Ooshie

Pretty much just a list this year, with these few comments: Most disturbing read - Beyond Black by Hilary Mantel Most moving read - Stoner by John Williams Most surprisingly enjoyable read - I Let You Go by Clare Mackintosh Most surprisingly disappointing read - I Am Pilgrim by Terry Hayes Oh, and apologies for not taking the time to alphabetize my list properly - I know it will have irritated some of you intensely!

Books Read in 2016 - 52 A Game for All The Family Sophie Hannah A God in Ruins Kate Atkinson A Start In Life Anita Brookner Beyond Black Hilary Mantel Breakfast at Tiffany’s Truman Capote Career of Evil Robert Galbraith Cold Kill P J Tracy Dead Simple Peter James Doctor Fischer of Geneva Graham Greene Family and Friends Anita Brookner Finders Keepers Stephen King Friday on my Mind Nicci French Gray Mountain John Grisham High-Rise J G Ballard Hotel du Lac Anita Brookner I Am Pilgrim Terry Hayes I Let You Go Clare Mackintosh Lewis Percy Anita Brookner Liar’s Chair Rebecca Whitney Life after Life Kate Atkinson Little Boy Blue M J Aldridge Look at Me Anita Brookner Looking Good Dead Peter James Of Mice and Men John Steinbeck Only We Know Karen Perry Providence Anita Brookner Second Life S J Watson Speaking in Bones Kathy Reichs Still Alice Lisa Genova Stoner John Williams Suite Francaise Irene Nemirovsky The Call of the Wild Jack London The Chosen Dead M R Hall The Cozy Life Pia Edberg The Darkest Day Tom Wood The Girl on the Train Paula Hawkins The Hit David Baldacci The Ice Twins S K Tremayne The Little Book of Hygge Meik Wiking The Loney Andrew Michael Hurley The Perfume Collector Katherine Tessaro The Revenant Michael Punke The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam Edward FitzGerald The Slaughter Man Tony Parsons The Spell Alan Hollinghurst The Swedish Girl Alex Gray The Weight of Silence Heather Gudenkauf The Wolves of Willoughby Chase Joan Aiken The Yellow Admiral Patrick O’Brian Waiting for Wednesday Nicci French Whatever You Love Louise Doughty X Sue Grafton

I didn't get quite as much reading done as I had hoped, but I did read the whole of The Spell by Alan Hollinghurst (257 pages). I always love reading everyone else's statistics, even though they do make my attempts look very paltry! :-)

I disappeared in the middle of the last read-a-thon, not on purpose but because I had somehow managed to lock myself out of my account and then couldn't set myself a new password! I haven't been having a good month, technology-wise Anyway, this weekend suits me very as well as I have a day off on Monday so that gives me a bit extra reading time.

I don't usually manage to start on a Friday, but made a wee beginning with The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam - just 70 pages including introduction but a lovely illustrated edition which meant I spent as much time looking at the pictures as reading! Good reading, everyone :-)

Good idea! It would be a shame to waste good reading time when you are in the mood to get started on your read-a-thon. I will definitely be joining in, but haven't chosen any books yet; I prefer just choosing what I am in the mood for rather than too much planning ahead :-)

Hello David, welcome to the forum; I hope you enjoy looking around. :-)

What a great list - I look forward to learning what you think of your choices. I didn't think I would have read many of them but have actually read 14 out the 51 so not too bad. Of those you haven't already read, I loved Lonesome Dove and The Secret History, and from what I remember very much liked Snow Falling on Cedars.

I only read about ten more pages of Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee, but then read the whole of Dr Fischer of Geneva or The Bomb Party by Graham Greene (140 pages). I think I do better in the read-a-thons when I read several short books rather than trying to read a longer book so I will go back to that next time I think!

Today I have read 200 pages of Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee by Dee Brown; it's a very interesting (although slightly depressing) read, but it's a big hardback book so I might choose a paperback to read in bed :-)

You did better than I did, I only managed 7 pages of The Revenant by Michael :Punke before nodding off last night!

I'm at work tomorrow and meeting a friend in the evening so don't think I will get too much reading done on Friday, but I hope to join in properly on Saturday and Sunday! :-)

I loved the original series and was pleased to see it coming back, although a bit wary of just how bad it might be! I thought episode 1 was ok - not great, but better than I had feared. Definitely good enough to keep me watching, especially if future episodes are getting better responses :-)

I have In Cold Blood on my TBR pile, it will certainly be very, very different! I enjoyed Breakfast at Tiffany's even more than I expected; although the Holly Golightly character has some differences in the book, it was still Audrey Hepburn's voice I kept hearing in my head. In the introduction it mentioned that Marilyn Monroe was originally considered for the part but turned it down, it's hard to imagine her in it now. It's quite satisfying completing a book even if you don't manage as much reading time as you intended, isn't it? I haven't read any Philip K Dick for a while, although I am watching The Man in the High Castle on Amazon Prime just now. Did you enjoy Eye in the Sky?

Just finished The Wolves of Willoughby Chase, so my totals are: The Call of the Wild - 91 pages Breakfast at Tiffany's - 107 pages The Wolves of Willoughby Chase - 185 pages making a grand total of 383 pages. Not a huge amount, but very satisfying having finished three short books, none of which I had read before. And, most important of all, I really enjoyed them! Hope everybody else enjoyed their reading too; I'm looking forward to next month's already!

Aw, that's a shame Athena; hope you feel a bit better today I'm glad you enjoyed your reading when you were feeling up to it though. I decided on The Wolves of Willoughby Chase by Joan Aiken as my third book, reading something with a wintery theme at this time of year appealed to me. The Call of the Wild was a bit wintery too, but not all the way through.

I was working yesterday, and out for quite a lot of today but am enjoying packing in all the reading I can! I collect Folio Society books but recently have been buying way more than I have been reading, so I decided to focus on some of my unread purchases this weekend. So far I have read The Call of the Wild by Jack London, and most of Breakfast at Tiffany's by Truman Capote; I should finish it tonight. I haven't decided which book to choose for tomorrow, I might go for another short one try for three in three days :-)

I enjoyed all three books, and will read the next one too when it comes out, so from my point of view it would be worth you continuing. Hope you enjoy the others too if you decide to give them a try :-)

Oh, wow, I didn't even realise a film was in the pipeline so thanks for the warning! I really need to get started on it; it's a hardback though, and although I love my hardbacks, paperbacks are just so much more convenient and end up getting read first.

Hello Sylvia, I hope you enjoy the forum - you certainly wouldn't have had much time for reading with four boys to look after! What sort of books do you like?

Hello Kelly, nice to hear from you, I have The 5th Wave on my pile of books waiting to be read, so I look forward to hearing what you think of it. Enjoy yourself on the forum!

If you would like another series, I wondered whether you might like the Aubrey-Maturin series by Patrick O'Brian (the film Master and Commander was based on three books from the series). To check my idea, I entered 'Bernard Cornwell' into Literature-Map, and Patrick O'Brian is one of the four authors who come closest to him; the idea is that the closer two authors are, the more likely it is that a reader will like both of them, so they might be worth you looking at. Good luck with your hunting!

I had heard of Epiphany but didn't know what it was - the wee bit of googling I did seems to show that it is on the 12th day of Christmas and that is when the visit of the three kings to the baby Jesus took place (the word Epiphany meaning 'to show', and this being Jesus shown to the world). I had never thought much about the 12th day itself, although where I live it is still a tradition that the Christmas decorations should be taken down by 12th night. Apparently in mediaeval times Christmas was celebrated from Christmas Eve to Epiphany; I actually really like that idea and it's what I tend to do although just as a matter of preference rather than because I realised there was a tradition behind it. I hope you had an enjoyable Epiphany celebration, Sabry, I'm sure you will let me know if I have got its origin totally wrong! Do you get more gifts at on Christmas Day itself and just a few on Epiphany, or is it equal between the two?

I have read both, although about 30 years ago - I read Anna Karenina in my teens, and War and Peace in my late twenties. It's so long ago that I can't remember details, but I did enjoy both, and have new editions of both on my TBR list. If you enjoyed Anna Karenina, I don't see any reason at all that War and Peace would be over your head. The length of the book could certainly be a bit daunting, but I read it in my lunch hours at work so never stressed about how much time I had to read or how long it was going to take me, I just read it for an hour, five days a week, until it was finished (I don't remember now how many weeks it took to finish, but it wasn't a terribly long time at all). The one thing I seem to remember about War and Peace is that the chapters (or sections? I can't quite remember) are often being about 'society' or about 'war'. I often found that when I had been very involved in the writing about one aspect, it sometimes took me a page or two to get into the other when they changed.

My last book of 2015 was The Commodore by Patrick O'Brian - number seventeen in the Aubrey-Maturin series. As you will guess, for me to have got to number seventeen in a series they are pretty consistently enjoyable, and this one was no disappointment. I will be really sad to get to the end of the series, which will probably be this year.