Reading report for September 2016

I decided to resurrect the monthly reading reports I used to post back when I was last actively blogging. Why, I hear you ask, since I am already publishing weekly reports? Well, they are mostly for me, to make it easier to have an overview of a whole month’s reading in a single post, but if someone else finds them useful, well, so much the better. Here is the first one:

I finished 15 books in September, of which 3 were rereads and 12 were first-time reads. That is: I think that's how it goes because I can’t be sure about Agatha Christie as I read a number of her books before I started keeping records of my reading.

11 were fiction in 3 genres and 2 were non-fiction in the same number of genres. Finally 2, The Darwin Awards II and Please Don’t Eat the Daisies, were a mixture of fiction and non-fiction.

Nearly half the books, 7 in all, were by Agatha Christie, so it can be said I got back into reading mysteries with a vengeance in September. In addition to the seven, there were 3 more mysteries and altogether they fall into 3 sub-genres. All the Christies are contemporaries, i.e they take place more or less around the time when they were written, whereas the Cadfael books are historicals and the first Fables book is fantasy, but still a mystery, with a detective, helper and very clever criminals.

My favourite of the month was Show Me the Magic, and I also greatly enjoyed the first Fables book and the last chapter of the Darwin Awards book. All of the books were enjoyable to some extent and I do not regret reading any of them, but I do regret not having read more books, because I had ample time to do so.

I know I am not going to beat last year’s record number of 329 read books, but I might still be able to top 2014s 194 books. I only have 20 books to go to achieve that goal.

The books:

• Annie Caulfield: Show Me the Magic: Travels Round Benin by Taxi. Travelogue. Reading challenge book.
• Agatha Christie: Dead Man's Folly by Agatha Christie. Mystery. A Hercule Poirot novel. Reread.
• Agatha Christie: Death in the Clouds. Mystery. A Hercule Poirot novel.
• Agatha Christie: The Golden Ball. Short story collection (mystery, suspense and romance).
• Agatha Christie: Hickory Dickory Dock. Mystery. Another Hercule Poirot novel.
• Agatha Christie: The Murder at the Vicarage. Mystery. The first Miss Marple book. Reread.
• Agatha Christie: Sad Cypress. Mystery. Another Hercule Poirot outing.I don't think I had read this one before, but I can't be sure since I read a number of Christie novels long before I began keeping records of my reading.
• Agatha Christie: Towards Zero. Mystery. A Superintendent Battle mystery.
• Dave Heyhoe & Damien Lewis: It's All About Treo: Life, Love and War with the World's Bravest Dog. Memoir.
• Jean Kerr: Please Don't Eat the Daisies. Humorous essays about motherhood, family and anything else the author could think of.
• Wendy Northcutt: The Darwin Awards II. Stories, true and untrue, of deaths both tragic and funny. Ellis Peters: The Hermit of Eyton Forest. Historical mystery. Book 14 of the Brother Cadfael mysteries.
• Ellis Peters: The Confession of Brother Haluin. Historical mystery. Book 15 of the Brother Cadfael mysteries.
• Andreas Staïkos: Les Liaisons Culinaires. Novella. A funny story about love and food.
• Bill Willingham and co.: Fables 1 & 2. Fantasy. Collected comic book editions. 

The TBR stack (owned) now stands at 803. This means I am reading my books at about the same speed as I am acquiring them.