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December 2006 reading report

Happy New Year!

I did not finish reading many books in December, but the number of pages does not reflect this – most of the the books I read were over 300 pages long. I have turned back to an old hobby I all but abandoned while I was at university, namely rock painting, and anyone who has done any painting knows that it's impossible to paint well while holding a book ;-)

I listened to an unabridged audiobook of The Lord of the Rings while I painted, so I suppose if I count the pages of that book into the total, it makes a pretty good number of pages. In addition, I read about half of the 600-something pages of The Historian, which will probably be the fist book I finish reading in 2007.

I finished three of the remaining four books in the From the Stacks challenge.

Books I plan to review: (this may change)

The Road to Oxiana: Robert Byron
My journey to Lhasa: Alexandra David-Neel (fourth From the Stacks challenge book finished)
The Emperor's Babe: Bernardine Evaristo (second From the Stacks challenge book finished)
Conspiracy in Death: JD Robb (third From the Stacks challenge book finished)


Unreviewed (as always, you can request a review if you want to know what I thought of them)
The Big book of cats: Susan Feuer, ed.
The Last Continent: Terry Pratchett
Madame Sarah: Cornelia Otis Skinner

Audio book listened to:
The Lord of the Rings trilogy, read by Rob Inglis: JRR Tolkien

Comments

I'd love to hear your views on The Last Continent. I haven't read much Pratchett for a long time but I did enjoy that one very much at the time.

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