Skip to main content

Reading report for March 2010

I finished 17 books altogether in March. I went on a major Nora Roberts glom, reading 5 of her contemporary romances published under that name and 1 of the futuristic police procedurals/thrillers published under the J.D. Robb name. Altogether I read 7 romances in March, more than any other genre. A special mention in that category goes to Jo Beverley, as I discovered her Malloren series of historical romances, which promise to make a delightful diversion (getting a comment from the author herself was fun).

I listened to Tony Robinson skillful reading of Terry Pratchett‘s Making Money, a book I have tried to read at least 3 times but have re-shelved each time because I wasn‘t in the mood to read it. I may make another attempt soon, because I found it quite funny in places and would like to read all the little jokes that got left out of this abridged version.

The TBR stack has finally started to diminish, which was achieved by a mixture of reading and culling without reading. I got it down to the number it was at the beginning of the year, 919, by culling, and the books I read brought it down to 910.

I didn‘t quite fulfil my (tentative) reading plan for March. I found The Anatomy of a Murder too depressingly cynical for my mood, so it remains unfinished, but as I have made a commitment to read it, I will try to at least make some headway with it in April. I didn‘t even open Arnaldur Indriðason‘s book, but I may crack it open tomorrow. And I am right smack in the middle of reading The Book Thief.

In the various reading challenges:
  • 1 Top Mystery
  • 1 Global Reading challenge book
  • 9 TBR books, one of them an audio book


The rest:
  • 2 Icelandic books
  • 4 non-challenge books, of which 1 was a re-read


The Books:
  • Miguel Angel Asturias: The Mulatta and Mister Fly (novel, surrealist)
  • Henry de la Barbe (Henry Beard): French Cats Don't Get Fat (humour, parody)
  • Jo Beverley: My Lady Notorious (Historical romance)
  • Jennifer Crusie: Crazy for You (Romantic thriller)
  • Halldór Laxness: Sjöstafakverið (Short stories)
  • Sharyn McCrumb: The PMS Outlaws (Crime novel)
  • Margaret Nicholas: The World's Greatest Cranks & Crackpots (Biography)
  • Ellis Peters: The Leper of St. Giles and A Rare Benedictine (Short stories)
  • Terry Pratchett: Making Money (Fantasy), abridged audio book, read by Tony Robinson
  • J.D. Robb: Imitation in Death (Police procedural, thriller)
  • Nora Roberts: Daring to Dream, Holding the Dream, Finding the Dream, Captivated(Romances), and Carolina Moon (Romantic thriller)
  • Þórarinn Eldjárn: Ó fyrir framan (Short stories)


Tentative reading plan for April:
I would like to finish at least one Top Mystery, possibly The Anatomy of a Murder, although Our Man in Havana looks tempting right now. Greene never fails to entertain me and I doubt this book will be any exception.

I want to make some more headway with Welcome Home, a book about small-town Canada that I have been reading in short spurts over the course of the last couple of years.

I have already finished one Bibliophilic Book challenge book in April, I plan to finish The Book Thief as the second, and The Camel Bookmobile by Masha Hamilton as the third. I may also make the last one my Africa book in the Global Reading challenge, or I might choose an African author to read for that challenge.

Additionally, I expect to finish several books in the TBR challenge, and possibly even get the TBR stack down below the 900 book mark. 10 books is all I have to read to make it that far, if I manage not to buy any new books.

Comments

I have a different kind of request. I was just recently diagnosed with breast cancer. Looking through my stack of books to read, I've noticed that the vast majority involve the main character dying or contending with disease. Normally that wouldn't bother me, but given my recent diagnosis, that just doesn't feel like a little "light" reading. I'm suddenly at a loss, because books I pick up that look like they might not deal with death, turn out to revolve around it such as the Friday Night Knitting Club. I love chic lit and mysteries (murder doesn't bother me, just deaths due to illness). Can you suggest some light-hearted or fun books to get me past this little bit of cancer crap I have to deal with? I'm sure eventually I'll get back to the point where reading books like Friday Night Knitting Club is enjoyable, but this cancer thing is still too new and painful to me right now.
Bibliophile said…
Well, I would like to think about this for a couple of days, but for starters, I definitely recommend Sharyn McCrumb's Elizabeth MacPherson books, up to and including "Missing Susan". They're light-hearted and funny, even when there is murder afoot. Read them for the humour and the characters rather than for the mystery content. Also try her "Bimbos of the Death Sun" and "Zombies of the Gene Pool".

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

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

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