2013 - Your Best Five Reads of Q3 (July-September)

Please share the best 5 books you read in the last 3 months with us.

Happy list making!

The past 3 months have not been a stellar reading period for me, but I can share 4 books I've enjoyed very much.
2 non-fiction:The Tao of Travel by Paul Theroux and The Skeptic's Guide to the Mind by Robert Burton
2 fiction: Let it Burn by Steve Hamilton and Children of the Revolution by Peter Robinson.

Hmm, okay.

How the Light Gets In by Louise Penny
The Telling Room by Michael Paterniti (non-fic)
Miss Buncle's Book by D.E. Stevenson
The Greater Journey by David mcCullough (non-fic)
Life After Life by Kate Atkinson

Runners-up: Sum: Forty Tales, Monuments Men (non-fic), The Enchanted Life of Adam Hope, Lady Susan, Montana 1948.

Wow, quarter time already!

My five, in no particular order/preference:

1. Galore by Michael Crummy (fiction)
2. Reduced to Joy by Mark Nepo (poetry)
3. News From Heaven by Jennifer Haigh (fiction - short stories)
4. "Zero" by Tom Leveen (fiction - YA)
5. The Song of Achilles by Madeine Miller (fiction)

Turtle Diary by Russell Hoban - fiction
One Green Field by Edward Thomas - nonfiction
A Journey with Two Maps by Eavan Boland - nonfiction
Someone: A Novel by Alice McDermott - fiction
Archangel by Andrea Barrett - fiction

Honorable mention (all nonfiction): I Hate to Leave This Beautiful Place by Howard Norman, The Book of My Lives by Aleksandar Hemon, Mentor by Tom Grimes, and Beautiful Shadow by Andrew Wilson.

In no particular order:

The Kill Room by Jeffrey Deaver
The Blade Itself by Marcus Sakey
The Two Deaths of Daniel Hayes by Marcus Sakey
Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout
The Cloud of Unknowing by Thomas H. Cook

Game of thrones by George R. R. Martin
Leave it to Psmith by P. G. Wodehouse
Portrait of a lady by Henry James
Guns of August by Barbara Tuchman
Circular staircase by Mary Roberts Rinehart

Let's see now. I think my favorite, in order read, are:

The Whistling Season by Ivan Doig
Pilgrim's Wilderness by Tom Kizzia
The Daughters of Mars by Thomas Keneally
We Need New Names by NoViolet Bulawayo
Five Days at Memorial by Sheri Fink

There were other good ones, too, a few that I didn't much like, and some light filler. Overall, a good 3 months.

Salinger by David Shields and Shane Salerno
Chronicles by Bob Dylan
Walker Percy remembered : a portrait in the words of those who knew him by David Horace Harwell
Sting and I : the hilarious story of life as Sting's best mate by James Berryman
Perfect Circle: The Story of R.E.M. by Tony Fletcher

How to Be a Woman, by Caitlin Moran
Speaking from Among the Bones, by Alan Bradley
Rites of Passage, by William Golding
Lonesome Dove, by Larry McMurtry
Ice Station Zebra, by Alistair MacLean

Here are my top four for the quarter, in no particular order:

On the Road with Charles Kuralt
The War Within These Walls by Aline Sax
For His Pleasure by Samuel Gipp
Seabiscuit: An American Legend by Laura Hillenbrand

What an eclectic list!

But picking the fifth is hard for me this time, here are the three tied for the fifth slot:

Nine Princes in Amber by Roger Zelazny
Never Cry Wolf by Farley Mowat
The White Pony in the Hills by Anne Bosworth Greene

In the order I read them, my favorites were:

Pussy Riot!: A Punk Prayer For Freedom by Pussy Riot
The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver
If Jack's In Love by Stephen Wetta
The Lost Dogs: Michael Vick's Dogs and Their Tale of Rescue and Redemption by Jim Gorant
Blaze by Richard Bachman

It was a very good quarter.

Three great ones:
How the Light Gets In, Crossing to Safety, All the King's Men

Two more very good ones:
The Other Woman and the End of Your Life Book Club

My favorites for this quarter were:

Notes from Underground by Fyodor Dostoevsky
Death and the Penguin by Andrey Kurkov
Life of Pi by Yann Martel
Crime and Punishment from Fyodor Dostoevsky
Antigone by Sophocles

A bit lopsided in that most of them were Russian books, but I guess it's still pretty diverse with some Greek tragedy.

I only have four that are worthy of inclusion this quarter:
Life After Life by Kate Atkinson
The Bookman's Tale by Charlie Lovett
The Aviator's Wife by Melanie Benjamin
Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking

Those were all 4 or 5 stars. I read several 3 or 3.5 stars that were enjoyable, but didn't stand out.

Late getting here:

In no particular order

The Long Ships by Frans Bengtsson
The Twin by Gerbrand Bakker
Hellhound on His Trail by Hampton Sides
How the Light Gets In by Louise Penny
The Glass Room by Simon Mawer