AnneDC starts over in 2014: January

Happy New Year dear 75 friends, and welcome visitors, new and old. I'm hoping for a much more active year here on my thread and am looking forward to keeping up with your reading too.

January 1 finds me not-skiing in Vermont (the rest of the family are out on the slopes.) This is the view from our snow-covered balcony.






Currently Reading:





Books Read in 2014
January
1. Transatlantic - Colum McCann
2. We Need to Talk About Kevin - Lionel Shriver (audio)
3. Death Comes for the Archbishop - Willa Cather
4. The Year of Magical Thinking - Joan Didion
5. Daughter of Smoke and Bone - Laini Taylor (audio)
6. Confessions of a Pagan Nun - Kate Horsley
7. Mr. Midshipman Hornblower - C. S. Forester (audio)
8. The Smartest Kids in the World - Amanda Ripley
9. Private Peaceful - Michael Morpurgo
10. The Castle Corona - Sharon Creech (aloud)
11. Lost in the City - Edward P. Jones
12. Lullaby - Diane Guest

February
13. A Storm of Swords - George R. R. Martin
14. Out Stealing Horses - Per Petterson
15. Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH - Robert O'Brien (aloud)
16. Of Love and Other Demons - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
17. The Mill on the Floss - George Eliot (Kindle/Audio)
18. Strawberry Girl - Lois Lenski (aloud)
19. Light in August - William Faulkner (2011)

March
20. The Guns of August - Barbara Tuchman (audio)
21. The Balkan Trilogy - Olivia Manning
22. Why the Whales Came - Michael Morpurgo (aloud)
23. The Last Chronicle of Barset - Anthony Trollope (audio)
24. The Graves Are Walking - John Kelly
25. The Prince of Tides - Pat Conroy (audio)
26. War Dances - Sherman Alexie (audio)
27. Little Town on the Prairie - Laura Ingalls Wilder (aloud)
28. Blood Meridian - Cormac McCarthy
29. Not the End of the World - Kate Atkinson

April
30. Americanah - Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
31. All the King's Men - Robert Penn Warren (audio)
32. Home - Toni Morrison
33. Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition - Daniel Okrent (Kindle)
34. Regeneration - Pat Barker
35. When the Devil Holds the Candle - Karin Fossum (Kindle)
36. The Great Influenza - John M. Barry (audio)
37. The Pearl - John Steinbeck
38. The Mysterious Howling - Maryrose Wood (audio)
39. The Hidden Gallery - Maryrose Wood (audio)
40. Jazz - Toni Morrison
41. And Then There Were None - Agatha Christie (Kindle)
42. These Happy Golden Years - Laura Ingalls Wilder (aloud)
43. Miss Buncle's Book - D. E. Stevenson (Kindle)
44. The Fault in Our Stars - John Green (audio)
45. The Lowland - Jhumpa Lahiri
45. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll (audio)
46. Eleanor and Park - Rainbow Rowell

May
47. Into the Wild - Jon Krakauer (audio)
48. The Goldfinch - Donna Tartt (Kindle)
49. The Indian Bride - Karin Fossum (audio)
50. The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency - Alexander McCall Smith (audio)
51. A Girl is a Half-Formed Thing - Eimear McBride
52. The Optimist's Daughter - Eudora Welty
53. The Story of Lucy Gault - William Trevor
54. Master and Commander - Patrick O'Brian
55. The Undertaking - Audrey Magee
56. Party Shoes - Noel Streatfeild
57. The Unseen Guest - Maryrose Wood

June
58. Burial Rites - Hannah Kent
59. Rules for Virgins - Amy Tan
60. Founding Brothers - Joseph Ellis
61. Mother Night - Kurt Vonnegut
62. The Interrupted Tale - Maryrose Wood (audio)
63. The Jewel in the Crown - Paul Scott

July
64. Don Quixote - Miguel de Cervantes (audio)
65. The Daughters of Mars - Thomas Kenneally
66. Phineas Finn - Anthony Trollope (audio)
67. The Stolen Lake – Joan Aiken (aloud)
68. The Maltese Falcon – Dashiell Hammett
69. The Moor – Laurie R. King (audio)
70. Becoming Naomi Leon – Pam Munoz Ryan (aloud)
71. The Summer Book – Tove Janssen
72. Wilderness Tips – Margaret Atwood

August
73. Maniac Magee – Jerry Spinelli
74. Norwegian Wood – Haruki Murukami (audio)
75. A Gathering of Days – Joan Blos
76. Daughter of Smoke and Bone – Laini Taylor (audio)
77. Days of Blood and Starlight – Laini Taylor (audio)
78. The Haunting of Hill House – Shirley Jackson
79. A Feast for Crows – George R. R. Martin (audio)
80. James Madison – Richard Brookhiser

September
81. A Dance with Dragons – George R. R. Martin (audio)
82. The Turtle of Oman -
83. Princess Academy – Shannon Hale (aloud)
84. The Secret Place – Tana French (audio)
85. Geek Love – Katherine Dunne
86. American Pastoral – Philip Roth
87. A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court – Mark Twain
88. The Last Founding Father: James Monroe and a Nation’s Call to Greatness -
89. The Sign of the Beaver – Elizabeth George Speare
90. Understood Betsy – Dorothy Canfield Fisher (aloud)
91. The Fortune of the Rougons – Emile Zola
92. The Long Way Home – Louise Penny (audio)

October
93. Giovanni’s Room – James Baldwin
94. The Children Act – Ian McEwan
95. The House of Mirth – Edith Wharton (audio)
96. Frankenstein – Mary Shelley (audio)
97. Rebecca – Daphne du Maurier
98. The Lighthouse – Alison Moore
99. The Ocean at the End of the Lane – Neil Gaiman
100. Walden – Henry David Thoreau (audio)
101. Nocturnes – Kazuo Ishiguro
102. The Sea – John Banville
103. Wildwood – Colin Meloy

November
104. Candide – Voltaire (audio)
105. The Turn of the Screw – Henry James
106. The Cloven Viscount – Italo Calvino
107. The Orphan Master’s Son – Adam Johnson
108. Netherland – Joseph O’Neill (audio)
109. The Hunger Games - Suzanne Collins
110. Catching Fire - Suzanne Collins
111. Birds of a Feather -Jacqueline Winspeare
112. The Things They Carried - Tim O'Brien
113. The Maples Stories - John Updike
114. Moon Over Manifest - Clare Vanderpool
115. Chronicle of a Death Foretold - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
116. The Nose - Nikolai Gogol
117. Dubliners - James Joyce
118. Disgrace - J.M. Coetzee
119. A Cold Day for Murder - Dana Stabenow
120. Howl's Moving Castle - Diana Wynne Jones
121. How to Read a Poem and Fall in Love With Poetry - E.D. Hirsch
122. Mockingjay - Suzanne Collins
123. The First Four Years - Laura Ingalls Wilder
124. The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett (aloud)
125. John Quincy Adams: A Public Life, A Private Life - Nagel

December
126. Far From the Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy (audio)
127. Black Water - Joyce Carol Oates
128. A Walk in the Woods - Bill Bryson (audio)
129. Montana 1948 - Larry Watson
130. A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens (audio)
131. Andrew Jackson - Robert V. Remini (audio)
132. Empire Falls - Richard Russo
133. Bewilderment - David Ferry
134. The Best Christmas Pageant Ever - Barbara Robinson (aloud)
135. The Water's Lovely - Ruth Rendell
136. Waiting for Snow in Havana - Carlos Eire

Books Read off my Own Shelves in 2014
1. We Need to Talk About Kevin - Lionel Shriver (print book 2011 or before; 2012 audio )
2. Death Comes for the Archbishop - Willa Cather (print book 2011 or before)
3. The Year of Magical Thinking - Joan Didion (2013 audio)
4. Daughter of Smoke and Bone - Laini Taylor (2012 audio)
5. Confessions of a Pagan Nun - Kate Horsley (2013)
6. Mr. Midshipman Hornblower - C. S. Forester (2013 audio)
7. Private Peaceful - Michael Morpurgo (kids' bookshelves)
8. The Castle Corona - Sharon Creech (kids' bookshelves)
9. Lost in the City - Edward P. Jones (2013)
10. Lullaby - Diane Guest (pre 2010) (reread)
11. A Storm of Swords - George R. R. Martin (pre 2010)
12. Out Stealing Horses - Per Petterson (2013)
13. Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH - Robert O'Brien (2012) (reread)
14. Of Love and Other Demons - Gabriel Garcia Marquez (2011 or before)
15. The Mill on the Floss - George Eliot (2012 Kindle)
15. Strawberry Girl - Lois Lenski (kids bookshelves) (reread)
16. Light in August - William Faulkner (2011)
17. The Guns of August - Barbara Tuchman (pre 2011)
18. The Balkan Trilogy - Olivia Manning (2012)
19. Why the Whales Came - Michael Morpurgo (kids bookshelves)
20. The Graves Are Walking - John Kelly (2013)
21. The Prince of Tides - Pat Conroy (2013 audio)
22. War Dances - Sherman Alexie (2012 audio)
23. Little Town on the Prairie - Laura Ingalls Wilder (kids bookshelves) (reread)
24. Blood Meridian - Cormac McCarthy (2011)
25. Not the End of the World - Kate Atkinson (2012)
26. Americanah - Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (2013)
27. All the King's Men - Robert Penn Warren (2013) (reread)
28. Home - Toni Morrison (2012)
29. Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition - Daniel Okrent (2013 Kindle)
30. Regeneration - Pat Barker (2011)
31. When the Devil Holds the Candle - Karin Fossum (2012 Kindle)
32. The Great Influenza - John M. Barry (2012 audio)
33. The Mysterious Howling - Maryrose Wood
34. The Hidden Gallery - Maryrose Wood
35. Jazz - Toni Morrison (pre 2010) (reread)
36. These Happy Golden Years - Laura Ingalls Wilder (reread)
37. The Fault in Our Stars - John Green (audio 2013)
38. Into the Wild - Jon Krakauer (audio 2012)
39. The Goldfinch - Donna Tartt (Kindle 2013)
40. The Indian Bride - Karin Fossum (audio 2012)
41. The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency - Alexander McCall Smith (audio 2013)
42. The Optimist's Daughter - Eudora Welty (pre 2010)
43. The Story of Lucy Gault - William Trevor
44. Party Shoes - Noel Streatfeild (pre 2010) (reread)
45. Wilderness Tips - Margaret Atwood (pre 2010)
46. Founding Brothers - Joseph Ellis (2013)
47. Mother Night - Kurt Vonnegut
48. Don Quixote - Miguel de Cervantes (audio 2012)
49. The Stolen Lake – Joan Aiken (2013)
50. Becoming Naomi Leon – Pam Munoz Ryan
51. The Summer Book – Tove Janssen
52. Wilderness Tips – Margaret Atwood (pre 2010)
53. Maniac Magee – Jerry Spinelli
54. Norwegian Wood – Haruki Murukami (audio 2012)
55. A Gathering of Days – Joan Blos (reread)
56. Daughter of Smoke and Bone – Laini Taylor (audio 2013)
57. A Feast for Crows – George R. R. Martin
58. James Madison – Richard Brookhiser (2013)
59. A Dance with Dragons – George R. R. Martin (audio)
60. Princess Academy – Shannon Hale (reread)
61. Geek Love – Katherine Dunne (pre 2010)
62. The Sign of the Beaver – Elizabeth George Speare (Kindle 2013)
63. Understood Betsy – Dorothy Canfield Fisher (reread)
64. The Fortune of the Rougons – Emile Zola (2013)
65. Rebecca – Daphne du Maurier (reread)
66. The Lighthouse – Alison Moore (2013)
67. The Ocean at the End of the Lane – Neil Gaiman (2013)
68. Walden – Henry David Thoreau (pre 2010)
69. Nocturnes – Kazuo Ishiguro (2011)
70. The Sea – John Banville (2011)
71. Candide – Voltaire (audio) (reread)
72. The Turn of the Screw – Henry James (reread)
73. The Orphan Master’s Son – Adam Johnson (20
74. Netherland – Joseph O’Neill (audio 2012, 2013)
75. The Hunger Games - Suzanne Collins (reread)
76. Catching Fire - Suzanne Collins (reread)
77. The Things They Carried - Tim O'Brien
78. Moon Over Manifest - Clare Vanderpool
79. Chronicle of a Death Foretold - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
80. Dubliners - James Joyce (reread)
81. Disgrace - J.M. Coetzee
82. A Cold Day for Murder - Dana Stabenow
83. Howl's Moving Castle - Diana Wynne Jones
84. How to Read a Poem and Fall in Love With Poetry - E.D. Hirsch
85. Mockingjay - Suzanne Collins (reread)
86. The First Four Years - Laura Ingalls Wilder (reread)
87. A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens (audio)
88. Empire Falls - Richard Russo

Best of 2013

Fiction book of 2013: Life After Life - Helen Atkinson
Nonfiction book of 2013: The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness - Michelle Alexander

The rest of the best

Fiction (in roughly the order of reading)
1. The Round House - Louise Erdrich
2. The Siege - Helen Dunmore
3. Through Black Spruce - Joseph Boyden
4. Troubles - J. G. Farrell
5. The Man in the Wooden Hat - Jane Gardam
6. Salvage the Bones - Jesmyn Ward
7. The Luminaries - Eleanor Catton
8. How the Light Gets In - Louise Penny
9. The Feast of the Goat - Mario Vargas Llosa
10. A Dance to the Music of Time - Anthony Powell

*(Runners Up: Where'd You Go, Bernadette?, City of the Mind, Inheritance of Loss, Alias Grace, In the Shadow of the Banyan, Flight Behavior, Brooklyn, Home (Marilynne Robinson), Year of Wonders)

NonFiction
Guns, Germs and Steel - Jared Diamond
The Memory Chalet - Tony Judt
John Adams - David McCullough
Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China - Jung Chang
Enough: Why the World's Poorest Starve in an Age of Plenty - Roger Thurow

Favorite Classics:
Les Miserables - Victor Hugo
The Chronicles of Barsetshire - Anthony Trollope
(personal favorites:Doctor Thorne, Framley Parsonage)

Favorite Rereads:
A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
Caddie Woodlawn - Carol Ryrie Brink
The Dark is Rising series - Susan Cooper
The Long Winter - Laura Ingalls Wilder
Matilda - Roald Dahl

Favorite New-to-me Childrens Books
Summer of the Gypsy Moths - Sara Pennypacker
The Incorrigible Children of Ashton Place - Maryrose Wood

Favorite Audiobooks: Three Pines/Chief Inspector Gamache series - Louise Penny, Ralph Cosham narrating

Best Brain Candy: Parasol Protectorate series, Gail Carriger
Favorite New Series: Beekeepers Apprentice (Mary Russell series) - Laurie R. King
Surprisingly Unputdownable: Game of Thrones - George R. R. Martin
Favorite Scandicrime: The Keeper of Lost Causes (Department Q) - Jussi Adler-Olsen

2014 Reading Goals

Coming soon

Books acquired in 2014
None!

January
✔The Daughters of Mars - Thomas Keneally (Kindle sale)
The Human Comedy - Honore de Balzac (NYRB subscription)
✔A Storm of Swords - George R.R. Martin (Audible credit)
The Grass is Singing - Doris Lessing (Kindle sale)
✔The Guns of August - Barbara Tuchman (Audible sale)

February
The Republic of Love - Carol Shields (Kindle sale)
On Being Blue: A Philosophical Inquiry - William H. Gass (NYRB subscription)
✔The Last Chronicle of Barset- Anthony Trollope (Audible credit)
✔Waiting for Snow in Havana: Confessions of a Cuban Boy - Carlos Eire - (Kindle sale)
The Shetland Bus: A WWII Epic of Escape, Survival, and Adventure - David Howarth (Kindle sale)
✔The Mill on the Floss - George Eliot (Audible)

March
A Murder Is Announced: A Miss Marple Mystery - Agatha Christie (Kindle DD)
Beautiful Ruins - Jess Walter (Kindle DD)
Hawaii: A Novel - James Michener (Kindle DD)
✔A Cold Day for Murder - Dana Stabenow (Kindle DD)
No Country for Old Men - Cormac McCarthy (Kindle DD)
Invisible Cities - Italo Calvino (Kindle DD)
The Nonexistent Knight - - Italo Calvino (Kindle DD)
✔The Cloven Viscount - Italo Calvino (Kindle DD)
Marcovaldo - Italo Calvino (Kindle DD)
Italian Folktales - Italo Calvino (Kindle DD)
City of Thieves - David Benoit (Kindle DD)
✔All the King's Men - Robert Penn Warren (Audible credit, 2 for 1)
✔Master and Commander - Patrick O'Brian (Audible credit, 2 for 1)
Bellefleur Joyce Carol Oates (Kindle DD)
Death on the Nile - Agatha Christie (Kindle DD)
4:50 from Paddington- Agatha Christie (Kindle DD)
A Pocket Full of Rye - Agatha Christie (Kindle DD)
Cards on the Table - Agatha Christie (Kindle DD)
Turn Around Bright Eyes: The Rituals of Love and Karaoke - Rob Sheffield

April
✔Miss Buncie's Book - D. E. Stevenson (Kindle sale)
Miss Buncie Married - D. E. Stevenson (Kindle DD)
The Crossing - Cormac McCarthy
One of Ours - Willa Cather
Why Read Moby Dick? - Nathaniel Philbrick
Someone - Alice McDermott
Hild - Nicola Griffith
Still Life With Breadcrumbs - Anna Quindlan
The Signature of All Things - Elizabeth Gilbert
✔Burial Rites - Hannah Kent
The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914 - Christopher Clark
All Our Names - Dinaw Mengestu
Angel - Elizabeth Taylor
The Flamethrowers - Rachel Kushner
Love - Toni Morrison
Ghana Must Go
Bastard Out of Carolina
The Impossible Lives of Greta Wells
✔The Incorrigible Children of Ashton Place: The Mysterious Howling - Maryrose Wood (Audible)
✔The Hidden Gallery - Maryrose Wood (Audible)
✔Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll (Audible)
The Lake 

-

Banana Yoshimoto
 (Kindle)
English Creek - 



Ivan Doig
 
(Kindle)
The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis 

-

Lydia Davis
 (Kindle)
And Then There Were None 
-


Agatha Christie
 (Kindle)
College Unbound - 



Jeffrey J. Selingo
 (Kindle)
The Rosie Project: A Novel - 



Graeme Simsion
 (Kindle)
The Boleyn Inheritance - Philippa Gregory
 (Kindle)
Shakespeare's Montaigne (NYRB Classics)

May
✔The Unseen Guest - Maryrose Wood (Audible)
Inés of My Soul: A Novel - 



Isabel Allende
 (Kindle)
Fear: A Novel of World War I - Gabriel Chevallier (NYRB Classics)

June
✔Days of Blood and Starlight - Laini Taylor (Audible)
✔The Moor - Laurie R. King (Audible)
✔A Feast for Crows - George R. R. Martin (Audible)
✔A Dance with Dragons (Audible)
✔Phineas Finn - Anthony Trollope (Audible)
Bradbury Stories: 100 of His Most Celebrated Tales 

-

Ray Bradbury
 (Kindle)
The Golem and the Jinni - Helene Wecker (Kindle)
Sun On Fire 
-


Viktor Arnar Ingolfsson
 (Kindle)
The Merry Misogynist - Colin Cotterill
 (Kindle)
The Coroner's Lunch - 


Colin Cotterill
 (Kindle)
The Professor and the Siren (NYRB Classics)

July
Austerity Britain, 1945-1951 - 



David Kynaston
 (Kindle)
The Glass Room 

-

Simon Mawer (Kindle)
✔The Maltese Falcon - 



Dashiell Hammett
 (Kindle)
The Innocents Abroad 
-


Mark Twain (Kindle)
✔The Life of Andrew Jackson 

-

Robert V. Remini
 (Kindle)
Thomas Jefferson (Eminent Lives) 


- 
Christopher Hitchens
 (Kindle)
So Much for That: A Novel - 



Lionel Shriver 














(Kindle)
A Brief History of Thought: A Philosophical Guide to Living 
- 


Luc Ferry
 (Kindle)
Truth & Beauty 



- Ann Patchett
 (Kindle)

Portrait in Sepia - 



Isabel Allende
 (Kindle)
The Dovekeepers: A Novel 
- 


Alice Hoffman
 (Kindle)
The Mad and the Bad (NYRB Classics)

August
✔The Last Founding Father - (Audible)
Dreams of Gods and Monsters - Laini Taylor (Audible)
✔A Walk in the Woods - Bill Bryson (Audible)
✔A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court 
-


Mark Twain
 (Kindle)
✔American Pastoral - 



Philip Roth
 (Kindle)
The Boy in the Suitcase - 



Lene Kaaberbol
 (Kindle)
The Burning of the World (NYRB Classics)

September
✔The Secret Place - Tana French (Audible and Kindle)
✔The Long Way Home - Louise Penny (Audible)
✔Wildwood - Colin Meloy
 (Kindle and print)
Totempole (NYRB Classics)
✔Giovanni's Room - James Baldwin
The Cuckoo's Calling - Robert Galbraith

October
✔Frankenstein - Mary Shelley (Audible)
✔The House of Mirth - Edith Wharton (Audible)
✔Walden - Henry David Thoreau (Audible)
How to Build a Girl 

-

Caitlin Moran
 (Kindle)
✔The Children Act - 



Ian Mcewan
 (Kindle)
✔John Quincy Adams: A Public Life, A Private Life - 



Paul C. Nagel
 (Kindle)
Journey by Moonlight - Antal Szerb (NYRB Classics)

November
✔Birds of a Feather - Jacqueline Winspear (Audible)
✔The Nose - 



Nikolai Gogol
 (Kindle)
✔The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter 
-


Carson McCullers
 (Kindle)
✔Catching Fire - 



Suzanne Collins
 (Kindle)
Main Street - 



Sinclair Lewis
 (Kindle)
✔The Maples Stories 
-


John Updike
 (Kindle)
In the Heart of the Heart of the Country - William Gass (NYRB Classics)

December
✔Far From the Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy (Audible)
✔Andrew Jackson -Robert Remini (Audible)
The Pickwick Papers - Charles Dickens (Audible)
Ancillary Justice - Ann Leckie
 (Kindle)
✔The Best Christmas Pageant Ever - 



Barbara Robinson
 (Kindle)
The Narrow Road to the Deep North - Richard Flanagan (Thingaversary)
Conspiracy of Faith Jussi Adler-Olssen (Thingaversary)
✔Bewilderment - David Ferry (Thingaversary)
✔Montana 1948 - (Thingaversary)
Some Desperate Glory - (Thingaversary)
Tristana - Benito Perez Galdos (NYRB Classics)

Christmas Haul (gifts):
The City and the City - China Mieville
The Unwinding - George Packer
Station Eleven - Emily St. John Mandel
Being Mortal - Atul Gawande
All the Light We Cannot See - Anthony Doerr
The Paying Guests - Sarah Waters
Nora Webster - Colm Toibin
The Bone Clocks - David Mitchell







I like to keep tabs on how I'm doing versus books on my shelves, so here's an update carried over my last thread:

Books acquired in 2013 and not yet read

✔1. The Lighthouse - Alison Moore
2. The Chip-Chip Gatherers - Shivadhar Srivinasa Naipaul
3. The Toilers of the Sea - Victor Hugo
✔4. Quiet London - Siobhan Wall
5. How Music Works - David Byrne
6. Plutocrats - Chrystia Freeland
7. The Belly of Paris - Emile Zola
8. Nana - Emile Zola
9. Therese Raquin - Emile Zola
✔10. The Fortune of the Rougons - Emile Zola
11. Pere Goriot - Honore de Balzac
12. Bel-Ami - Guy de Maupassant
13. Proud Beggars - Albert Cossery
14. Irretrievable - Theodor Fontane
15. Wish Her Safe at Home - Stephen Benatar
16. A Game of Hide and Seek - Elizabeth Taylor
17. The Slaves of Solitude - Patrick Hamilton
18. Ilustrado - Miguel Syjuco
19. The Gift of Rain - Tae Twan Eng
✔20. Lost in the City - Edward Jones
21. John Adams - David McCullough
✔22. The Graves are Walking - John Kelly
23. The Famine Ships - Edward Laxton
24. Gabriela Clove and Cinnamon - Jorge Amado
25. A Dance to the Music of Time Second Movement - Anthony Poole
26. A Dance to the Music of Time Third Movement - Anthony Poole
27. A Dance to the Music of Time Fourth Movement - Anthony Poole
28. The White Lioness - Henning Mankell
29. Stone Upon Stone - Wiesław Myśliwski
30. Ashes and Diamonds - Jerzy Andrzejewski
31. The Black Spider
32. Fighting for Life - Josephine Baker
33. Autobiography of a Corpse - Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky
34. The Skin - Curzio Malaparte
35. In Love - Alfred Hayes
36. The Bridge of Beyond - Simone Schwarz-Bart
37.Transit - Anna Seghers
38. Pitch Dark - Renata Adler
39. The invention of Morel - Adolfo Bioy Casares
40. The Crisis of the European Mind - Paul Hazard
41. Turtle Diary - Russell Hoban
42. The Bridge of Beyond - Simone Schwarz-Bart
✔43. Founding Brothers- Joseph Ellis
✔44. The Summer Book - Tove Jansson
45. The Enchanted April - Elizabeth von Armin
✔46. Madison - Richard Brookhiser
47. Founding Rivals - Chris DeRose
48. The History of Love - Nicole Krauss
49. The Book of Salt - Monique Truong
50. Pale Fire - Vladimir Nabokov
51. The Towers of Trebizond - Rose Macauley
52. Can You Forgive Her? - Anthony Trollope
53. The Enigma of Arrival - V.S. Naipaul
✔54. Americanah - Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
55. Last Friends - Jane Gardam
56. The Man in the Wooden Hat - Jane Gardam
57. Thousand Cranes - Yasunari Kawabata
Gift Books:
✔The Ocean at the End of the Lane - Neil Gaiman
Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children
Hawthorn and Child - Keith Ridgeway
✔Out Stealing Horses - Per Petterson
The Magician's Assistant - Ann Patchett
And the Mountains Echoed - Khaled Hosseini
✔Confessions of a Pagan Nun - Karen Horsley
After This - Alice McDermott (free)
The Beach at Galle Road - Joanna Luloff (ER)
How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia - Mohsin Hamid

57 books purchased in 2013. 12 of those I read in the same year--so 45 added to the Teetering TBR Tower. Plus, I got 7 books as gifts and picked up at least 3 for free, only 2 of which I read in 2013. But, I read 44 print books that I already owned at the beginning of the year (most of them (32) books I had before 2012. I guess that means I only added 9 books to the TBR grand total. Not bad!

Books Acquired in 2012 and not yet read (only 15 of these got read in 2013)

The Grief of Others - Leah Hager Cohen
Afterimage - Helen Humphreys
Brixton Beach - Roma Tearne
Astonishing Splashes of Colour - Clair Morrall
Black Water Rising - Attica Locke
Blackberry Wine - Joanne Harris
The Book of Lies - Mary Horlock
An Atlas of Impossible Longing - Anuradha Roy
Beyond Black - Hilary Mantel
On the Floor - Aifric Campbell
Behind the Beautiful Forevers - Katherine Boo
The Way the Crow Flies - Ann-Marie MacDonald
✔The Balkan Trilogy - Olivia Manning (Book 1 completed)
Conquered City - Victor Serge
Slynx -Tatyana Tolstaya
✔Netherland -Joseph O'Neill
New Grub Street - George Gissing
Audition - Ryu Murakami
Twenty-Five Books that Shaped America - Thomas Foster
The Power and the Glory - Graham Greene
The Ark Sakura - Kobo Abe
In the Miso Soup - Ryu Murakami
An Equal Stillness - Francesca Kay
Broken April - Ismail Kadare
Silence in the Garden - William Trevor
The Bigamist's Daughter - Alice McDermott
In Praise of the Stepmother - Mario Vargas Llosa
The Yates Reader - William Butler Yeats (partially read)
✔Not the End of the World - Kate Atkinson
A Golden Age - Tahmima Aman
The Good Muslim - Tahmima Aman
Lyrics Alley - Leila Aboulela
The White Woman on the Green Bicycle - Monique Roffey
The Wife - Meg Wolitzer
White Ghost Girls - Alice Greenway
The Emperor of all Maladies - Siddhartha Mukherjee
Moth Smoke - Mohsin Hamid
Moby-Duck: The True Story of 28,800 Bath Toys Lost at Sea and of the Beachcombers, Oceanographers, Environmentalists, and Fools, Including the Author, Who Went in Search of Them - Donovan Hohn
The Outsourced Self: Intimate Life in Market Times - Arlie Hochschild
When the Emperor Was Divine - Julie Otsuka
Molly Fox's Birthday - Deirdre Madden
Ten Thousand Saints - Eleanor Henderson
Emily Alone - Stewart O'Nan
Trapeze - Simon Mawer
Man Gone Down - Michael Thomas
Pure - Andrew Miller
Capital - John Lanchester
The Great Divergence: America's Growing Inequality Crisis and What We Can Do About It - Timothy Noah
Heat Wave - Penelope Lively
Quicksand - Junichiro Tanizaki
Brown Girl, Brownstones - Paule Marshall
Cane - Jean Toomer
The Lifetime Reading Plan - Clifton Fadiman
The Zookeeper's Wife - Diane Ackerman
The Great War and Modern Memory - Paul Fussell
An Episode of Sparrows - Rumor Godden
Frost in May – Antonia White
The New York Stories of Edith Wharton
A Month in the Country – J. L. Carr
War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
Matterhorn - Karl Marlantes
Rouse Up O Young Men of the New Age - Kenzaburo Oe
Too Much Happiness - Alice Munro (stories – partly completed)
✔The Things They Carried - Tim O'Brien (stories – partly completed)
Ready Player One - Ernest Cline
Katherine - Anya Seton
Tree of Smoke - Denis Johnson
A Peoples History of the United States - Howard Zinn
Team of Rivals - Doris Kearns Goodwin
We Wish to Inform You that Tomorrow We Will be Killed with our Families - Philip Gourevitch
Mary Queen of Scots - Antonia Fraser
River of Doubt - Candice Millard
Testament of Youth - Vera Brittain
Narcopolis - Jeet Thayil
To the Lighthouse - Virginia Woolf
Everything Flows - Vasiliy Grossman
The Night Watch – Sarah Waters
The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry -
American Salvage - Bonnie Jo Campbell
Season of Migration to the North - Tayeb Salih
Runaway Horses - Yukio Mishima
Selected Poems - William Carlos Williams (partly completed)
College: What it Was, Is, and Should Be - Andrew Delbanco
The Road Not Taken - Robert Frost (partly completed)
What's the Matter with White People? Why We Long for a Golden Age That Never Was - Joan Walsh
The Dream of the Celt - Mario Vargas Llosa
✔Home – Toni Morrison
Sweet Tooth – Ian McEwan
The Casual Vacancy (gift)
Arcadia ((gift)
✔The Orphan Master’s Son (gift)
Dear Life (gift)
Why Nations Fail (gift)
Canada (gift)
Haiti: The Aftershocks of History (gift)
Iron Curtain (gift)
Why Does the World Exist? (gift)
Joseph Anton (gift)

Unread Books on my Kindle at the opening of 2014

2012 downloads
Undaunted Courage
✔The Mill on the Floss
Cranford
The Pickwick Papers
The Scarlet Letter
Botchan
Longitude
Galileo’s Daughter
Mornings in Jenin
Harry Truman’s Excellent Adventure
The Architecture of the Ozarks
Alone: The Classic Polar Adventure
The Fall of the Roman Empire
Black Like Me
The Best American Noir of the Century
Petrostate
The Siege of Washington
At the Sign of the Sugared Plum
How to Live: Or A Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer
The ask and the Answer
Monsters of Men
The Mapping of Love and Death
Rebels Rising
Boardwalk of Dreams
The Rage Against God
The Mosquito Coast
The Food Revolution
On the Cold Coasts
The Secret Piano
The Greenhouse
Thirst
The King of Kahel
The Solitude of Thomas Cave
✔When the Devil Holds the Candle
✔The Indian Bride
Black Seconds
The Water’s Edge
Bad Intentions
Maps and Legends
Postcards from Nam
A Kiss Before Dying
The File on H
Lovely Green Eyes
A Discovery of Witches
A Gay and Melancholy Sound
The Master of Verona
Miss Peregrine's Home for Particular Children - Ransom Riggs -
These Old Shades
Under the Dome – Stephen King
Waging Heavy Peace
The Bronze Bow
Howl's Moving Castle
The Nine
Lost Memory of Skin
Faith: A Novel
Swimming Home
Grand Sophy
✔The Sign of the Beaver
Restless – William Boyd
The Ascent of George Washington
Bruno's Dream
The Philosopher's Pupil
Possessing the Secret of Joy
A House Divided
The Confessions of Nat Turner
Sons
The Mother: A Novel
The Man Who Loved Children: A Novel
The Italian Girl
The Alexandria Quartet
Pearl of China: A Novel
Old Town
On Gold Mountain
Wonder Boys
The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind: Creating Currents of Electricity and Hope
The World According to Monsanto: Pollution, Corruption, and the Control of the World's Food Supply
Shifu, You'll Do Anything For a Laugh
The Republic of Wine
The Cement Garden - Ian McEwan
The Coldest Winter: America and the Korean War
The Chaperone
2013 downloads
A History of the World in Six Glasses
✔The Raj Quartet Volume 1 The Jewel in the Crown
Man's Search for Meaning - Viktor Frankl
If I Stay - Gayle Forman
The Siege of Krishnapur - J. G. Farrell
Cold: Adventures in the World's Frozen Places - Bill Streever
The Snow Child - Eowyn Ivey
Child 44 - Tom Rob Smith
House of Evidence – Viktor Arnar Ingolfsson
We Die Alone: A WWII Epic of Escape and Endurance – David Howarth
The Devil's Star: A Novel – Jo Nesbo
The Brontës: Wild Genius on the Moors: The Story of Three Sisters – Juliet Barker
The Whistling Season – Ivan Doig
The Sheltering Sky – Paul Bowles
Prep: A Novel – Curtis Sittenfeld
How to Read a Poem – Edward Hirsch
Kira-Kira – Cynthia Kadohata
Bad Samaritans - Ha-Joon Chang,
Daughters of the River Huong - Uyen Nicole Duong
Care of Wooden Floors – Will Wiles
Burmese Days – George Orwell
The Magician's Assistant – Ann Patchett
The Professor and the Madman – Simon Winchester
Londoners: The Days and Nights of London Now--As Told by Those Who Love It, Hate It, Live It, Left It, and Long for It – Craig Taylor
Five Little Pigs – Agatha Christie
Strong Poison - Dorothy Sayers
The Birth House – Ami McKay
The Complete Stories – Flannery O'Connor
The Violent Bear It Away: A Novel – Flannery O'Connor
The Light Between Oceans: A Novel – M. L. Stedman
Nemesis – Jo Nesbo
The Blue Book: A Novel – A. L. Kennedy
The House at Sea's End – Elly Griffiths
People Who Eat Darkness: The True Story of a Young Woman Who Vanished from the Streets of Tokyo--and the Evil That Swallowed Her Up – Richard Lloyd Parry
Black Boy – Richard Wright
Blunt Instrument – Georgette Heyer
The Gathering Storm - Winston Churchill
Sleeping Murder – Agatha Christie
✔ Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition – Daniel Okrent
Etiquette & Espionage - Gail Carriger
Footsteps in the Dark – Georgette Heyer
The Son – Philipp Meyer
✔The Goldfinch – Donna Tartt
✔Don Quixote – Miguel de Cervantes
The White Tiger: A Novel – Aravind Adiga
The Collected Stories of Eudora Welty
The Alchemist - Coelho
Eleven Minutes - Paulo Coelho
Brida - Coelho

Unheard Audible books as of 1/1/14 (I purchased 27 in 2013 and read 19 of them, along with 15 of the 26 I had before 2013)
From 2013
✔The Year of Magical Thinking - Joan Didion
✔The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency
✔The Fault in Our Stars - John Green
The Passage of Power - Robert Caro
✔Mr. Midshipman Hornblower - C.S. Forester
✔The Prince of Tides - Pat Conroy
✔Don Quixote - Cervantes
Outlander - Diana Gabaldon
From 2012
✔Candide - Voltaire
✔Daughter of Smoke and Bone - Laini Taylor
✔The Great Influenza – John Barry
✔War Dances - Sherman Alexie
Defending Jacob – William Landay
✔We Need to Talk About Kevin – Lionel Shriver
✔Netherland - Joseph O'Neill
The Lies of Locke Lomora – Scott Lynch
In the Company of Cheerful Ladies
✔Norwegian Wood - Murukami
✔Into the Wild – John Krakauer
From 2011
None left!

saving

Is it safe to come in yet, Anne?

What a great view.. lovely photo. So... why aren't you skiing with the rest of the family?

Beautiful view from the balcony! Hope you enjoy Transatlantic - I found it a wonderful read! And, yes, hope that the not-skiing is by choice, and not by necessity.

>6 AnneDC: Always safe to come in, Caro, but there's not much to see yet.

>7 cameling: Welcome lalbro! I was hoping to squeeze in Transatlantic before the end of the year, and thought I'd have time lounging in the lodge for one more book, but my husband's December 31 birthday and my sister's arrival on Monday with her family reduced my reading time. As a result I'm only on page 10, but so far so good. I've heard lots of good things about it, and it's a library book due on my return to Washington--so I will get back to it soon.

The not skiing is to protect my increasingly creaky knees--my choice, and arising from caution more than necessity. Plus, it's really cold out there and I decided I'd have more fun with a cup of coffee and a book. Next year I'll ski (maybe).

Hurrah! Anne is here!

Not skiing can be fine if you have great views and a good book... So it sounds as if you're all sorted out...

Happy 2014! May it be a better year for you.

Books acquired in 2014
None!

Congrats! You've made it through 16 hours. Happy New Year!

Happy New Year, Anne. I look forward to following your 2014 reading. Your choices always inspire.

Beautiful landscape! And it looks like you have some great reading ahead.

Welcome back, Anne! Looks like a great reading spot...

Dear Anne, I wish you a happy, smooth, productive, satisfying 2014 --- and .....



GLAD you're back! You are both brave and smart to list what you bought last year but didn't get to. I should, but I'm not going to. I sorry too because it would probably make you feel a lot better.

Anne - Went to sleep and almost missed you. One good thing about the new year is renewing acquaintance via the threads. I'll be with you for the duration.

Wishing you a wonderful 2014.

I'm glad to see you back. I've always enjoyed following your reading.

Happy New Year Anne! Lovely view from your perch above the slopes. I think I'd prefer a book and a cup of coffee too. I'm too chicken to list all the books I've purchased in 2013 and haven't read yet but if I could get up the nerve to do that it would resemble your list.

Happy New Year, Anne and happy to see you back with a 2014 thread!

Glad to see you back.

Hi Anne! Happy New Year to you. What a lovely view of Vermont -- another place I'd dearly love to visit.

Anne - great to see you back. Here's hoping that 2014 is a better year for you.

Hi Anne - happy new year! I'm looking forward to following your thread again this year and I am too chicken to list all the unread books on my Kindle...

Have a great time not skiing. Sounds lovely.

Hi Anne and happy new year!

Happy New Year, Anne! It's so great to see one of my favorite 75ers back :)

The photo up top is beautiful.

I'm with Bonnie - too chicken to list my 2013 acquisitions that remain unread - yikes!

So lovely to see you, Anne. Happy New Year! Look forward to following your reading again in 2014.

>10 Chatterbox: Hi Suzanne! I am thinking 2014 has to be a better year and I'm not sorry to see the last of 2013.

>11 qebo: Yes, Katherine, 16 hours and counting. Not even a Kindle download. It's nice to see you!

>12 BLBera: Welcome Beth. I look forward to seeing what you're reading too.

>13 banjo123: Rhonda, yes, I have enough unread books in my library to keep me happy for years.

>14 drneutron: Happy New Year Jim. Yes, a fabulous reading spot--inside.

>15 LizzieD: Peggy it's good to be back. I don't feel that bad about all those unread books. I make the list because it gives me great satisfaction to make the little check mark next to the ones I read. Unfortunately the ratio of check marks to book titles was not in my favor last year. (or any year)

>16 PaulCranswick: Happy 2014 to you, too, Paul. Have a missed a whole thread yet?

>17 arubabookwoman: It's good to see you Deborah. I hope to be posting a little more this year.

>18 brenzi: Hi Bonnie! I'm sure there are a lot of us who download the same $1.99 Kindle deals.

>19 lkernagh:, 20 Two Loris in a row! It is good to see both of you here.

>21 AMQS: Happy New Year Anne. Vermont is lovely and we had a wonderful week there--lots of snow.

>22 SandDune: Thank you Rhian and I am looking forward to 2014.

>23 cushlareads: Hi Cushla! I'd like to think listing all the Kindle books makes me buy less of them, but it doesn't seem to work that way. I started listing them last year and downloaded more than ever.

>24 wilkiec: Hi Diana and Happy New Year to you too. Thank you for stopping by!

>25 katiekrug: Hi Katie--it is nice to be back too. I'm pretty sure your list would rival mine.

>26 lit_chick: Happy New Year Nancy! I hope to drop by your thread (and others) as soon as I can.

Anne - I did start a new thread this morning my time now that you come to mention, but by your time, there has been no new thread today. xx I suppose I deserve the prods a little but I do get excited at the beginning of each year and it helps when old friends like your goodself come back again.

Have a lovely weekend.

I'm still setting up for 2014 up top, but I thought I'd go ahead and post January reading plans. One of my goals for the year is to have one month where I read a book in every TIOLI challenge category. I thought I would do it in December but I ran out of reading time.

TIOLI January (and January reading plans)

1. Gabriela, Clove and Cinnamon - Jorge Amado
✔2. We Need to Talk about Kevin - Lionel Shriver
3. The Summer Book - Tove Jansson
✔4. The Smartest Kids in the World - Amanda Ripley
5. The Fortunes of the Rougons - Emile Zola
6. The Tenant of Wildfell Hall - Anne Bronte
7. The Magician’s Assistant - Ann Patchett
8. The Bone People - Keri Hulme
9. Not the End of the World - Kate Atkinson
10. Last Friends - Jane Gardam
✔11. Death Comes for the Archbishop - Willa Cather
12. The Moor - Laurie R. King
13. Beowulf - Seamus Heaney tr.
14. Maniac Magee - Jerry Spinelli
15. Regeneration - Pat Barker
16. I need to find a book with an ugly cover
17. Lost in the City - Edward Jones
18. Americanah - Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
19. Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition - Daniel Okrent
20. The Enchanted April - Elizabeth von Arnim

Hi Anne - I always love to see your ambitious reading plans. You have some good ones planned for Jan. Americanah may have been my favorite read of last year. I'll be interested to see what you think.

Like Beth, I'm always eager to see your specific ambition for the month! I have to tell you that you are really going to need The Enchanted April if you manage to get through both We Need to Talk about Kevin and The Bone People. Both of those knocked my socks off, but they are both disturbing and emotionally draining!

Popping in to say hello and Happy New Year Anne! Looks like your reading is off to a great start.

I would love to do a "Full House" of TIOLIs one month, but I need a month where only about 10 challenges are posted :-P And that would even be a stretch!

I think I've (finally) decided on Death Comes for the Archbishop as my Cather read. I was going back and forth between that and My Antonia...

Anne I'm trying to shoehorn Out Stealing Horses for the January Joyrides. The library down the street has a copy in print and audio! If I can get my other planned reads done then I'll snag it at the end of January. Thanks for the book bullet on that one. :)

I can never resist this meme. Here we go again, with 2013 book titles:

Describe yourself: A Question of Upbringing

Describe how you feel: Sidetracked

Describe where you currently live: Washington: A Life

If you could go anywhere, where would you go: Casanova’s Chinese Restaurant

Your favorite form of transportation: The Long Ships

Your best friend is: The Keeper of Lost Causes

You and your friends are: A Monstrous Regiment of Women

What’s the weather like: The Long Winter

You fear: Anarchy and Old Dogs

What is the best advice you have to give: How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia

Thought for the day: Books Do Furnish A Room

How I would like to die: Things Fall Apart

My soul’s present condition: Can You Forgive Her?

Excellent answers, Anne! I think we had the same thought for the day...

>32 BLBera: Hi Beth! I noticed Americanah on your best of list as well as on some other people's, so it looks like a winner.

>33 LizzieD: Peggy, I'm already revising my plans--that's the whole point. I so want to read The Bone People (as I recall you raved about it), but it is enormous. The fact that it has a glossary made it perfect for a TIOLI challenge. But now I've noticed that one of my Xmas Swap gift books (Confessions of a Pagan Nun also has a glossary and is very short, so I'll probably go with that and save The Bone People for later. See how TIOLI messes with my reading!

>34 luvamystery65:, 36 Hi Roberta! (And thank you again for the books! It looks like I may get to two of them this month. Yippee!) I think I'm going to swap Out Stealing Horses for The Magician's Assistant because it is shorter and my plate is pretty full, so maybe we'll be reading it together.

>35 katiekrug: Yes, Katie, if only we could get our fellow TIOLI participants to hold off on the challenges. Not likely. I enjoy trying to come up with a list of books that would satisfy all the challenges, even if it is completely impossible to read them all. I've already read My Antonia--wonderful!--and Death Comes for the Archbishop is begging to be read (actually, the book isn't begging, literally, but I do have an aunt who is begging me to read it so the timing is good.)

Enjoyed your meme answers, Anne.

I'm enjoying getting caught up with LT friends, Anne. You are so brave to list your unread books...I would find myself having book anxiety if I did that! Best of luck with your January reading plans and wishing you all good things in 2014.

Hi Anne - I loved Death Comes for the Archbishop, so you are in for a great read.

Chortle chortle re A Monstrous Regiment of Women... :-)

What Suz said. It takes a lot to make me spill coffee, Anne, but you managed it this morning.

Hi Anne! So glad you're back!

How is We Need to Talk about Kevin working on audio? I'm trying to open my mind to the types of books I'll listen to on audio. Up to this point, it's just been straight-forward non-fiction and some genre fiction, but I think I may be ready to add some more challenging reads to the mix.

>38 katiekrug: Great minds, Katie. In fact if you could see some of my rooms you would realize the phrase is apt.

>40 thornton37814: I love seeing everybody's answers, Lori--I guess that's why this meme keeps coming back year after year.

>41 Donna828: Hi Donna! I haven't yet made it past the opening posts of your thread to leave a comment, so I'm not even doing a very good job lurking, but I'll get to the end of the thread soon. No book anxiety here! That's not quite true--the teetering stacks of books around my bed cause me book anxiety, but listing them all here is nothing but calming.

>42 BLBera: Thanks, Beth. You seem to be in the majority around here regarding Death Comes to the Archbishop, so I'm eager to read it.

>43 Chatterbox: The title just had to be used, Suz...

>44 PaulCranswick: Always happy to facilitate the spilling of coffee, Paul, since I'm known to do it myself.

>45 DorsVenabili: It's good to be back, Kerri! I had some trepidation about We Need to Talk About Kevin on audio, and I need to get further into it before I can say it's working, but so far, so good. I'm encouraged by the fact that the novel is in letter form, which I didn't realize, so having a narrator read the letters works surprisingly well. I have the print version to fall back on if I decide the audio isn't working, but I wanted to ditch the audio book I was listening to and this was the audiobook in my collection that was clamoring to be first in line. (Criteria for what audiobook to read next seem to be: 1) I already own it. 2) It fits into a TIOLI category. 3) I'm in the mood for it, more or less in that order.)

The audiobooks that work best for me seem to be: crime series, if I like the narrator. classics, especially very long ones. non-fiction, including memoirs. I also find that many books are enhanced by a narrator with an appropriate accent. I've definitely found some books that don't work for me, and there are some books I don't even consider as candidates.

HAH! A Monstrous Regiment of Women:)

More cheer leading for Death Comes for the Archbishop. It's a favorite.

Favorite reads of 2013

Fiction book of 2013: Life After Life - Helen Atkinson
Nonfiction book of 2013: The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness - Michelle Alexander

The rest of the best

Fiction (in roughly the order of reading)
1. The Round House - Louise Erdrich
2. The Siege - Helen Dunmore
3. Through Black Spruce - Joseph Boyden
4. Troubles - J. G. Farrell
5. The Man in the Wooden Hat - Jane Gardam
6. Salvage the Bones - Jesmyn Ward
7. The Luminaries - Eleanor Catton
8. How the Light Gets In - Louise Penny
9. The Feast of the Goat - Mario Vargas Llosa
10. A Dance to the Music of Time - Anthony Powell

*(Runners Up: Where'd You Go, Bernadette, City of the Mind, Inheritance of Loss, Alias Grace, In the Shadow of the Banyan, What Was Lost, Flight Behavior, Brooklyn, Home (Marilynne Robinson), Year of Wonders)

NonFiction
Guns, Germs and Steel - Jared Diamond
The Memory Chalet - Tony Judt
John Adams - David McCullough
Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China - Jung Chang
Enough: Why the World's Poorest Starve in an Age of Plenty - Roger Thurow

Favorite Classics:
Les Miserables - Victor Hugo
The Chronicles of Barsetshire - Anthony Trollope
(personal favorites:Doctor Thorne, Framley Parsonage)

Favorite Rereads:
A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
Caddie Woodlawn - Carol Ryrie Brink
The Dark is Rising series - Susan Cooper
The Long Winter - Laura Ingalls Wilder
Matilda - Roald Dahl

Favorite New-to-me Childrens Books
Summer of the Gypsy Moths - Sara Pennypacker
The Incorrigible Children of Ashton Place - Maryrose Wood

Favorite Audiobooks: Three Pines/Chief Inspector Gamache series - Louise Penny, Ralph Cosham narrating

Best Brain Candy: Parasol Protectorate series, Gail Carriger
Favorite New Series: Beekeepers Apprentice (Mary Russell series) - Laurie R. King
Surprisingly Unputdownable: Game of Thrones - George R. R. Martin
Favorite Scandicrime: The Keeper of Lost Causes (Department Q) - Jussi Adler-Olsen

Wonderful year-end summary, Anne. I'm not enjoying The Luminaries as much as you, but we certainly share some excellent reads feom your "rst of the best" selections. Powell has been very popular here on LT; I see Audible has Dance to the Music of Time with Simon Vance narrating. Thinking I camnot resist ...

Caddie Woodlawn! It's been well over 40 years since I read it, but I remember where it was in the public library because I borrowed it often.

Great year-end lists, Anne. We shared some favorites. Others that I haven't read are on my wish list. I look forward to seeing what you read this year.

Have a wonderful weekend, Anne!

Anne - Hope your weekend will go swimmingly. xx

Anne Out Stealing Horses is up next in my queue. The library has it waiting for me. :)

Anne, I love your view and, with my own creaky knees, definitely think your plan of sitting inside with a book and a hot drink is superior.

What ambitious plans you have, my dear! And I always keep track of what books I acquire and which I get read within a year--but I have never done it for THREE years back on a new thread. Ouch!

Every single one of the books on your fiction and non-fiction lists that I have read (with the exception of Louise Penny), was a winner for me too, whether in 2013 or previously. Which means I had better get up to speed on those I haven't yet read, such as The Luminaries and Troubles. I'm not sure I'm ready for the dog-fighting stuff in Salvage the Bones, however.

Hello Anne! Love the snow topper! Looking forward to following you on your reading adventures this year..

#46 - I agree that crime series work best on audio. I'm thinking about branching into classics as well, particularly ones I've already read. I may listen to Native Son soon, for example.

What a great list of favorites from 2013, Anne. I have read and enjoyed many of them. I hope your reading this year is equally fulfilling.

Anne - Please come out to play soon. Miss your rapid-fire reading in these parts.

Finally, a moment to come back to my thread!

>49 lit_chick: Nancy, I'm sorry you're not enjoying the Luminaries. It wasn't my favorite read of the year, but I definitely enjoyed it, and found it memorable in many ways. A Dance to the Music of Time was a year long endeavor and it was nice to have the company of a group read here. I hadn't thought about it as an audiobook since I had the 4 volume series in hand, but I think it would work...

>50 qebo: Hi Katherine! I hadn't read Caddie Woodlawn for decades but I've rediscovered it with my kids. And there are scenes that really stand out across the years.

>51 BLBera: Hi Beth. I'm still not sure I've made it over to your thread, but I will. I love seeing what you're reading.

>52 wilkiec: Thank you Diana! Now I'm having another weekend, one less packed with obligations than the last few have been.

>54 luvamystery65: Wonderful, Roberta! I'm not reading Out Stealing Horses yet but I hope to be getting to it before the end of the month.

>55 ronincats: Roni, where would I be without ambitious plans? Keeping track of books acquired going back three years is not really a big deal once I started listing them on my thread--it's really a cut and paste operation. The fun part is putting the little check marks when I actually read them.

>56 Chatterbox: Hi Suzanne. I had a quick peek at your best of lists too and was excited to see both In the Woods and The Roundhouse on your list, as these are both authors I'm inordinately fond of. The rest of your books I had to scribble down for future reference. I didn't find the dog fighting to be quite as difficult as I expected. What came across much more was the deep caring the boy had for his dog.

>57 PrueGallagher: Hi Prue--very nice to see you around here. Now to go and find your thread.

>58 DorsVenabili: Kerri--I did listen to Native Son as an audio book. I hadn't read it before but it was a gripping "listen."

>59 Donna828: Donna, I'm very far behind in my thread visits, and I don't think I've gotten beyond lurking on yours, but I'm using some free time this weekend to catch up.

>60 PaulCranswick: and 53 Hello Paul and thanks for visiting me twice! It seems I've been busier than I thought this month. I think we're reading at about the same pace from what I can see--so if that's rapid-fire you can apply it to your own pace too. It is nice to have some time to come and play here.

Anne I finished Out Stealing Horses and it was lovely. I felt such a deep connection to it. Thanks for wishing for it! I had never heard of it. Now I love it.

>62 luvamystery65: Oh good Roberta, that is a great endorsement--I'm so glad I was able to bring it to your attention. It's coming up to the top of the queue and I'm looking forward to it! So far almost everything I've read in 2014 has been pretty wonderful.

I have to add my voice to Out Stealing Horses, too. I read that a couple of years ago, and I'm pretty sure it made my list of Bests for that year. I read it around the same time I read Bakker's The Twin; it's another I highly recommend.

I finally caught up with you and have you starred now, Anne! I loved your thread topper from not-skiing in Vermont. My partner and stepson are skiing at Killington today, but I have given up downhill and stayed home. Instead, I spent two hours shoveling snow (light snow, but long driveway and many sidewalks) and am now trying to catch up with some threads. That seems nearly impossible this year. Everything is moving so fast!

Ahh! I just saw your Ugly Cover entry. I can't believe you read Mr. Midshipman Hornblower this year. I recently finished Commodore Hornblower! What a coincidence! I can't get over how many people are familiar with Hornblower here...my book sat on my shelf for YEARS, as just one of a shelf of 'I never heard of it before' books I got from my Grandmother.

The 'ahh!' is me shrieking with delight. Hornblower deserves to still be read. I may have to get the rest of the books about him someday. What did you think of the audio?

Did someone mention shoveling snow? I'm waiting until the temp rises a bit this afternoon to shovel the five inches from my driveway and apply ice melt.

I'm not likely to get frostbitten fingers here in Kuala Lumpur so I'll safely type a Happy Weekend, Anne.

>64 lit_chick: Hi Nancy. I remember you loving Out Stealing Horses, that may be why it ended up on my wish list (from which it migrated to my Xmas Swap list where Roberta very kindly saw it and sent it to me.) I didn't get to it in January but I've read the first few pages and it will definitely be one of my first reads in February.

>65 Linda92007: Hi Linda! We were at Killington, too. That is where we head every year after spending Christmas in Connecticut.

>66 Merryann: Welcome Merryann--how funny. Now I will have to go and visit your thread and see what you're reading besides Hornblower. I didn't necessarily plan to read Hornblower--I may have downloaded it by mistake getting it confused with the Master and Commander series, which I've also been meaning to read. The audio was a pretty good way to read it I think.

>67 thornton37814: Not much snow in my parts, at least not this week. I had a friend visiting from Minnesota though and I think she brought her temperatures with her. Brrrr. Thank goodness it got up to 50 this weekend--that's more like what I expect from DC winter.

>68 PaulCranswick: Thank you Paul--I hope you had a lovely weekend yourself.

Well it is a new month and that means it is time for another Ambitious Reading List.

I will never read 22 books in the short month of February, but if I were going to sweep the TIOLI challenge, these would be my books:

1. The Balkan Trilogy - Olivia Manning (Book 2)
2. The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse
3. Not the End of the World - Kate Atkinson
4. The Merry Misogynist - Colin Cotterill
✔5. A Storm of Swords - George R. R. Martin
6. The Story of Lucy Gault - William Trevor
7. Someone - Alice McDermott
8. Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition - Daniel Okrent (Reading)
✔9. Out Stealing Horses - Per Petterson
10. Turtle Diary - Russell Hoban
11. Americanah - Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
✔12. Light in August - William Faulkner
✔13. The Mill on the Floss - George Eliot
✔14. Five Children and It - E. Nesbit Strawberry Girl - Lois Lenski
15. Waiting for Snow in Havana - Carlos Eire
✔16. Enduring Love - Ian McEwan Of Love and Other Demons - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
17. Jack and Jill - Louisa May Alcott
18. The Fortune of the Rougons - Emile Zola
19. Bud, Not Buddy - Christopher Paul Curtis
✔20. Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH - Robert O'Brien
21. The Dilemma of a Ghost - Ama Ata Aidoo
22. Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe - Fannie Flagg

Mayhap I'll join you in Olivia Manning -- I think I stalled partway through book # 2 listening to the audiobook. I'd read it previously, and very much liked it (and I adore the TV miniseries; one of my all-time faves) and I really should either persevere with the audiobook or revert to the dead tree version.

But yes, that IS an ambitious list!!

Inspiring list, Anne - will be interested to see what gets read!

Great list, Anne! If anyone can get through it in a month, you can! There are a couple there I've been wanting to get to myself: The Balkan Trilogy and Americanah.

Great list, Anne. Good luck. There are several great ones there, and some on my wish list. I highly recommend Someone, Americanah and Light in August. I've been wanting to get to The Balkan Trilogy. I will be reading the Erdrich book for my class -- one of three of hers I haven't read. Oh well. I've had it on my list for a while.

Anne - I have been waiting somewhat impatiently for the mass paperback version of Americanah to appear here in the shops (among many in truth) - Goodard, Child, McCann, Camilleri etc etc etc - so I'll be interested to see if it is amongst the books you polish off in Feb.

Hi, Anne!
I do hope you get round to Mrs. Frisby this month - it's one of my all-time favorite reads from when I was younger.

>71 Chatterbox: Hi Suzanne. I wouldn't be surprised if it was you who originally got me interested in the Balkan Trilogy. I read and enjoyed the first book last year, but haven't managed to get back to the second book--maybe because it didn't fir nicely into a TIOLI challenge. But I am looking forward to resuming.

>72 PrueGallagher: Hi Prue. I'll be interested too! In January I made a lot of substitutions mid-moth so my list looked nothing at all like my plan.

>73 lit_chick: Nancy, I actually doubt I can do it but where would I be without a list.

>74 BLBera: Thanks Beth. I will definitely be reading Light in August to keep up with the American Authors challenge though Someone and Americanah are more aspirational. Like you, The Last Report of the Miracles at Little No Horse is one of the few Erdrich books I haven't read.

>75 PaulCranswick: I have to say, Paul, that it surprises me a little that you would wait patiently to buy a book--but I guess that waiting for the paperback version means that you can justify buying more. :)

>76 scaifea: Hi, Amber! Mrs. Frisby is one I will definitely get to this month as I'm reading it aloud to my daughter and there is no stopping or skipping nights. I haven't read it since I was a kid myself but I remember it fondly.

So I have just finished up the massive tome A Storm of Swords (1127 pages) which I started in January as an audiobook. I had to switch to the paperback near the end because the narration was taking too long and I was impatient. Plus, the narrator's voice was annoying me. This is the first volume I've read without already knowing what was going to happen because of the series--so it was full of surprises. Now I am ready to catch up on Season 3 before Season 4 starts up.

Without that book to distract me, I am now able to settle in with Out Stealing Horses--seemingly not quite as plot-driven. I enjoyed this passage today:

Lars is Lars even though I saw him last when he was ten years old, and now he's past sixty, and if this had been something in a novel it would just have been irritating. I have in fact done a lot of reading particularly during the last few years, but earlier too, by all means, and I have thought about what I've read, and that kind of coincidence seems far-fetched in fiction, in modern novels anyway, and I find it hard to accept. It may be all very well in Dickens, but when you read Dickens you're reading a long ballad from a vanished world, where everything has to come together in the end like an equation, where the balance of what was once disturbed must be restored so that the gods can smile again.

A nice way to think about Dickens, I think.

Hi Anne!

#78 - I assume the narrator was Roy Dotrice, right? That's who reads the audio of the first and second in the series. I've listened to the first so far, and didn't mind him terribly, but I've heard of other readers being disappointed in his narration. That being said, I must get to the audio of that second book (I really loved the first). It's just sooo looong.

That is a nice way to think about Dickens. Great quote.

I love the quote about Dickens.

I've been afraid to start the Game of Thrones books; there are so many of them and they are so long. Kudos to you, Anne, for being brave enough to dive in.

when you read Dickens you're reading a long ballad from a vanished world, where everything has to come together in the end like an equation, where the balance of what was once disturbed must be restored so that the gods can smile again.

I like that. A lot. Richard of course will be gnashing his teeth.

Have a lovely weekend. xx

>79 DorsVenabili: Hi Kerri! You are right, the narrator is Ray Dotrice. I didn't think he was a bad narrator, I think I'm just experiencing the effects of mixing book + tv series + audiobook, and the voices the narrator uses for the different characters were getting on my nerves. How the characters are SUPPOSED to sound has definitely been influenced for me by watching the series.

>80 lit_chick: Nancy (and Beth)--one of the things I enjoyed about Out Stealing Horses was the way Dickens was woven in in so many places--like the narrator's anxiety and suspense as a child regarding whether David Copperfield would indeed turn out to be the central figure in his own narrative, and what it would mean if he wasn't.

>81 BLBera: Beth, I was dragged into The Game of Thrones by my husband who is a huge fan, and because I agreed to watch the first few seasons of the series without having read the books. Now I am catching up. They are very very long, but I've found them to be good escapist fare during recent months. I think now I've read past where Season 3 left off so I am all ready for Season 4.

>82 PaulCranswick: Heh Heh. Paul, Richard doesn't generally show up in these parts so I think I'm safe.

I've now wrapped up both Out Stealing Horses and Of Love and Other Demons by Gabriel Garcia--a remarkably short novel in comparison with One Hundred Years of Solitude and which I quite enjoyed.

I am also completely engrossed in the audio version of The Mill on the Floss, which I realize I've never read. I was very pleased to discove that the audiobook links up with a free Kindle version I downloaded a couple of years ago, so I can switch back and forth between print and audio and keep my place. For some reason I thought that only worked if you purchased a Kindle version.

Now I am about to settle in for some Faulkner--Light in August. I've avoided Faulkner all my life so wish me luck.

Anne - As usual, you are inspirational in your reading. I love Faulkner. One thing I'm learning in my World Lit class is how much Vargas Llosa, Garcia Marquez and Fuentes love Faulkner. The Sound and the Fury is my favorite.

>84 AnneDC: & >85 BLBera: I hated The Sound and the Fury almost as much as any book I have struggled to the end of. I also had my moments with this month's As I Lay Dying but overall I have to say that I came away from it a bit more appreciative of what Faulkner was trying to do.

Anne, I hope you enjoyed Out Stealing Horses as much as I did. I'm into some Faulkner presently, too: an audio version of As I Lay Dying, which is superb.

>85 BLBera: Hi Beth. As I noted this was my first successful attempt at reading Faulkner. I just finished Light in August yesterday and although it took me quite a while, it was well worth it. The connection with Vargas Llosa and Garcia Marquez makes sense--it's interesting when you read authors who were inspired by an author whom you've never actually read. Makes me feel like I'm reading things in reverse order.

>86 PaulCranswick: Paul, it sounds like you got much farther in The Sound and the Fury than I ever did. I have a vague recollection of attempting a few paragraphs of it in my 20s and it put me off Faulkner until just now. But I really did enjoy Light in August enough to try some more. I'm glad you made it through As I Lay Dying more or less unscathed.

>87 lit_chick: Hi Nancy--I did love Out Stealing Horses. I'm trying to think about Faulkner by audio--I'm not sure my attention span would be up to the task.

Anne, I think you made a good choice for your first Faulkner. So far Light in August has been my favorite by him but I am not well-read in the Faulkner world. Lots of books left to explore but I'll take my time. I have found that switching between audio and print, especially for long books, is a way to keep the reading fresh. I plan to do that with this month's reading of The Last Chronicle of Barset.

Happy Sunday to you. We're currently getting snow on top of last night's sleet. Nothing happy about that!

It is snowing and snowing, the government and schools are shut down (again). It is very pretty, and a three-day weekend is always appreciated, but I am ready for spring! I have a trip to Memphis at the end of the week and I hope it's a little warmer there.

>89 Donna828: Donna, while reading Light in August I found myself thinking often of Gilead and Home--I'm not exactly sure why, except maybe the Hightower storyline with its references to grandfather-father-son and the connections with the ministry and slavery.

>90 AnneDC: It went south this time. We were told to expect 6"-12", but got only a thin layer that didn't even stick to the streets, and now it's done.

Reading plans for March: so many possibilities.

February was a short month with some long long books, so I didn't get very far on my list, and I'm still finishing up a number of books I started in February. But I'm very excited about this month's options! Also, I am doing great this year with reading books from my own shelves.

Still Reading:

✔The Balkan Trilogy - Olivia Manning (TIOLI #11)
✔The Guns of August - Barbara Tuchman (TIOLI #5)
✔Why the Whales Came - Michael Morpurgo
Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition - Daniel Okrent (TIOLI #2)
Not the End of the World - Kate Atkinson (TIOLI #2)

March Possibilities:

The Fortune of the Rougons - Emile Zola (TIOLI Challenge #1)
✔The Last Chronicle of Barset (TIOLI #2)
The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse - Louise Erdrich (TIOLI #2)
Last Friends - Jane Gardam (TIOLI #2)
Blood Meridian or The Evening Redness in the West - Cormac McCarthy (TIOLI #3) (also for AAC)
Larry's Party - Carol Shields (TIOLI#4)
The Photograph - Penelope Lively (TIOLI #6)
Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children - Ransom Riggs (TIOLI #6)
Home - Toni Morrison (TIOLI #7)
✔The Graves are Walking - John Kelly (TIOLI #8)
The Jewel in the Crown - Paul Scott (TIOLI #8)
Walden - Henry David Thoreau (TIOLI #10)
Americanah - Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (TIOLI #14)
Blackberry Wine - Joanne Harris (TIOLI #15)
The Shadow in the North - Philip Pullman (TIOLI #17)
The Orphan Master's Son - Adam Johnson (TIOLI #18)


Also, if I can get to the D-A-Y-L-I-G-H-T challenge (#9) at the right moment, I will insert The Road for my Cormac McCarthy read this month.

Anne - Thanks so much for posting your planned or potential reads for the month. I enjoy seeing them so much. For my class, I will be reading the Erdrich book.

You have some treats ahead, many good books on your list.

>91 qebo: Katherine--Lucky you! It has been snowing all morning and it's supposed to stop by 2 or 3. I think we're definitely getting the 5 to 10" we were promised. (It is somewhat gratifying when predictions are correct instead of the overblown hype that is the norm around here.) Plus, it's co-o-old so no chance of melting, today. It should warm up later in the week, though.

Anne, I hope I can make it to The Guns of August this month. Maybe I can!

>92 AnneDC: You might have guessed but I also love those lists. Just about done with The Guns of August and loving it. Haven't really looked at the TIOLI's yet this month or formulated my own plans as March has sort of sneaked up on me somewhat. Could well join you with Americanah though.

Have a lovely weekend, Anne.

This time I WILL join you with the Balkan trilogy as a matched read... I need an audiobook, as the narrator for The Jewel in the Crown was dreadful, and I'm having audiobook hangover after finishing listening to the superlatively read Broken Homes by Ben Aaronovitch.

It's Saint Patrick's Day and ANOTHER snow day, and rather than "working from home" as I was supposed to do I've spent part of my day reading about the Irish potato blight. Seems appropriate.

My March reading is going ve-e-e-e-ry slow, maybe because I'm reading mainly tomes.

I've finished The Guns of August as part of my World War I reading plans (other than this I've been reading children's books set in World War I, so it was nice to dive into the military history.)

And I finished (finally) The Balkan Trilogy, which I began last year or maybe even the year before, but paused at the end of Book 1 and never managed to get back to Book 2. It was very good and I probably should have kept going after my initial read, but I was able to keep Book 1 mostly in mind as I moved on to Books 2 and 3. It was a little disconcerting to be reading about the early days of World War I at the same time as a story about the flight of British expatriates fleeing German-occupied Rumania during World War II, and winding up in Greece.

Right now, besides The Graves Are Walking, which is about the potato blight and famine in Ireland and which I'm finding fascinating, I'm also about to finish up The Last Chronicle of Barset (also not a slim volume) which I am loving. I will be sad to see the Barsetshire series come to an end. And equally delightful, I've started reading Little Town on the Prairie with Helen, which has always been my favorite book of the series.

I've also started on my Cormac McCarthy book for the month, for the American Authors read, and after wavering between two from my shelf I'm going with Blood Meridian. I've been meaning to read it since I read Moby Dick and then Heart of Darkness a year or so ago and picked it up because its been compared with Melville--and Faulkner. I thought it would make a good segue from Light in August and so far that's just how it feels.

>95 thornton37814: Lori I hope you get to The Guns of August--if not this month then soon. Really interesting account about the early days of the war.

>96 PaulCranswick: What, Paul, you like lists? I had no idea... I loved The Guns of August and am looking forward to continuing to read all the WWI books on my shelves (and maybe some others). I still really would like to get to Americanah this month, but it's been a slow reading month for me so no guarantees.

>97 Chatterbox: Hi Suzanne! I will have to duck over and see if you got to The Balkan Trilogy and how it went--as I recall this is a re-read for you, right? I've definitely put the Aaronovitch series on my Audible wishlist as the result of your raves.

Anne, you have been doing some wonderful reading. Your mention of The Graves Are Walking sent me right over to Amazon, as I have been attempting some largely unsuccessful genealogical research on my Irish relatives. Also, The Balkan Trilogy has been on my wishlist for a long time. I'm looking forward to your comments on both.

Hi Anne - Quality, not quantity, right? You have read some great books. I want to get to The Balkan Trilogy one of these days. The Graves Are Walking sounds fascinating.

>98 AnneDC: I did celebrate St. Pats with a quick nip of John Jameson and a huge bowl full of Shephard's Pie. Made me think of the old country if nothing else. The Guns of August was military history but with an insight not necessarily borne of iron and blood.

Thanks to my cold, I'm nearly finished listening to The Spoilt City; I have switched to listening as it's less demanding (!) than reading with bleary eyes. Enjoying it. I see Yakimov's trip to Cluj as his turning point, to some extent.

The Graves Are Walking is excellent, but very controversial among Irish nationalists. Although harshly critical of British policies (clinging to the principles of free trade as people starved), Kelly explicitly rejects the label of genocide, which is anathema to the die-hard nationalists. Well, you can read some of the responses to my review on Amazon...

>100 Linda92007: Hello Linda! I have vague aspirations of genealogical research on my own Irish relatives someday, but for now I'll content myself with reading. I find myself taking a very personal interest in The Graves Are Walking, which so far I highly recommend.

>101 BLBera: Yes, Beth, I'm definitely more than satisfied with the quality of my March reading--and my page count is not too shabby, either, not that I'm in the habit of tracking it.

>102 PaulCranswick: I'm guessing St. Paddy's Day is not a major event in KL although you never know. The Guns of August was really fascinating--I found myself continually thinking throughout "what would have happened if...?" It is thought provoking how epic historical events can turn on the frailties of particular individuals.

>103 Chatterbox: Suz, Cluj does seem to be a transition on several levels. Oooo, controversy. I will have to check out your review and ensuing controversy (although in general, reading comments sections on-line is one of my least favorite activities and makes me despair for the future of civilization). One of the things that is a little eerie about the book is how contemporary some of the ideology sounds--particularly as it pertains, say, to food policy in Africa.

I also meant to mention that I am greatly enjoying Kate Atkinson's Not the End of the World, a short story collection that has been sitting on my shelf for a few years and which I'm slowly working my way through this month. I adore Atkinson's writing, it almost doesn't matter what she's writing.

Here are some snippets from a story called "Transparent Fiction":

Meredith had gone through life borrowing other people's personalities rather than going to the trouble of developing her own. She found it was a good way of avoiding the anguished introspection that most people seemed prey to. Meredith's own family provided a vast assortment of personae from which she could pick and mix.

Adelaide met and married a penniless Italian count while she was on the Grand Tour. Adelaide died in childbirth at the end of her first year of marriage and the Italian count inherited her fortune and disappeared into history. There was a tendency among some Zanes to think of Adelaide as a doomed, romantic figure, but in truth, she was a plain girl with a fondness for small dogs and licorice and her count was no Gilbert Osmond.

A couple of books I am not actually reading though the top of my thread says that I am: The first is Last Call, a non-fiction book about Prohibition which I have been reading for many months and have been really enjoying--no, really!--despite that I'm still only 34% into it after starting it in November. It's very very interesting, and I think the problem may be that I'm reading it on my Kindle and I haven't had good Kindle-reading opportunities lately. I surely will continue to read on, but it seems not very fast.

The other is The Orphan Master's Son which I picked up the other day but had a hard time getting into. So it is temporarily set aside.

Anne, I was too far behind to really catch up, but I leave with the impression of lots of good reading going on.
(I glanced at your comment above about Last Call, and sure enough, the Touchstone leads to the first of my favorite Tim Powers trilogy involving the Fisher King on the west coast....) Meanwhile, count another lover of *Stealing Horses* and a vote for *Jewel*, which I just finished, and Larry's Party.

Hi Anne - I have the Atkinson short stories next to my bed, but I've only read the first one. I liked it, but I feel like I want to start over. It's been languishing.

Book bullet on the Kate Atkinson short stories! Although I think they will come from the library next month sometime...

I struggled with The Orphan Master's Son all the way through, and just didn't understand all the fuss. Yes, the writing was occasionally good, but I suspect it was intended to be read as a big parable and I don't like parables with my fiction. I finished, but it wasn't a good book for me.

Mmmmm I would have thought that Kate Atkinson is a dab hand at the short story genre and must go and seek that out.

>104 AnneDC: You are right than St. Pats went off without a murmur over here other than for those of us with a drop of the Emerald Green in our veins.

Have a lovely weekend. xxx

*Happy weekend wave*

>106 LizzieD: Hi Peggy. I didn't get to Jewel in the Crown this month but still have hopes for April. I went back and fixed that Last Call touchstone but it gives me the wrong book every time. Maybe if I wasn't too lazy to type in the full title...anyway it is a non-fiction account of Prohibition and it is quite interesting--I WILL finish it next month!!

>107 BLBera: Beth, I'm not quite finished with the Atkinson short stories (two more to go) but I have a feeling based on the titles that the first and last ones will end up as "bookends" for the collection--so it might be worth at least a re-skim of the first one whenever you pick them back up. Meanwhile, although these stories seem to stand alone as short stories, it is fascinating to me how Atkinson works in tiny little details that show up throughout the collection that don't exactly tie them together, but that make me feel like I need to be on my toes.

> 108 Well, Suzanne, it's good to know it's not just me. I haven't given up The Orphan Master's Son altogether--I'm considering the possibility that reading it at the same time as Cormac McCarthy was not a good plan, and that April may find me in a different mood.

>109 PaulCranswick: Well it's two weekends later Paul, but I hope they have both been good ones.

>110 wilkiec: Thanks for visiting Diana! Off to make some thread rounds.

I'm still sorting out my April reading plans, but here is my teetering tower of possibilities:

Nooo! It's snowing again!

It was a near blizzard here last night but today the sun is out and it's pretty nice out. Winter please go away...now!

Looking at that teetering tower Anne, I see a book that I'm planning to read in April too: Margaret Atwood's Wilderness Tips. I thought The Orphan Master's Son was completely over-hyped also. Not only that, there were parts that made no sense to me. Atkinson's short story collection sounds too good to miss. I love her books but I'd never heard of that one.

Too bad about the snow, Anne. Nice pile of possibilities for April. Americanah is great.

Looks like an impressive stack of books, as always, Anne. I highly recommend The Cellist of Sarajevo. There are others in your pile I'm meaning to get to ...

De-lurking to say that that's a fantastic pile of April possibilities, Anne!! I loved 5 of them (A Dry White Season, Americanah, The Gift of Rain, The Cellist of S., and Americanah) and almost all the rest are on my TBR list.

Hope you (and everyone else reading this in the US) get rid of winter soon.

>116 lit_chick: I agree that The Cellist of Sarajevo was a beautiful book.

Well, I must read *Cellist*, but I don't know when. The difference between you and me, dear Anne, is that while I might have those 2 great piles of possibilities, I wouldn't get to even half of them, and you will do much better! *sigh*

>112 AnneDC: That would be an impressive blackjack of reads Anne. 21 as I count and nary a dud amongst 'em.

>114 brenzi: This week it really feels like spring. Fingers crossed. So you and Suz were both underwhelmed by Orphan Master. I can feel my eagerness to get back to it steadily dipping.

>115 BLBera: I just finished Americanah last night, Beth, and loved it!

>116 lit_chick: Okay, Nancy, you've convinced me. I had several viable candidates for the TIOLI Eastern Europe challenge but {cellist of Sarajevo it is!

>118 thornton37814: Ditto Lori

>119 LizzieD: Well, Peggy, since Paul informs me that my count is 21, I think I will be lucky to read half of them.

>120 PaulCranswick: I'd love to read 21 books in a month again but I don't think this will be the month.

Edited to fix numbers in replies.

I had a burst of book buying at the members-only sale at my local bookstore this weekend. I haven't bought a real live book in at least six months so I don't feel even the slightest bit guilty. (However, I haven't taken them out of the trunk yet).

The Crossing - Cormac McCarthy
One of Ours - Willa Cather
Why Read Moby Dick? - Nathaniel Philbrick
Someone - Alice McDermott
Hild - Nicola Griffith
Still Life With Breadcrumbs - Anna Quindlan
The Signature of All Things - Elizabeth Gilbert
Burial Rites - Hannah Kent
The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914 - Christopher Clark
All Our Names - Dinaw Mengestu
Angel - Elizabeth Taylor
The Flamethrowers - Rachel Kushner
Love - Toni Morrison
Ghana Must Go
Bastard Out of Carolina
The Impossible Lives of Greta Wells

Hi Anne - Nice haul. The ones that I've read are all winners, and several others are on my to read list. I'm glad you loved Americanah, but what's not to love?

Oooh, great haul! I loved Hild (was an "early adopter"!), but have yet to read the Elizabeth Gilbert and Hannah Kent ARCs that I also snagged at BookExpo at the same time, shameful as it is.

Great list for May, too. I LOVED the Andre Brink novel, and may have to re-read Regeneration very soon.

I'm ashamed to admit I've been a fluff devotee for the last month or two. I do have the new Steven Galloway novel lined up, along with Caught by Lisa Moore, and the upcoming book by Dinaw Mengestu, however, so there will be some "protein content"!

Hope all is well and the snow has shuffled off to Buffalo (probably quite literally, judging by news reports...)

Great haul

>112 AnneDC: Fabulous collection of planned reads for April, Anne! I can vouch for The Gift of Rain, Stone Upon Stone, Disgrace and Americanah. I'd like to read Ancestor Stories and Regeneration soon, and All the King's Men should be on my wish list.

>122 AnneDC: Great book haul as well. I'll read The Signature of All Things later this spring, and I'll pick up All Our Names in the next month or two.

Just noticing that I messed up the ordering of my reply posts up there, and the new referral feature makes that glaringly obvious. Oops.

So, nice to see you, >117 cushlareads: , Cushla, and I'm glad that you loved those five books. I'm never quite sure the origins of book bullets around here, and often a book lands on my wishlist because several people have loved it, but I'm pretty sure The Gift of Rain came from you.

>123 BLBera: Yes, Beth, what's not to love? I'm expecting to see it on the formerly-Orange short list.

>124 Chatterbox: I had you associated in my mind with Hild, Suz, so I am not surprised to hear you are an "early adopter." Thank goodness for fluff! My April stack falls a little short in that department, admittedly.

>125 thornton37814: Why buy one book when you can buy 15, I always say.

>126 kidzdoc: Hi Darryl! I just finished Americanah and it was fabulous. I loved Half of a Yellow Sun also but now I feel confident saying I love the author and not just one book.
I also just finished All the King's Men, which was a reread, but it might as well not have been. I read it in my late teens or early 20s because my high school English teacher raved about it, and I swear I don't remember a thing except maybe the opening scene. But I loved it this time--beautifully written and very thought-provoking.

Me 'n Hild; good company! :-)

Yes, Anne, I think Americanah will make the short list. I wonder if there are odds yet... Hmm, I'll have to check.

OK - I just checked and the shortlist has been announced:
Americanah
The Lowland
The Goldfinch
The Undertaking
Burial Rites
A Girl Is a Half-Formed Thing

I've only read the first two, and Americanah is by far my favorite.

I've read the first three, and would have to say I don't really have a favorite from amongst them. On a literary level, I'd say Americanah edges out the Lahiri novel, and on a thumping good read standpoint, Donna Tartt wins. Clearly, I'll have to read The Undertaking and Burial Rites this month!

Thanks for the list, Beth.
And Suzanne, it may be time for me to get on with that "thumping good read." I wonder if it fits a TIOLI category...

I've only read Americanah so far, and so have no basis to pick a favorite. I have The Goldfinch and Burial Rites in my possession, and so those are logically next up. I didn't love The Namesake, and so have been lacking in motivation to seek out The Lowland (in fact I passed it up in my book binge this weekend), but since I generally make an effort to read the whole shortlist, I will give it a chance. Both The Undertaking and A Girl is a Half-Formed Thing have piqued my interest--shame they're not released here yet.

March Summary

5 stars


4.5 stars


4.2 stars
4.2

4 stars




The Guns of August - Barbara Tuchman 4.5
The Balkan Trilogy - Olivia Manning 4.5
Why the Whales Came - Michael Morpurgo 4.2
The Last Chronicle of Barset - Anthony Trollope 5.0
The Graves Are Walking - John Kelly 4.5
The Prince of Tides - Pat Conroy 4.0
War Dances - Sherman Alexie 4.0
Little Town on the Prairie - Laura Ingalls Wilder 4.5
Blood Meridian - Cormac McCarthy 4.2
Not the End of the World - Kate Atkinson 4.2

10 Books read

2 Nonfiction
2 Ch/YA
2 short story collections
4 fiction (1 classic, 3 literary fiction)

1 new (audio), 9 Off-the-shelf
Of off-the-shelf books: 2 from kids’ shelves, 7 from mine
Of my TBR books: 2 from 2013, 2 from 2012, 1 2011, 1 before

Print books: 6
Audio: 4
Kindle: 0

Male authors: 5
Female authors: 3
New authors: none
US authors: 4
UK authors: 4
Translated books: 0
Rereads: 1
19th century: 1
20th century: 7
21st century: 2

Country settings:
Romania
Greece
UK (Scilly Islands)
UK (Barsetshire, I know, not real)
UK (Edinburgh)
Mexico

State settings:
South Carolina
Washington
South Dakota
Texas/Southwest

Thoughts:
No genre fiction in March. No new-to-me authors, which is unusual. No translated books. High proportion of audiobooks.
On track with American Authors challenge. Completed The Balkan Trilogy which has been pending for a long time. No disappointing books.

Nice summary, Anne! It's definitely a good month when your lowest ranked books are still 4 stars :)

And no disappointing books! Hurrah!!!

Woot! That's some great reading month, Anne! Hope you enjoyed Trollope's Barsetshire novels as much as I did.

Hello Anne - I'm just going to put a plug in for Burial Rites which I absolutely loved. (The author is Australian, BTW). Some great reading up on your lists! I have Americanah in the piles somewhere.....

Nice summary, Anne. I hope April is another good reading month for you.

Happy Easter!

Hi, Anne. Hope you're having a blessed Eastertide.
I just posted this on my own thread and then thought of you.....
One of my all-time favorite students has been understudying Tovah Feldshuh in her role as Golda Meir in Golda's Balcony by William Gibson. Ms. Felshuh has other commitments this Wednesday and Thursday nights when the play is in D.C., and my Anne is going on!!!! Here's the Scoop! How I wish I could get there!!!

Hi Anne! Thanks for finding me. :)

I read my second McCarthy last month, No Country For Old Men, and although it was a pretty good read, the end left me in a bad mood and I can't really say why? I much preferred The Road, even though it is probably more depressing and bleak.
Looking forward to following your readings again.

Long time no see Anne. Hope to hear from you soon in a complete mixing up of the senses.

Hi Anne - I was just checking out your reading for the year. Lots of good stuff.

Hello, Beth! What a surprise to see my own thread pop to the front of the queue.

(Waves at Paul, too, from way back in May, and Valerie and Peggy too!)

It seems I've been mostly absent from LT most of the year, not even lurking much. I've been keeping up with the TIOLI challenge and the American Author Challenge but that's about it. Looks like I will only need one thread this year! Oh, well, there is always 2015.

By way of an update, here's what I've been reading since I last posted on my own thread.

May
47. Into the Wild - Jon Krakauer (audio)
48. The Goldfinch - Donna Tartt (Kindle)
49. The Indian Bride - Karin Fossum (audio)
50. The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency - Alexander McCall Smith (audio)
51. A Girl is a Half-Formed Thing - Eimear McBride
52. The Optimist's Daughter - Eudora Welty
53. The Story of Lucy Gault - William Trevor
54. Master and Commander - Patrick O'Brian
55. The Undertaking - Audrey Magee
56. Party Shoes - Noel Streatfeild
57. The Unseen Guest - Maryrose Wood

June
58. Burial Rites - Hannah Kent
59. Rules for Virgins - Amy Tan
60. Founding Brothers - Joseph Ellis
61. Mother Night - Kurt Vonnegut
62. The Interrupted Tale - Maryrose Wood (audio)
63. The Jewel in the Crown - Paul Scott

July
64. Don Quixote - Miguel de Cervantes (audio)
65. The Daughters of Mars - Thomas Kenneally
66. Phineas Finn - Anthony Trollope (audio)
67. The Stolen Lake – Joan Aiken (aloud)
68. The Maltese Falcon – Dashiell Hammett
69. The Moor – Laurie R. King (audio)
70. Becoming Naomi Leon – Pam Munoz Ryan (aloud)
71. The Summer Book – Tove Janssen
72. Wilderness Tips – Margaret Atwood

August
73. Maniac Magee – Jerry Spinelli
74. Norwegian Wood – Haruki Murukami (audio)
75. A Gathering of Days – Joan Blos
76. Daughter of Smoke and Bone – Laini Taylor (audio)
77. Days of Blood and Starlight – Laini Taylor (audio)
78. The Haunting of Hill House – Shirley Jackson
79. A Feast for Crows – George R. R. Martin (audio)
80. James Madison – Richard Brookhiser

September
81. A Dance with Dragons – George R. R. Martin (audio)
82. The Turtle of Oman -
83. Princess Academy – Shannon Hale (aloud)
84. The Secret Place – Tana French (audio)
85. Geek Love – Katherine Dunne
86. American Pastoral – Philip Roth
87. A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court – Mark Twain
88. The Last Founding Father: James Monroe and a Nation’s Call to Greatness -
89. The Sign of the Beaver – Elizabeth George Speare
90. Understood Betsy – Dorothy Canfield Fisher (aloud)
91. The Fortune of the Rougons – Emile Zola
92. The Long Way Home – Louise Penny (audio)

October
93. Giovanni’s Room – James Baldwin
94. The Children Act – Ian McEwan
95. The House of Mirth – Edith Wharton (audio)
96. Frankenstein – Mary Shelley (audio)
97. Rebecca – Daphne du Maurier
98. The Lighthouse – Alison Moore
99. The Ocean at the End of the Lane – Neil Gaiman
100. Walden – Henry David Thoreau (audio)
101. Nocturnes – Kazuo Ishiguro
102. The Sea – John Banville
103. Wildwood – Colin Meloy

November
104. Candide – Voltaire (audio)
105. The Turn of the Screw – Henry James
106. The Cloven Viscount – Italo Calvino
107. The Orphan Master’s Son – Adam Johnson
108. Netherland – Joseph O’Neill (audio)
109. The Turn of the Screw - Henry James
110. The Things They Carried - Tim O'Brien
110. Moon Over Manifest - Clare Vanderpool (aloud)

I'm currently reading The Maples Stories by John Updike for Mark's American Author's Challenge, and a biography of John Quincy Adams for my very very slow moving endeavor to read about all the presidents in chronological order. If I get to Andrew Jackson next month I will have achieved this year's goal.

I'm also re-reading the Hunger Games trilogy as part of my new mother-daughter book group that I started in a desperate effort to entice my 11-year-old to read for fun. (Can you believe enticement is necessary? Shocking.) But it's working--we take turns choosing a book, we both read it, and then we go out for lunch or tea to chat about it. I thought it was a good idea but it is so much better than I even imagined. This month we will go see the new movie once Helen gets through all the books.

I'm hoping to have some time to drop by threads over the weekend and catch up a little on other people's reading.

I love the idea of a mother-daughter book group. Maybe I can start one with my granddaughter when she gets to the reading age.

I can't wait to see your "Best of 2014" list. You've read a lot and a lot of good books this year. And I'm impressed by how many were off your shelves.

Looking forward to keeping up with your readings in 2015! :)

What a treat to "see" you, Anne! You have been missed.

I love the idea of that mother-daughter book group. I wonder if my 10-year old niece would be interested in something similar....

Anne, it's a real treat to see you back (I see I'm echoing Katie) and to have a look at all your good reading for the year. I think your mother-daughter book group is wonderful. The only fault I have with your chronological Presidents reading is that it's going to take you forever to get to Caro's LBJ, and those are the best biographies I've ever read, and I've read some great ones since coming to LT!

Welcome, Stranger! Looks like you've been doing some great reading while you've been gone, and that mother-daughter book group is inspired! I see you fit some fantasy into August and September. Of all those books, which were outstanding in your opinion?

Hi Anne, what a delight! Oh, I love the look of your reading list! I've read some wonderful stuff this year, too, but I am reading at a snail's pace. Got off track with a long and bitter teachers' strike June through late Sept and never really seemed to pick up the pace since that time.

Oh I have missed being around here!

>144 BLBera: Beth, yikes--my Best of 2014 list--sounds stressful already! I always have such a hard time narrowing down the list of bests.

As you noticed I have been doing really really well reading off my shelves this year. Not really on purpose, except that I'm always trying to reduce the TBR stack, but I haven't been buying very many books, except for Kindle sales, and I haven't spent much time at the library this year. It turns out I have a lot of great books on my shelf, and it's been fun to focus on them. (Of course there are plenty more.)

>145 jolerie: Valerie, yes, I hope to be way more active in 2015. It would be hard to get less active, I think.

>146 katiekrug: Hi Katie! I've missed being around. I thought about reading together as a way to manipulate Helen into choosing reading over the many other distractions available to her--I just couldn't tolerate the idea that I might be raising a child who is bored by reading. She is also suddenly the only child at home this year, since both her brother and sister are in college, so it's been a great justification for scheduling special outings with mom. We've only gotten through three books but I already can see a difference in her reading pace and her desire to do it. She is flying through the Hunger Games books and carrying a book with her everywhere (sound familar?). Plus it's fun for me. Our book talks are not that exciting but it's an excellent excuse to go out for lunch.

>147 LizzieD: Peggy it's funny you should mention the Caro biographies since they (and probably your rave reviews) are one of the things that got me started on this project. I kept accumulating presidential biographies and not reading them, and so this is a plan to get through them all. It's going to take me a while, and I'm well aware that I will have to suffer through some mediocre presidents as well as some mediocre writers to get to the LBJ series, but I am really enjoying the journey, even though it may seem like I am plodding along. I'm also really appreciating the overlapping layers of history I'm getting from reading about the same events over and over again as they recur in multiple biographies. By the time I get to Caro I will be very well informed!

>148 ronincats: Hi Roni! I had to scroll back through the list to remember what fantasy I was reading at the end of the summer. I've been working my way through the Game of Thrones series (after resisting my husband's urgings for many years) and now I am with all the longterm fans wondering when the next book will finally come out. Daughter of Smoke and Bone I read with my older daughter last year, I think--I had the audiobook and we were on a car trip or something, and so got completely engrossed in it. Until we got to the end neither of us realized it was a trilogy (boo). We re-listened to it as an entire family while we were on vacation this summer, in order to move on to Days of Blood and Starlight, which completely absorbed all five of us. We had to figure out a way to make my iPhone play loud enough in the hotel room for all of us to keep listening. I promised Kate that I would not read the final book until she comes home in December, so that's lined up for next month.

>149 lit_chick: Hello Nancy! Sorry to hear about your protracted teachers' strike and its negative impact on your reading. That probably means there will be fewer reviews to catch up on when I find your thread. I always love seeing what you've been reading.

I notice my number of posts is in the same neighborhood as the number of books I've read. How often does that happen?

Lovely to see you posting!

>150 AnneDC: And we have missed you too! Appropriate on your Thanksgiving day to express my happiness to see you back!

Hi >151 lkernagh: Lori and >152 PaulCranswick: Paul! It is nice to be back. I doubt that I'll be able to keep up around here but I will do my best to make more frequent appearances.

I'm currently attempting to complete a TIOLI sweep before the end of the month--one book in each challenge category. If ony my John Quincy Adams book did not have quite so many chapters...

Hi Anne - I hope your holiday weekend was great.

Merry Christmas, Anne!

From our family to yours!

Dear Anne, thank you so much for the books. You did a great job shopping! I hope your books got there in time.

Merry Christmas, Anne. I hope we'll see you around in 2015.