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Bobblybear's Book List - 2018


bobblybear

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Welcome to my belated book list!! :lol:

 

I don't know what has happened this year. I've just had no motivation to write reviews, even though I have been reading and buying books like crazy!! I just seem to have lost my mojo in terms of putting my thoughts down in writing. :rolleyes: I'm not going to bother with conventional reviews for the rest of the year (no way I can catch up!), though I hope to at least be able to put some kind of thoughts down (no matter how brief) about the books I have read. 

 

I hope everyone is having a great reading year so far, and may it continue throughout the second half of the year. :D

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Books Read This Year

 

The Night Manager - John Le Carre

Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck

I Am Pilgrim - Terry Hayes (abandoned)

Dark Chapter - Winnie Li

A Stolen Life - Jaycee Dugard

Small Great Things - Jodi Picoult

Darktown - Thomas Mullen

Strong Women - Karren Brady

The Great Cholesterol Con - Malcolm Kendrick

The State We're In - Adele Parks

Ablutions - Patrick deWitt

The Alienist - Caleb Carr

A Fraction of the Whole - Steve Toltz

The Good Immigrant - Nikesh Shukla

Golden Lies - Barbara Freethy

Cursed - Stephen Leather

The Dog Stars - Peter Heller

Dark Eden - Chris Beckett

Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking - Susan Cain

Nothing to Envy - Barbara Demick

The Haunting of Hill House - Shirley Jackson

The Knot - Mark Watson

A Day at the Office - Matt Dunn

The End of Your Life Book Club - Will Schwalbe

Into The Darkest Corner - Elizabeth Haynes

The Elegance of the Hedgehog - Muriel Barbery

The Spinster Wife - Christina McKenna

Brooklyn - Colm Toibin

Not Thomas - Sara Gethin

As You Wish - Cary Elwes

The Princess Bride - William Goldman

The Last Days of Rabbit Hayes - Anna McPartlin

I Can't Believe You Just Said That - Danny Wallace

The Storyteller - Jodi Picoult

The Other Me - Saskia Sarginson

Eats, Shoots and Leaves - Lynne Truss

Altered Carbon - Richard Morgan

The Outsider - Stephen King

Mary Poppins - P L Travers

Into The Wild - Jon Krakauer

How To Stop Time - Matt Haig

Leviathan Wakes - James S A Corey

I Am I Am I Am - Maggie O'Farrell

Death Row - Michelle Lyons

The Pearl - John Steinbeck

Rubbernecker - Belinda Bauer

Wreckage - Emily Bleeker

Scrappy Little Nobody - Anna Kendrick

Middlesex - Jeffrey Eugenides

The Chrysalids - John Wyndham

Dyaltov Pass - Alan Baker

Total Recall - Arnold Schwarzenegger

Falling Angels - Tracy Chevalier

Do No Harm - Henry Marsh

Kane and Abel - Jeffrey Archer

Handle With Care - Jodi Picoult

Children of Time - Andrei Tchaikovsky

Picking Up The Pieces - Paul Britton

The Luminaries - Eleanor Catton

The Miracle Inspector - Helen Smith

The Last Anniversary - Liane Moriarity

I Contain Multitudes - Ed Yong

Dog Gone It - Spencer Quinn

 

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Books Purchased This Year

 

Happy: Why More or Less Everything is Absolutely Fine - Derren Brown

The Checklist Manifesto: How To Get Things Right - Atul Gawande

The Great Cholesterol Con - Malcolm Kendrick

How To Be Champion - Sarah Millican

The English and Their History - Robert Tombs

The Gene: An Intimate History - Siddhartha Mukherjee

Why We Sleep: The New Science of Sleep and Dreams - Matthew Walker

No Is Not Enough: Defeating the New Shock Politics - Naomi Klein

The Quiet American - Graham Greene

The Plague - Albert Camus

The Gallows Pole - Benjamin Myers

Fierce Kingdom - Gin Phillips

Unwind - Neal Shusterman

The Name of the Rose - Umberto Eco

The Good Immigrant - Nikesh Shukla

Ikigai: The Japanese secret to a long and happy life - Héctor García, Francesc Miralles

The Third Policeman (Harper Perennial Modern Classics) - Flann O'Brien

Solitude: In Pursuit of a Singular Life in a Crowded World - Michael Harris

The Greatest Story Ever Told...So Far - Lawrence Krauss

The Pearl - John Steinbeck

Cannery Row - John Steinbeck

Tortilla Flats - John Steinbeck

The God Delusion - Richard Dawkins

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep - Philip K Dick

The Five Giants - Nicholas Timmins

Woman on the Edge of Time - Marge Piercy

The Science of Everyday Life - Marty Jopson

The Light Between Oceans - M L Stedman

The History of Love - Nicole Krauss

The Yorkshire Shepherdess - Amanda Owen

A Brief History Of Time: From Big Bang To Black Holes - Stephen Hawking

The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion - Jonathan Haidt

I Am I Am I Am - Maggie O'Farrell

Rubbernecker - Belinda Bauer

Noughts and Crosses - Malorie Blackman

Endurance: A Year in Space, A Lifetime of Discovery - Scott Kelly

Edge of Eternity - Ken Follett

From Bacteria to Bach and Back: The Evolution of Minds - Daniel C. Dennett

The Narrow Road to the Deep North - Richard Flanagan

Thirteen Reasons Why - Jay Asher

As I Lay Dying - William Faulkner

Pimp: The Story of my Life - Iceberg Slim

This Is How It Always Is - Laurie Frankel

The Fact of A Body - Alexandra Marzano-Lesnevich

Valley of the Dolls - Jacqueline Susann

David Bowie: A Life - Dylan Jones

A Clockwork Orange - Anthony Burgess

Mortality - Christopher Hitchens

An Appetite for Wonder - Richard Dawkins

Other Minds - Peter Godfrey-Smith

The Yellow Birds - Kevin Powers

The Running Hare: The Secret Life of Farmland - John Lewis-Stempel

Out of Africa - Karen Blixen

Hearts in Atlantis - Stephen King

Lisey's Story - Stephen King

Storm in a Teacup: The Physics of Everyday Life - Helen Czerski

The Chimp Paradox - Steve Peters

And Then You're Dead: A Scientific Exploration of the World's Most Interesting Ways to Die - Paul Doherty

House Rules - Jodi Picoult

Sing You Home - Jodi Picoult

Leaving Time - Jodi Picoult

My Lovely Wife: A Memoir of Madness and Hope - Mark Lukach

Seven Brief Lessons on Physics - Carlo Rovelli

Consider Phlebas: A Culture Novel - Iain M. Banks

Death Row: The Final Minutes: My life as an execution witness in America's most infamous prison - Michelle Lyons

The Walker's Guide to Outdoor Clues and Signs - Tristan Gooley

Cryptonomicon - Neal Stephenson

The Bonfire of the Vanities - Tom Wolfe

The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald

Abducted (Lizzy Gardner Series, Book 1) - T.R. Ragan

At the Edge of the Orchard - Tracy Chevalier

Pale Rider: The Spanish Flu of 1918 and How it Changed the World - Laura Spinney

The Chrysalids - John Wyndham

His Bloody Project - Graeme Burnet

The Right Stuff - Tom Wolfe

I Capture The Castle - Dodie Smith

Behave - Robert Sapolsky

Life 3.0 - Max Tegmark

The Constant Gardener - John LeCarre

Picking Up The Pieces - Paul Britton

All The Little Lights - Jamie McGuire

Let Me Lie - Claire MacKintosh

Humans - Christopher Seddon

Finding My Virginity - Richard Branson

What Comes Next and How To Like It - Abigail Thomas

The Salt Path - Raynor Winn

Crazy Rich Asians - Kevin Kwan

The Old Man and the Sea - Ernest Hemingway

2001: A Space Oddessy - Arthur C Clarke

Fragrant Harbour - John Lanchester

My James - Ralph Bulger

Pandemic - AG Riddle

The Thorn Birds - Collen McCullough

Adventures of a Young Naturalist - David Attenborough

The City of Mirrors - Justin Cronin

Holding - Graham Norton

Janesville - Amy Goldstein

The Happiness Advantage - Shawn Achor

Touching the Void - Joe Simpson

Hired: Six Months Undercover in Low Wage Britain - James Bloodworth

Admissions - Henry Marsh

The Great Zoo of China - Matthew Reilly

A Year in the Life of the Yorkshire Shepherdess - Amanda Owen

The Phantom Tollbooth - Norton Juster

The 100-Year Life - Lynda Gratton, Andrew Scott

Wicked Beyond Belief - Michael Bilton

The Silence of the Lambs - Thomas Harris

Freedom - Jonathan Franzen

Science(ish) - Rick Edwards, Michael Brooks

The Stranger in the Woods - Michael Finkel

The Time of my Life - Patrick Swayze, Lisa Niemi

Elmet - Fiona Mozley

 

 

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Books Purchased In 2017

 

The Loney - Andrew Michael Hurley

Let The Light Shine - Nick Alexander

The Age of Wonder - Richard Holmes

Wild Swans - Jung Chang

The Power of Habit - Charles Duhigg

Horses, Heifers and Hairy Pigs - Julian Norton

The Litigators - John Grisham

Sniper One - Dan Mills

Say Goodbye for Now - Catherine Ryan Hyde

Scrappy Little Nobody - Anna Kendrick

Myopia - Jeff Gardiner

A Shepherd's Watch - David Kennard

Methods of Persuasion - Nick Kolenda

Spin - Robert Charles Wilson

Cut - Hibo Wardere

We Were The Mulvaneys - Joyce Carol Oates

The Better Angels of Our Nature - Steven Pinker

Emotional Intelligence - Daniel Goleman

Total Recall - Arnold Schwarzenegger

Superforecasting: The Art of Science and Prediction - Philip Tetlock, Dan Gardener

The Truth About the Harry Quebert Affair - Joel Dicker

Here I Am - Jonathan Safran Foer

The Establishment: And How They Get Away With It - Owen Jones

Breakfast Is A Dangerous Meal - Terence Kealey

A History of the World - Andrew Marr

House of Cards - Michael Dobbs (never watched the series but it's on my Netflix list)

Children of Time - Adrian Tchaikovsky

Who Rules The World: Reframings - Noam Chomsky

The Aquariums of Pyongyang - Kang Chol-Hwan, Pierre Rigoulot

In The Darkness, That's Where I'll Know You: The Complete Black Room Story - Luke Smitherd

Sane New World: Taming the Mind - Ruby Wax

All Creatures Great and Small: The Classic Memoirs of a Yorkshire Country Vet (James Herriot 1) - James Herriot

How to Run A Government: So that Citizens Benefit and Taxpayers Don't Go Crazy - Michael Barber

East of Eden - John Steinbeck

On the Road - Jack Kerouac

The Bone Clocks - David Mitchell

The Pillars of the Earth - Ken Follett

American Psycho - Bret Easton Ellis

Stephen King Goes to the Movies: Featuring Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption - Stephen King

The Passage - Justin Cronin

The Second Coming - John Niven

Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of NIKE - Phil Knight

Allie and Bea: A Novel - Catherine Ryan Hyde

The Poisonwood Bible - Barbara Kingsolver

Flowers For Algernon - Daniel Keyes

The Twelve: The Passage Trilogy Book 2 - Justin Cronin

A Brief History of Everyone Who Ever Lived: The Stories in Our Genes - Adam Rutherford

All Things Bright and Beautiful: The Classic Memoirs of a Yorkshire Country Vet - James Herriot

Water for Elephants - Sara Gruen

Spaceman: An Astronaut's Unlikely Journey to Unlock the Secrets of the Universe - Mike Massimino

Mad, Bad, and Dangerous to Know - Ranulph Fiennes

The Fear of 13: Countdown to Execution: My Fight for Survival on Death Row - Nick Yarris

How to Own the World: A Plain English Guide to Thinking Globally and Investing Wisely - Andrew Craig

The Body Keeps the Score: Mind, Brain and Body in the Transformation of Trauma - Bessel van der Kolk

Dog On It - Spencer Quinn

The Power of Time Perception: Control the Speed of Time to Slow Down Aging, Live a Long Life, and Make Every Second Count - Jean Paul Zogby

The Neutronium Alchemist (Nights Dawn Book 2) - Peter F. Hamilton

The Naked God (Nights Dawn Book 3) - Peter F. Hamilton

The Evolutionary Void (The Void Trilogy Book 3) - Peter F. Hamilton

The Temporal Void (The Void Trilogy Book 2) - Peter F. Hamilton

Naïve Super - Erlend Loe

Big Brother - Lionel Shriver

Black Water Lilies - Michel Bussi, Shaun Whiteside

Wreckage - Emily Bleeker

Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov

Start With Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone To Take Action - Simon Sinek

Our Iceberg is Melting: Changing and Succeeding Under Any Conditions - John Kotter, Holger Rathgeber

The Finance Book: Understand the numbers even if you're not a finance professional - Stuart Warner, Si Hussain

Northern Lights: His Dark Materials 1 - Philip Pullman

The Subtle Knife: His Dark Materials 2 - Philip Pullman

The Amber Spyglass: His Dark Materials 3 - Philip Pullman

Who Moved My Cheese: An Amazing Way to Deal with Change in Your Work and in Your Life - Spencer Johnson

Einstein: His Life and Universe - Walter Isaacson

Under A Pole Star - Stef Penney

The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat - Oliver Sacks

Invisible Man - Ralph Ellison

Foxes Unearthed - Lucy Jones

The Case Against Sugar - Gary Taubes

Misbehaving: The Making of Behavioural Economics - Richard H Thaler

TED Talks: The official TED guide to public speaking - Chris Anderson

Jurassic Park - Michael Crichton

The Man in the High Castle - Philip K Dick

Seveneves - Neal Stephenson

The God of Small Things - Arundhati Roy

The Sundial - Shirley Jackson

Contact - Carl Sagan

The Last Anniversary - Liane Moriarity

The Year of the Runaways - Sunjeev Sahota

American Assassin - Vince Flynn

A Mindfulness Guide for the Frazzled - Ruby Wax

The Threat Level Remains Severe - Rowena Macdonald

All Out War: The Full Story of How Brexit Sank Britain's Political Class - Tim Shipman

Lone Rider: The First British Woman to Motorcycle Around the World - Elspeth Beard

The Sky Below: A True Story of Summits, Space, and Speed - Scott Parazynski, Susy Flory

Elon Musk: How the Billionaire CEO of SpaceX and Tesla is Shaping our Future -  Ashlee Vance

The Universe in Your Hand: A Journey Through Space, Time and Beyond - Christophe Galfard

The Element in the Room: Science-y Stuff Staring You in the Face (Festival of the Spoken Nerd) - Helen Arney, Steve Mould

Bushcraft 101: A Field Guide to the Art of Wilderness Survival - Dave Canterbury

Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth and Happiness - Richard H Thaler, Cass R Sunstein

The Outsider - Albert Camus

10% Human: How Your Body's Microbes Hold the Key to Health and Happiness - Alanna Collen

The Lord God Made Them All: The Classic Memoirs of a Yorkshire Country Vet (James Herriot 4) - James Herriot

Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman - James Gleick

On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century - Timothy Snyder

A Closed and Common Orbit: Wayfarers 2 - Becky Chambers

The Mother Tongue - Bill Bryson

Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion - Robert B. Cialdini PhD

Our Man in Havana - Graham Greene

Charlotte's Web - EB  White

I Contain Multitudes - Ed Yong

Olive Kitteridge - Elizabeth Strout

The Secret Life of Cows - Rosamund Young

Outliers: The Story of Success - Malcolm Gladwell

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Books Purchased In 2016

 

The Other Son - Nick Alexander

Wilbur Smith Trilogy: Hungry as the Sea, Elephant Song and Wild Justice - Wilbur Smith
Her Mother's Shadow - Diane Chamberlain
Home - Matt Dunn
A Short History of England - Simon Jenkins
Sister - Rosamund Lupton
The Three-Body Problem - Cixin Liu, Ken Liu
The Corrections - Jonathan Franzen
Night Film - Marisha Pessl
The Watchmaker of Filigree Street - Natasha Pulley
Facing Up: A Remarkable Journey to the summit of Mount Everest - Bear Grylls
Complications: A Surgeon's Notes on an Imperfect Science - Atul Gawande
The Pursuaders: The Hidden Industry That Wants to Change Your Mind - James Garvey
How To Be Alone - Jonathan Franzen
This Thing of Darkness - Harry Thompson
The Rotten Heart of Europe: Dirty War for Europe's Money - Bernard Connolly
Harry Potter: The Complete Collection - JK Rowling
The Revenant - Michael Punke
What You See Is What You Get - Alan Sugar
A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
New York - Edward Rutherfurd
Outlander - Diane Gabaldon
The Road - Cormac McCarthy
The Hitchiker's Guide To The Galaxy : The Trilogy of Five - Douglas Adams
Anathem - Neal Stephenson
Parkland - Vincent Bugliosi
My Year of Meats - Ruth Ozeki
Kamikaze Kangaroos! - Tony James Slater
The Godforsaken Daughter - Christine McKenna
Us - David Nicholls
The Snowden Files: The Inside Story of the World's Most Wanted Man - Luke Harding
The Last Runaway - Tracy Chevalier
The Little Book of Big History: The Story of Life, The Universe and Everything - Ian Crofton, Jeremy Black

The Old Ways: A Journey on Foot - Robert McFarlane

Introducing Psychology - Nigel Benson

The Girl You Left Behind - JoJo Moyes

The Painted Bridge - Wendy Wallace

When God Was A Rabbit - Sarah Winman

Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Secrethood - Rebecca Wells

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Books Purchased In 2015

 

 

Forgotten Victory: The First World War: Myths and Realities - Gary Sheffield

Extreme Sleeps: Adventures of a Wild Camper - Phoebe Smith

Secret Lives - Diane Chamberlain

Slaughterhouse-Five - Kurt Vonnegut

I Used To Know That: Stuff You Forgot From School - Caroline Taggart

We - Yevgeny Zamyatin

The Universe versus Alex Woods - Gavin Extence

The Miracle Inspector: A Dystopian Novel - Helen Smith

The Chronicles of St Mary's Boxset Vol 1 - Jodi Taylor

Canoeing the Congo: The First Source-to-Sea Descent of the Congo River - Phil Harwood

The Lies We Told - Diane Chamberlain

All I Ever Wanted - Kristan Higgins

Papillon - Henri Charriere

Warship - Joshua Dalzelle

The Proof of Love - Catherine Hall

The Atlantis Plague - AG Riddle

Stone Mattress: Nine Tales - Margaret Atwood

Lost At Sea: The Jon Ronson Mysteries - Jon Ronson

The Missionary Position: Mother Theresa in Theory and Practice - Christopher Hitchens

The Shadow Wife - Diane Chamberlain

The Journal of a Disappointed Man - Wilhelm Nero Pilate Barbellion

The Bay at Midnight - Diane Chamberlain

Shogun - James Clavell

The Confession - John Grisham

The Things We Have In Common - Tasha Kavanagh

Enigma - Robert Harris

Keeper of the Light - Diane Chamberlain

The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet - David Mitchell

Black Swan Green - David Mitchell

Number9dream - David Mitchell

The Courage Tree - Diane Chamberlain

The Invention of Wings - Sue Monk Kidd

The Martian Chronicles - Ray Bradbury

The Long Walk to Freedom - Nelson Mandela

The Good Father - Noah Hawley

Alone In Berlin - Hans Fallada

The Little Stranger - Sarah Waters

Wayfaring Stranger - James Lee Burke

Death of a River Guide - Richard Flanagan

The Windup Girl - Paolo Bacigalupi

Watership Down - Richard Adams

Middlesex - Jeffrey Eugenides

I Think You'll Find It's a Bit More Complicated Than That - Ben Goldacre

Do No Harm: Stories of Life, Death and Brain Surgery - Henry Marsh

Handle With Care - Jodi Picoult

The Wild Places - Robert McFarlane

The Grand Design - Stephen Hawking, Leonard Mlodinow

Annihilation - Jeff VanderMeer

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Books Purchased In 2014

 

The Luminaries - Eleanor Catton

One Summer: America 1927 - Bill Bryson

The Female Eunuch - Germaine Greer

Twelve Years a Slave - Solomon Northup

I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings - Maya Angelou

The Good Father - Diane Chamberlain

The Silver Linings Playbook - Matthew Quick

Summer's Child - Diane Chamberlain

The Default Line: The Inside Story of People, Banks and Entire Nations on Edge - Faisal Islam

Wilderness Survival Guide: The Practical Skills you need for the great outdoors - Joe O'Leary

The Thorn Birds - Colleen McCullough

False Impression - Jeffrey Archer

Exodus (Extinction Point, Book 2) - Paul Antony Jones

Dyatlov Pass - Alan K Baker

Lucky Planet: Why Earth is Exceptional - And What that Means for Life in the Universe - David Waltham

Stealing Phoenix - Joss Stirling

The Knot - Mark Watson

Rejoice! Rejoice! Britain in the 1980s - Alwyn Turner

Lifers - Jane Harvey-Berrick

Mary Poppins: The Complete Collection - P.L. Travers

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks - Rebecca Skloot

The Reapers Are the Angels - Alden Bell

The Dinner - Herman Koch

Gideon's Spies: The Inside Story of Israeli's Secret Service - Gordon Thomas

The Dreaming Void - Peter F Hamilton

The Complete Wizard of Oz Collection - L Frank Baum

Not A Drop to Drink - Mindy McGinnis

Love, Poverty and War: Journeys and Essays - Christopher Hitchens

Pattern Recognition - William Gibson

Falling Angels - Tracy Chevalier

Every Living Thing - James Herriot

The Secret Keeper - Kate Morton

Catastrophe: Europe Goes to War 1914 - Max Hastings

The 33 Strategies of War - Robert Greene

Requiem for a Dream - Hubert Selby Jnr

Introducing Quantum Theory: A Graphic Guide - JP McEvoy, Oscar Zarate

Robopocalypse - Daniel H Wilson

A Prisoner of Birth - Jeffrey Archer

We Need to Talk About Kevin - Lionel Shriver

Judas Unchained - Peter F Hamilton

The Men Who Stare At Goats - Jon Ronson

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Books Purchased In 2013

 

The Happiness Trap: Stop Struggling, Start Living - Russ Harris
The Reality Dysfunction - Peter F. Hamilton

Incoming! Or Why We Should Stop Worrying and learn to Love the Meteorite - Ted Nield
Sworn Secret - Amanda Jennings
1493: How the Ecological Collision of Europe and the Americas Gave Rise to the Modern World - Charles C. Mann

White Fang - Jack London
Deceived Wisdom: Why What You Thought Was Right Is Wrong - David Bradley
Uncle Tom's Cabin - Harriet Beecher Stowe

Great Apes - Will Self

Boneshaker - Cherie Priest

The Phoenix Conspiracy - Richard Sanders

The Virgin Suicides - Jeffrey Eugenides

Good Strategy/Bad Strategy: The Difference and Why it Matters - Richard Rumelt

You Are Not So Smart: Why Your Memory is Mostly Fiction, Why You Have Too Many Friends On Facebook, and 46 Other Ways You're Deluding Yourself - David McRaney

The Distant Hours - Kate Morton

On Books and the Housing of Them - W E Gladstone

Born Liars: Why We Can't Live Without Deceit - Ian Leslie

The Korean War - Max Hastings

The Beach - Alex Garland

Kiss River - Diane Chamberlain

Snow Crash - Neal Stephenson

Au Revoir, Europe: What If Britain Left The EU? - David Charter

Bang! The Complete History of the Universe - Patrick Moore, Brian May, Chris Lintott

The Undercover Economist - Tim Harford

And Still I Rise - Doreen Lawrence

The Great Tax Robbery: How Britain Became a Tax Haven for Fat Cats and Big Business - Richard Brooks

QI The Book of the Dead - John Mitchinson, John Lloyd

How Do We Fix This Mess? - Robert Peston

The Complete Soldier Son Trilogy - Robin Hobb

The Glass Guardian - Linda Gillard

Great Expectations - Charles Dickens

Stuffed and Starved: From Farm to Fork - Raj Patel

All Hell Let Loose: The World at War: 1939 - 1945 - Max Hastings

Half of a Yellow Sun - Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Them: Adventures with Extremists - Jon Ronson

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Books Purchased In 2012

 

Supersense - Bruce Hood
What's Wrong With Eating People - Peter Cave
The Little Friend - Donna Tartt
Written In Stone - Brian Switek
QI: The Book of General Ignorance - The Noticeably Stouter Edition - John Lloyd and John Mitchinson

Quantum - Manjit Kumar
The Moonstone - Wilkie Collins
Fire and Ice (Liam Campbell #1) - Dana Stabenow
Compromised - Derek Keyte
QI: The Second Book of General Ignorance - John Lloyd and John Mitchinson
Mirage Men - Mark Pilkington

The Book of Human Skin - Michelle Lovric
The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change - Stephen Covey
The Complete Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
The Elephant Whisperer - Graham Spence and Anthony Lawrence
The Girl On The Wall - Jean Baggott
How to Raise the Perfect Dog: Through puppyhood and beyond - Cesar Millan
The Key To Rebecca - Ken Follett
Are We Nearly There Yet?: A Family's 8000 Miles Around Britain in a Vauxhall Astra - Ben Hatch

Farmer Buckley's Exploding Trousers : And other odd events on the way to scientific discovery - Stephanie Pain
Are You Smart Enough to Work at Google? - William Poundstone
The Making of Modern Britain - Andrew Marr
As The Crow Flies - Jeffrey Archer
The Happiness Equation: The Surprising Economics of Our Most Valuable Asset - Nick Powdthavee
Around the World in 80 Days Junior Edition - Jules Verne

An Atlas of Impossible Longing - Anuradha Roy
Daddy-Long-Legs - Jean Webster

Inflight Science: A Guide to the World from your Airplane Window - Brian Clegg

The World's Greatest Idea - John Farndon
The Etymologicon: A Circular Scroll through the Hidden Connections of the English Language - Mark Forsyth
One Million Tiny Plays About Britain - Craig Taylor

The Eleventh Commandment - Jeffrey Archer

Only Time Will Tell - Jeffrey Archer

Ash - James Herbert
Sarah Thornhill - Kate Grenville
VIII - H M Castor

Winter of the World - Ken Follet

Yesterday's Gone: Season Two - Sean Platt and David Wright
Times Echo - Pamela Hartshorne
Trojan Horse - Mark Russinovich
How Not To Worry: The Remarkable Truth of How a Small Change Can Help You Stress Less and Enjoy Life More - Paul McGee

The Dead Women of Juarez - Sam Hawken

Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett

The Horologicon: A Day's Jaunt Through The Lost Words of the English Language - Mark Forsyth
The History of the World In Bite-Sized Chunks - Emma Marriott

The Millenium Trilogy - Stieg Larsson

A History of 20th Century Britain - Andrew Marr
The Mess We're In: Why Politicians Can't Fix Financial Crises - Guy Fraser-Sampson
Yesterday's Country Customs: A History of English Folk Traditions - Hentry Buckton

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Books Purchased Pre - 2012

 

 

The Fire Gospel (Myths) - Michel Faber

Kidnapped - Robert Louis Stevenson
CK - 12 Biology 1 - Honors
CK - 12 Earth Science Honors for Middle School
The Legend of Sleepy Hollow - Washington Irving
Grimm's Fairy Stories - Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm
Gulliver's Travels - Jonathan Swift
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Wojtek the Bear: Polish War Hero - Aileen Orr
Killing the Messenger - Christopher Wallace
A Carpet Ride to Khiva: Seven Years on the Silk Road - Christopher Aslan Alexander
Guiness World Records: 2012
The Epigenetics Revolution: How Modern Biology is Rewriting our Understanding of Genetics, Disease and Inheritance - Nessa Carey
Introducing Neurolinguistic Programming - Neil Shah
Do Polar Bears Get Lonely? - New Scientist
Sapper Martin - Richard van Emden
Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
The Last Man - Mary Wollstonecraft Shelly
50 Facts That Should Change The World - Jessica Williams
The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds - Charles Mackay

The Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
The Reluctant Traveler - Bill Lumley
Diary of a Nobody - George Grossmith

 

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Audiobooks Purchased

 

The Fellowship of the Ring - JRR Tolkien

The Luminaries - Eleanor Catton

The Power - Naomi Alderman

11.22.63 - Stephen King

A Short History of Nearly Everything - Bill Bryson

The Silk Roads - Peter Frankopan

Three Things About Elsie - Joanna Cannon

The Help - Kathryn Stockett

The Woman In White - Wilkie Collins

Great North Road - Peter F Hamilton

Killers of the Flower Moon - David Grann

Roots - Alex Haley

The Three-Body Problem - Cixin Liu

Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine - Gail Honeyman

Crime and Punishment - Fydor Dostoevsky

Moby Dick - Herman Melville

Bleak House - Charles Dickens

Anne of Green Gables - Lucy Maud Montgomery

The Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas

23 Things They Don't Tell You About Capitalism - Ha-Joon Chang

I Can't Make This Up: Life Lessons - Kevin Hart

Pale Blue Dot - Carl Sagan

The Humans - Matt Haig

Middlemarch - George Eliot

Kafka on the Shore - Haruki Murakami

Rebecca - Daphne du Maurier

The Godfather - Mario Puzo

Station Eleven - Emily St John Mandel

Jeff Wayne's The War of the Worlds - HG Wells

The Left Hand of Darkness - Ursula K Le Guin

Norweigen Wood - Haruki Murakami

Alias Grace - Margaret Atwood

The Blind Assassin - Margaret Atwood

Jaws - Peter Benchley

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn - Mark Twain

 

 

 

 

Audiobooks Listened To

 

The Fellowship of the Ring - JRR Tolkien

The Power - Naomi Alderman

11.22.63 - Stephen King

A Short History of Nearly Everything - Bill Bryson

The Silk Roads - Peter Frankopan

Three Things About Elsie - Joanna Cannon

The Help - Kathryn Stockett

Great North Road - Peter F Hamilton

The Luminaries - Eleanor Catton

The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins

Edited by bobblybear
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On 19.7.2018 at 9:55 PM, bobblybear said:

Welcome to my belated book list!! :lol:

 

Thank you, happy to see it! :D  

 

On 19.7.2018 at 9:55 PM, bobblybear said:

 

I don't know what has happened this year. I've just had no motivation to write reviews, even though I have been reading and buying books like crazy!! I just seem to have lost my mojo in terms of putting my thoughts down in writing. :rolleyes: I'm not going to bother with conventional reviews for the rest of the year (no way I can catch up!), though I hope to at least be able to put some kind of thoughts down (no matter how brief) about the books I have read. 

 

I wouldn't worry about not having a mojo to write reviews, too much, because I feel like it's happened to a lot of people every now and then. The most important thing is that you've still kept reading and buying books! :lol:  

 

On 19.7.2018 at 9:55 PM, bobblybear said:

 

I hope everyone is having a great reading year so far, and may it continue throughout the second half of the year. :D

 

Here here! Or was it hear hear. I can't remember!! :alc:

 

On 19.7.2018 at 10:06 PM, bobblybear said:

Books Read This Year

A Fraction of the Whole - Steve Toltz

 

I'm curious, did you like it? No review necessary! I have the book on my TBR! :smile2: I think I'll like it! 

 

 

On 19.7.2018 at 10:06 PM, bobblybear said:

 

Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking - Susan Cain

 

Oooh I hope you liked this one! I've heard great things about it and found a copy of it earlier this year! :)

 

On the list of your purchased books, I really loved Cannery Row, Thirteen Reasons Why and Valley of the Dolls, plus A Clockwork Orange. I hope you will enjoy them when you get to them! :smile2:

 

Have a happy reading year 2018, bobbly dear! :smile2:

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Hi BB! I haven't written a review since March so no way I can catch up either :D Ah well!

 

Nice to see your belated book log and you've been reading an interesting selection. How was Nothing to Envy? I have it on my pile and have no conception at all about how it will go. Ominous that you also (as well as Willoyd) abandoned The Pilgrim - reckon I might leave that one languishing on the shelf a little longer...

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On 22/07/2018 at 11:33 AM, Alexi said:

Ominous that you also (as well as Willoyd) abandoned The Pilgrim - reckon I might leave that one languishing on the shelf a little longer...

 

I picked that up too.  Interested to know what you thought and why BB - my review was one of the more in-depth ones I've done this year, and there wasn't much good that I had to say about it.

 

Glad you haven't lost your reading mojo - that's the important bit!  There's some cracking looking books in your bought list for this year, especially the non-fiction; three near the top all stand out for me as they're on my TBR shelves too - the Tombs, Mukherjee and Walker volumes.  The first is a chunky looking read!

Edited by willoyd
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  • 3 months later...

First of all, thank you Hayley for getting the forum back up and running!! :flowers2:

 

I'm so far behind in reviews (about a year behind) that I have no way of catching up, but I will try to make some comments on the books that I finish from now on. Next year I will not let myself get so far behind! :o I have updated my lists at the top of this post, so you can see I have still been buying books and reading them, just not reviewing them!! I'm starting to slightly panic about ever getting through all the books I have been buying!!! :blush:

 

I've read 56 books so far, which I think is a lot! I recall when I'd try to hit 50 in a year, but that's when I was studying on top of working full-time. However, I have purchased 97 books so far this year, hence my panic. :lol:

 

Currently I'm reading Children of Time by Adrian Tchiakovsky. It's a sci-fi novel and brilliant and original so far.

 

I'm also listening to The Silk Roads by Peter Frankopan, but I am really struggling with it. I find it hard to stay focused and I'm wondering if it would have been better to read, rather than listen to. I think there is a lot of assumed knowledge, and he refers to so many names and places that I've not heard of before; and because he's mentioning these one after another, I can't stop and flip back to 'refresh my memory' (especially given that I do most of my listening while I'm driving). Anyway, I'm just listening to it to finish it now, though some parts are easier to follow (like when he was talking about the Plague); I've said before that I find fiction audiobooks much easier to listen to than non-fiction.

 

 

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5 hours ago, bobblybear said:

I've said before that I find fiction audiobooks much easier to listen to than non-fiction.

 

Over the years, I've listened to a fair number of audiobooks, although only intermittently now.  I can't imagine listening to a non-fiction book, unless it was a 'proper' story, like a lot of travel writing - which might perhaps be why fiction is so much easier to listen to?  As you say, I want to flick backwards and forwards too often, especially when reading something as dense as The Silk Roads (which I've dipped into and intend to read properly soon). 

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I've been listening to Stalingrad by Anthony Beevor and I have to admit its a bit hard going. I have listened to one other non-fiction audio book, Into the Black by Rowland White.  I really enjoyed it but the narrator did put on a few different voices during the reading which help a lot.

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On 11/11/2018 at 1:51 PM, willoyd said:

 

Over the years, I've listened to a fair number of audiobooks, although only intermittently now.  I can't imagine listening to a non-fiction book, unless it was a 'proper' story, like a lot of travel writing - which might perhaps be why fiction is so much easier to listen to?  As you say, I want to flick backwards and forwards too often, especially when reading something as dense as The Silk Roads (which I've dipped into and intend to read properly soon). 

 

The Silk Roads is very dense! So much detail, and I think without a lot of prior knowledge on the subject it's very difficult to listen to and absorb it all.  I have one more non-fiction on Audible; after I read that one, I will stick with fiction!

 

On 11/11/2018 at 7:45 PM, Brian. said:

I've been listening to Stalingrad by Anthony Beevor and I have to admit its a bit hard going. I have listened to one other non-fiction audio book, Into the Black by Rowland White.  I really enjoyed it but the narrator did put on a few different voices during the reading which help a lot.

 

The narrator of The Silk Roads has put on a few accents, which are fairly amusing. Reading the reviews on Audible though, a lot of people seem to take offense at the accents. Some of them do sound comically stereotypical, especially the Indian ones. :lol:

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Yes, that's the one. I thought it was ok, but not brilliant. I think haunted house stories are hard to write without getting into 'cliche' territory. I much preferred We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson, which was far more understated. 

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2 hours ago, bobblybear said:

Yes, that's the one. I thought it was ok, but not brilliant. I think haunted house stories are hard to write without getting into 'cliche' territory. I much preferred We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson, which was far more understated. 

The tv show is good, but a bit slow in my opinion. I might add 'We Have Always Lived in the Castle' to my TBR list.

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  • 3 weeks later...

I've finished a few books in the last couple of weeks.

 

Children of Time - Adrian Tchiakovsky

 

Very enjoyable SF. I thought the concept was original but as I don't read a huge amount of SF it may have been done before. 

 

The book follows two main storylines. The last surviving group of humans are trapped on a spaceship desperately looking for a place to land and start anew. They find a world that had previously been terraformed for human inhabitation, but on landing they are met with significant resistance from the inhabitants and have to leave pretty much straight away. However, as it's the only suitable planet they make their plans - over many, many generations - to take over the planet. One storyline follows those on the spaceship, the other storyline follows those on the planet.

 

Really loved this, especially the first chapter when it becomes apparent what is about to happen. I thought the middle section was a bit drawn out, but that could have been because I wanted to find out what happened next, as soon as possible.

 

Picking Up The Pieces - Paul Britton

 

Written by a top British psychologist, he covers some very well known criminal cases and also his experiences of dealing with people who are teetering on the edge of committing very violent crimes. I love books like this and he is so good a describing what makes these people tick and how he has managed to help them. Fascinating stuff.

 

The Luminaries - Eleanor Catton

 

I listened to this on Audible as well as reading it on Kindle. It's the first time I've managed to do that, and I enjoyed the experience. It also made me finish the book far quicker than if I'd just been reading it.

 

It has received mixed reviews, but I loved it. The story (based around the New Zealand gold rush of the 1800s) is fairly convoluted and doubles back on itself; it requires a lot of concentration to get the timeline right but even if you get muddled, never mind....the enjoyment is more in the storytelling rather than the plot. It is essentially a tale of mystery (one man is missing and another has been found dead in his cottage), in which 12 men - each with some involvement - try to resolve.

 

It's a big book (800+ pages; 29+ hours audio), but there is not a lot of action. I'd say at least a third of it revolves around the characters telling their side of events. I loved reading/listening to every word, but I can see how some people find it laborious. If you are looking for something plot driven then this probably isn't for you.

 

It's one of my highlights of the year. :) 

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