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Anna Begins 2017


Anna Begins

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2014

Books read: 87

Pages: 26,347

 

2015

Books read: 77

Pages: 22,618

 

2016

Books read: 53

Pages: 17,764

 

This hasn't been the best reading year for me; health problems have greatly decreased my book and page counts for 2016. Here's looking forward to another year (maybe I'll hit 90 this year!).

 

My goals for 2017 are to read more new releases, read more contemporary fiction, step out of my history genre comfort zone and read more books less than 500 pages :D

 

Happy 2017!

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January

5/5 To Hell and Back: Europe 1914- 1949 by Ian Kershaw (594 pages, 300 completed in 2017)

5/5 Prague Winter: A Personal Story of Remembrance and War 1937- 1948 by Madeline Albright (731 pages)

4/5 The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich by William L Shirer (1147 pages)

5/5 Gulag: A History by Anne Applebaum (736 pages)

3/5 A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Alexandr Solzhenitsyn (208)

6/5 Mother Night by Kurt Vonnegut (270 pages)

6/5 Breakfast of Champions by Kurt Vonnegut (303 pages)

Total= 3,689 pages (!)

 

February

3/5 The Forgotten Soldier by Guy Sajer (467 pages)

Total= 467 pages

 

March

 

April

 

May

 

June

 

July

5/5 Into Think Air by Jon Krakauer (368 pages)

5/5 Decision Points by George W. Bush (514 pages)

5/5 A Mother's Reckoning by Sure Klebold (338 pages)

Total= 1,220 pages

 

August

5/5 K2: The Savage Mountain by Charles Houston and Robert Bates (208 pages)

5/5 Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea by Barbara Demick (336 pages)

5/5 The Humans by Matt Haig (321 pages)

3/5 Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden (512 pages)

No Rating- Only Ever Yours by Louise O'Neil (406 pages)

4/5 Get Well Soon by Jennifer Wright (336 pages)

Total= 2,119

 

September

2.5/5 A Hidden World by Rafael Rupert (163 pages)

5/5 No god, But God by Reza Aslan (386 pages)

Total= 549 pages 

 

October

5/5 Zealot by Reza Aslan (354 pages)

4/5 Red Famine by Anne Applebaum (496 pages)

4/5 Survivor by Chuck Palahniuk (304 pages)

5/5 2BR02B by Kurt Vonnegut (12 pages)

4/5 World War Z by Max Brooks (352 pages)

5/5 Endurance by Scott Kelly (400 pages)

Total= 1,918 pages

 

November

 

December

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TBR

 

Contemporary Fiction

 

Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng (298 pages)

Everything We Keep by Kerry Lonsdale (306)

Leave Me by Gayle Forman (353)

News of the World by Paulette Jiles (224)

The Nix by Nathan Hill (642)

Today Will Be Different by Maria Semple (273)

Truly Madly Guilty by Liame Moriarty (415)

War and Turpentine by Stefan Hertmans (305)

 

Fiction

 

The Girls by Emma Cline (370)

Hag Seed by Margaret Attwood (324)

Into the Thickening Fog by Andrei Gelasimov (266)

Small Great Things by Jodi Picoult (481)

The Things We Wish Were True by Marybeth Mayhew Whalen (290)

The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead (322)

The Vegetarian by Han Kang (194)

No Country For Old Men by McCarthy Cormac (322)

Sophie's Choice by William Clark Sutton (575)

A Good Man is Hard to Find by Flannery O'Connor (278)

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith (528)

 

Kristin Hannah:

Night Road (434)

Home Front (397)

Winter Garden 401)

 

Non Fiction

American Heiress by Jeffery Toobin (402)

Moonglow by Michael Chabon (448)

Stolen Life by Jaycee Dugard (304)

The Story of My Life by Helen Keller (82)

Imperial Woman by Pearl S Buck (432)

Dead Man Walking by Sister Helen Prejean (290)

 

Historical Fiction

The Summer Queen by Elizabeth Chadwick (514)

Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel (560)

Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Jamie Ford (290)

 

History

 

Between the Wars by Philip Ziegler (release 3/7, no page count)

Elizabeth: The Forgotten Years by John Guy (493)

The House of the Dead: Siberian Exile Under the Tsars by Daniel Beer (496)

Joan of Arc by Helen Castor (368)

Queen of Scots by John Guy (683)

Reagan: American Icon by Iwan Morgan (320)

The Time Travelers Guide to Medieval England by Ian Mortimer (354)

Victoria: The Queen by Julia Baird (752)

The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien (259)

The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich by William L Shirer (1264)

Ghost Soldiers by Hampton Sides (343)

 

Science Fiction

 

Dark Matter by Blake Crouch (354)

Ella Minnow Pea by Mark Dunn (208)

Fellside by MR Carey (485)

The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet by Becky Chambers (467)

Time and Again by Jack Finney (404)

The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury (298)

Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert A. Heinlein (530)

On the Beach by Nevill Shute (322)

The Bad Seed by William March (226)

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? By Philip K Dick (258)

Beacon 23 by Hugh Howdy (258)

 

Crime

 

The Cold Dish (Walt Longmire Mystery) by Craig Johnson (no page count)

Night School (Jack Reacher #21) by Lee Child (385)

The Sympathizer by Viet thank Nguyen (384)

The North Water by Ian McGuire (270)

 

YA

 

More Happy Than Not by Adam Silvera (306)

The Odds of Loving Grover Cleveland by Rebekah Crane (274)

 

Classics

 

1984 by George Orwell (322)

As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner (258)

Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov (372)

The Joy Luck Club by Any Tan (354)

It Can't Happen Here by Sinclair Lewis (199)

Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe (224)

The Jungle by Upton Sinclair (260)

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey (336)

Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse (162)

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This is what I plan to read for the rest of the year:

 

September:

Zealot by Reza Aslan (354)

The Shell Collector by Hugh Howey (reread) (282)

An Abundance of Katherines by John Green (reread) (276)

Eiger Dreams by Jon Krakauer (208)

Wasted by Marya Hornbacher (320)

Lost City of Z by David Grnn (352)

What is Due the Other by Kent Russell (161, Kindle Single)

 

Current: (to 14th)

No god, but God by Reza Aslan (386)

Guns, Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond (528)

Drinking: A Love Story by Caroline Knapp (reread) (304)

 

Total= 2,963

 

October:

Happy Halloween!!

Strange Weather by Joe Hill (release 10/24 (488)

Psycho by Robert Bloch (227)

A Kiss Before Dying by Ira Levin (260)

Rosemary's Baby by Ira Levin (reread) (282)

Firestarter by Stephen King (577)

The Last by Michael John Grist (part 1 of an 8 book series) (262)

 

Might add in Carrie (reread almost every Halloween!) (322)

And some stories from Bradbury Stories by Ray Bradbury

 

Total= 2,418

 

November:

 

Red Famine by Anne Applebaum (496)

Artemis by Andy Weir (11/14) (320)

Burial Rites by Hannah Kent (reread) (353)

FDR by Edward Smith (880)

Under the Dome by Stephen King (657)

 

Total= 2,706

 

December:

 

Victoria: The Queen by Julia Baird (752)

On Tyranny by Timothy Snyder (130)

The Midnight Line (Jack Reacher (384)

Imperial Woman by Pearl S. Buck (432)

Buried in the Sky by Peter Zuckerman (321)

 

And A Christmas Carol added as I wrap presents

 

Total= 2,019

 

 

 

Edited by Anna Begins
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Happy New Year, Anna. I hope you have a great reading year, and that your health improves this year. :smile:

 

I read The Long Way To A Small Angry Planet this year and enjoyed it a lot. :boogie: I've also read Ella Minnow Pea, which is highly entertaining but I wouldn't have classed it as science-fiction. It's more 'drama' I suppose?

 

I totally understand your goal for wanting to read more books with fewer than 500 pages. Sometimes those chunkers can leave you a bit drained and in need to something light and easy.

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Happy New Year to you too, Anna! Hope you have a great reading year ahead of you with lots of captivating books awaiting you. :)

Thanks! Happy quilting too :)

 

Happy New Year to you too! I hope 2017 will be a great reading year for you :readingtwo::).

:)

 

Happy New Year Anna! I intend to be around a bit more in 2017, so look forward to comparing reads with you. Hope you have some great books in your future.

 

It's great seeing you around, I hope the wedding was wonderful!

 

Have a great 2017 Anna, I'm particularly looking forward to reading your opinions on the Kristin Hannah books. :)

I'm not sure which to read first! Maybe Home Front.

 

Happy New Year, Anna. I hope you have a great reading year, and that your health improves this year. :smile:

 

I read The Long Way To A Small Angry Planet this year and enjoyed it a lot. :boogie: I've also read Ella Minnow Pea, which is highly entertaining but I wouldn't have classed it as science-fiction. It's more 'drama' I suppose?

 

I totally understand your goal for wanting to read more books with fewer than 500 pages. Sometimes those chunkers can leave you a bit drained and in need to something light and easy.

You and Gaia's reading of Angry Planet made me want to read it! Maybe I'll get to some Kingsolver this year as well.

 

History books are very long :)

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My goals for 2017 are to read more new releases, read more contemporary fiction, step out of my history genre comfort zone and read more books less than 500 pages :D

 

Funny that - one of my aims is to read a few more doorstoppers - and the ones on my shelves are mostly history books!  Anyway, I hope it turns out to be a better year for you.  Happy New Year!

(Afterthought: or do you mean historical fiction?).

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Funny that - one of my aims is to read a few more doorstoppers - and the ones on my shelves are mostly history books!  Anyway, I hope it turns out to be a better year for you.  Happy New Year!

(Afterthought: or do you mean historical fiction?).

Well, I mostly read history, so none of them are small- I want to read Victoria: The Queen by Julia Barid... that's a good 750. I do read historical fiction too though. Roots should be on my list, at 600. I do want to re-read Gone With the Wind again this year also.

 

Thanks for stepping in and Happy New Year to you :)

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To Hell and Back: Europe 1914- 1949 by Ian Kershaw (594 pages)

 

"History resists an ending as surely as nature abhors a vacuum; the narrative of our days is a run- on sentence, every full stop a comma in embryo."

-Mark Slouka, Essays From the Nick of Time

 

Starting with "The Golden Age" or "Gilded Age" before the first world war, Ian Kershaw begins a telling of 35 years of European history. Social change and economic prosperity were in a hey day, worries carefree. Lingering in the background - or rather, simmering- were the presence of early socialism and the beginnings of communism.

 

A British historian, Kershaw focuses on the English role in the 35 year time period, which I liked, having read mostly US history of these years. Some of that was understandable, however to find no mention of Hiroshima or Nagasaki was astounding. Especially when the last 100 pages are devoted to the US/ Soviet struggle in the beginnings of the cold war, with little to no mention of the British.

 

A tremendous undertaking and a well done job, To Hell and Back is the first of a two part series of modern day Europe.

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A big book! I'm glad you liked reading it :). Do you think you'll read part two in the series some day?

Thanks! I'm not going to. I don't really like the cold war period. And I lived through some of it :P I'm going to read a book about Ronald Reagan, I think that's all I can take! :D

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I hope 2017 is much better for you than 2016 was, Anna! Both reading-wise and other-wise :smile2:

 

Thanks Frankie :)

 

Happy Reading in 2107. :)

 

A vote from me for The Joy Luck Club. :D I`ll be interested in how you like the Longmire books too - I`m watching the latest season on TV, but have never tried the books. :)

I keep hearing how great The Joy Luck Club is!

 

How is the Longmire show?

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Excellent ! I love seeing a US show which isn`t set in some big city - pluis- I can`t think of another show which shows Life on the Rez too. :)

Oh yes, isn't the bar the Red Pony? His friend is Native American? I really want to read the book!

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Prague Winter by Madeline Albright (750 pages)

 

"Whatever power the Germans may have over the persons and property of the Czechs, they have little influence over their souls."

-Czech resistance leader

 

Madeleine Albright has long been one of my most admired women. Ambassador to the U.N. and my country's first female Secretary of State, she has fought against racism and for democracy her entire adult life.

 

Prague Winter: A Story of Remembrance and War 1937- 1948 follows Albright's early childhood in Prague, early years spent in London during the Blitz and living in Belgrade as communism descended on Eastern Europe.

 

Albright tells a little of the history of Czechoslovakia, but mostly life under occupation.

 

Before becoming Secretary of State, The Washington Post traced her ancestry and found Jewish roots. Albright tells the story of her family, most of them killed in Theresienstadt.

 

The book is extremely readable and fascinating to read about these years from the Czech point of view.

 

Albright follows in the footsteps of her Ambassador father, who dedicated his life to democracy. Prague Winter doesn't touch on her work as a fighter for freedom and against oppression -it's about her family and the lives of those who suffered - but it does show why she chose her path and why she subscribes to her beliefs.

 

5/5

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