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


Maureen

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I've been very, very pleased with the books I've either read or listened to this year.

 

It is 45 so far, and I've nearly finished Labyrinth by Kate Mosse so the total will be 46 books, which is about 10 more than last year.

 

I've also re-discovered my 'reading' mojo - for many years I've just been listening to audio books and hadn't 'read' a book for ages, I just haven't had the patience somehow to sit down and read a book but this year that's all changed and I've actually read 4 books. ;):readingtwo: So, I'm very happy and looking forward to reading more next year.

 

Carole

:lol:

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Compared to other years I haven't read as much as I used too. Most years I read between 70 to 100 books. This year just 30.

 

The main reason that I haven't gotten around to read as often as I used too, is that I have become the mother of a son in Januari and I have spend a lot of my reading time on him naturally and otherwise I have been too tired. I do hope to get more reading done in 2008 though.

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I really don't care about the number of books I've read. I could read 300 badly written short thrillers a year, and get nothing from it; or read 5 genuinely classic, moving novels that make me examine my life and the world, and emerge a far better person. I'd rather the latter.

 

I'm not sure I've read much this year which genuinely shifts my outlook - possibly 1812 which is a history; and possibly The Singapore Grip which I'm reading now and which is introducing me to a cynicism of Empire which even I didn't have before. And Cormac McCarthy's The Road which is deeply moving and harrowing.

 

I am thoroughly pleased with my reading this year for one thing, at least. I am deeply proud of myself for finally having read War and Peace (which is, of course, actually very good). But it probably hasn't changed the way I look at the world. And I'm also proud of having read Eminent Victorians.

 

There have been a number of other thoroughly enjoyable reads, but the latter part of the year has mostly been defined by disappointments, particularly Atonement, Life of Pi and Inheritance of Loss, all of which seem to have been written to please Booker judges rather than to have any genuine quality about them.

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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!

 

I'm trying to restrict my Murukami to one every few months. I love his books, generally, but sometimes they seem just a bit too similar and if I don't break them up with other stuff it begins to overwhelm me. Which means I still have the very hightly rated Hard-boiled Wonderland, and the much derided Kafka on the Shore up my sleeve, along with Sputnik Sweetheart and After the Quake.

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Guest fireball

Freewheeling Andy wrote:

There have been a number of other thoroughly enjoyable reads, but the latter part of the year has mostly been defined by disappointments, particularly Atonement, Life of Pi and Inheritance of Loss, all of which seem to have been written to please Booker judges rather than to have any genuine quality about them.
mercifully, it's been a long time since I've had a drought of bad reading, the worst being, of course when I had my second stroke, well that buggered me somethin' awful, even thinking of reading made, God forgive me, sick, my reading mojo went straight down, as the Americans say : "down the toobs" and it DID for three years.! Hell on earth BELIEVE ME. You might well ask Free, what the afore said has to do with the latter part of your posting....quite a lot really, it was the really crap booksthat got my mojo up and running in the latter part of my third year of my 2nd stroke, when (at LAST) my reading better half came alive, it got throughly PEED off with "never mind the quality feel the width "kicked" in FULL charge.! And thankfully I've never looked back, not that I'd want to. You see the 'reading' of crapolo books took no energy, or even proper concentration at all, and as the doctors said the mind had had enough and was going BACK to work...for me.
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Right I don't know exactly how many I have read this year but here were some of my favourites, in no particular order (ooh I sound like a presenter on the X factor!)

 

A Friend Like Henry by Nuala Gardner

The Heart of the Dale by Gervase Phinn

The Road by Cormac McCarthy

A Murder is Announced by Agatha Christie

Spelling Mississippi by Marnie Woodrow

Q and A by Vikas Swarup

Purple Hibiscus by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Black Swan Green by David Mitchell

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

The Brief History of the Dead by Kevin Brockmeier

The Girls by Lori Lansens

Half of a Yellow Sun

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