Ben

Well with the final thoughts of 2012 typed up the reading review signals the start of a new year of books, and hopefully a good one. As I finished the final book of 2012 not so long ago - The Golem's Eye by Jonathan Stroud (which I'd thoroughly recommend) - I thought I'd wait until midnight to start this year's adventures, as it only seemed fitting. With just forty-five minutes go, I can safely say I'm excited to get started.

2012 Reading Review Being a huge lover of ridiculous rants about books and all the weird and wonderful things they entail, I always take pleasure in writing my end-of-year reading review (even if isn't read by anyone I enjoy writing it, which is the most important thing). I'm delighted to first and foremost announce that this was my best reading year since I started keeping track, with a respectable total of 81 books completed. January and February started exceptionally well despite juggling the usual revision, and the latter month was my biggest ever with a total of 19 books completed. Some of my favourites included A Room With A View by E.M. Forster, and a book that shoots into my top ten of all-time, Birdsong by Sebastian Faulks. I also enjoyed amongst others, a number of Sherlock Holmes stories, the majority of the Darren Shan saga, and Alex Connor's second thriller Legacy of Blood. That's not to mention Stoker's Dracula and Dickens' Great Expectations. All in all then, an exceptional start to the year, and March, although slower, still presented me with some good reads. Principally, I tackled the Hunger Games trilogy by Suzanne Collins, which I enjoyed immensely, and which I think deserved the attention and the subsequent film adaptations. My Shakesperian education continued from February's A Midsummer Night's Dream to include Much Ado About Nothing and Love's Labour's Lost, amongst others on my university module. Netherland by Joseph O' Neil was an excellently unique novel to top off another good month. April involved a heavy start with D.H. Lawrence's Sons and Lovers which although wasn't terrible, it didn't make me feel like I'd be leaping back into her novels any time soon. I read some crime fiction with Raymond Chandler's Farewell, My Lovely and Devil In A Blue Dress by Walter Mosley, both of which were decent reads. Jane Eyre was excellent, as was Percy Bysshe Shelley's Zastrozzi. I wrapped up the month with the last three books in the Darren Shan saga. May and June were excellent reading months, a mixture of review books and classics. The Good Father was the pick of the review books for me, an excellent tale of the importance of journeys, and a search for identity. Yet Andrew Nicoll's rip-roaring comedy If You're Reading This I'm Already Dead ran it an entertainingly close second. Interspersed with these, I read some outstanding classics. Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier, the wonderful and sprawling The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas, the exceptional To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee, and Joseph Heller's utterly brilliant Catch-22. With July a disappointing and unacceptable zero-books-read month, when August rolled around I continued George R. R. Martin's epic fantasy series, which I started in June with A Game of Thrones. Second in the series, A Clash of Kings really starts to get the narrative moving, and I'm excited to get to Storm of Swords in the following twelve months. In August I also read the book that took the world by storm: E. L. James' terrible 50 Shades of Grey. To wrap up the month I started on some of my university books; thoroughly entertained by Jean Rhys' Wide Sargasso Sea but not so much by Horace Walpole's Castle of Otranto. September and October was go-go-go university reading, and so I tackled it furiously. My post-colonial module delivered the best books: Foe by J. M. Coetzee, Shame by Salman Rushdie (definitely need to read more of him sooner rather than later), The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje, and finally the excellent Nervous Conditions by Tsitsi Dangarembga. Nothing exceptional stood out to me in the other modules, only my re-read of Frankenstein by Mary Shelley which is one of my favourite classics. The highlight of the Victorian module was definitely Tess of the D'urbervilles which I found to be a great read, but the rest on the course were hard-going and mostly disappointing (particularly George Eliot's arduous Felix Holt: The Radical). Novemer was a slow both due to finishing assingments and revision for my December exams, and as a result I only read the rather marvellous The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath (a book I've wanted to read for a while, and most certainly did not disappoint). I eased out the year with some light-hearted reads, namely The Hobbit by J. R. R. Tolkien, and the opening two novels of the Bartimeaus trilogy by Jonathan Stround (which begins with the brilliant Amulet of Samarakand). I also thouroughly enjoyed Alex Connor's latest offering, The Memory of Bones which could even be her best yet. All in all then, no complains. I've had some absolutely marvellous books this year, and although I had long periods of non-reading time, I finished with a solid total. With the exams out of the way in December, I should hit the ground running, beginning with a splurge of university reads in the coming months. It's been a brilliant year, and here's to 2013. Hoping it's a great one for all. Let's see if I can finally track that elusive 100-book total down.

Well, I've just finished Jonathan Stroud's rather excellent The Golem's Eye, the second book in the original Bartimeaus trilogy, and with it my total books for the year rests at a respectable 81. I have really enjoyed this series but as I can remember exactly what happens in the final book, and have many university books to read, I think that I'll leave this series there. Now all that's left to do is write my reading review for the year in the following post, and to get choosing my first book of 2013.

I've wanted to read The Stand for years now, could be another ambitious 2013 project for me.

I read Rebecca this year, thought it was excellent. I'm determined to get around to more King this year, I've left it far too long already. I think I shall too, there's far too many good books waiting on my list for it not to be the case.

Hehe, me neither. Right back at you, here's hoping we both have a good 2013.

Hopefully that means a whole bunch of cracking reads. You too, hope 2013 is good to you.

One of the more manageable ones, I think that's why it's one of my favourites. Will definitely be ticking more off in 2013. Best of luck to you with your reading adventures, hope it's a good year.

Was much easier after doing all the organising last year. Thanks, you too Mona.

Best of luck with your 2013 reads VF mate, hope you have some crackers. As for ratings, I've changed mine to out of ten this year, for the first time, as I've found that I can give 5/5 to different books but one will be miles better than the other. I'm hoping my new rating system gives me a better chance of differentiating between my levels of enjoyment with different books. Edit: 5,000th post, woo.

Right, everyone stop saying how long and ambitious it is, doesn't make it any easier. Haha, yes, fun it will be. Best of luck for your 2013 reading year, Hayley.

Don't remind me. Best of luck to you too, Kat. I'm hoping this is my year for the classics, really determined to get through a fair few. Ooh, which are your personal favourites? Filling me with confidence, Brian. Best of luck to you too.

That's interesting. I think perhaps if I didn't enjoy reading so much then it would have a serious affect. I've really never found studying to take away the enjoyment of a text, though, even back at school. I studied every inch of The Great Gatsby because of re-sits and whatnot, and it's still one of my favourite books to date. I certainly feel relieved that it doesn't ruin my enjoyment.

Hey Noll, best of luck with your 2013 reads, you have some great books waiting on TBR. Khaled Housseini's The Kite Runner and Gabriel Garcia Marquez's Love In The Time Of Cholera are ones that stand out to me. Particularly the latter, which I really enjoyed. The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo is also well worth the read, although a bit long-winded in places. I also studied The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje at university this year, and that was fantastic. Also, the Artemis Fowl books are one of my favourite childhood series'. Well, enjoy, will follow your thoughts with interest.

Thanks Bree, right back at you. I think considering my massive list as beautiful is a good idea, will make me forget the fact it's not going down. Oh well I'm sure there'll be some that I dislike too, wouldn't be the same otherwise. Hmm, it's an interesting question. I mean, it definitely hasn't stopped me from having fun while reading recreationally, but I think that's because I can separate studying texts from just actually reading them. When I'm reading books for university I tend to read them in relation to themes and background information we've learned. When it's just casual reading I usually haven't studied the context. Don't know if that helps. Hey Devi, happy reading to you too. Thanks Kylie, it is good isn't it?! Dead excited. Good luck with your 2013 reading too. You too, Noll. Hope it's great year for you. Haha, it certainly is.. You too Alexi, happy reading for 2013. Thanks, I'll make sure there's something worth reading then.

Oh Frankie how I wish my lists were in the same league as yours, brilliant and I look forward to following your thoughts on your literary abandonment during 2013. I hope it's a great year for you, and that you have some wonderful reads.

Hey, Claire. Your numbers always amaze me, consistently 130+ for four years is incredible; I've never managed to hit 100 in a single year, but I'll do my best to rectify that in the following twelve months. Anyway, happy reading for 2013, subscribed and look forward to reading your thoughts on everything, hope it's a great year for you.

Yep, it was pretty big at the start of last year too so I think I've just accepted it might not ever go down at all. It's like starting a new exercise book at school, everything is so neat and fresh; a blank slate that holds so much promise and potential. I can't wait to go round and follow everyone's reading pages (which I'm sure I'll be doing in the next couple of days). They're all full of exciting new lists and whatnot, it's great.

Ah I hate endings that suck, damn. White Teeth looks promising now though, I actually thought it looked good when I read the blurb.

Well, here it goes, a new topic and hopefully the start of my best ever reading year. It's a bold claim, but I'm really excited to see what literary adventures 2013 will bring. I intend to read a lot more classics this year, and will finally get around to Tolstoy's War and Peace and hopefully Joyce's Ulysses too. I'm hoping to be more conscientious with my reviews, and much better organised over all. I'm not going to make any claims about reducing my to-be-read pile, as the amount of books I have to purchase for university often makes this impossible. Similarly with reading purchases. I'm also putting down the tentative idea that I'll have my first ever year completing 100 books. It'll mean not falling off the pace like I usually do, but we shall see. Happy 2013 reading to you all, and definitely don't be strangers.

Reserved (Just in case).

The Sherlock Holmes Challenge (Bold indicates read) (Bold and medium blue indicates read in 2013) A Study in Scarlet (1887) (Novel) The Sign of the Four (1890) (Novel) The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (1892) 'A Scandal in Bohemia' 'The Red-headed League' 'A Case of Identity' 'The Boscombe Valley Mystery' 'The Five Orange Pips' 'The Man with the Twisted Lip' 'The Blue Carbuncle' 'The Speckled Band' 'The Engineer’s Thumb' 'The Noble Bachelor' 'The Beryl Coronet' 'The Copper Beeches' The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes (1894) 'Silver Blaze' 'The Yellow Face' 'The Stock-broker’s Clerk' 'The ‘Gloria Scott' 'The Musgrave Ritual' 'The Reigate Squires' 'The Crooked Man' 'The Resident Patient' 'The Greek Interpreter' 'The Naval Treaty' 'The Final Problem' The Hound of the Baskervilles (1902) (Novel) The Return of Sherlock Holmes (1905) 'The Empty House' 'The Norwood Builder' 'The Dancing Men' 'The Solitary Cyclist' 'The Priory School' 'Black Peter' 'Charles Augustus Milverton' 'The Six Napoleons' 'The Three Students' 'The Golden Pince-Nez' 'The Missing Three-Quarter' 'The Abbey Grange' 'The Second Stain' The Valley of Fear (1915) (Novel) His Last Bow (1917) 'Wisteria Lodge' 'The Cardboard Box' 'The Red Circle' 'The Bruce-Partington Plans' 'The Dying Detective' 'Lady Frances Carfax' 'The Devil’s Foot' 'His Last Bow' The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes (1927)* 'The Illustrious Client' 'The Blanched Soldier' 'The Mazarin Stone' 'The Three Gables' 'The Sussex Vampire' 'The Three Garridebs' 'Thor Bridge' 'The Creeping Man' 'The Lion’s Mane' 'The Veiled Lodger' 'Shoscombe Old Place' 'The Retired Colourman' *I posted these in the order which is in the majority of the newer copies of this anthology, not the chronological order. Total: 14/60.

2013 Purchases: 35. (Nothing going on in here, hurry along). 7. 04/04/13: On the Road by Jack Kerouac. Read ??/05/13: The Prisoner of Heaven by Carlos Ruiz Zafón. Read 24/05/13: Sweet Tooth by Ian McEwan. Read 31/05/13: Winter in Madrid by C. J. Sansom. 31/05/13: The Age of Miracles by Katie Thompson Walker. Read 13/06/13: The Woman Who Went to Bed For a Year by Sue Townsend. 13:06/13: NW by Zadie Smith. For Uni: 28. 29/06/13: Anil's Ghost by Michael Ondaatje. 02/07/13: The Rendezvous and Other Stories by Daphne du Maurier. Read 02/07/13: Dressing Up for the Carnival by Carol Shields. Read 02/07/13: The Waves by Virginia Woolf. 02/07/13: A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce. Read 02/07/13: Adam Bede by George Eliot. 02/07/13: Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte. 02/07/13: 'Brother Jacob' by George Eliot. 04/07/13: The Country Without a Post Office by Agha Shahid Ali. Read 04/07/13: Selected Poems by Simon Armitage. Read 04/07/13: Love and Longing in Bombay by Vikram Chandra. Read 04/07/13: A Maggot by John Fowles. 04/07/13: The Shadow Lines by Amitav Ghosh. 04/07/13: Father and Son by Edmund Gosse. 04/07/13: The Dubliners by James Joyce. 04/07/13: The Woman Warrior by Maxine Hong Kingston. Read 04/07/13: And When Did You Last See Your Father? by Blake Morrison. Read 04/07/13: In the Skin of a Lion by Michael Ondaatje. Read 04/07/13: The History of Mary Prince by Mary Prince. 04/07/13: Confessions of an English Opium-Eater by Thomas de Quincey. Read 04/07/13: Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie. Read 04/07/13: The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie. Read 04/07/13: Funny Boy by Shyam Selvadurai. 04/07/13: Kartography by Kamila Shamsie. Read 04/07/13: Cracking India by Bapsi Sidhwa. 04/07/13: The Whole Story and other stories by Ali Smith. Read 04/07/13: Staying Alive: real poems for unreal times (edited by Neil Astley) by Various. 04/07/13: Portrait with Keys: The City of Johannesburg Unlocked by Ivan Vladislavić. Read

World Book Night Top 100 Books 2012 (Bold indicates already read) (K) indicates a Kindle e-book read (Bold and medium blue indicates read in 2013) 1. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee 2. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen 3. The Book Thief by Markus Zusak 4. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte 5. The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger 6. The Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien 7. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams 8. Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte 9. Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier 10. The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini 11. American Gods by Neil Gaiman 12. A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini 13. Harry Potter Adult Hardback Boxed Set by J. K. Rowling 14. The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon 15. The Hobbit by J. R. R. Tolkien 16. One Day by David Nicholls 17. Birdsong by Sebastian Faulks 18. The Help by Kathryn Stockett 19. Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell 20. Good Omens by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman 21. The Notebook by Nicholas Sparks 22. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson 23. The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood 24. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald 25. Little Women by Louisa M. Alcott 26. Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden 27. The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold 28. Atonement by Ian McEwan 29. Room by Emma Donoghue 30. Catch-22 by Joseph Heller 31. We Need to Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver 32. His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman 33. Captain Corelli's Mandolin by Louis De Bernieres 34. The Island by Victoria Hislop 35. Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman 36. The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver 37. The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger 38. Chocolat by Joanne Harris 39. Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro 40. The Five People You Meet in Heaven by Mitch Albom 41. One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez 42. Animal Farm by George Orwell 43. The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett 44. The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde 45. Tess of the D'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy 46. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl 47. I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith 48. The Wasp Factory by Iain Banks 49. Life of Pi by Yann Martel 50. The Road by Cormac McCarthy 51. Great Expectations by Charles Dickens 52. Dracula by Bram Stoker 53. The Secret History by Donna Tartt 54. Small Island by Andrea Levy 55. The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett 56. Lord of the Flies by William Golding 57. Persuasion by Jane Austen 58. A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving 59. Notes from a Small Island by Bill Bryson 60. Watership Down by Richard Adams 61. Night Watch by Terry Pratchett 62. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley 63. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time by Mark Haddon 64. Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke 65. The Color Purple by Alice Walker 66. My Sister's Keeper by Jodi Picoult 67. The Stand by Stephen King 68. Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell 69. The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov 70. Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy 71. Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons 72. Frankenstein by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley 73. The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer 74. The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde 75. Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell 76. The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman 77. The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins 78. The Princess Bride by William Goldman 79. A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth 80. Perfume by Patrick Suskind 81. The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas 82. The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy 83. Middlemarch by George Eliot 84. Dune by Frank Herbert 85. Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel 86. Stardust by Neil Gaiman 87. Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov 88. Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie 89. Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone by J. K. Rowling 90. Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts 91. The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro 92. Possession: A Romance by A. S. Byatt 93. Tales of the City by Armistead Maupin 94. Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami 95. The Magus by John Fowles 96. The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas by John Boyne 97. A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry 98. Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood 99. Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami 100. The Wind-up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami 39/100.