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Kylie's Literary Adventures in 2017


Kylie

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Huzzah! I'm done! My lists got quite out-of-date during 2016, so I had to spend ages fixing them. New Year's resolution: keep up-to-date with lists so I don't have all this bother this time next year!

 

I know I say this every year, but in 2017 I simply must spend more time reading and less time watching TV!

 

Happy reading in 2017 everyone!  :readingtwo:

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Oh .. Happy Reading Kylie!!  :hug: You're so organised!  :D 

I'm with you. I don't make resolutions but am going to make the one about reading more and spending less time doing OTHER things! They only get in the way and are of no benefit whatsoever. Extensive reading improves the mind .. we have that on the good authority of Mr Darcy .. and he could never be wrong  :D I'm going to try and take long muddy walks as well .. can listen to a book at the same time .. win, win!  :D 

Hope you have a very Happy 2017 Kylie! Looking forward to reading your blog and catching up with the books you've read/bought and seeing pics of your library etc. I might have time to read a book after that!  :D  :flowers2:  :friends0:

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Yay for a new Kylie reading log! :exc: I hope you have a fabulous reading year in 2017, my darling :smile2: 

 

First off, I want to reiterate what I said on FB: I love it that you have updated your Best Books list, because I've been wanting to ask you if you have any updates. 

 

Second, I love how you've organized the reference links in your first post. It's so tidy and clean and looks great. So much better than mine! :blush: Have you changed it from last year, is it more simple this year? Or am I just imagining things. 

 

Wow at TBR being close to 1500 books :thud: Bow to the master! :thud: 

 

Third, your selected wishlist is so short! Where do you keep the rest of the titles :D 

 

Re: priority reads and the book jar: "This is a list of the books I'd most like to read this year. In 2015, I read 20 books (17 fiction, 3 non-fiction) out of the 81 on the list. In 2016, I read 14 books (12 fiction, 2 non-fiction) out of 77 on the list. I haven’t yet added extra books to the list for 2017."  That's really well done! :o  I did the book jar thing last year and read 0 (0. As in zero.) books based on what came up from the jar. 0. 

 

Re: Rory challenge: I just wanted to again thank you for sending me the compiled list. I know it must've taken you ages to do the whole thing, and I really appreciate the fact!  :flowers2:   Thank you for letting me have it and use it! You saved me a whole lot of trouble :) 

 

I also love how you've listed your TBR books according to their being on multiple challenge lists :smile2: Makes prioritizing easier, should you want to prioritize! :)

 

And I feel rather humbled and honored to be in the post where you've listed my favorites :blush: Mwaaaah!  :flowers2: 

 

I wish you loads of luck with keeping your lists up to date! :smile2: 

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Kylie, I BOW DOWN to your lists, both in terms of organisation and the sheer number/quality of your library! Jealousy abounds! 

 

I hope you have an excellent year in 2017, both books and non-books. 

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Oh my, I had no idea you had so many books on your TBR pile. I mean I knew you had a lot, but I didn't know it was that many! :thud:

 

Some stand-out books from your list that I have enjoyed:

 

Margaret Atwood Alias Grace

Michel Faber The Book of Strange New Things (I loved this one so much when I read it this year. Loved it!)

SE Hinton Tex
SE Hinton That Was Then, This Is Now (my very favourite book as a teengaer. Rather annoyingly, it's not available on Kindle)

Stephen King IT (my second favourite King)

Stephen King The Stand (my favourite King and possibly my favourite book of all time)

Haruki Murakami The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle (really great read)

Vincent Bugliosi Helter Skelter (a must-read, for anyone interested in the case)

 

I hope you have a great reading year, Kylie, and hopefully you can knock some off your TBR pile. :smile:

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Might not have been around on the reading lists much for a couple of years, but always enjoy the annual Kylie reading thread. Glad to see your TBR is as typically massive as ever and your lists just as fabulous. Have a wonderful 2017 Kylie. :):friends0:

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Happy Reading in 2017. :)

 

Your blog looks so good ! :D

 

From your TBR, I`d especially rate Mapp and Lucia - EF Benson, The Edmund Crispin books, The Marriage Plot - Jeffrey Eugenides, My Brilliant Career - Miles Franklin ( love the film with Whatshername, too ), The Thin man, The Maltese Falcon ( Dashiell Hammet ), A Discovery of Witches ( Deborah Harkness ), 1Q84 ( Murakami), Terry Pratchett, Dorothy L Sayers, Amy Tan, Connie Willis and the wonderful Jasper Fforde.

 

I didn`t know Shaun Micallef had written books ! Off to look those up. :)

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I'm with you. I don't make resolutions but am going to make the one about reading more and spending less time doing OTHER things! They only get in the way and are of no benefit whatsoever. Extensive reading improves the mind .. we have that on the good authority of Mr Darcy .. and he could never be wrong  :D I'm going to try and take long muddy walks as well .. can listen to a book at the same time .. win, win!  :D 

Hope you have a very Happy 2017 Kylie! Looking forward to reading your blog and catching up with the books you've read/bought and seeing pics of your library etc. I might have time to read a book after that!

 

Thanks Kay! My library is quite a mess at the moment and I haven't been able to fix it up because it's too hot to spend much time upstairs, where most of my books are. :( This heat just zaps my will to do anything and go anywhere. But once it gets cooler I look forward to organising my books a bit better. :)

 

Yay for another reading log! I look forward to see pictures of your library.

 

I wish you a wonderful year of reading in 2017 :readingtwo::)!

 

Fantastically organized and pretty lists, as always, Kylie!  Happy 2017 reading  :smile2:

 

Always lovely to see your incredibly organised book thread, Kylie! :D. Hope you have a great year of reading ahead of you.

 

Aw, thank you all! :D

 

You always have so many books on the go- I don't know how you do it!

 

Happy New Year  :)

Happy New Year to you too. :)

 

Having so many books on the go is not intentional! I've had problems with my reading mojo for a while, and then I get excited about other books on my TBR pile, so I keep starting new ones before I finish others.  :doh: This year I'm going to try to finish some of the books that I've been dragging my heels about reading. :) 

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Kylie, I BOW DOWN to your lists, both in terms of organisation and the sheer number/quality of your library! Jealousy abounds! 

 

I hope you have an excellent year in 2017, both books and non-books. 

 

LOL! Thanks Alexi. I love having so many wonderful options on my TBR pile, but I do wish it was quite a bit smaller than it is!

 

Oh my, I had no idea you had so many books on your TBR pile. I mean I knew you had a lot, but I didn't know it was that many! :thud:

 

Some stand-out books from your list that I have enjoyed:

 

Margaret Atwood Alias Grace

Michel Faber The Book of Strange New Things (I loved this one so much when I read it this year. Loved it!)

SE Hinton Tex

SE Hinton That Was Then, This Is Now (my very favourite book as a teengaer. Rather annoyingly, it's not available on Kindle)

Stephen King IT (my second favourite King)

Stephen King The Stand (my favourite King and possibly my favourite book of all time)

Haruki Murakami The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle (really great read)

Vincent Bugliosi Helter Skelter (a must-read, for anyone interested in the case)

 

I hope you have a great reading year, Kylie, and hopefully you can knock some off your TBR pile. :smile:

 

Thanks Bobbly! I've read over 100 pages of IT, and I intend to finish it this year, and Helter Skelter is also very high on my list. I'm also overdue to read another book by SE Hinton, Margaret Atwood and Haruki Murakami, so I'll take your recommendations into consideration, thanks! :)

 

Might not have been around on the reading lists much for a couple of years, but always enjoy the annual Kylie reading thread. Glad to see your TBR is as typically massive as ever and your lists just as fabulous. Have a wonderful 2017 Kylie. :):friends0:

 

It's good to see you back on the forum, Ben. :)

 

Your blog is the most organised I've ever seen, and I love the photos at the start of the threads.  I am in total awe of your number of unread books.  I hope you have a great 2017.  :)

 

Thanks Janet. :) Thankfully I started these lists when I didn't have nearly as many books on my TBR pile, so it's just a matter of keeping them updated each year now. If I had just joined the forum, I don't think I could be bothered typing up all of these books now!

 

Wishing you a wonderful year of reading, Kylie.  :smile: 

 

Thanks Chrissy. The same to you. xo

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Frankie, I had to cull some of your emojis. :(
 
Yay for a new Kylie reading log! :exc: I hope you have a fabulous reading year in 2017, my darling
Thank you my dear! The same to you. :D
 
First off, I want to reiterate what I said on FB: I love it that you have updated your Best Books list, because I've been wanting to ask you if you have any updates. 
I'm pleased that you're pleased. :D Hopefully I'll have a good reading year and be able to add more than one book to the list!!
 
Second, I love how you've organized the reference links in your first post. It's so tidy and clean and looks great. So much better than mine! :blush: Have you changed it from last year, is it more simple this year? Or am I just imagining things. 
Thanks. :) I've been doing the reference links for at least a couple of years, I think. It might look a bit simpler because I combined some of my TBR lists into longer posts (last year my TBR fiction books were in 9 separate posts; this year they're in 7 posts). I also deleted a couple of the challenge ideas because I didn't do anything about them last year.
 
Wow at TBR being close to 1500 books.  Bow to the master!
I wish! It's actually at 2100, which includes 1428 fiction and 678 non-fiction. :o 
 
Third, your selected wishlist is so short! Where do you keep the rest of the titles
I culled my overall wishlist recently, but on BCF I only tend to include the books I want the most. Like Poppyshake said on her new blog, I get sick of looking at the same books over and over! :D My complete wishlist is kept on the Book Depository's site.
 
Re: priority reads and the book jar: "This is a list of the books I'd most like to read this year. In 2015, I read 20 books (17 fiction, 3 non-fiction) out of the 81 on the list. In 2016, I read 14 books (12 fiction, 2 non-fiction) out of 77 on the list. I haven’t yet added extra books to the list for 2017."  That's really well done! :o  I did the book jar thing last year and read 0 (0. As in zero.) books based on what came up from the jar. 0. 
LOL. I must admit that I haven't been using my actual book jar to select books. I just choose what I want to read and then later realise that the book was on the list. Most of the books have been on the list for years, so I guess it's inevitable that I'll choose from it without realising.
 
Re: Rory challenge: I just wanted to again thank you for sending me the compiled list. I know it must've taken you ages to do the whole thing, and I really appreciate the fact! Thank you for letting me have it and use it! You saved me a whole lot of trouble
No worries! It's a bit like our blogs...it's been taking shape over a number of years, so it doesn't seem like much work now.
 
I also love how you've listed your TBR books according to their being on multiple challenge lists :smile2: Makes prioritizing easier, should you want to prioritize!
Now that took me a while to do!! And yes, I love that I can easily check whether a book is on multiple lists. It will make it feel like even more of an achievement if/when I read such books!
 
And I feel rather humbled and honored to be in the post where you've listed my favorites :blush: Mwaaaah!
Aww. :) I wouldn't have it any other way! And I'm honoured to be on yours. xo
 
I wish you loads of luck with keeping your lists up to date!
Thanks! I really hope I do a better job of keeping them up to date this year. It was a pain in the bum to update the thread this year because I was so far behind with updating! I'm going to try to avoid going to both bookfairs this year. It'll make me really sad on one hand, but on the other it will help me keep my TBR pile down and make it easier to keep my lists updated! :D

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Happy Reading in 2017. :)

 

Your blog looks so good ! :D

 

From your TBR, I`d especially rate Mapp and Lucia - EF Benson, The Edmund Crispin books, The Marriage Plot - Jeffrey Eugenides, My Brilliant Career - Miles Franklin ( love the film with Whatshername, too ), The Thin man, The Maltese Falcon ( Dashiell Hammet ), A Discovery of Witches ( Deborah Harkness ), 1Q84 ( Murakami), Terry Pratchett, Dorothy L Sayers, Amy Tan, Connie Willis and the wonderful Jasper Fforde.

 

I didn`t know Shaun Micallef had written books ! Off to look those up. :)

 

Thanks, Little Pixie! Wow, now you've got me excited to read all of those books! :D

 

I really should have read My Brilliant Career by now. It's a classic Australian novel and I'm ashamed to have not read it yet. Also, I believe Miles Franklin once lived in my home town, which is pretty cool!

 

Do you have a favourite of the Edmund Crispin books? They came to my attention when Poppyshake reviewed The Moving Toyshop, so that's the one I'm most interested to read.

 

 

In other book news, my ex's sister gave me a lovely book (belated Christmas present) called All I Need to Know I Learned from My Cat (and Then Some). I read it as soon as I got home and it was lovely. It's mostly illustrations with small amounts of text, so it was a quick read.

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I really should have read My Brilliant Career by now. It's a classic Australian novel and I'm ashamed to have not read it yet. Also, I believe Miles Franklin once lived in my home town, which is pretty cool!

 

Do you have a favourite of the Edmund Crispin books? They came to my attention when Poppyshake reviewed The Moving Toyshop, so that's the one I'm most interested to read.

 

 

In other book news, my ex's sister gave me a lovely book (belated Christmas present) called All I Need to Know I Learned from My Cat (and Then Some). I read it as soon as I got home and it was lovely. It's mostly illustrations with small amounts of text, so it was a quick read.

 

Ooh ! That`s exciting about Miles Franklin. :)

 

I enjoyed all of Edmund Crispin`s books except the last one ( not that I disliked it, it just wasn`t up to the same level as the others )  ; I`d pick Swan Song as my favourite. :D

 

I`ve peeked at that cat book - it looks really cute !  :22:

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Frankie, I had to cull some of your emojis. :D 

Of course you did! Don't be sorry, I know what it's like :D I've replaced your sad face with a happy face, see? ^  

 

 

First off, I want to reiterate what I said on FB: I love it that you have updated your Best Books list, because I've been wanting to ask you if you have any updates. 

I'm pleased that you're pleased. Hopefully I'll have a good reading year and be able to add more than one book to the list!!

That would be rather splendid! :smile2: I don't think I added one book to the list in 2015 :( But I think I have to add This Is Life by Dan Rhodes for the 2016 one, hehe! 

 

Second, I love how you've organized the reference links in your first post. It's so tidy and clean and looks great. So much better than mine! Have you changed it from last year, is it more simple this year? Or am I just imagining things. 

Thanks. I've been doing the reference links for at least a couple of years, I think. It might look a bit simpler because I combined some of my TBR lists into longer posts (last year my TBR fiction books were in 9 separate posts; this year they're in 7 posts). I also deleted a couple of the challenge ideas because I didn't do anything about them last year.

You've been doing the reference links for many years! It was your reference links that inspired me to do mine, and I remember asking you if I could steal the idea. So if I go back and see I've done the links thing since 2012, so you've done it at least since 2011. 

I think quite a few of us dropped some challenges because we didn't do much about them last year, hehe.

 

Wow at TBR being close to 1500 books.  Bow to the master!

I wish! It's actually at 2100, which includes 1428 fiction and 678 non-fiction.

Oh lord, I knew you were over 2000! :thud: I knew that! But when I was posting, I got the number 1500 from somewhere and just went with it. :rolleyes: I was off my brain, and one can't blame me, because I've been at home with the flu and my brain's gone to wool at times. :blush: (I'm doing better by now!)

 

Third, your selected wishlist is so short! Where do you keep the rest of the titles

I culled my overall wishlist recently, but on BCF I only tend to include the books I want the most. Like Poppyshake said on her new blog, I get sick of looking at the same books over and over! My complete wishlist is kept on the Book Depository's site.

Ah yes, so you still keep a complete wishlist somewhere :) I intend to do the same, but I'm not sure where I shall stick the list of the 'boring titles' :blush: 

 

Re: priority reads and the book jar: "This is a list of the books I'd most like to read this year. In 2015, I read 20 books (17 fiction, 3 non-fiction) out of the 81 on the list. In 2016, I read 14 books (12 fiction, 2 non-fiction) out of 77 on the list. I haven’t yet added extra books to the list for 2017."  That's really well done!  I did the book jar thing last year and read 0 (0. As in zero.) books based on what came up from the jar. 0. 

LOL. I must admit that I haven't been using my actual book jar to select books. I just choose what I want to read and then later realise that the book was on the list. Most of the books have been on the list for years, so I guess it's inevitable that I'll choose from it without realising.

Ahhhahahaha :D And here I was, thinking you'd hand picked so many Book Jar books and actually read them after picking :D:giggle2: 

 

I also love how you've listed your TBR books according to their being on multiple challenge lists :smile2: Makes prioritizing easier, should you want to prioritize!

Now that took me a while to do!! And yes, I love that I can easily check whether a book is on multiple lists. It will make it feel like even more of an achievement if/when I read such books!

I can totally relate to that! :) 

  

I wish you loads of luck with keeping your lists up to date!

Thanks! I really hope I do a better job of keeping them up to date this year. It was a pain in the bum to update the thread this year because I was so far behind with updating! I'm going to try to avoid going to both bookfairs this year. It'll make me really sad on one hand, but on the other it will help me keep my TBR pile down and make it easier to keep my lists updated! 

Oh boy, that's going to be hard, not going to the book fairs  :empathy:  But like you said, you'll keep your TBR down and there will be less of that tedious updating of lists :D 

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  • 4 weeks later...

Just a quick update...

 

I haven't done much reading lately, but I've had a big week, and the next couple of weeks will be big too.

 

Today I celebrate my 10th anniversary on the forum! Woohoo!

 

Earlier this week I held auditions for the play I'll be directing. It was a huge step outside of my comfort zone, as I had to take charge and speak in front of a group of around 20 people. I managed to get through it well enough, but then I had the terrible job of ringing everyone to deliver good and (more often) bad news. It was awful having to turn people down (many of whom I consider friends). Anyway, that's over with, thank goodness. We start rehearsals next week.

 

My beloved bookfair starts in Canberra tomorrow! My mum and I weren't planning to go. In fact, we were very firm in our decision not to go, as we both have too many unread books. But then I rang Mum the other day and cheekily read her an article I'd found that said this bookfair would be the biggest one yet. I thought she would say 'no' and that would be the end of it, but she said that maybe we should go! I unexpectedly caught her at a weak moment, so now we're going to the bookfair! It's now midnight and I have to get up at 4.30 am so we can drive down. I'm feeling a bit unorganised because I usually prepare by updating various lists, but I haven't had a chance to do so yet! Never mind. I'm super excited!

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Congratulations on your 10 year anniversary :hug:!! That is amazing.

 

I can imagine having to deliver bad news to people isn't nice at all :(. I'm glad you got it over with.

 

How exciting you're going to the book fair in Canberra! Last year I wasn't sure about going to the yearly book fair near here - but I decided to go in the end and was glad I did. I hope you have a great time and that you find many lovely books :D.

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