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Andrea's reading in 2011


~Andrea~

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Books completed in 2011:

 

Crime and Punishment - Dostoyevski (audio book)

Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

Frankenstein - Mary Shelley (audio book)

The Mayor of Castorbridge - Thomas Hardy (audio book)

The Face - Dean Koontz

What the Bible really teaches - Keith Ward

Acid Row - Minnette Walters

The little Prince - Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

It - Stephen King

The Clan of the Cave Bear - Jean M Auel

Bywyd Blodwen Jones

Why there almost certainly is a God - Keith Ward

The Little Friend - Donna Tartt

Oliver Twist (audio)

While I'm still an anglican - Caroline Chartres

About Time - Paul Davies

Royal Assassin - Robin Hobb

 

Currently reading:

Clean Code - Robert Martin

God of Surprises - Gerard Hughes

Edited by ~Andrea~
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Unread books on the bookshelf:

 

Acquired pre 2009

 

1 Minnette Walters - The shape of snakes

2 Minnette Walters - Acid Row

3 Logic - A very short introduction

4 Wilkie Collins The Woman in White

5 Chaucer - The Canterbury Tales (modern translation)

6 From the Holy Mountain - William Dalrymple

7 Alice through the looking glass - Lewis Carrol

8 Joanna Trollope - The men and the girls

10 Damaged - Cathy Glass

11 The Essential tales of Chekhov

12 Othello

13 The Merchant of Venice

14 The face - Dean Koontz

15 Julius Caesar

16 Twelfth night

17 A Winter's tale

18 Oliver Twist (audio)

19 The Mayor of Castorbridge (audio)

20 Frankenstein (audio)

21 Middlemarch (audio)

22 Crime and punishment (audio)

23 The French Leuitenant's woman

 

Begin year size: 23

End year size: 16

 

Acquired 2009

 

1 The Soldier's return - Melvyn Bragg

2 The Rime of the Ancient Mariner - Coleridge

3 Collected works of Tennyson

4 The Secret of Crickely Hall - James Herbert

5 About Time - Paul Davies

6 It - Stephen King

7 The Great Turning points of British History

8 The Making of Modern Britain - Andrew Marr

 

Begin year size: 8

End year size: 6

 

Books acquired 2010:

1 Arthur C Clarke - A Fall of moondust (Feb)

2 Tess Gerritson - The Apprentice (4 Dec)

3 The Little Prince - Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's (11 Dec)

4 Bywyd Blodwen Jones (11 Dec)

5 Ray Bradbury - The Martian Chronicles (16 Dec)

6 Elizabeth Kostova - The Historian (25 Dec)

7 Donna Tartt - The Little Friend (25 Dec)

8 Why I am Still an Anglican - Caroline Chartres (25 Dec)

9 What the Bible really teaches - Keith Ward

10 Clan of the Cave Bear - Jean M. Auel

 

Begin year size: 10

End year size: 4

 

Books acquired 2011

 

Clean Code - Robert Martin

Why there almost certainly is a God - Keith Ward

Shakespeare's Landlord - Charlaine Harris

I Partridge - Alan Partridge (audio)

To Kill A Mockingbird - Harper Lee/Sissy Spacek (audio)

More Than Matter - Keith Ward

Hens reunited - Lucy Diamond

Search dogs and me - Neil Powell

Silver Birches - Adrian Plass

Six easy pieces - Richard Feynmann

Think, a compelling introduction to philosophy - Simon Blackburn

The everlasting man - G K Chesterton

The great divorce - C S Lewis

Brighton Rock - Grahame Greene (audio)

The adventures of Sherlock Holmes volume 1 - Arthur Conan Doyle (audio)

Blodwen Jones a'r aderyn prin - Bethan Gwenas (a novel for welsh learners

 

Begin year size: 0

End year size: 15

 

Total Begin year size: 41

Max size: 41

Min size: 32

Current Size: 41

End year size:41

Edited by ~Andrea~
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The Wish List (will there ever be time?)

 

Ambrose, David - Superstition

Beah, Ishmael - Memoirs of a Boy Soldier

Bradbury, Ray - Something Wicked this way comes

Barker, Clive - Weaveworld

Challis, Sarah - Footprints in the sand

Chesterton, G K - Orthodoxy

Conan Doyle, Arthur - The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes

Conran, Shirley - Savages

Coupland, Douglas - Microserfs/JPod

Du Maurier, Daphne - Rebecca

Du Maurier, Daphne - The House on the Strand

L'Engle, Madeleine - A Wrinkle in Time

Greene, Grahame - Brighton Rock

Greene, Grahame - The Third Man & The Fallen Idol

Haugen, Gary (IJM) - Just Courage

Highsmith, Patricia - The Talented Mr Ripley

Hinton, Susan- Rumble Fish

Hodgson, Burnett Frances - The Secret Garden

Keyes, Daniel - Flowers for Algernon

Koontz, Dean - The Mask

Koontz, Dean - From The Corner Of His Eye

Koontz, Dean - False Memory

Koontz, Dean - Odd Thomas

London, Jack - White Fang

Neville, Adam - Apartment 16

Milne, A. A. Winnie the Pooh - complete short stories and poems

Mitchell, Margaret - Gone With the Wind

Niffenegger, Audrey - The Time Travellers Wife

Pargeter, Edith - The Heaven Tree

Rayner, Jay - The Oyster House Siege

Tolkein - LOTR

Trueman, Terry - Stuck in neutral

Trigell, Jonathan - Boy A

Wheatley, Dennis - The Haunting of Toby Jugg

Wyndham, John - Chocky

Wyndham, John - The Kraken awakes

Watson, S J - Before I go to sleep

Ruiz Zafon, Carlos - The Shadow Of The Wind

Ruiz Zafon, Carlos - The Angel's Game

Ryan, Carrie - The Forest Of Hands & Teeth

Zusak, Markus - The Book Thief

Edited by ~Andrea~
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Well I've been reading Les Mis for nearly 3 months now :rolleyes:. I hope I'll finish it by the end of the month. I'm a little disappointed by my reading efforts last year. I only managed to complete 15 books, although I enjoyed some great reads, and I suppose not all of them were easy - the 2 on quantum physics were certainly no picnic, but very satisfying and another book was in a second language!

I also read some great fiction, Pet Semetary and The Seance spring to mind, and discovered new authors noteably Robin Hobb, who I look forward to enjoying a lot more of.

Another good thing: my TBR went down by 5 books overall which I am really pleased about. It's nice to finally make a bit of a dent rather than watch it grow year on year. Hopefully this year I'll do even better, get through the backlog and read a lot more!

Edited by ~Andrea~
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  • 2 weeks later...

When I first started listening to C&P in the car I found it really hard to concentrate and my mind wandered all over the place. However, loving it now. Think I was just really tired at first - I have been doing loads of overtime lately and worked a weekend (working 12 days in a row can really take it out of a girl) but after a few early nights am finally feeling back to myself. I love getting in the car now. I think audio books are going to become my new thing!!

 

On page 975 of Les Mis - nearly there!!

Edited by ~Andrea~
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Hi Andrea - good to hear that you've been bitten by the audiobook bug! I have to say that since I've been able to use my iPod in the car, I've stopped listening to audiobooks and tend to stick with podcasts or music, but I can't deny that if we go on a long journey, I love nothing more than to listen to Stephen Fry reading the Harry Potter books to me :smile2:

 

Congrats on almost finishing Les Mis too, must feel like it's taken forever! :lol:

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Finished Crime and Punishment today. I had no idea what to expect when I started listening to this, but wow - it was fantastic, a really gripping story, which has made my journey to and from work thoroughly enjoyable for the last week or so. Yes ok, it was abridged, so perhaps I missed out because of that, but hey, maybe I'll read the full book one day. Still I really enjoyed having Alex Jennings accompanying me in my car rides and relying this suspenseful and rather (in parts) gruesome tale.

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I started listening to Frankenstein on audio today. I tried to read this book many years ago and found it rather dull and didn't get far at all. I am afraid I will have the same problem with the cd, although it is abridged which may help, but so far it is only faintly holding my attention.

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Hurrah - I have fnished Les Miserables! It only took me four months lol. It was a cracking read, but I feel it could have easily been 400 pages shorter and been none the worse for it. The story is a real page turner, but there are so many asides, many of them rather dull, that really detract from the story and make the book much more of a chore than it needs to be.

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Well as suspected I am finding Frankenstein unsufferably tedious. I am two thirds through it and will finish it for the sake of completion but cannot wait for it to come to an end.

 

I started reading a theology book a couple of nights ago: What the Bible really teaches by Keith Ward. It's very interesting but I suspect I may need some light fiction to go alongside it. I have Dean Koontz's "The Face" on the bookshelf - I think it's calling to me lol.

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Started "The Face" by Dean Koontz last night. Another tome - over 600 pages :rolleyes: Hopefully it won't be another Les Mis (I am sure it won't be, I'll race* through it I know)

 

*relatively - me racing through books is not a usual occurrence :D)

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I finished Frankenstein (audio) the other day and I think it's fair to say I HATED it. I listened to the whole thing just for a sense of completion but did not enjoy a word of it. I thought the writing was awful and the story stupid. Yes I know she was only 18 when she wrote it, all I can say is: it shows.

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. Yes I know she was only 18 when she wrote it, all I can say is: it shows.

 

 

That made me laugh, I've never really felt inclined to read Frankenstein maybe because I didn't find him particularly scary on screen.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Hurrah - I have fnished Les Miserables! It only took me four months lol. It was a cracking read, but I feel it could have easily been 400 pages shorter and been none the worse for it. The story is a real page turner, but there are so many asides, many of them rather dull, that really detract from the story and make the book much more of a chore than it needs to be.

 

 

I do so agree! But you must feel good at having read it - at least I did! :)

 

I promise - if you are joining in for April's book circle - it is nothing like Les Mis :)

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  • 2 weeks later...

Oh I did. I am very glad to have read it, but I do feel like giving Hugo a bit of a shake lol!

 

I finished listening to The Mayor of Castorbridge today. It was a cracking listen, full of twists and turns - at one point I audibly gasped. It's typical Hardy though - expect no fairytale endings! Very enjoyable all the same.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Finished What the Bible really teaches last night. I found it a very interesting and helpful read. It's subtitle is "A challenge for fundamentalists" and it criticizes lots of fundamentalist teachings, of which I have received my fair share over time! I really enjoyed this and it has helped me to see the bible in a new way. Hopefully I will be able to start reading it again, minus my baggage.

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What the Bible Really Teaches sounds an interesting read, Andrea, I often think that many churches/christians just seem to make things up as they go along with no grounding in the Bible at all! :)

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