the merman laughed. Then the farmer walked up towards his house, but on the way he tripped over a tussock and hurt himself. He got angry and gave the tussock a good kicking. Then...
Post a Comment
Read more

Book 7: Shadow of the Sun by Ryszard Kapuściński (reading notes)

-This reads like fiction - prose more beautiful than one has come to expect from non-fiction and many of the chapters are structured like fiction stories. There is little continuity between most of the chapters, although some of the narratives or stories spread over more than one chapter. This is therefore more a collection of short narratives than a cohesive entirety. You could pick it up and read the chapters at random and still get a good sense of what is going on. -Here is an author who is not trying to find himself, recover from a broken heart, set a record, visit 30 countries in 3 weeks or build a perfectly enviable home in a perfectly enviable location, which is a rarity within travel literature, but of course Kapuściński was in Africa to work, and not to travel for spiritual, mental or entertainment purposes (he was the Polish Press Agency's Africa correspondent for nearly 30 years). -I have no way of knowing how well Kapuściński knew Africa - I have never been there...
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