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Are you pleased with what you've read in 2007?


Maureen

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I think I've read more than usual this year. The highlight has to be Michel Faber's Crimson Petal and The White, I loved this book and didn't want it to end. I've also found quite a few new authors this year, Karin Slaughter, Phillipa Gregory, Stuart McBride and Michel Faber to name but a few. Here's to next year and lots more reading!

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My aim was 100 this year but am currently only on 89. I hardly read at all in November due to a real stressful time that meant I just couldn't conentrate. I think it will still be about double the normal amountI read though which is good.

 

New authors for me are

Tess Gerritsen

Torey Hayden

Jodi Picoult

 

I have also bought books just on the reccommendatoions/reviews from people on here:)

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My reading was down a little this year; will only total out to around 69-70 books.

 

I enjoyed Settling Accounts: In At The Death

by Harry Turtledove. The last book of a long series about a continuing civil war in North America.

 

Another "find" was On Hitler's Mountain by Emgard A. Hunt. This is a NF book of the life and times of a young girl growing up in Germany prior to and during WWII. Excellent read!

 

And, as always, some stuff by Stephen King:

Carrie

Blaze

The Colorado Kid

 

Merry Christmas everyone!

 

dan :lol:

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I've had an excellent year for trying out new things - I've read more classics and modern classics than ever before and discovered that I really love some of them too!. I've also read some foreign authors who were new to me and started reading books from the list of 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die by Peter Boxall, so I've really been challenging myself this year!

 

I think my major "discoveries" this year were a previously unrealised love of Jane Austin, an appreciation and respect for new authors who choose to self-publish (Andrew E. Shipley springs to mind with his excellent debut The Messenger), and a realisation that I can get in extra reading time by listening to audio books on my iPod when I'm out and about.

 

Am now looking forward to another year of exciting literary adventures!

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I can't really remember that many of my books, but the one I've just been reading is Exodus and it's absolutely fantastic

 

It's about the Earth in 2100, only the ice has all melted so there's only a tiny amount of land left, and a lot of humans have died, and it's about this girl called Mara trying to lead the people on her drowning island to a new land, only to find...

read the book! It's amazing, and chilling in a way no other book has been that I've ever read, because it could soon happen.

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DWMG - At last, I've "met" someone else who's actually read Exodus! ;) I thought it was excellent too, and very believable. I actually emailed the author to beg for a sequel, and so did many others, because she wrote it! It's called Zenith, and it's good but not as good as Exodus.

 

You might like a trilogy by Stephen Bowkett called Ice, Storm and Thaw, which I liked even better, but no-one else has ever heard of! :lol:

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Mia: yay, somebody has read it! I'm actually reading Zenith now! I love Exodus, but it's really scary at the same time because you think; Mara could be my children or grandchildren's generation! :D it's just freaky cuz it's so close; they're always talking about global warming but this shows just how near it is!! They should make it compulsory reading ;)

 

And I've heard of the other ones, too!!:lol:I read one, but I didn't like it that much - this could, however, be because I read Storm first :lol: I didn't realise there was another one, you see.

I may give them another chance when we go back to school, then.

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I have read a lot more this year as well. I was very pleased with:

 

A Place Called Here by Cecelia Ahern

The Girls by Lori Lansens

The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas by John Boyne

The Complete Maus by Art Spiegelman

The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd

The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood

The Chocolate's Lover Club by Carole Matthews

The Mammoth Cheese by Sheri Holman

This Book WIll Save Your Life by A.M. Homes

The Robber Bride by Margaret Atwood

The Book Of Lost Things by John Connolly

The Myth of You and Me by Leah Stewart

Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood

The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox by Maggie O'Farrell

Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood

The Penelopiad by Margaret Atwood

The Melancholy Death of Oyster Boy and Other Stories by Tim Burton

A Spot of Bother by Mark Haddon

The Boy Who Kicked Pigs by Tom Baker

The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood

The Riders by Tim Winton

Cloudstreet by Tim Winton

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte

Stardust by Neil Gaiman

An Open Vein by J.M. Warwick

The Secret of Crickley Hall by James Herbert

Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami

Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami

 

There is more...

 

Books I was indifferent to:

 

The Testament of Gideon Mack by James Robertson

The Memory Keeper's Daughter by Kim Edwards

The Jane Austen Book Club by Karen Joy Fowler

The Secret History by Donna Tartt

 

 

:lol:

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I had owned Anne of Green Gables for something like 15 years, but didn't read it until it was the reading circle choice this year. I absolutely loved it! I also really enjoyed The Book of the Dead by Preston/Child, and it remains my favorite of the year.

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I think I've read more than usual this year. The highlight has to be Michel Faber's Crimson Petal and The White, I loved this book and didn't want it to end. I've also found quite a few new authors this year, Karin Slaughter, Phillipa Gregory, Stuart McBride and Michel Faber to name but a few. Here's to next year and lots more reading!

 

I loved that book as well. Have you read anything else by M. Faber?

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I am very pleased with the books I have read this year (over 50 of them - far more than I thought I would read with school/college work and revision taking priority this year). I have read some excellent old and modern classics and I have also found a few new authors. All in all, it has been a brilliant year for books. :lol:;)

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I sadly didn't keep a list this year but know I read less than last year. however, there were some very good books that I read. Among them were:

 

Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte

 

The Road - Cormac McCarthy

 

Jesus Out To Sea - James Lee Burke

 

The Moon Is Down - John Steinbeck (A re-read)

I posted the above in the wrong topic, I meant to post it here. :lol:

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I definitely read more than usual which is thanks to this site no doubt. I still only managed about 22 I think, but that's very good for me. I had been wanting to try and read more which was one of the reasons I went looking for an online book club. So thank you everyone :lol:

 

I am very pleased that I have read as much as I have and really pleased that I finally got around to reading Dracula and The Picture of Dorian Gray. Anne of Green Gables was an unexpected delight. I would have been very unlikely to read it if it hadn't come up as a reading group choice. I also read two autobiographies, (new territory for me) both of which I found very powerful. They were by Daniella Westbrook and Constance Briscoe. Highlights of the year are The girl in a swing by Richard Adams and the fabulous Flatland by Edwin Abbott.

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Guest fireball

FishAndChips Wrote:

I would have been very unlikely to read it if it hadn't come up as a reading group choice.

 

 

 

You and me both FishAndChips; having come to this site I've had to (and I didn't know I had it either!, a certain prejudice of some either authors/ress.!) readjust some writers and genres and buckle down and give myself a treat....And BOY have I.! :lol:

 

I, sometime back, invested in two particular Classic Penguin books, I lost count on how many film adaptations I'd seen of them, and never actually read the true origins. And boy they were dark, beautifully descriptive too. Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde :

thestrangecaseofdrjekylbl9.jpg

 

and The picture of Dorian Gray

:

pictureofdoriangrayfk8.jpgfear-1.gifscared.gif

 

I haven't got around to them...yet.! But as soon as I do you'll be the second to know.

 

When I read Frankenstein many years now, I was stunned to learn that he (the monster) could talk, and not the way Karloff way, though he DID (Karloff), get the essence of the book in the second movie.!

In Frankenstein's second outing 1935's film Bride of Frankenstein The scene where the 'monster' [Karloff] accidentally killed a child was at first omitted as being too horrific, but later re-instated.

Just some fanish info there.!

 

You know, while I'm here, it's really amazing that EVEN to-day, one or other of the three books mentioned here...is referenced somewhere in the world. EVEN NOW.! fear-1.gif

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I'm quite pleased with this years books, though I do wish I managed to read more of them. I did discover a couple of great authors though: namely Maggie O'Farrell and Ian McEwen.

 

 

Which Ian McEwan did you read? I read Cement Garden this year and loved it. I really like all his stuff I've read except Saturday, which I thought was a little tedious. It read like he was just showing off about his research! I've been given On Chesil Beach for xmas and looking forward to reading it.

 

Not been keeping track of how many books I've read this year, but finished plowing my way through Haruki Murakami's fiction. I can't get enough of him!

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I loved that book as well. Have you read anything else by M. Faber?

 

I read 'The Apple' which was the follow up to TCPATW. This book was tiny in comparison TCPATW but I was equally entranced by it.

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