willoyd

Have decided not to work on this list this year: there are simply too many that I just don't want to read, and too many not on the list that I do!! I'm also increasingly sceptical of the recent books: there are far too many that look decidedly transient. The only lists I'm going to keep are (a) a list of classics to read and (b) a list of doorstopper (500+ pages) non-fictions that I want to catch up on, having left them sitting on the shelves too much the past couple of years. I'll keep in touch with the thread, and will probably find myself totting up every now and again though (am currently on 111 of the original list and 117 of the 1305, FWIW)! In the meantime, good luck to all those looking to build their totals up this year!

I've known a couple of people like that too. I find it really hard to understand how anybody can enjoy a book in 5 minute bursts: whenever I get interrupted like that, I have to go back and reread bits all over again otherwise I just lose the plot (literally!), and certainly never feel that I've 'got into' a book at all. Having said that, I probably can't comment as I've been listening to Don Quixote on and off for about 8 months now, and am not even quite half way through yet - do so in 15-20 minute stints when walking between school and station on the days I commute in by train (1-2 times a week). But then DQ is almost a sequence of stories rather than a coherent whole (or maybe that's how I see it because of the way I'm listening to it?). Whatever, maybe it's easier than I thought!

Can I second that? Yours is one of the first blogs I go looking for, primarily because your reviews are so interesting. If you're ashamed of your reading this month, I hate to think what I should feel about August (two books) and September (one book)! Please don't be, or you'll make the rest of us feel bad too! Life does sometimes have to take priority (I mean life outside reading - yes it does exist)!! Here's to some great reading in 2013 instead!

Have to agree with James about Sophie's Choice: started off well, but found myself getting very bogged down and dissociated with the way it developed, and struggled to finish. But, it was good on the philosophy - some of the explanations made clear things that I had struggled with previously.

Me too! (Agree about the TBR list too!).

Oops, sorry! Subconsciously fooled by your avatar I suspect! I tried 10 too to start with, and found it got too inconsistent, with too many fine divisions. The secret is not to fall into the Amazon trap, where reviewers seems to give 5 stars at the drop of a hat.

Interesting - haven't spotted that on bobblybear's list yet, but that's very similar to the one I've been using for the past few years (seven or so now, I think). I use a slightly different set of definitions at the bottom end, not least because I've found that i've wanted to differentiate between books that mildly didn't like, and those I really didn't! 1/6: disliked intensely almost certainly unfinished! 2/6: disappointing: sometimes unfinished. 3/6: solid enjoyable read, but nothing that I was especially excited about. 4/6: a really good, involving read, hard to put down. Recommended. 5/6; excellent, unputdownable, with something special about it 6/6; goes on to my all-time favourites list (which I keep a list of at the front end of my blog. On LibraryThing, I rank them 1, 2, 3, 3.5, 4 and 5 stars. If I think a book is outstanding, I will quite often rate it 5/6 to start with, and find myself rerating to 6/6 later: I've found that favourites are quite often those that grow on me after I've read a book. I've even had the odd 4/6 do that in the past! Later edit: Just been to bobblybear's 2013 blog - I see he's just started with these gradings, having seen them on my blog, so that explains why I haven't spotted them before. Hope they work for you too!

Yes, me! I'll be interested to see how you get on with it. Here's to some great reading in 2013!

Good luck with all those lists Frankie! I hesitate to say,but I've decided to go the other way this year, and am dropping all of them, although they stillprovide some good ideas for reads. There are just too many books on them (e.g. the 1001 list) which I just don't see me ever reading (i.e. wanting to read!), and I'm starting to feel them more inhibiting than anything else Having said that, your Classics Challenge looks interesting! Any particular place you're pulling that together from, or just one you're doing yourself? (Oh dear, I can see the OCD kicking in again!!). Anyway, good reading for 2013, and all the best with all your goals.

A post from arukuyomi on LibraryThing suggests that the app will become available again sometime in the next three months.

A few more quick reviews: Children of the Green Knowe by Lucy M Boston ***** Beautifully lyrical children's book: only child, Tolly, goes to live with his great-grandmother at her home, called Green Knowe, in the middle of the country (the Fens?). The house is steeped in magical mystery, and Tolly gets to relate to the animals and the ghosts of children of his ancestors who died in the Plague. I'm not normally into this sort of book, but Boston's writing is so addictive, and the location (based on Lucy Boston's real home, which can be visited apparently) comes so vividly to life, that I could barely put this slim volume down, reading it in one session. Slightly fizzles out as an ending, but then this is not a story in the conventional style, and I found the plot almost irrelevant to my enjoyment. The Chimes by Charles Dickens *** The second of Dickens's Christmas novellas, published the year after Christmas Carol. Enjoyable, with a classic Dickens character centre stage, but not in the same league as his full scale novels. Similar structure to Christmas Carol - indeed too samey to rate it particularly highly. But then I thought Christmas Carol was overrated too. An interesting cameo, but not a lot more. Wind, Sand and Stars by Antoine de Saint-Exupery ****** Widely regarded as one of the great classics of aerial literature, and all too easy to see why: beautifully evocative and poetic prose, particularly when writing about his experiences in North Africa, including a miraculous escape from a crash in the Libyan Desert. Writing this a day and a half after finishing it, I've already reread a couple of chapters just to immerse myself in the language and the narratives, and a book that I am sure to go back to in full very soon. Wonderful. The Bar on the Seine by Georges Simenon *** Maigret is always worth reading for Simenon's rounded, complex characters and sense of place. His plotting is a bit more hit and miss for me - not the classic whodunnit, more investigations based on Maigret's understanding of the psychology of the participants. For me, the plot was particularly wobby this time, and never really got off the ground to any great extent, but Maigret himself was as good as ever. Summoned by Bells by John Betjeman ***** Betjeman's autobiographical blank verse poem, telling the story of his childhood and adolescence through to obtaining his first job (as a cricket master who had no understanding of cricket!). Betjeman's poetry, always so easy to read, is for me often severely underrated mainly because it is so deceptively simple, but I love his fluid sense of rhythm with words that always seem just right. There were a couple of sections where I struggled to follow what it was all about, but overall, it read beautifully. Griff Rhys Jones's Introduction is also well worth reading, and, unlike so many, can be read beforehand without spoiling the book - indeed I felt it improved my enjoyment. Liza of Lambeth by W. Somerset Maugham *** Maugham's first published novel, and to be honest, it feels a bit like that - lots of potential, but a bit rough and ready. Tells the story of the downfall of Liza through an affair with a married man. I didn't appreciate the fact that it was written to try and show the characters' South London accents, the sort of affectation which ninety-nine times out of a hundred is simply annoying and spoils what I'm reading. This wasn't one of the 1%!

English Counties Reading Challenge (Willoyd's variation) This is closely based on the English Counties Challenge listed in the Reading Challenge section. I've listed a few different books, primarily to replace books already read which I don't want to reread, mainly because I've read them too recently. These are marked with an asterisk. 01. My Uncle Silas by H. E. Bates (Bedfordshire) 02. Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame (Berkshire) 03. The Misses Mallett by E. H. Young (Bristol) 04. The Dark Is Rising by Susan Cooper (Buckinghamshire) *****(*) 05. The Nine Tailors by Dorothy Sayers (Cambridgeshire) 06. Cranford by Elizabeth Gaskell (Cheshire) 07. A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens (City of London) ***** 08. Jamaica Inn by Daphne Du Maurier (Cornwall) 09. The Maid of Buttermere by Melvyn Bragg (Cumbria) 10. Year of Wonders by Geraldine Brooks (Derbyshire) 11. To Serve Them All My Days by RF Delderfield (Devon)* 12. Far From The Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy (Dorset) 13. Nicholas Nickleby by Charles Dickens (Durham) 14. South Riding by Winifred Holtby (East Riding of Yorkshire) 15. Winnie-The-Pooh by A. A. Milne (East Sussex) 16. The Turn Of The Screw by Henry James (Essex) **** 17. Cider With Rosie by Laurie Lee (Gloucestershire) 18. The End of the Affair by Graham Greene (Greater London)* 19. North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell (Greater Manchester) 20. Watership Down by Richard Adams (Hampshire) 21. On The Black Hill by Bruce Chatwin (Herefordshire) 22. Howard's End by EM Forster (Hertfordshire)* 23. England, England by Julian Barnes (Isle of Wight) 24. The History of Mr Polly by HG Wells (Kent)* 25. Oranges are Not the Only Fruit by Jeanette Winterson (Lancashire) 26. The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole aged 13¾ by Sue Townsend (Leicestershire) 27. The Mill on the Floss by George Eliot (Lincolnshire) 28. An Awfully Big Adventure by Beryl Bainbridge (Merseyside) 29. The Go-Between by L. P. Hartley (Norfolk) 30. All Creatures Great and Small by James Herriot (North Yorkshire) 31. Mansfield Park by Jane Austen (Northamptonshire) 32. The Stars Look Down by A. J. Cronin (Northumberland) 33. The Rainbow by D. H. Lawrence (Nottinghamshire)* 34. The Pursuit of Love by Nancy Mitford (Oxfordshire) 35. Set In Stone by Robert Goddard (Rutland) 36. Summer Lightning by P. G. Wodehouse (Shropshire) 37. Lorna Doone by R. D. Blackmore (Somerset) 38. A Kestrel For A Knave by Barry Hines (South Yorkshire) 39. The Old Wives' Tale by Arnold Bennett (Staffordshire) 40. The Bookshop by Penelope Fitzgerald (Suffolk) *** 41. Emma by Jane Austen (Surrey) 42. Another World by Pat Barker (Tyne and Wear) 43. Tom Brown's School Days by Thomas Hughes (Warwickshire) 44. Middlemarch by George Eliot (West Midlands) 45. Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons (West Sussex) 46. Agnes Grey by Anne Brontë (West Yorkshire)* 47. Doctor Thorne by Anthony Trollope (Wiltshire)* 48. The Well of Loneliness by Radclyffe Hall (Worcestershire)

Books read from 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die Total read = 120 out of 1294. 1. Books from the original 2006 list (115 read). 2000s 011. The Lambs of London by Peter Ackroyd ***** 019. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time by Mark Haddon ****** 029. The Story of Lucy Gault by William Trevor ***** 033. Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides **** 049. Life of Pi by Yann Martel **** 1900s 72. Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson ****** 081. Amsterdam by Ian MacEwan **** 89. The Hours by Michael Cunningham ****** 095. Enduring Love by Ian MacEwan * 115. The Rings of Saturn by WG Sebald *** 116. The Reader by Bernard Schlink * 141. A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth ****** 153. The Crow Road by Ian Banks **** 157. Miss Smilla's Sense of Snow by Peter Hoeg ***** 190. Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro **** 209. The Long Dark Tea-time of the Soul by Douglas Adams **** 210. Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency by Douglas Adams **** 247. Hawksmoor by Peter Ackroyd ****** 265. Waterland by Graham Swift ****** 288. Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie ****** 293. The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco ****** 301. Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams ***** 339. Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy by John Le Carre ****** 375. Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut * 379. The Godfather by Mario Puzo *** 389. 2001: A Space Odyssey by Arthur C Clarke **** 400. The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov ***** 428. The Graduate by Charles Webb *** 430. The Spy Who Came In From the Cold by John Le Carre ** 450. The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark **** 456. To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee ****** 488. Justine by Lawrence Durrell * 494. The Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkien ****** 506. The Story of O by Pauline Reage * 508. Lord of the Flies by William Golding **** 510. The Go-Between by LP Hartley ** 511. The Long Goodbye by Raymond Chandler **** 521. The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway *** 527. Foundation by Isaac Asimov **** 539. I, Robot by Isaac Asimov **** 542. Love in a Cold Climate by Nancy Mitford ****** 547. Nineteen Eighty Four by George Orwell * 559. The Plague by Albert Camus * 564. Animal Farm by George Orwell ** 566. The Pursuit of Love by Nancy Mitford ***** 579. The Outsider by Albert Camus * 584. Between the Acts by Virginia Woolf ****** 586. Farewell, My Lovely by Raymond Chandler **** 599. The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler **** 601 Miss Pettigrew Lives For A Day by Winifred Watson ***** 610. The Hobbit by JRR Tolkien **** 611. The Years by Virginia Woolf ****** 650. Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons ***** 654. The Waves by Virginia Woolf ***** 656. Cakes and Ale by W. Somerset Maugham ***** 660. The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett *** 667. All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque *** 675. Orlando by Virginia Woolf **** 676. Lady Chatterley's Lover by DH Lawrence * 686. To The Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf ****** 695. The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie **** 698. Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf ****** 699. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald ** 716. Jacob's Room by Virginia Woolf ***** 740. The Voyage Out by Virginia Woolf ***** 743. The Thirty Nine Steps by John Buchan **** 761. A Room With A View by EM Forster ***** 777. The Riddle of the Sands by Erskine Childers **** 781. The Hound of the Baskervilles by Arthur Conan Doyle **** 783. Kim by Rudyard Kipling **** 1800s 789. The Turn of the Screw by Henry James **** 794. Dracula by Bram Stoker ***** 803. The Diary of a Nobody by George Grossmith * 804. The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle ***** 811. La Bete Humaine by Emile Zola **** 820. The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson **** 822. Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson ****** 825. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain **** 831. Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson ***** 833. The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James **** 839. Return of the Native by Thomas Hardy **** 848. Around The World in Eighty Days by Jules Verne **** 853. Middlemarch by George Eliot ***** 854. Through The Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll **** 857. War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy ****** 862. Little Women by Louisa May Alcott *** 863. The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins **** 867. Journey to the Centre of the Earth by Jules Verne **** 868. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll **** 875. Silas Marner by George Eliot *** 876. Great Expectations by Charles Dickens **** 880. The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins ***** 886. Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert ***** 890. Bleak House by Charles Dickens ****** 892, Cranford by Elizabeth Gaskell **** 896. Moby Dick by Herman Melville ****** 898. David Copperfield by Charles Dickens ****** 900. Mary Barton by Elizabeth Gaskell ***** 902. Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte ****** 904. Vanity Fair by Wllliam Thackeray ****** 905. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte ****** 906. The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexander Dumas ***** 913. A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens *** 918. Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens ***** 930. Ivanhoe by Walter Scott *** 932. Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen ***** 933. Persuasion by Jane Austen *****] 936. Emma by Jane Austen ****** 937. Mansfield Park by Jane Austen ***** 938. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen ****** 939. Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen ****** 1700s 970. Candide by Voltaire **** 985. Moll Flanders by Daniel Defoe * 1001. Aesop's Fables by Aesopus ** 2. Books added in 2008 (5 out of 282 read) 055. The Dumas Club by Arturo Perez-Reverte *** 058. Faceless Killers by Henning Mankell **** 174. Excellent Women by Barbara Pym *** 205. The Street of Crocodiles by Bruno Schulz *** 234. The Call of the Wild by Jack London **** 3. Books added in 2010 (0 out of 11 read)

Classics TBR list I also want to get stuck more into the classics, so this is my list of classics to read (the definition of 'classic' has been stretched on occasions!). Only one book/series per writer allowed at any one time, so will only add the next from that author once the previous one has been read. Le Pere Goriot by Honore de Balzac The Mandarins by Simone de Beauvoir The Master and Margarita by Mikhael Bulgakov Evelina by Fanny Burney Agnes Grey by Anne Bronte Villette by Charlotte Bronte Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte (reread) ****** Possession by AS Byatt The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins (reread) The Last of the Mohicans by James Fenimore Cooper The Deptford Trilogy by Robertson Davies David Copperfield by Charles Dickens ****** Nicholas Nickleby by Charles Dickens Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes The Three Musketeers by Alexander Dumas The Mill on the Floss by George Eliot The Siege of Krishnapur by JG Farrell Tom Jones by Henry Fielding The Good Soldier by Ford Madox Ford North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell I, Claudius by Robert Graves King Solomon's Mines by H. Rider Haggard Far From The Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy Catch-22 by Joseph Heller Les Miserables by Victor Hugo The Turn of the Screw by Henry James **** Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K Jerome ** Ulysses by James Joyce Les Liaisons Dangereuses by Choderlos de Laclos Of Human Bondage by W Somerset Maugham Titus Groan by Mervyn Peake A Dance to the Music of Time by Anthony Powell Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie (reread) The Jewel in the Crown by Paul Scott Waverley by Walter Scott Frankenstein by Mary Shelley Doctor Thorne by Anthony Trollope Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton The Once and Future King by TH White The Voyage Out by Virginia Woolf ***** Night and Day by Virginia Woolf The Fortune of the Rougons by Emile Zola

Non-fiction lists No overall TBR list - that's simply the unrated books on my LibraryThing account. However, I have been meaning to make greater inroads into the list of non-fiction doorstoppers on my shelves than I've managed to achieve over the last year or two, so have decided to list those I've not read here as a specific list for encouragement!! Rules are that book should be greater than 500 pages, and that only one book by an author to be listed at one time. A few are multi-volume works. Goodness knows how long they will take to read! I've also been collecting the series of memoirs being published by Slightly Foxed (possibly my favourite 'magazine', if that is how such a beautiful production can be described), but have barely made any inroads to them, so am going to give them a go this year. Rather slimmer than the doorstoppers, they are listed at the end. As the doorstopper list is a changeable feast, books that have been read are listed at the end. For the Slightly Foxed list, books in blue have been read. Doorstoppers History 01. The Noble Revolt by John Adamson 02. The Crusades by Thomas Asbridge 03. The Pursuit of Glory by Tim Blanning 04. The Discoverers by Daniel Boorstin 05. This New Ocean by William Burrows 06. The Identity of France by Fernand Braudel 07. World Crisis v1: 1911-1914 by Winston Churchill 08. The Sleepwalkers by Christopher Clarke 09. The Seven Years War by Julian Corbett 10. Vanished Kingdoms by Norman Davies 11. The Penguin History of Modern China by Jonathan Fenby 12. A History of Europe by HAL Fisher 13. The World on Fire by Amanda Foreman 14. The Thirties by Juliet Gardner 15. The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbons 16. The Presidents by Stephen Graubard 17. Catastrophe by Max Hastings 18. The Battle of Britain by James Holland 19. The Great Game by Peter Hopkirk 20. The Birth of the Modern by Paul Johnson 21. Postwar by Tony Judt 22. The Seven Pillars of Wisdom by TE Lawrence 23. The History of England by Thomas Macauley 24. The History of Christianity by Diarmid Macculloch 25. Battle Cry of Freedom by James McPherson 26. Scotland: The Story of a Nation by Magnus Magnusson 27. The History of Germany since 1789 by Golo Mann 28. The Line Upon the Wind by Noel Mostert 29. Pax Britannica trilogy by Jan Morris 30. History of Venice by John Julius Norwich 31. The Scramble for Africa by Thomas Pakenham 32. Global Catastrophe by Geoffrey Parker 33. The Making of the British Landscape by Francis Pryor 34. America, Empire of Liberty by David Reynolds 35. The Penguin History of the World by JM Roberts 36. The England of Elizabeth by AL Rowse 37. Never Had It So Good by Dominic Sandbrook 38. The Culture of the Europeans by Donald Sassoon 39. An Embarrassment of Riches by Simon Schama 40. Trial by Battle by Jonathan Sumption 41. Religion and the Decline of Magic by Keith Thomas 42. The German Genius by Peter Watson 43. The Thirty Years War by CV Wedgwood 44. The Rise and Fall of Ancient Egypt by Toby Wilkinson Biography 01. Dickens by Peter Ackroyd 02. The Brontes by Juliet Barker 03. Nikolaus Pevsner by Susan Harries 04. Titian by Sheila Hale 05. Stanley by Tim Jeal 06. Churchill by Roy Jenkins 07. Hitler by Ian Kershaw 08. Salisbury by Andrew Young 09. Team of Rivals by Doris Kearns Goodwin 10. God's Architect by Rosemary Hill 11. The Pursuit of Victory by Roger Knight 12. Darwin by Adrian Desmond and James Moore 13. Queen Anne by Anne Somerset 14. Bismarck by Jonathan Steinberg Travel and Exploration 01. The Worst Journey in the World by Apsley Cherry-Garrard 02. Into the Silence by Wade Davis 03. In Europe by Geert Mak 04. Maximum City by Suketu Mehta 05. Old Glory by Jonathan Raban Read this year Seasons in the Sun by Dominic Sandbrook ***** The Plantagenets by Dan Jones **** Slightly Foxed Editions 01. Blue Remembered Hills by Rosemary Sutcliffe **** 02. My Grandmothers and I by Diana Holman-Hunt 03. A Cab at the Door by VS Pritchett 04. A Boy at the Hogarth Press & A Parcel of Time by Richard Hoggart *** 05. A Late Beginner by Priscilla Napier 06. Corduroy by Adrian Bell 07. The Missing Will by Michael Wharton 08. Another Self by James Lee-Milne 09. The High Path by Ted Walker 10. A House in Flanders by Michael Jenkins 11. A Sort of Life by Graham Green 12. The Young Ardizzone by Edward Ardizzone 13. People Who Say Goodbye by PY Betts 14. Hand-grenade Practice in Peking by Frances Wood 15. Mr Tibbit's Catholic School by Ysende Maxtone Graham 16. Look Back with Love by Dodie Smith 17. Mango and Mimosa by Suzanne St Albans 18. The Flame Trees of Thika by Elspeth Huxley 19. A Late Education by Alan Moorehead 20. My Grandfather & Father Dear Father by Denis Constanduros 21. The Real Mrs Miniver by Ysende Graham 22. Country Boy by Richard Hillyer 23. The Past is Myself by Christabel Bielenberg

That is such an irritating 'feature'.

Books rated as 6-stars A record of the 87 books I've given my top rating to: Fiction (60) Ackroyd, Peter: Dan Leno and the Limehouse Golem Ackroyd, Peter: Hawksmoor Atkinson, Kate: Case Histories Austen, Jane: Sense and Sensibility Austen, Jane: Pride and Prejudice Austen, Jane: Emma Bronte, Charlotte: Jane Eyre Bronte, Emily: Wuthering Heights Buchan, John: John Macnab Carr JL: A Month in the Country Carr JL: The Harpole Report Carre, John Le: Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy Chaucer, Geoffrey: The Canterbury Tales Chevalier, Tracey: Falling Angels Childers, Erskine: The Riddle of the Sands Collins, Norman: London Belongs To Me Cunningham, Michael: The Hours Cooper, Susan: The Dark is Rising Davies, Martin: The Conjuror's Bird Dickens, Charles: Bleak House Dickens, Charles: David Copperfield Elphinstone, Margaret: The Sea Road Elphinstone, Margaret: Voyageurs Ewing, Barbara: Rosetta Greig, Andrew: The Return of John MacNab Haddon, Mark: The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time Herbert, Frank: Dune Horwood, William: Skallagrig Hulme, Keri: Bone People Japrisot, Sebastian: A Very Long Engagement Kipling, Rudyard: Puck of Pook's Hill Kipling, Rudyard: Rewards and Fairies Lee, Harper: To Kill A Mockingbird Mantel, Hilary: Wolf Hall Melville, Herman: Moby Dick Mitchell, David: The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet Miller, Andrew: Pure Monsarrat, Nicholas: The Cruel Sea Moorcock, Michael: Mother London O'Brian, Patrick: The Mauritius Command Pears, Ian: An Instance of the Fingerpost Penney, Stef: The Tenderness of Wolves Pullman, Philip: Northern Lights Rushdie, Salman: Midnight's Children Seth, Vikram: A Suitable Boy Smiley, Jane: A Thousand Acres Smith, Dodie: I Capture the Castle Stephenson, Neal: Cryptonomicon Stevenson, Robert Louis: Kidnapped Thackeray, William: Vanity Fair Thompson, Harry: This Thing of Darkness Tolkien JRR: The Lord of the Rings Tolstoy, Leo: War and Peace White, TH: Mistress Masham's Repose Willis, Connie: To Say Nothing of the Dog Woolf, Virginia: Mrs Dalloway Woolf, Virginia: The Years Woolf, Virginia: To The Lighthouse Woolf, Virginia: Between the Acts Woolfenden, Ben: The Ruins of Time Non-fiction (27) Cocker, Mark: Crow Country Dawkins, Richard: The Blind Watchmaker Fadiman, Anne: Ex Libris Frater, Alexander: Chasing the Monsoon Hanff, Helen: 84 Charing Cross Road Hastings, Max: All Hell Let Loose Holland, James: Dam Busters Hoskins, WG: The Making of the English Landscape Huntford, Roland: Shackleton Junger, Sebastian: The Perfect Storm Longford, Elizabeth: Wellington, The Years of the Sword Lee, Hermione: Virginia Woolf Moore, Richard: In Search of Robert Millar Nichols, Peter: A Voyage for Madmen Pennac, Daniel: The Rights of the Reader Rackham, Oliver: The History of the Countryside Pinker, Stephen: The Language Instinct de Saint-Exupery, Antoine: Wind, Sand and Stars Salisbury, Laney and Gay: The Cruellest Miles Simpson, Joe: Touching the Void Taylor, Stephen: Storm and Conquest Tomalin, Claire: Pepys, The Unequalled Self Uglow, Jenny: The Pinecone Unsworth, Walt: Everest Weldon, Fay: Letters to Alice on first reading Jane Austen Wheeler, Sara: Terra Incognita Young, Gavin: Slow Boats to China

Book List 2013 Previous book lists: 2009, 2010-2011, 2012 January 1. When We Were Orphans by Kazuo Ishiguro (Jan 2) G ** February 2. David Copperfield by Charles Dickens (Feb 2) G ****** 3. Antarctica by Gabrielle Walker (Feb 18) **** 4. Alone in Berlin by Hans Fallada (Feb 23) G * March 5. Underground, Overground by Andrew Martin (Mar 9) **** 6. The Glass Painter's Daughter by Rachel Hore (Mar 16) **** 7. King Solomon's Carpet by Barbara Vine (Mar 22) ***** April 8. The Crimson Petal and the White by Michel Faber (Apr 13) ***** 9. A Far Cry from Kensington by Muriel Spark (Apr 18) *** 10. Capital by Maureen Duffy (Apr 28) **** May 11. Sarah Thornhill by Kate Grenville (May 12) G *** 12. Bankside by David Brandon and Alan Brooke (May 14) *** 13. The Last Viking by Stephen Bown (May 20) **** 14. The Voyage Out by Virginia Woolf (May 27) ***** June 15. The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet by David Mitchell (Jun 7) ****** 16. Little House in the Big Woods by Laura Ingalls Wilder (Jun 8) *** 17. Light by Margaret Elphinstone (Jun 15) G ***** July 18. Seasons in the Sun by Dominic Sandbrook (Jul 12) ***** 19. Where'd You Go Bernadette by Maria Semple (Jul 17) *** 20. Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte (Jul 27) R ****** 21. White River by Jamie Whittle (Jul 28) *** August 22. Findings by Kathleen Jamie (Aug 4) ***** 23. A Month in the Country by JL Carr (Aug 14) RG ****** 24. To Sea and Back by Richard Shelton (Aug 20) **** 25. On Chesil Beach by Ian McEwan (Aug 21) G ** 26. The Darling Buds of May by HE Bates (Aug 22) *** 27. Ashenden by W Somerset Maugham (Aug 28) **** September 28. Walk the Lines by Mark Mason (Sep 14) *** 29. A Case of Exploding Mangoes by Mohammed Hanif (Sep 21) G *** October 30. A Time of Gifts by Patrick Leigh Fermor (Oct 3) GU ** 31. The Blue Flower by Penelope Fitzgerald (Oct 12) G ***** 32. The Real Jane Austen by Paula Byrne (Oct 27) ***** 33. Portrait in Sepia by Isabel Allende (Oct 31) G ***** November 34. Sweet Poison by David Gillespie (Nov 6) *** 35. Armchair Nation by Joe Moran (Nov 21) **** 36. An Unsuitable Job for a Woman by PD James (Nov 23) G *** 37. The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary-Anne Shaffer and Annie Burrows (Nov 25) GR **** 38. Circle Line by Steffan Hughes (Nov 29) ** 39. The Bookshop by Penelope Fitzgerald (Nov 30) *** December 40. The Plantagenets by Dan Jones (Dec 1) **** 41. A Little History of Literature by John Sutherland (Dec 6) **** 42. Sacred Hearts by Sarah Dunant (Dec 9) ***** 43. Letters to Alice on first reading Jane Austen by Fay Weldon (Dec 11) ****** 44. Charles Dickens by Claire Tomalin (Dec 20) ***** 45. The Turn of the Screw by Henry James (Dec 21) **** 46. Pietr the Latvian by Georges Simenon (Dec 22) *** 47. Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K Jerome (Dec 22) ** 48. A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens (Dec 23) R ***** 49. The Yellow-Lighted Bookshop by Lewis Buzbee (Dec 23) *** 50. Forever X by Geraldine McCaughrean (Dec 24) *** 51. Christmas Pudding by Nancy Mitford (Dec 25) **** 52. The Dark is Rising by Susan Cooper (Dec 26) ****** 53. Blue Remembered Hills by Rosemary Sutcliff (Dec 27) *** 54. The Courier's Tale by Peter Walker (Dec 29) ***** 55. The Testament of Mary by Colm Toibin (Dec 30) **** 56. The Matisse Stories by AS Byatt (Dec 30) G ** Unfinished and insufficient completed to count towards reading list. 1. The Boy in Striped Pyjamas by John Boyne (Jan 31) UG * 2. Yellow Birds by Kevin Powers (Feb 24) UG * 3. Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn (Feb 25) U * 4. Starter for Ten by David Nicholls (Mar 17) UG * Ratings * Disliked this, Very rarely finished. ** Disappointing. Usually finished but may not be. *** Solid read, even if perhaps not fully engaging. **** Very good, involving read. ***** Excellent, an outstanding read, even if not quite making it onto my favourites list. ****** An all-time favourite. A star in brackets means that I can't decide which of two grades to give as yet! U=unfinished, A=audiobook, R=reread, G = reading for book groups

I'm glad of that - whilst I only gave it 2 stars, that was my reaction. It's a book that's worth reading simply for the questions and issues it raises. I don't think it's a man issue - not least for the points you make, plus the fact that there were women in the group who had similar thoughts to me. All seemed very mixed when it came to gender, even if the book itself is very female orientated.

At this time of the year, the books tend to come thick and fast - Christmas is my usually my big holiday for reading - so reviews will likely be fairly snappy and short. The Sea Detective by Mark Douglas-Home **** Crime fiction a cut above the usual fire, with an interesting twist in that the main protagonist, Cal McGill, is a PhD oceanography student, an expert in tides, currents and wind conditions at sea, using his skills to predict or calculate where floating debris (including human body parts) will come ashore. The plot is based around three disparate threads - child sex trafficking from the Indian sub-continent, a mystery surrounding the death of Cal's grandfather on a naval trawler in WW2, and an investigation into where a series of severed feet washed up on Scottish shores are coming from - which the author weaves into an intriguing and satisfying whole, populated by a range of characters about whom I'd love to read more in the future. Romanno Bridge by Andrew Greig *** The sequel to The Return of John Macnab, the two novels forming a continuous thread. Even if the stories are completely different, there are enough continuity issues that John Macnab needs to be read first. This is a thoroughly enjoyable, solid read, but whilst Greig's lyricism still shines through, the story doesn't hold together as well, and the book suffers somewhat in comparison. The author introduces a harsher element in the form of a psychopathic villain, whose viciousness, whilst being successfully scary, doesn't quite fit into the overall scheme of things for me. I also felt my credulity being stretched just a bit too much on occasions. I do love Andrew Greig's writing style though..

I'd say he's got really good taste! JL Carr is one of my favourite authors, and I'd list 'A Month in the Country' as my favourite book. I've got a special fondness for 'The Harpole Report' too (also in my top dozen, and one of the very few humorous books I've ever really enjoyed), not least as I'm a primary teacher. His touch is nigh on perfect, not surprising considering he was a primary head himself. I'd strongly recommend Byron Rogers's biography of JL Carr, The Last Englishman, which, aside from being highly readable (he's another writer worth exploring), gives a real insight into where all the source material for his books comes from, and really highlights what an interesting, highly individual, character he was.

Hope it is. For me, Christmas Carol is definitely one of his lesser works - a bit too sentimental for my taste, even by Dickens's standards. Much prefer the relatively light humour of Pickwick Papers, the grittiness of Oliver Twist, or the intricacies of Bleak House (the last is my favourite). Definitely worth exploring at least! Good luck for 2013.

The Spire by William Golding *** In terms of pure writing, The Spire is superb: Golding's lyricism, sense of place and characterisation totally wows me, and there were times in this story of the obsessive determination of fourteenth century Dean Jocelin to see through the building of a huge spire on his cathedral (believed to be modelled on Salisbury) where this proved as good as anything I've read to date. However, even though I love the stream of consciousness writing of the likes of Virginia Woolf, there were also times when I was left completely bemused, unable even to to remotely follow what was going on, as the narrative appeared to take off on another flight of abstraction. I can handle this happening occasionally, but my overriding feeling on reaching the end was of relatively brief windows of clarity interspersed by complete obfuscation, or a sequence of dark tunnels, emerging every now and again into the open air.. Having read the Wikipedia entry for the book, which cleared up a number of points for me, I reckon that this is a book that will requires some study for me to get the most out of it. At this initial stage though, it's one where I am uncertain as to what I feel about it - it always felt like a 5/6 star read, but because of the gaps, it so far has not really grabbed me sufficiently to rate it at that level: technically superb, but yet to prove itself to me as a novel of that order. A small coincidence: this was my 49th book of the year; two years ago, my 49th book was another William Golding novel: Lord of the Flies. They are the only two Goldings I have yet to read.

The Return of John Macnab by Andrew Greig ****** I initially picked up Romanno Bridge, but decided that I needed to reread this first as RB follows on almost immediately from it. I'm glad I did: I remember this as a favourite read, and was anything but disappointed. ROJM is a modern day take on the classic adventure story by John Buchan, but Andrew Greig brings his own political text and sense of poetry to the task, very much creating his own story. Reading the Amazon reviews, it doesn't quite work for some, but for me it gels perfectly: a genuinely exciting adventure led up by hugely sympathetic characters in a landscape which Greig obviously has a huge affinity with, written so that I spent several hours transported to one of my all-time favourite parts of the world- this was read in just two shortish and one extended sitting. Even the Scotch came out (single malt, of course!), but the warm glow was very much provided by the author! No, this isn't a 'great' piece of literature, but it earns its place in my favourites list simply by being such a good fun, very human, read. Ironically, I enjoyed it so much, that I think I need a short rest before tackling Romanno Bridge, just to make sure I enjoy it sufficiently for itself - give it a few days whilst I divert to something else.

Spell It Out by David Crystal *** A history of how English spelling developed by one of the big guns of language history. This may sound as dry as dust, but is actually a fascinating subject, one that really emphasises the scavenger nature of the English language. I found it particularly interesting how spellings of words seem to have been deliberately changed by scribes, printers and others to try and make spellings more understandable and memorable, whilst having precisely the opposite effect! Unfortunately, it also got a bit 'listy' as a book: loads of examples, which whilst useful, gradually lost me and got in the way of the narrative. I'm not certain how else the author could have handled it, but by the end I was skim reading chunks as my mind gradually glazed over in the face of the stream of words.