Notmyrealname's 2015 50 book challenge

Here we go again! I had a really terrible reading year last year, so pushing through some more books is a real goal for me in 2015.

Tickers below:

Book of the month selections for 2015:

January - A Perfect Spy by John le Carre. Magnificent.

February - Hangover Square by Patrick Hamilton. Gritty.

March - The Night Watch by Sarah Waters. Rapid.

April - The Forest by Edward Rutherford. Nostalgic.

May - The Rules of Work by Richard Templar. Practical.

June - Twenty Thousand Streets Under the Sky. Sad.

July - Tipping the Velvet by Sarah Waters. Saucy.

August - Birdsong by Sebastian Faulks. Epic.

1. A Perfect Spy by John le Carre

A really wonderful start to the reading year. Calling it early, this one will be hard to beat for book of the year. Le Carre is just an utterly fantastic novelist - this narrative unfolded quietly and tensely. The twists and turns along the road were subtle. This was just the perfect novel - I loved it.

680 pages

2. The Narrow Road to the Deep North by Richard Flanagan

A worthy winner of the 2014 Man Booker, this was a devastating, but beautiful book. It mainly explores the plight of Australian prisoners of war building the Thai-Burma railway, which is something I always thought I should know more about. It looks at the moral codes of the Japanese and Korean guards and their ambiguous perspective on the rights and wrongs of what they were doing. But, in the main, it follows the suffering and privation of the soldiers held there, and forced to do brutal work surviving on nothing.

467 pages

3. The Woodlanders by Thomas Hardy

I just love Hardy, for some inexplicable reason. The writing in this is beautiful, and it is only fairly mild on the Hardy depressometer. I'm not particularly familiar with the woodland, rural type environment in which this is set, but that didn't matter too much.

367 pages

4. Death Comes to Pemberley by P.D. James

Completely lame. And a touch self-indulgent.

324 pages

5. Everyman by Philip Roth

Bleak and depressing, really. All about old age and an acceptance of the decline and death that comes with it. At least it was short.

182 pages

#6> Ho-ho! I read Death Comes To Pemberley last year. I think you have to take it for what it is - a bit of a pot boiler! The knowing winks and inclusion of other Austen characters annoyed me when I read it, but it was untaxing and I enjoyed it for that.

#3> I need to read more Le Carre. Thanks for reminding me!

Completely agree - I just felt it was a little bit flatter than I expected. I feel like it didn't really read like a true detective novel, but more an exposition of James's ideas about Austen's characters. There was too much filling in the fictional backstory for me, and a fairly unsatisfying crime 'framework'. But you're right, it is what it is!

And Le Carre - wow. If you're into it, you should. He is, bar none, the best spy writer that I have read. His work is so complex and his creation is so deft and nuanced, it is incredibly good writing for what are often similar pot boilers to the crime/detective genre.

For the first time in quite a while, I am struggling to pick a book of the month.

I can't believe I am overlooking an incredibly beautiful Booker winner, but it is A Perfect Spy for January.

I read Tinker Tailor not too long ago and loved it. His prose is outstanding - as you say, nuanced and deft. So much going on and yet he takes you through it so easily!

Keep going with The Honourable Schoolboy and Smiley's People - they are fantastic too!

6. Hangover Square by Patrick Hamilton

I've been meaning to read this ever since I moved to London and finally got to it when a friend lent it to me. The story of sleazy, seedy Earl's Court in 1939 through the eyes of George Bone, a sad, alcoholic man besotted with the horrible Netta Longdon.

George goes through episodes of automatism and, when he awakes, has no idea where he is. The way Hamilton caputres this is quite modern for its time, I think. His portrayal of Bone is quite sympathetic really, and we are left in little doubt about the poetic, if not moral, justice of the story's final wash up.

281 pages

7. Amnesia by Peter Carey

Not bad, although I love Peter Carey's work and it wasn't his best. A bit disjointed and jarring - almost like he has forgotten what Melbourne is really like.

377 pages

#1> LeCarre I resisted for years out of some misguided snobbishness about genre fiction. What a mistake. I can't get enough now. My only quibble is after reading a half dozen or so, they tend to end in the same way, with a general disillusionment with the state of the world; during the war the line between right and wrong was clear, during the cold war not so much. But it's a minor quibble, I'm going to finish reading them all. I find they are great to pick after you've read something you didn't particularly enjoy.

#4> Pemberley. Completely agree. Watched the TV adaptation as well to please my wife but we both found it utterly forgettable as well.

#2> The Narrow Road to the Deep North - OK, I've hit the tipping point, I need to read this. I've read a bit about Canadian POWs who were captured at the fall of Hong Kong. I'm sure the treatment is comparable.

Great list so far, I look forward to seeing what you read.

-Grant

Thanks Grant, good to have you on board! Pat Barker's Regeneration trilogy up next...

8. Regeneration by Pat Barker

I didn't realise that real historical figures were so entwined in this novel (including, for example, that Robert Graves). I quite enjoyed it, although it was very dialogue heavy it was very easy to read and ran along nicely. The horror these young men suffered is really indescribable, but this novel treated the subject matter very sensitively. The idea of a pacifist poet seeing it as his duty to return to the front is a heavy reminder of the nature of war.

All in all, I usually intensely dislike books focussed on psychiatrists as protagonists, but I didn't mind that one little bit in this one.

335 pages

And my third from the 1001 list for the year (two of which were unexpected, and I found out after the fact.

9. The Eye in the Door by Pat Barker

A fairly typical book two of any trilogy, with a few developments and a lot of build up. This book was increasingly focused on Billy Prior and his journey of self-discovery.

299 pages

10. The Ghost Road by Pat Barker

Interestingly, I felt like this trilogy ran out of steam as it went along. Regeneration was by the far the best, and dealt most comprehensively with what I thought the subject matter was going to be. The Eye in the Door, I thought, was the typical build up book without much structure on its own.

I expected this to be the grand finale, especially given it won the Booker in 1995. However, I lost track. The narrative arc following Billy Prior's trip back to France was one of the more graphic, but sensitive, treatments of warfare I have read. Indeed, it reminded me of the film Saving Private Ryan in how it unflinchingly described the horror of the trenches and the complete futility of sending young men out and over the top.

The parallel story of Dr Rivers and his Melanesian (mis)adventures was incomprehensible to me. I know the whole imagery of death, skulls, etc, was designed to mirror the ongoing war in some way, but it just lost me. I admit to skipping chunks of that towards the end, and focussing on poor old Billy's loss of friend after friend and, of course, his own inevitable end.

235 pages

As February closes, I'm right on track in terms of books and 1000 pages ahead of my pages goal, so going well.

Book of the month for February is Hangover Square. Regeneration was great too, and it is fantastic to finally have to battle to choose, but I just love stories about the grit underneath London. This is where I live, and I just eat up these old stories about the history of the stones on which we walk and in which we work every day.

11. London Belongs to Me by Norman Collins

Epic isn't quite the word, but this wide ranging examination of ordinary London lives was wonderful. The story of the lodgers at 10 Dulcimer Street, Kennington, it is comic, tragic, uplifting and sad.

It captures the chaos of London in a way that resonates with me today, despite it being set in the late 1930s and early 1940s, as war breaks out in Europe. London's character, to my mind, is relatively unchanged.

A lovely book.

734 pages

12. Decline and Fall by Evelyn Waugh

Funny, in a 1920s, Wodehousey, laugh-at-the-upper-classes kind of way, but nowhere near the unmissable classic I thought I was getting.

It seemed disjointed somehow, like there were jumps in the narrative that weren't quite explained and didn't quite make sense. It was almost like an early novel type experience like Candide or similar, where the novel form wasn't quite developed yet.

Anyway, not the worst, but not amazing.

216 pages

#23> I like the sound of London Belongs To Me, so I'm adding it to my wish list. Thanks!

Definitely have a go at it, it's not too hard and is a lot of fun.

13. The Night Watch by Sarah Waters

I just love Sarah Waters. This wasn't her best, by any means, but that is a fairly high bar to reach. This was another in my seeming tramp through the history of London in the war, albeit this time it was inadvertent. Helen, Kay, Viv and Duncan are the key players amongst the chaos of the war and its aftermath.

What I love most about the way Waters writes is the detail. She is very thorough in her descriptions of the everyday, which gives them extraordinary life and vividness. It is just fantastic writing and I am so glad I picked this one up.

470 pages

14. The Rosie Project by Graeme Simsion

An absolutely delightful examination of an autistic professor's quest for the 'perfect' wife. When The Wife Project kicks off with a lengthy compatibility questionaire, it seems that Don Tillman has it all worked out. Until the perfect wife actually shows up.

327 pages

15. The Rosie Effect by Graeme Simsion

The follow up to the first novel, The Rosie Project, we find Don and Rosie navigating through the terrors of preparing for a child, all the while living with Don's best friend in New York. Less overtly, blissfully happy than the original, but that gives it more depth and complexity. Not all is 'roses'.

418 pages

16. Nemesis by Philip Roth

Unimpressed. There is a place in life for depressing books, but life is too short for reading unendingly bleak nonsense. I agree with the Booker judge who resigned from the panel when this won in 2011. He just says the same stuff over and over and over.

This one in a tweet: 'Nice man feels responsible for Jewish boys in playground. Some get polio. He leaves. He feels responsible and self-destroys his life'

Bah

280 pages

#30> What a great review! "life is too short for reading unendingly bleak nonsense." - it's also too short to read books you think you ought to read because critics tell you that you should or they win prizes. I'm wary of the Booker these days because it throws out some odd winners. I shall avoid this one!

Haha thank you. It just really bugged me - Roth has done some fantastic work, but it all just starts to sound the same and I don't think that should be rewarded!

You're right about the Booker too. The more winners I read, the more I think it is a bit unpredictable...

17. The Master of Petersburg by J.M Coetzee

Not bad. Not his best by any stretch, but not bad. The story of the imagined Dostoyevsky's loss when hearing of his stepson's death and the implications of this on his own relationships is a bit of a stretch to go along with, but is ok.

250 pages

Holy moly, an 8 book month. I haven't had one of those for a while!

In what was quite a good month for choice, I think I will go with The Night Watch as book of the month. It was very hard to choose between that, London Belongs to Me and The Rosie Project, but it wins because of the detail and thoroughness of the writing, to go along with the excellent story.

18. The Forest by Edward Rutherford

I love the concept of these books, taking a number of families and tracing their respective histories and fortunes down the ages. I didn't know much about the history of the New Forest, so this was most enjoyable. These books are just easy reads packed to the brim with interesting fact, fiction, and at times a mixture of both.

883 pages

19. The Whirlpool by George Gissing

My first Gissing, at the suggestion of my lovely wife. I haven't read much of the late Victoria era and this is such a wonderful juxtaposition of people trying desperately to hang on to the old world, with others ushering in the modernity of the new. It says a huge amount about the state of marriage and women's place generally - whilst it is still utterly scandalous to be alone in the company of a man not one's husband, nevertheless there is scope for women to consider coming out as professional musicians and playing to the masses. This tension drives most of the novel and many of its periodic downfalls are directly related to it.

471 pages

I'm giving up on The Castle of Otranto after 20 pages and not counting it. One sometimes has to remember that the 1001 Books to Read before you Die list is about the development of the novel, not the best books of all time. Some, like this one, are on that list because they are a staging post in that development, but are so early in the development that they are just awful to read. I can see it as antecedent for lots of other concepts, tropes and stories, but gosh, how boring in its original form.

And I think I'm up to 7 1001 books, which is a good year for me!

#30 - 32> I am probably the biggest Philip Roth fan you know. I agree though, that his last group of shorter novels were not up to par, mostly by a long shot. It irked me that each book release would be met by reviews stating Roth was writing "at the height of his powers," when clearly that was not the case. In fact, I was relieved when he announced his retirement from writing. The funny thing, though, is that of all those later books, Nemesis is my favorite, the one that I think stands up, not with the best of Roth, but at least as a quality, thought-provoking reading experience. The Humbling, now there's a book I hated. Anyway, it's to each his/her own, of course. Cheers!

Thanks for stopping by! I think I didn't like Nemesis because it was the last one I read in a run of his novels and it tipped me over the edge. I've still got The Human Stain sitting around, which I borrowed from the library - what's that like? I think I'll try Portnoy's Complaint at some point to see what all the fuss is about, too, but if you've got suggestions on which are his better works, I'd love to hear them!

The Human Stain is one of Roth's very best. I recommend it highly. As to Portnoy's Complaint, I recently read an essay by Roth himself about it. Roth, after he stopped writing, decided to go back and read all his own novels in order of their writing, "to see whether I've been wasting my time."

His take on Portnoy's Complaint is that time has passed it by, that the issues of sexual identity and neurosis it delves into, groundbreaking at the time, have been settled by society, or pushed past, to such a degree that the book is really no longer particularly relevant. His final line in the essay is, "RIP, Alexander Portnoy." However, as somebody who grew up in the exact Newark, NJ, neighborhood and ethnic Jewish world described in that book, my memory (I read the book many years ago) is that it's a dead-on satire of that world as a whole, not just of Portnoy's sexual struggles. Also, I still count it as one of the 4 or 5 funniest books I've ever read. If you decide to read it, let me know. Maybe I'll read it then, too, and we can decide whether we think it still holds up. Roth wouldn't be the first artist to be tougher on his own work than it deserves.

So: The Human Stain and American Pastoral are both masterworks. Sabbath's Theater in many ways is my favorite, but be aware that the protagonist is extremely unlikeable, and so the book is not everybody's cup of tea. I loved all the Nathan Zuckerman books, starting with The Ghost Writer. The next two, Zuckerman Unbound and The Anatomy Lesson are very good, but The Counterlife is a metafictional tour de force. However, to really enjoy it, you have to have read all three of its predecessors.

Finally, if you are a baseball fan, another of his earlier works, The Great American Novel, is a riot.

Hope that helps.

Here's the link to that Roth essay on Portnoy:

http://tmagazine.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/11/06/pen-auction-philip-roth-portnoys-c...

Wow, thanks! That's excellent info. I will stick at it and see how another couple go, but that is super helpful. Cheers!

20. The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells

I can't believe I missed this in my childhood. Reading it now, though, it seems a little comic to be honest, rather than terrifying. My first H.G. Wells and I will definitely read him more - his writing style is clear and realist, which I enjoy. I think part of the oddness of this was the fact it was set in and around Woking and the Thames Valley, with the odd excursion into London. The familiarity of the locations set against the absurdity of Martians clumping through Regent's Park was fantastic.

180 pages

Just to chime in about Portnoy, I didn't read it until maybe 10 years ago, so relatively recently in this context. I agree with Roth's own take. It felt like the world had passed it by, that there was little shocking about it, that the neurosis bored me. And the biggest downer, there was no way it could live up to it's reputation as a comic masterpiece. It just wasn't as funny as I imagine it was at the time it was written.

It is interesting reading books like that a long way down the track. I had a similar experience with books like Frankenstein and Dracula - they seem so primitive now and you have to remember how groundbreaking they would have been at the time.

21. Metroland by Julian Barnes

I was surprised by this. Basically, this was the story of a pretentious twat growing up into a fairly decent guy. I hated it for the first 100 or so pages, but it really blossomed towards the end as the protagonist became a more likable character. There was the added bonus that it was set right, in the main, on the Tube line I use every day and it felt incredibly familiar to me, right down to the observation about looking at the faces on the 'fast trains to Marylebone' while sitting on the Metropolitan line tubes. A good one in the end, and I do really quite like Barnes in general.

176 pages

22. The Temporary Gentleman by Sebastian Barry

Beautiful, lyrical, tragic and so very, very Irish. This developed into a truly lovely story doused in heartache, whisky and gin.

268 pages

I'm putting down American Pschyo 150 pages in. I just can't handle it. I get he's a psycho by now and I think it can only get worse. Some things you don't need to read. Things I noted: lots of italics in dialogue make it very hard to read, and this had dated terribly, with references to Walkmans etc as the hottest new accessories, it really showed its age.

For April's book of the month, I think I have to go with The Forest, even though it isn't nearly as good as The War of the Worlds, The Whirlpool, or The Temporary Gentleman from an artistic perspective, I did enjoy it the most.

23. The Facades by Eric Lundgren

I wasn't sure about this one - I'm just not great with slightly dystopian fiction. The bald story on its own isn't enough, but I wasn't at any point really attuned to the waves of deeper meaning that I was sure were going on under the surface. Not my favourite style of fiction really.

215 pages

24. Vile Bodies by Evelyn Waugh

Read enough of this to count it, but didn't finish it. Was a bit over the top farcical for me and not funny enough to make up for it.

108 pages

25. The Rules of Work by Richard Templar

Great little book which puts together a range of tips on how to work effectively and be a positive office presence. Only occasionally strays into the slightly manipulative and calmly sociopathic, but mainly is a sunny and positive book. I took away a few little nuggets that will help my career in the long term.

239 pages

Half way there! Really pleased to be ahead of the game given my poor record the last couple of years!

26. Munich Airport by Greg Baxter

The very depressing story of a father and son's time in Munich Airport, while they wait for their daughter/sister's body to be released to fly it home.

264 pages

I've just started London Belongs To Me and I love it already. Thanks for the recommendation!

Great news!!

Wowee. Haven't been back for a while! Has been so busy...

Gee, May was a depressing reading month. I think book of the month had to be The Rules of Work. Blah, but the best of a bad bunch.

27. The Tailor of Panama by John le Carre

Not his best work by any means, but still fantastically good. This was farcical and off the wall, but still retained that trade mark brooding, threatening style. Loved how the whole shebang toppled over in the end, which was always bound to happen.

413 pages

So I managed to sneak in one more book in June, finishing it at 11.30pm on 30 June...

28. Twenty Thousand Streets Under the Sky by Patrick Hamilton

Actually three books brought together as one, set loosely around Bob and Ella, the waiter and barmaid at The Midnight Bell. This pub on the Euston Road in the 1930s is the epicentre of their really quite mundane existences, both of which are briefly shaken up to various ends.

Bob finds himself falling for a Soho prostitute called Jenny. His slow, frustrating and sometimes maddening pursuit of her and the blindingly obvious and inevitable ending are heartbreaking.

Jenny's fall is described in the second book and is equally distressing. Only her first glass of port stood between her respectable career as a housemaid and a stable relationship with a boring, but lovable, young man and her (equally) inevitable end.

Ella's story is in someways sadder. Lacking looks, spark and worldlness, she is swept up by the entirely suitable, and elderly, Mr Ernest Eccles. She survives this scrape, but her expectations are slowly and crushingly stifled until she comes full circle and carries on with her life as it was, with only her broken heart to show for it.

I love Hamilton's writing. If one were uncharitable, it could be called simple and boring. My preference is to view his method as the extremely close examination of one or two people at a time, teasing out their motivations and feelings until their fate is unwound. Set principally in London, about a 10 minute walk from my home, I felt the echo of these protagonists as I walked in the area or caught the Tube through it.

527 pages

Book of the month for June is Twenty Thousand Streets Under the Sky.

And book of the half year is still A Perfect Spy. That was a cracker.

#60> That sounds great. I'm adding it to my wish list. He's the Hangover Square author, isn't he? That's on my list, too!

He is! I don't think he wrote heaps more than these few though, although I will probably go digging!

29. West End Chronicles by Ed Glinert

Ed Glinert is about as good an authority on London, both current and past, as there is. This in depth look at Soho, Mayfair, Fitzrovia and Marylebone zooms in on my favourite part of London and looks lovingly at his history. As is the case with all of these types of books, it gets a little dry and fact heavy in places, but you can skip the bits you're not interested in and crack on to the bits you are.

My favourite story was the one about the upstairs 'house' where George IV used to go to get whipped and smacked... I was sitting in a wine bar in Charlotte Street in Fitzrovia and, when I looked up, realised the flat in question was above a restaurant directly across the road. That's what I love about books like this.

289 pages

30. Tipping the Velvet by Sarah Waters

Even in her first novel, Waters was just an astonishingly good writer. I love her style, I love her content, she is just magnificent.

Another book about London too, funnily enough, which involved places, sites and sounds I know so well.

472 pages

Decided to give up on Kimberly's Capital Punishment after 64 pages. Just didn't grab me.

Have you read Fingersmith by Sarah Waters? I loved that one. Slammerkin by Emma Donoghue is also a good read, in a similar vein.

Fingersmith was my first Sarah Waters and (sadly) still the best. Amazing book! I haven't read any Emma Donoghue - thanks for the tip!

Book of the month for July is Tipping the Velvet by Sarah Waters

31. Birdsong by Sebastian Faulks

Absolutely lovely. One of the most sensitive World War I books I've read.

503 pages

32. How to be English by David Boyle

Lame and superficial. Gave up after 168 pages.

33. Marylebone & Tyburn Past by David Brandon

A lovely woosh through the potted history of my neighbourhood in London - not always fascinating but I learnt some wonderful things about where I live.

140 pages

34. Three Brothers by Peter Ackroyd

This was such a weird one - it was going along very nicely for 210 pages or so, then all of a sudden, he wrapped it up in 36 pages in a rush, everybody dies, nothing is really resolved, and the whole lots is veiled in some weird magical realism. Just bizarre.

246 pages

35. Eureka: Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About the Ancient Greeks but Were Afraid to Ask by Peter Jones

I knew a lot of this stuff, but the format was fantastic. Bite sized chunks of chronologically related fact and supposition. Perfect for a week beside the pool in Lisbon, which is where I got most of it read.

372 pages

36. A Week in December by Sebastian Faulks

A great book about the many crossovers that occur in London - set in a week just before Christmas around the time of the GFC. This was a bit wide-eyed-with-horror about the banking scandals going on at the time and was in places a little heavy handed with the explaining of social context, but was basically pretty readable. The ending was a little unsatisfying, though, if you are going to run seven parallel stories they have to come together to some sort of stronger conclusion. This petered out a little bit.

390 pages

Oh and I didn't do book of the month for August. Definitely Birdsong and it deserves its place on the 1001 list.

37. The View from the Tower by Charles Lambert

More of a character study than a real thriller, this was woven together really nicely and I certainly didn't see the end coming.

311 pages

38. The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher by Hilary Mantel

I didn't realise before I started this that the various short stories were entirely unconnected. Gee, they were good though. Her writing in these was so much more incisive and interesting than Wolf Hall etc, which I found tiresome in the extreme.

Can definitely recommend this - a nice easy read.

245 pages

39. The Truth About the Harry Quebert Affair by Joel Dicker

Magnificent. Layered, complex, compelling. I loved this from a content perspective but also from a pure literary form perspective.

The only downside was that, because it is in translation, I couldn't be sure if the slightly simple style was in the original or just a matter of some of the complexity of language being lost in that translation.

615 pages

+1 on Slammerkin by Donoghue.

I read this because I wanted to read Donoghue but I couldn't face Room (as well as the subject matter, I almost always hate child narrators).

Set in the late 18th century in London, this book is about a young woman who gets raped, gets blamed for the rape and thrown out of her home, and falls into prostitution. Moves to a new town and tries to make a fresh start as a maid and seamstress, but it doesn't end well.

Loved the writing, loved the detail, and loved the unsentimental way Donoghue treated the story. I'm still not ready for Room, but I'll read more Donoghue.

40. As Chimney Sweepers Come to Dust by Alan Bradley

Quite simple little whodunit which seems to be the most recent in a long line of Flavia De Luce stories. Will definitely be going back to the start for more!!

389 pages

41. The Road to Little Dribbling by Bill Bryson

I love Bill Bryson's stuff, although this was a bit overly nostalgic and a repetitive. Lots of instances of whining about expensive coffee (hello, you're in England) and how things used to be. I know that is the point, but it is just a bit wearing. Such a shame, because other Bryson work I've found to be laugh out loud funny.

381 pages

42. Brooklyn by Colm Toibin

One of the lovelier books I've read in quite some time. The story of the typical Irish girl who migrates to America in the 1950s, finding a new world and losing connections to home. However, those connections are strong even when they are stretched, and in the end the choices she faces are difficult ones. I asked someone who had read this whether it had a happy or sad ending, and they said 'Neither, it's just life'. That was absolutely right, and having been in a situation recently where I had to choose between my new life and my old, I completely empathised.

255 pages

#83> I loved this book when I read it. Toibin captures the time and the challenges well, I think.

I never really liked his work, but my wife insisted I read this one! It was just beautiful and so lyrically Irish, if you know what I mean.

43. Rules of Civility by Amor Towles

A sparkling book that I really loved, set in 1930s Manhattan. Jazz clubs, high living, boozy nights and treachery. The writing is astonishingly good - so many sentences where I actually slowed down to reread them and savour them, such was the turn of phrase.

324 pages

Some books of the month, now that I am catching up:

September - A Week in December by Sebastian Faulks. Nothing special in a slow month.

October - The Truth About the Harry Quebert Affair. Loved it.

November - As Chimney Sweepers Come to Dust. Be default really, as my reading year came to a sputtering stop.

#86> Rules of Civility is such a good book, and you're right about savouring the sentences. It's a novel I've ended up recommending to a few people.

Book of the month for December was Rules of Civility.

A mixed reading year this year - got off to a flying start, and it petered out when I moved countries (again) and the Rugby World Cup was on... Such is life.

Book of the year was the first thing I read, A Perfect Spy. Classic spy novel, which had it all.