Sitting dizzily atop the heights of Mt TBR, Peace2 reads in 2017

So here goes, somewhat belatedly I'm starting an actual 2017 thread.

Looking back at last year's goals, I don't want to restrict my reading by making them stricter but I do need to tackle the too big pile of books waiting to be read. Looking also at how many books I read last year, I know that the amount of books finished dropped markedly in the second half of the year after I changed jobs. I also know that I got through quite a few of the smaller books on my shelves and that I didn't tackle as many of the doorstops in proportion.

With that in mind, I'm going to stick with the goal of approximately 1,000 pages per month from the TBR pile - 12,000 pages in the year.

The TBR pile classes as anything in the house on 1st October 2016 (there is a reason why this is not 31 Dec 2016 - I'm doing another challenge which involves reading more books than I buy between 1st October 2016 and 29 June 2019 and also reading at least 100 books from the TBR pile that existed on 1st October 2016 in the same period)

I'm going to aim for a rough balance of male/female writers and a proportion of non-fiction to my fiction but no specific goal in mind, although I will track the figures on a spreadsheet and will likely write a monthly summary.

But some visual trackers to keep me going...

Number of Books read in 2017




Number of Pages read in 2017

I see I'm your first visitor, so will make myself comfortable in this cosy spot, and try not to get hit by too many book bullets! I hope 2017 is a good year for you in reading and in life.

I always enjoy seeing what you've been reading. We share some proclivities. Also taking a seat here.

Me three.

Me, four.
I'm snagging a spot and I'm bringing cheese for all to nibble on.

me five. I'll bring the wine.

Welcome all! I'm in hiding from the enforcers - although I've more than followed their directions - I feel they should be pleased with me but given the last time they were pleased with me there was the direction to buy more book I daren't make them happy again (or unhappy as that also seems to result in the need to buy more books - maybe I just need to stay out of the spotlight!)

So yesterday I thought I had begun my Thingaversary purchases (if DNBR days aren't allowed to count), so I purchased two books from one of the charity shops - The Magician's Apprentice by Trudi Canavan and Real World by Natsuo Kirino.

Today I went to the real bookshop and given that this is only my Third Thingaversary - thereby necessitating in the purchase of 4 books in total (4 - 2 = 5 more apparently - and 1 of those was an omnibus edition). So I've brought home We Who Are About To... by Joanna Russ, The Penguin Lessons by Tom Michell (not the same as Walden by Henry David Thoreau which is what the book title links to immediately), In Order to Live by Yeonmi Park (not Ella Enchanted - what is going on with the touchstones?), What I Tell You in the Dark by John Samuel (who is apparently a local author and this is a signed copy!) and Earthsea: The First Four Books by Ursula Le Guin.

Now the Earthsea one will mean that I can pass onward two titles Tehanu and The Farthest Shore which have been lurking on my shelf for a while - they weren't particularly nice copies, but I've been trying since May 2015 to get the other two without success, so this is a neat copy and now I can tackle them again (at some point).

I really don't stand a chance, do I? I think I'll have a very quiet DNBR day on Sunday given the weather here and I'll hope the enforcers don't notice.

>7 Peace2: I really like the last Earthsea book, The Other Wind. Intriguing characters and a great story with a truly radical ending.

>8 Jim53: That's the only one I haven't got - I'd been trying to collect them all but had only managed to get 3 - 5, so this was a good way to get 1-4 - at least I can now start reading them all. By the time I get close I might even be able to justify a trip to Amazon for the final part!

Time to start commenting on the books I've finished this year.

January Book 1 The Peppermint Pig by Nina Bawden

I actually found the title of this slightly misleading. I'll be honest and say I might have read this as a child, but I don't remember it if I did. It was originally published when I was about 5. This is the story of a family. At the outset the family are living comfortably, but when events lead them to lose their home and their financial stability, they move to live in a village alongside their aunts. It is set probably around the early part of the twentieth century. The father travels to America to seek his fortune, leaving the mother to look after the four children. Over the course of the year, they face various trials and tribulations and also a variety of high points. The family take in a pig, the runt of the litter (hence the title) who they rear as a pet. The pig is only a small part of the events of the story which is more about family dynamics and what makes a decent person and how people should treat each other.

Overall, it's okay, but it wouldn't be a personal favourite.

January Book 2 Planetes Omnibus Volume 1 by Makoto Yukimura

This is a manga set in space, a little way in the future (about 60 years from now 2070ish). It was recommended to me by someone on another forum. The story begins with trash collectors in space, circling Earth collecting all the dangerous junk that orbits the planet making travel from Earth to space treacherous - considering all of the left over satellites, bits of old spaceships, things knocked lose, general debris and the inherent danger they all pose to travelling space craft.

It was interesting. There is quite a message to this story about man's constant search for energy and resources at the expense of the surroundings - the idea that with Earth's resources depleting, Man has also developed the technology to use resources available on the Moon and Mars and now has eyes set on Jupiter. One of the characters aspires to be part of a manned mission to Jupiter. This planned mission has generated conflict between the people who believe Man should keep expanding their field of collection for resources and those who believe Man should be stopped from continuing their destructive path.

I liked the fact that this left me with something to think about both about Man's destiny and Man's 'right' to use and deplete resources at will.

It was very different to the Manga I have read previously, but I hope to eventually treat myself to the second Omnibus volume to see where the story goes.

For those familiar with Vinland Saga, this is created by the same person (I can't comment on how it compares because I'm not familiar with that one - but was recommended it at the same time).

>7 Peace2: I read all six Earthsea books this past September and liked them a lot. They’re also really short, fast reads. I hope you enjoy them!

>7 Peace2: So it's your Third Thingaversary and you bought 7 books total?? The enforcers really did a number on you ;) I think they may be too good at their job!

>7 Peace2: "thereby necessitating in the purchase of 4 books in total (4 - 2 = 5 more apparently"

Hey folks, I think we may have an enforcer in the making here!

>7 Peace2: I loved what was at the time I read it, The Earthsea Trilogy. Le Guin is a great writer. I have not tackled the additional Earthsea books.

You are doing really well with your purchases and DNBRDs. I am sure the enforcers will want to reward you further.

>13 MrsLee: I think you are correct. She is doing so well she should be rewarded even further.

*goes into hiding*

*slides into a comfy seat* Must be the season - I've just pulled my copy of The Earthsea Trilogy off the shelf to read A Wizard of Earthsea this weekend!

Even hiding behind curtains doesn't seem to keep me safe from all the book bullets flying at the minute...

Not likely to be firing any at the moment myself. (maybe soon though)

January Book #3 The Water Babies by Charles Kingsley

I know I read this when I was young, but reading it now I'm amazed if I managed to follow and understand half of it, or maybe I read in a different way now... Hmm that's maybe more the point. Back when I was a kid perhaps I would have read this and parsed the story of what was happening, whereas reading it as an adult, I got bogged down in trying to fathom particulars of words I wasn't familiar with or allusions that may well have passed me by when I was younger. Not an 'easy' children's book by any means.

January Book #4 The Atopia Chronicles by Matthew Mather and DNF #2 The Dystopia Chronicles by Matthew Mather

I struggled through the first of this pair because I'd already got the second part (and also because when I bought them they sounded interesting) but I honestly can't say I enjoyed it and in the end gave up half way through the second book.

The Atopia Chronicles is a series of related short stories (they become more related as you go along). Set in a not too distant future, technology allows people to make splinters or proxies of themselves to go for meetings or hit the surf etc. People can take measures to have all adverts removed from their life. The stories follow different peoples' lives as the technology spreads with difficulties becoming increasingly emphasised the more the technology is used. Part of the problem for me was in part the world building - it was clearly well developed in the author's mind, but he hadn't fully realised that for the reader/listener - talk of weather wars, of different political and geographical groups and so on, but for me it wasn't clear what had prompted the developments. Also for me, I had issues with the actual technicalities of consciousness - if someone has a proxy out skiing, ones in different meetings how is their brain managing all the different bodies and interactions. Some quite sinister ideas - people can choose to have artificial babies by given criteria and can arrange for each on to test different

By the second book, the characters have thinned down some and rather than a series of short stories, it focuses more on specific problems left over from the first book. It was n't enough for me though and so I gave up.

If you want a bleak outlook with technology run riot, maybe this would suit, but personally I was disappointed in it.

January Book #5 March Violets by Philip Kerr

This is the first in Philip Kerr's Bernie Gunther series and I liked it a lot more than I expected going in. Set in pre-WW2 Germany, Gunther is a private detective engaged by Herr Six to find out who was responsible for the murder of his daughter and son-in-law and who stole documents and jewels from their safe. What follows is a series of twists and turns as Gunther unravels various bits of information and discovers deeper and deeper layers of intrigue, all against the backdrop of the rise of Nazis and the effects that has upon the ordinary (and not so ordinary) citizens.The style and tone reminded me somewhat of Dashiel Hammett's The Maltese Falcon - which it funnily enough name dropped part way through, after I'd come to that conclusion.

I'll be looking out for more of the series (I already have 5 and 6 on the shelf but unfortunately the library only has 8, 9 and 10).

January Book #6 We Who Are About To... by Joanna Russ

Relentlessly dark sci-fi. When something goes wrong with a spaceship, the passenger capsule is ejected and crashes onto the nearest habitable planet. Habitable means breathable atmosphere - nothing else is guaranteed. The survivors face an initially uncertain future, and differing opinions about how to face that future lead to further issues.

Not an easy read in terms of content despite being only short, but even more so, in my mind, by the disjointed writing style (for which there are some reasons as the book progresses). Different to other things I've read.

January Book #7 Death Comes to Pemberley by P.D. James

Set in the world of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, Elizabeth and Darcy have been married for a few years, time enough for Elizabeth to settle in at Pemberley and for there to be children. She is still close to her sister Jane, but perhaps to most people's surprise Lydia is still with Wickham. On the eve of Lady Anne's Ball, problems befall Pemberley when a man dies in the woods and someone we know is implicated in his death.

I have to say that this was more readable than I expected, having disliked my previous experience of PD James when I read The Private Patient in 2013. Having said that I still have my reservations. I felt that the book could have been finer tuned, there was lots of surplus - nothing much happened until over 1/3 of the way through the book. The murder is brief - we barely know the dead person and the ultimate ending of how the murder happened was an out of the blue answer and not a prior consideration and the mode of discovery of the truth was 'convenient'.

But really, it was just somewhat disappointing. I'm not the biggest Jane Austen fan, but I don't think this is a great addition to the works surrounding her pieces.

Not exactly a DNBR day but maybe more of a DANBR day (Do Almost Nothing But Read Day).

So far I've finished two books - I'll post reviews at some point later but don't hold your breath for anything good as it was sheer gritty determination that got me to the end not enjoyment unfortunately).

I'm off to the next bit of cleaning and decluttering to make room to store some of my books in a better fashion than they're currently in now and will start another audio book while I do before sitting down to some more reading paper book time.

January Book #8 Scoop by Evelyn Waugh

A period satire about journalism. I have mixed feelings about this one. The journalism aspect was amusing - the wrong journalist is called up and sent abroad to cover a potential war, except there is no war but all the other journalists are sending back news, until they go off in pursuit of the real news and Boot, the principal character gets left behind and ends up with the real 'scoop' or at least something that might be. Not rip-roaring humour, at times a little tedious, but the general idea of fiction becoming fact in the hands of journalists was good.

I have a difficulty, however, in actually recommending the book because of the racist attitudes and language within the book, even taking in to account that it was written in 1938.

January Book #9 Firesong by William Nicholson

The third part of the Wind on Fire trilogy. This trilogy has appealed less and less as I've gone along. Part 1 I finished in May 2015 and gave it 3 and a half stars saying that I was hoping to get to Part 2 fairly soon afterwards. Part 2 didn't get finished until July of that year and only got 2 stars and I was less happy with it, to the extent that it's taken until the beginning of 2017 to actually finish the series. I could barely even tell you what this one was about - The Manth people are searching for their homeland following the prophecies of Ira Hath and encounter difficulties along the way. Twins Bowman and Kestrel have extra abilities that allow them to converse mentally with each other, but also, just as his mother, Bowman is tied up in the Manth people's destiny. There are facets of romance, of kinds that left me uncomfortable - Bowman and the former princess, Mumpo and Pinto. But overall I found that I didn't engage enough to really like the book.

That disappointment has left me looking at the other two William Nicholson books on the TBR pile (the first two parts of his Noble Warrior trilogy - Seeker and Jango) and wondering whether I should just pass them along to someone else straightaway and not even attempt them.

>24 Peace2: Oh, that's too bad. I've loved the handful of Waugh's works that I've read, particularly A Handful of Dust, and Decline and Fall. They are quite dark, though.

January Book #10 Real World by Natsuo Kirino

I happened across this book and another by the same author in a shop a couple of weeks ago - I only got this one as the other was in poorer condition. The story is told by 5 teenagers growing up in Tokyo, one of them in particular telling the beginning and ending. Four of the teenagers are girls and school friends, the fifth is a boy and next door neighbour to one of the girls.

It was a dark crime but not a thriller. The mother of one of the teens is murdered, and early on we know who the murderer is. The book focuses more on how the five teens lives become intertwined because of the murder and their subsequent actions. I found it hard to believe that each of them followed the course of action that they did and even harder to understand the motivations. There were a number of points at which I found it hard to believe that authorities would act in the way they did.

I can't say that I enjoyed this book, but was left at the end wondering if the Japanese way of thinking is really as different to my way of thinking as this book made me believe. I can't really find much to say that would entice someone to read it - I certainly won't be getting any more by this author if I can hel it.

January Book #11 No Man's Nightingale by Ruth Rendell

This was an audio book and it was fairly well read - not 100% keen on the male narrator's range of voices but listenable - it felt like sometimes he didn't switch voice at the right moment. The actual story is a Wexford one, but in this Wexford had retired but was still solving crimes for the police. The story begins with Wexford trying to escape the chatter of the cleaning lady who tells him among other things about how she discovered the body of the local vicar. What ensues is an attempt to solve both the mystery of who murdered the vicar, but who the father of the vicar's almost 18 year old daughter. Wexford ends up intricately bound into various elements of the story.

Overall it was a reasonable listen to a not bad story, not too gruesome although a bit strange at times (the elderly mother of the late vicar's late husband dressing up and flirting with Wexford was somewhat odd). One thing that stood out was how much time Wexford and his wife spent trying to escape the house and their cleaner and how that gave the impression that the cleaner was there almost constantly! I've given it three stars but that might partly be because most of the books I read prior to it this year have not been personal roaring successes.

January Book #12 The House at the End of Hope Street by Menna van Praag

Really enjoyed this one - best of the year so far and I picked it up just before Christmas for free from the Ibook store. Set in Cambridge in England, the story begins with Alba upset out walking at night when she happens across a house at the end of Hope Street that she's never noticed before. Drawn there by music, she is welcomed in by Peggy and told that she can stay but only for 99 nights, time enough to heal and decide what to do next. Inside the house are two other women, Greer and Carmen, both also there only for 99 nights while they overcome difficult periods in their lives. Over the years the house has been a brief home for a large number of women, many of whose names are recognizable (but I won't spoil the story by mentioning any of them).

There are hints of magic but not overt casting spells type magic. There are some romantic themes (both positive and negative) and a few sexual moments (brief). I would say that the overall sort of theme is about thinking about what would make someone happy, what is the real goal and what one is better to let go of.

I've requested another book by the same author from the local library - The Witches of Cambridge and hope to be able to report back in a similarly positive vein before too long.

January Book #13 Lucifer by Paul Darrow

This was just a quick re-listen before I move onto the next in the series. I listened to it last year and was disappointed, that feeling hasn't really changed but I didn't think I could remember enough of it to go straight into the next one. Given that I'm not going to waffle on any further about it.

January Book #14 Stasi Child by David Young

This is the story of a female police detective in the 1970s in East Germany as she and her team attempt to solve the apparent murder of a teenager, shot by someone in the West as she tried to escape from West Berlin to East. At first hampered by not being able to find out who the victim is, what ensues is her attempt to solve the crime while also dealing with the internal politics of her country and government - the difference between the 'people's police' and the Stasi. Her own behaviour outside of her job and her husband's role in the story add further layers to the story unfolding. I didn't love this story by any means and didn't even like the characters individually, but at times I found the portrayal of the country and its government interesting. Suspension of belief also played a role in accepting certain aspects of the plot, but to be honest, I'm not sure how much of the portrayal of East Germany at this time is accurate - certainly I would expect some of it to be realistic, but clearly this is something I need to read more historical fact on to be better informed. I can't see me reading anything further by this author (there is a suggestion that this is the first in the series, but no additional titles are shown. All in all, not a winner for me.

January Summary

Total Number of Books Read : 14
Books Retained After Reading : 3

Books on Shelf Prior to 1st Oct 2016 : 8
Books on Shelf Prior to 1st Jan 2016 : 4

Books Abandoned : 2 (13%)
Series Finished as far as I intend reading : 3

Non-Fiction Reads : 0 (0%)
Fiction Reads : 14 (100%)

Male Authors (first time to read that author this year): 8 (57%)
Female Authors (first time to read that author this year): 6 (43%)

Books by Male Authors : 8 (57%)
Books by Female Authors : 6 (43%)
Books by Collaboration : 0 (0%)

Books acquired : 13

Goal to read 20000 pages from Mt. TBR by the end of the year : 2366 read (17,634 pages left to reach goal)

End of January update on Walking to Mordor : 880.83 miles completed so far. I hope to arrive at Lothlorien in the next week or two.

OH! I forgot all about the Walking to Mordor thing! Thanks for the reminder, and well done on all of the January books read.

>32 clamairy: I didn't do terribly well in making progress to Mordor in January, thanks to the cold, dark, wet weather - and only the dark one of those seems to be changing at the moment (and very very slowly). Good luck to you with your journey.

>33 Peace2: Winter walking is rough. I have a treadmill in the basement. It's a dinosaur but it still works and I can read my kindle while I'm on it. Having that has made a huge difference for me.

I logged 1250 miles last year, though I probably walked more than that. I don't have a fitbit so I rely on a tracker on my phone, which I have to remember to turn on and off. (I am tempted by the idea of a fitbit because it would help me figure what is wrong with my sleep patterns, too.)

>34 clamairy: I'll be glad when the weather improves enough to seriously consider walking home from work again more regularly. 1250 miles is a great amount. I seem to have ups and downs with my walking even discounting the weather factor. I just use the app on my phone to track my walking so it doesn't count what I do inside the workplace or home (which can sometimes be quite a considerable amount). It's very hit and miss about counting when I use the lateral thigh trainer (not often to be honest as not only is it hard work, I find it very hard to maintain a good walking posture on it and given current health issues surrounding my back/shoulder - I'm not convinced that not walking with a reasonably good posture will be worth the risk.

February Book #1 Fleabag and the Ring Fire by Beth Webb

Not a bad children's book, that if I hadn't had it on my TBR pile for so long without seeing any sign of the sequels, I might have hung on to it for longer to have as part of a set. It's the story of Gemma Streetchild, a servant to the Queen, who is sent on a quest along with a lady knight and Fleabag the cat.

Typical quest type adventure in some respects - the need to overcome obstacles by a combination of intellect, strength and fortune, meeting with strangers good and bad and acquiring of companions, information and acquisitions.

Quite enjoyable for the 9-11 sort of age range and Fleabag, who is a talking cat, is full of humor, sarcasm and has quite a few wisdoms and opinions which he shares.

February Book #2 The Ancient Magus' Bride Volume 1 by Kore Yamazaki

This was one of my Santathing books this Christmas. It's the first (unsurprisingly given the 'volume 1' in the title) in a manga series. A little odd so far - an orphan girl is sold at a slave auction to a mage. The mage announces that she will be his apprentice and his bride. The girl is described as being a sleigh beggy - not a term I was familiar with but it appears to be based on a Manx language term 'sleih beggey' according to Google and mean 'little people'. It's alright so far - got me curious about where it will go - there's been nothing inappropriate despite the 'bride' aspect so far and it appears that the magical type events are being revealed to Chise (the girl) at the same time as the reader. I like the art so far and at some point will pick up the next in the series before making a decision as to whether I really do like it or not.

February Book #3 Lucifer: Revelation by Paul Darrow

Very disappointing. If anyone were to ask me, I'd say don't bother. Very upset by this and so am going to go and do some cleaning and try and get rid of my frustration and disappointment.

February Book #4 Memento Mori by Muriel Spark

Not quite sure how to classify this one - the story is around a group of older people (all over 70 before the book is out) who receive phone calls telling them to 'Remember you must die'. It's a dark, somewhat humorous look at old age, self interest, mortality, repercussions of choices made earlier in life. The characters are all self absorbed, mostly upper class and they all have pasts of one sort or another that links them. It was an interesting read. It may not have been the best choice for me personally at the present time due to other life events, but I didn't dislike it.

February Book #5 King of Shadows by Susan Cooper (have removed touchstone around author's name as I think it's linking to the wrong Susan Cooper (partly because this book isn't listed for her) and when I try to link to a different one, I just get a list of Harry Potter titles for some reason)

Anyway on to the book which centres around the main character, an orphan called Nathan Field who has been chosen to join a theatre group who are travelling from the US to perform in The Globe Theatre. The story involves time travel with Nathan travelling unexpectedly to a completely different historical period and experiencing life there. Reasons are given later for why (although not how?) the time travel was arranged. Overall not terrible, but not great either

>40 Peace2: I suspected that King of shadows wouldn't reach the same high standard as Cooper's The dark is rising series does for me, so have not been tempted to read it. It doesn't sound as though I missed much.

>41 Sakerfalcon: My thoughts exactly!

>41 Sakerfalcon: The Dark is rising is still on my TBR pile - I'd heard good things which was why I bought both... I'm hoping that I still have a treat in sure and that this isn't just me!

DiR is great. For children's fantasy set in england, pre-mobile phone! Some of the cultural concepts might feel a bit odd now, as will the degree of freedom the children enjoy! I've not re-read it for a long time, but it's still a prized possession birthday gift from sometime in my school years. Not the best of bindings it's in danger of losing pages!

February Book #6 The Death of Captain America: The Complete Collection by Ed Brubaker and team

A good collection, story progressed well although there are still secrets to be revealed in later volumes. I felt the artwork was of a great consistency throughout. Glad I read it and will definitely be keeping this on the shelf.

>45 Peace2: Glad you found something good.

There are seasons...

>46 2wonderY: It's a relief at the moment when I do - although to be fair the others I'm making me way through at the moment aren't too bad either. :D I do seem to have had a few bad picks this year.

February Book # 7 The Witches of Cambridge by Menna van Praag

I picked this one up from the library just after finishing The House at the End of Hope Street by the same author. This one wasn't as much to my liking as the first but was still okay - 3 stars rather than the 4 I gave the other. It's the story of a group of people who have slight powers - not necessarily substantial and sometimes they work more against the person rather than in favour. There is humour in this book, but also for me I found it sadder in tone (as well as in certain events that happen). If you're after a full on fantasy type novel, this isn't the book for you. It's far more 'real world' than that with just hints of 'witchcraft' - to give an idea of the kinds of powers, there some prescience, a small amount of spell casting, some truth telling and so on, but the witches don't have 'all' of the powers - the powers are spread between them.

I read somewhere an article likening the books to 'Love Actually' and 'PS I love you' (which if I'd seen that before I started reading would probably have put me off).

One thing that I found particularly strange throughout the book was the characters referring to a baby's diapers - given the books are set in Cambridge in England and that the author is as far as I can tell English, I couldn't see why the word nappy wasn't used - maybe the audio version is American? I know that seems petty but it just threw me out of the story - if I'd been reading an American novel or character, I wouldn't have batted an eyelid - it just seemed strange to me.

Anyway, overall I liked it but wasn't as enthralled as I was with The House at the End of Hope Street. If I happen across others by the same author I will give them a try.

February Book #8 The Road by Cormac McCarthy

This was a very depressing post apocalyptic dystopia. There's a certain distance in the fact that the author never actually names his two main characters and they remain 'the man' and 'the boy'. One of those kind of books where I can say trying it was the right thing, it wasn't really my cup of tea and I probably won't read anything else by the author, but I'm still pleased to have picked it up. But definitely depressing outlook. I think I need something more upbeat!

February Book #9 The Kill Room by Jeffrey Deaver

Passed to me by a colleague, I wasn't sure I was going to like it - my reading of crime novels is intermittent, although I'll have a spurt of trying to make it through a bunch to get them off the shelves to make room for something else! This one however, I got to fairly quickly because she said it would be different to anything else I'd tried. It was and it wasn't. Lincoln Rhyme the central 'detective' is unlike anything I've read before in that he is a quadriplegiac. If you've seen the movie The Bone Collector with Denzel Washington - that was based on an earlier book in the series. I liked Rhyme, he was determined and astute and he didn't underestimate people and people who knew him and his work respected him. There was some definite grue happening at some of the descriptions - but that's me and anything that's horrifying. There were some convoluted plots with people being murdered and trying to work out who, why and whether it was justified, with investigators following leads and then heading in different directions until finally solving and rounding it all out.

I'd read more (but not right away! and in actual fact picked up an unopened pack of three books by Deaver at one of the local charity shops the other day with the plan to give them to my Dad to read first).

In other news - I've made it to Lothlorien and have set out immediately for Rauros.

Even though I'm drawn to apocalyptic and post apocalyptic fiction, I've never been tempted to read The Road. I gather it's pretty violent.

>49 Peace2: I read Cormac McCarthy's No Country for Old Men and was left with the same feeling you have after reading The Road. "No Country for Old Men" was getting rave reviews and many people liked it, but I felt it was the standard of a weekly cop show with a bit more shooting in it than normal.

My younger son had to read The Road for his Leaving Certificate exams (the state exams taken at the end of secondary school that are used by colleges to decide if they will give the pupil a place or not - It's a bit more complex than that but I do not want to write thirteen pages on the points system right now) and he has no inclination to read another Cormac McCarthy book, and he's a very keen reader.

In addition to The Road being depressing and one dimensional, it also wasn't convincing. I snigger when I recall the man standing in a barn filled with hay, mourning the loss of animals, particularly cows. And then he concludes "but what would they eat?"

>52 2wonderY: Well... the barn may have been full of hay but I read that as a temporary food source for any cows that may have survived. Much the same way any hidden caches of canned food were all that the man and the boy could find to get by. The landscape of the world was described as being completely destroyed. Even the oceans were described as lifeless so any living things left on planet earth simply had no future. That's what was so depressing about the book for me - that there was no hope left. Many people read hope into the ending but, drawing on the barn full of hay comparison, the boy hooking up with the other people was really just a temporary stay from the inevitability of what was coming for everyone.

The other really depressing part of the narrative was the way many people ended up scrambling for any type of food they could find.

I found the book horrifying on many levels. I have the movie on DVD but, after reading the book, I have little desire to watch it. I simply prefer less depressing fare for my escapism.

I did find it hard to understand why I had heard so many positive things about it, because it was for me too depressing. I don't mind post-apocalyptic, in fact I enjoy some, but it's about the hope that comes with it - things can go badly wrong, but life, humans and animals have a resilience, there'll be suffering but they'll come back from the dark into a new light. This for me had none of that.

@pgmcc The Road strikes me as just the kind of book that exam boards pick in order to completely put anyone off ever reading a book again - how to massacre a love of reading in three easy steps... with the added bonus of making teenagers depressed (like they need that weighted on them with all the other exam and life stresses that hit at that time of life) Having read this I don't think I've got an inclination to try No Country for Old Men - wasn't that also made into a film? Well, on the upside, I've ruled out reading anything further by him - which must be good news for the future of Mt TBR (even though there's nothing further by him on there at this point that I'm aware of).

@ScoLgo I would have no interest in watching the film of The Road at this point, I'm 100% with you on that. Your spoiler hidden comments about the end of the book would echo my own feelings on the subject.

The one thing that did occur to me after finishing the book was that perhaps my view of humanity and people was too generous - but while I know there are selfish, unkind and downright awful people out there, I'm going to persist stubbornly in my personal wish that the greater part of humankind aren't like that (come the apocalypse I may be proved wrong...).

I also think I need to read a few more optimistic books for a while to brighten up my quiet time thoughts! I want the future to be a beautiful place and time that we are heading for together.

February Book #10 The Looking Glass House by Vanessa Tait

I borrowed this from the local library based off of what they had written on their website about it - "Vanessa Tait, the great-grandaughter of the Alice who inspired Lewis Carroll's childhood classic, tells the fascinating story of the strange beginnings, as seen through the eyes of a naive and deceived school governess".

What I got wasn't quite what I was expecting. The novel is actually a fictionalised telling of the interactions between Charles Dodgson (Lewis Carroll's real name) and the Liddell family, in particular Alice. Mary, the Liddell family governess is the central character, a young woman of moderate intelligence, considerable jealousy and unfortunate naivete when it comes to relationships and attraction. She also doesn't particularly like children, which would be quite unfortunate given her line of work! Alice comes across as a very spoilt child (partly this may be the governess' viewpoint, but she does seem to feel rather entitled to getting her own way). Dodgson is increasingly unnerving in his interactions. I know there have been actually questions over his interest in Alice in particular, but in young girls generally and this story treads a fine line in what it implies and how it suggests those kinds of rumors spread. In an afterword, the author talks about her sources and touches on those accusations.

I was disappointed by the book largely because I was wrongly expecting something far more fantastical, which is entirely my misinterpretation of the information I'd seen before and the book's cover and not anybody else's fault. For what it was, it was a fairly interesting portrayal of the period and some of the possible interactions of significant figures of the time, but I'd rather read 'fact' that 'fictional possibilities of what might have happened'.

One thing that did make me curious though was a passing comment between characters (whose attitudes to women and their education was not 'modern', shall we say) about a scientific study which had proved that as girls begin to develop breast tissue so their brain altered making it a worthless pursuit to try and educate them any further. Now, obviously I don't hold with the belief (I like to think my brain is still functional even after all these years! Some may beg to argue that point with me), but it did make me wonder as to whether the scientific study had ever actually taken place!

>55 Peace2: "I'd rather read 'fact' that 'fictional possibilities of what might have happened'.

I'm with you there!

>55 Peace2: As to the "scientific study," I'm not sure about science, but it was my experience that when my boys began that "change" to adulthood, it would have been far more productive to put them to hard physical labor for a couple of years than to try to sit them down and make them learn. Possibly the same for girls, although I only had the one, and she has always loved learning. :)

February Book #11 The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett

I seem to remember liking this a lot more when I was younger. With the exception of Dickon, his sister and mother there aren't actually many nice characters in this at the beginning. While both other children have reasons to be as awful as they are initially, none of the adults are sympathetic either. Is the issue with this that as I've matured I wouldn't want to accept this kind of behaviour when looking at adults or children? The story arcs round predictably with the attitudes of many taking a turn en route.

Overall I guess it was interesting to a point, I wouldn't rate it as a highlight as I looked book over the many books I have read and am wondering if it was a different novel that I'm thinking of having been fond of in my formative years - perhaps The Little Princess which I also have on the TBR pile and am convinced I've read before.

I didn't find that The Secret Garden suffered too much when I reread it recently. I'm terrified to reread A Little Princess though, because I loved it so much as a child, and I'm almost certain the suck fairy will have hit it. I'm also afraid to reread Louisa May Alcott's An Old-Fashioned Girl.

>58 Peace2:, >59 SylviaC:, I read both of those books over and over as a child, especially The Secret Garden. I was probably in my early teens the last time I read them, so it's been close to 30 years.

Even though I loved them as a child, my memory of the stories doesn’t make them seem terribly appealing so I suspect I wouldn’t enjoy them nearly as much as an adult.

Sometimes we might be better off remembering a well loved childhood book than revisiting it. We can recall our favourite bits, and ignore the parts that are melodramatic, illogical, or no longer socially acceptable.

>60 YouKneeK: and >61 SylviaC: It's difficult to know in advance whether they're going to suffer for the revisit. I acquired quite a number of books that were new editions of books that I'd read when I was young (oh so long ago) and decided I wanted to try them out before passing them on to a friend for her school's library along with a bunch of newer authors. Even now I'm not sure whether this was the right choice, but I'm going to stick with it for now. Still to come are things like Tom's Midnight Garden, Carrie's War, Carbonel (that was a real favourite but I remember so little about it), The Owl Service, amongst others.

>62 Peace2: The owl service was still spine-chilling the last time I read it! Garner really has a gift for creating atmosphere.

>63 Sakerfalcon: I visited the wizard for the 1st time just at christmas it's carved, semi-legible, onto some rocks in Alderly Edge a few miles from me.

February Book #12 Search for Wondla by Tony DiTerlizzi

For anyone familiar with The Spiderwick Chronicles, this is by one of the co-authors of that series and is the first in a series. Eva Nine lives in a Sanctuary with Mutha. She has grown up there alone, Mutha taking care of her and arranging her education. Eva is human, Mutha is a robot. Eva wants nothing more than to go outside and find other humans, but Mutha is resistant saying that Eva isn't ready yet.

Events transpire that lead Eva Nine to leave the Sanctuary and the world she finds is nothing like the one she's been training for and along the way she makes new friends, learns new things and overcomes obstacles.

I would say this is probably aimed at probably a 9+ sort of age range. I actually quite enjoyed it, there's some great vocabulary in amongst the easy to read - enough to encourage finding out new word meanings without being too many and losing track of what's happening. Interesting character development too, some characters make more assumptions about others and they're not always right, but then trusting new people isn't always the right thing to do either.

I thought I'd worked out what the goal of Eva Nine's search was, but I was wrong, although part of what they discovered I was expecting.

Although I enjoyed this enough for what it was, I've no particular plans to try and find the rest of the series, but if I happen across any others I may well find myself succumbing to the temptation.

February Book #13 A Wanted Man by Lee Child

Stay out of the way of Jack Reacher - for a drifter the man sure happens on a lot of major crime! This time Reacher hitches a lift and tries to work out just what's going on with his three new companions, because there's something fishy about it all. Meanwhile a man has been found murdered in a disused pumping station and the police are trying to figure out who he was and why he was killed. Needless to say, Reacher finds himself embroiled.

I actually found this one even more of a stretch than previous ones that I'd read in the series. Overall, I wasn't keen.

February Book #14 Owl Song at Dawn by Emma Claire Sweeney

I found this interesting but I can't say I loved it. The main character is Maeve Maloney. She's approaching 80 and still runs the Sea View Lodge Guest House in Morecambe. She's a somewhat prickly character. This tells the story of now and when she was young and living at Sea View Lodge with her parents and twin sister. Vincent, a man from her past, arrives in the present and so she begins to relive and reassess the events of the past, finally coming to a new understanding and acceptance of events that happened so long ago.

Maeve's Guest House caters specially for visitors with special needs, as the book opens an a cappella group are staying. The book has characters with Down Syndrome and Aspergers and shows some of the changing attitudes to the people with these conditions. Maeve's family had chosen to keep her twin sister and bring her up at home despite her conditions and the prevailing attitudes at the time. There are some horrible instances of attitudes that would have been prevalent in the fifties - it makes for very uncomfortable reading. Some of those attitudes emerge in the modern period, but the circle of acceptance and support seems wider.

There were times when this was an emotional read and having tissues handy may have been wise, but there were other times where for me it dragged on a little. Overall though, I think it was a good one to read and I liked the positive portrayal of the characters and their relationships and interactions (whilst being left to seethe and loathe some of the passing 'authority' figures or strangers attitudes).

February Book #15 The True Tails of Baker and Taylor by Jan Louch with Lisa Rogak

An audio book that I picked up at the library and my first non-fiction of the year (not quite sure what's happened this year, it's very unusual for me to get through 2 months without any). It's the autobiography of a woman who along with a colleague brought two cats into the library in which they worked. Although the cover suggested it was the story of the cats, it's actually the history of the cats' principal human. She begins by outlining a number of events in her life that lead her to a position of working in a library and subsequently of getting the cats. Parts were interesting, parts were amusing. It's a fine book to wile away a few hours, but there's nothing earth shattering here. One word of warning, there are parts where having tissues to hand may be a suitable precaution to take.

February Book #16 The Game by Diana Wynne Jones

This is one for the mythology buffs. In essence, Hayley moves from living with her Grandparents to visiting with her aunt where she discovers a wealth of new things, makes her first friends and find life to be massively different from all she has known before. Life is interspersed with mythology and Hayley finds herself enjoying it immensely, even if it is rather more than she has ever known before.

Interesting, a challenge to keep up with all of the different mythological and fairy tale hints. Not one of my favourite's by Diana Wynne Jones, but it is worth the effort to read.

February Book #17 The Magician's Nephew by C.S. Lewis

I had an audio book of this one read by Kenneth Brannagh along with a paperback anthology of three of the Narnia series combined. I remember as a child reading The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe but also I'm pretty sure not managing to make it through any of the others despite several attempts (which given the rate at which I devoured books then was I thought in retrospect a little surprising, hence this revisit). I actually liked the first part of this book with the children getting to know one another and beginning to explore through the attics. I found the uncle unconvincing and irritating (although the voice KB picked for him may have been a contributing factor). The initial foray into 'another world' began interesting but by the time events moved on I was just frustrated by the events. The introduction of Aslan soon had me looking to see how much more of the book I had to get through. I did finish but it wasn't for me. At this point I'm passing on the paperback and not going to bother trying to read the rest and I'll pass the audio along to someone who may appreciate it more.

February Book #18 Carrie's War by Nina Bawden

Another childhood classic - I found two copies of this on the shelf, my own childhood copy and a newer version. I remembered nothing of the story as I read it this time. Carrie and her brother, Nick, are evacuated to a Welsh town during World War II and end up staying with Mr and Miss Evans (Auntie Lou), a brother and sister. Mr Evans is a severe and judgmental man, but Carrie looks for the best in him and tries to see the good in his actions.

The story begins with a grown Carrie returning to the Welsh town and facing the outcomes of the events that she remembers. On reading it now, I can't say I loved it, but it was okay. I'm not convinced of it as a portrayal of the period (evacuees during WWII), but it's more a sort of study of people's individual characters and their interactions and motivations and how different people try to put different slants on other people's actions, trying to understand one another. Albert and Carrie have different views of the people around them, how maturity and experience effect how we read other people, as do (in the case of Nick) people's own self-interest.

And with that I finish commenting on the individual books read in February. I'll pop back this evening to round up the whole of the month with a summary.

February Summary

Total Number of Books Read : 18
Books Retained After Reading : 3

Books on Shelf Prior to 1st Oct 2016 : 10
Books on Shelf Prior to 1st Jan 2016 : 5

Books Abandoned : 1 (5.3%)
Series Finished as far as I intend reading : 3 (I'm unlikely to find sequels without a great deal of effort to a couple of those and while I enjoyed them, I didn't love them that much)

Non-Fiction Reads : 1 (5.6%)
Fiction Reads : 17 (94.4%)

Male Authors (first time to read that author this year): 6 (current yearly percentage 48.3%)
Female Authors (first time to read that author this year): 9 (current yearly percentage 51.7%)

Books by Male Authors : 6 (current yearly percentage 43.8%)
Books by Female Authors : 11(current yearly percentage 53.1%)
Books by Collaboration : 1 (current yearly percentage 3.1%)

Books acquired : 23 (some of these were given rather than me buying!)

Goal to read 20000 pages from Mt. TBR by the end of the year : 3128 read this month (current total is 5,494 pages which leaves 14,506 pages left to reach goal)

End of February update on Walking to Mordor : 960.81 miles (a little over 44 miles from Lothlorien).

Oh, YOU are the other one walking to Mordor! I am going to begin this, as it seems a much more interesting walk than the other challenges on my fitbit. So, Hi Ho, Hi Ho, it's off to Mordor I go!

>70 Peace2: >71 MrsLee: I keep forgetting about this! I always keep track of my walking (well, when I remember to start the app) but it would be great to have a goal other than 'at least 3 miles a day' to aim for.

I'm also thinking seriously of getting a fitbit because I have sleep issues, but it would make tracking so much easier.

I calculated it out last night with my 26 miles, and my Middle Earth atlas. I am in Frogmorton. I might stop off at a pub, they're bound to have one.

>73 MrsLee: So you started with this past week? I was going to start with January 1st. Perhaps we should start a dedicated thread, and then coerce others into joining us...

>73 MrsLee: Oooo, good idea!

I'm starting it now! :o)

>72 clamairy: >73 MrsLee: That's a great idea - I actually found that before I found this conversation!

March Book #1 The Dragon Machine by Helen Ward

A picture book story of a little boy who sees dragons. All is fine until he begins to feed them and they begin to follow him causing trouble wherever he goes. A fun children's book.

March Book #2 Mr Peek and the Misunderstanding at the Zoo by Kevin Waldron

Another children's picture book. When Mr Peek heads out into the zoo for his normal rounds, his jacket is feeling too tight. Over the course of the morning, he berates himself for gaining weight and getting old and so on. Each of his comments is overheard by one of the animals who takes it heart and feels upset by the news he's just given them. The situation resolves itself happily when he discovers one of his mistakes later in the day, and then 'accidentally' puts right the others as well.

The story was amusing enough, but a very simplistic and basic picture style.

I'm going to donate both of these to a local school rather than keep them on my shelf.

>78 Peace2: I love, love, love some of Helen Ward's work; both her art work and her texts. This wasn't one of them. Since she is such a superlative illustrator, I've wondered why any of her books feature someone else's work.

>79 2wonderY: I've not knowingly come across any of her other books (heads to look and see if I recognise any of the others). Although the art work was complex in this, it did somehow lack some of the excitement that dragons normally inspire in me - perhaps because of the muted colours...

I first noticed Helen Ward through her few illustrations of The Wind in the Willows. and then fell in love with her The Town Mouse and the Country Mouse : an Aesop fable, and some of her other Aesop Fables works. She's done Hare And The Tortoise twice, improving the second time.

Here is my appreciation thread.

>81 2wonderY: Makes me curious as to why she hadn't illustrated her own work in this case, if she has illustrated other pieces.

Out of curiosity, is anyone in the UK tackling the Reading Passport Challenge at their local library? It's only just being advertised at my local library now, but looking online the deadline for finishing is the 31st of this month! I'm looking at what I might read to give it a try - if I can find a few that aren't tomes, I might be able to make it in time, but it's really going to throw my other reading goals of reducing the TBR pile off.

March Book #3 The Missing Hours by Emma Kavanagh

The book begins with a missing mother who vanishes for several hours - the implication on the back of the book is that this is what the book is about. In actual fact, before the mother is found, a man is found dead and what ensues is a hunt for his killer with the two cases seeming to become more and more entwined.

It was okay, but I didn't love it.

March Book #4 The Whisperer by Nick Butterworth

Nick Butterworth, creator of Percy the Park-keeper, created this book. I love the art, typical of his style but also the story. The story begins with a situation deliberately reminiscent of Romeo and Juliet, but with cats instead of humans. It's a fun children's book about 'love' and acceptance rather than fighting and the power of rumour and hearsay. Another plus is the happy ending (no tortured lovers dying in a tomb thankfully). Loved it, and keeping it even if I am getting rid of many of my children's books, because I no longer need them for work and they do take up quite a lot of room (understatement). I will try sharing it with my niece though.

March Book #5 The Hidden People by Alison Littlewood

My first word of advice would be whatever you do, don't get the audio! I could write a list of complaints purely about the narrator, before I commented on the book but that wouldn't be fair. As for the book, in essence it's the story of a man who hears of the death of his cousin, burned on her own hearth for being a changeling, and heads to the village where she lived to find out more. It seems to be the story of superstition over rationality, but then moves to become a combination of a look at the belief in the supernatural and a crime thriller. The local dialect is at times beyond being understandable and having looked at other reviews this is not just the narrator although he certainly doesn't help. I found the narrator's obsession with the cousin he remembered meeting once as a child unrealistic - he expected his cousin to be the same kind of 'sweet innocent' as she had been when they were young. Overall I found it disappointing.

As far as the audio goes, the narrator's voice is quite nasal, 'superior' and almost breathy. His accents aren't to my liking and often virtually unintelligible (this may have been down to the writing as mentioned above - I couldn't check as the library only has the audio version). His voices for people other than the narrator are inconsistent. Then to top it off there are bizarre repeats I presume due to bad editing where a sentence/part sentence are repeated before moving on.

I would have given up, except I'm trying to do the library's Reading Passport Challenge and having got part way through I needed it to count for my 2010s - I'm unlikely to manage the full challenge as it is without having to restart a book for any of the decades. Next up the 1930s and The Color Purple and the 1920's with The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.

March Book #6 The Curious Case of Benjamin Button by F Scott Fitzgerald

What a curious little story! I'd never watched the film and certainly hadn't realised the film was based off a book (let alone one by F Scott Fitzgerald!). It was interesting looking at the relationships within the book, nothing is dealt with in great detail (it's a short story after all), but watching how Benjamin's relationship with his father, wife and son change, the echoes of one within another, the changing perspectives and attitudes was as the title suggests curious. Glad I read it and it got me thinking (partly because my copy was actually designed for book clubs with some questions to consider at the end and as I had a bit of time left during my lunch time I did indeed ponder the story a little deeper than the face value). It's not a book I'm going to love or need to return to, but one that I'm content to have passed a little time with.

March Book #7 The Color Purple by Alice Walker

I listened to this narrated by the author herself. Sometimes I find authors do a terrible job at narrating their own works, but not at all in this case. Not an easy book to read, with some heartbreaking and horrible events, but also in some other respects, it's filled with an essence of hope and goodness. I'm sorry it took me so long to get to this one. The very beginning of the book is very hard to get through and did almost stop me continuing. I am relieved I managed to get past the initial scenes. The bond of sisterhood, the strength of Celie's character, the love and belief of Nettie in her letters, the support of Shug. Quite a remarkable book and Celie was an outstanding character. Exceptional piece of writing.

That's my '20s and '30s entries for the library's reading challenge accomplished (along with my earlier read of Memento Mori for the '50s).

I've got The Colour of Magic down for the '80s, Nineteen Seventy Seven (yep that's for the '70s!), Travels with My Aunt for the '60s , The Collaborator for the '40s (also known as The Soldier's Wife) and Garth Nix's Drowned Wednesday for the 2000's. It only leaves me something to find for the 1990s. I'm not sure all of these are going to be my thing, but if nothing else it's got me trying things that are different, asking the librarian for recs whereas I don't often ask for advice - normally just whether they have something specific hidden away somewhere or whether they can have it brought from the branch library for me. I better get a move on!

If anyone wants to make suggestions for the 1990s that I can investigate whether the library has it or not (I'd be particularly grateful for any suggestions that are short for purely practical reasons - I'm supposed to have finished the books before the end of the month and at least 3 of the above are more than 300 pages!

Re - Benjamin Button - I've never read the book but the film is very good - I'd recommend watching it if it's on TV.
For your 90s challenge, have you tried any Dick Francis? - he pretty much wrote a book a year for 30 years so there should be plenty of choice for the 1990s. His books are generally very good, shortish and easy to read.

Any parameters besides being written in the 1990s and length?

>87 infjsarah: Thanks for the suggestions

>88 SylviaC: Not really - I'm tackling a few different genres and themes. It'll be a matter of whether the library has it - the librarian suggested the ones I've got for the '40s and '70s (the '70s one is more gritty than I would have chosen for myself, but I'm sticking with it). The length is purely a time consideration (so if you want to recommend something longer that I might like later, feel free!) It also doesn't have to be written then - the alternative is it being set in the '90s - either is valid. I've used that option for a couple of my choices - Alice Walker's The Color Purple counts for the '30s but wasn't written until the '80s, similarly with Nineteen Seventy Seven was first published in 2000.

That was harder than I expected! Through a combination of searching my catalogue and "What should you borrow?" I came up with these relatively short books that might be available in a well-stocked library:

Ex Libris : Confessions of a Common Reader by Anne Fadiman (nonfiction)
Rose Cottage by Mary Stewart
Phoenix Rising by Karen Hesse (YA)
Aunt Dimity's Death by Nancy Atherton
Thale's Folly by Dorothy Gilman

and one that isn't short: The Beekeeper's Apprentice by Laurie R. King.

I don't seem to have read much 1990s SF or fantasy. I must have been more into mysteries and nonfiction then.

>89 Peace2: How about Jurassic Park? Published in 1991 and still holds up when I reread it last year.

>90 SylviaC: and >91 Narilka: Thank you for the suggestions - I've hunted the library's catalogue and they have the first two of @SylviaC's suggestions (although the Mary Stewart is on loan and the Anne Fadiman is at the branch) They've only got much more recent Laurie R. King's and Nancy Atherton's. I find it almost unbelievable but according to the listings there's no Jurassic Park apart from an 'intermediate abridged version which is retold by someone else (and more recent) - it's also not in the main library - I'm not sure if it's borrowable from the place it's listed at.

@infjsarah - your Dick Francis suggestion may work - they seem to have quite a substantial collection, but it will be a matter of investigating on site (they seem quite popular and so lots but not all are out on loan and they range over quite a span of years, so I'll have to hope for the best when I head in - I'll finish up one or two of the current ones before I go back in)

March Book #8 Travels with my Aunt by Graham Greene

I've a vague recollection of reading The Power and the Glory and at least one other by Graham Greene in my late teens (possibly when I was studying lit at College) and quite enjoying his style - but I remember nothing of the actual books now, too many years in between. This was an amusing book. At the funeral of his mother, Henry meets his aunt who he hasn't seen since childhood. Henry is a retired bank manager who has lead a quiet life, his aunt's life has been anything but. She leads him on a wild ride, unlike anything he's experienced before, revealing things he'd never expected. It was an amusing tale but at the same time there is a depth to the characters.

Glad I read this one, and when I have some time, I'll be back to sample some more of Greene's books.

March Book #9 The Collaborator by Margaret Leroy (also released as The Soldier's Wife)

This book is set in Guernsey in the Channel Islands. The story begins as the islanders are offered the opportunity to evacuate to England before the German army arrives. Vivienne initially decides to evacuate but on arriving at the harbour decides that she and her daughters will stay in the island and so we see through her eyes, the arrival of the Germans amidst a barrage of bombs that hit the harbour and then the introduction of curfews and the changing of rules. In actual fact, the book treads lightly for the greater part over the restrictions that the Occupation brought to the Islanders, with only brief glimpses into life without chocolate or coffee. Vivienne's house is some way out into the countryside but also away from the areas used by the Organisation Todt and so she remains isolated from some of the awareness of things that were happening around her. Without giving away the story, much of it is predictable, bordering on unbelievable in the period - having read other stories both fiction and non-fiction, I find some of the reactions unlikely. Speaking personally, I preferred The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society as a book with more interesting characters dealing with a similar set of events.

The above two books further my forays for the library challenge by knocking out the 1940s and 1960s. The same challenge has also thrown up a DNF in Nineteen Seventy Seven by David Peace - a horrible portrayal of life in Yorkshire in the '70s. The police are trying to hunt down a serial killer who is killing prostitues in the North of England. The story is told by a policeman and a journalist, the chapters switching from one to the other, but it's not immediately clear which is telling the tale. No one in the story was likeable and the police attitude and behaviour was appalling - brutality, prejudice and abusive. Grim, dark, bitter, disturbing and in the end unfinishable. Not my thing at all.

Next month I'm really going to have to concentrate on reading my own TBR pile!

March Book #10 Ending Up by Kingsley Amis

The story revolves around 5 elderly people living in Tuppeny-Ha'penny Cottage together and their various infirmities and disagreements. Having given up on 1977 above, I still needed a book for the 1970s period for the library challenge and as this was written in the '70s it fit the bill. Not really my cup of tea, the cover described it along the lines of brilliantly witty and humorous, but I find humour to be very personal and while elements were amusing, overall this isn't my kind of humour (but I would say the same about many 'tv comedies' and 'comedians' - they just don't hit the mark for me even when they are popular with other people). Back to this story though and the five people don't get on terribly well, but their lives are intrinsically intertwined by their co-habitation and the story is about their interactions and the results. I also found the finale very quick and the actual ending very abrupt (to the extent that I checked twice that I hadn't missed something and then still came to check on LT what was listed as being the final words!). I haven't read anything else by Kingsley Amis so have no idea whether this is typical of his work, but it doesn't make me feel like I want to try anything else at the moment.

Followed by another DNF Molly Keane's Good Behaviour. I didn't get very far with this one, but the story begins with a daughter who resents her interactions with her mother and her mother's seemingly deliberate causing of problems (such as a refusal to eat rabbit). The reaction to a death finished me off - perhaps if it had been following on from something different I might have given it more of a chance, but I just didn't want to continue, so back to the library it goes.

I still need to finish my '80s, '90s and '00s books for the library challenge - it's back to being The Colour of Magic by Terry Pratchett, The Prince of Mist by Carlos Ruiz Zafon and Drowned Wednesday by Garth Nix respectively. I'd dipped into TCoM with the intention of it being that when I first started, but I just hadn't quite got into it this time (I read it when it first came out but fell out of reading the Discworld books apart from some of those that revolve around Vimes and the Watch) I can't remember it from so long ago and as I recently reacquired The Light Fantastic and Equal Rites this seemed liked a good place to start over. TPoM is also on my own personal TBR pile, so borrowing it from the library might seem a little ridiculous but as with Drowned Wednesday , it seemed a reasonable compromise to spending a month reading library books when I'm supposed to be reducing the TBR pile - 2 out of the 10 for the challenge borrowed despite owning and possibly only 2 books from the TBR pile in the month - the pile is currently appearing to be 10 higher than it was at the beginning of the month, between books I've been given, library ones not finished yet and ones I succumbed to acquiring despite all intentions to resist the temptations.

A spokesperson for one of the local charity shops says they are contemplating stopping selling books, CDs and DVDs because 'their days are past and it's important to move with the times' - despite the fact that they cumulatively make about £20,000 per year for said shop/charity. I don't know whether to be devastated or delighted - given how much bigger the TBR pile gets any time I go near them... Is it me or does that seem preemptive? Or just ... searching for the right word... I mean I know you're never going to make as much off a book as you will off a piece of furniture and you've got to sell a lot more books to make the same amount of money but surely ... Finding it hard to believe right now...

March Book #11 The Prince of Mists by Carlos Ruiz Zafon (I removed the book touchstone as it didn't link to the right book and the right one wasn't an option in the 'others' list for some reason - the books it threw up were strange - one mentioned prince and the other mist but that was it)

A young adult horror. Max and his family move into a new house in a new town. His younger sister has an accident and ends up in hospital with his parents staying with her. He and his other sister are left alone, so begins a series of explorations, making friends, uncovering a mystery that is far more sinister than they at first realised. There are elements of surprise in the resolution along with both sadness and happiness. It's the first of a trilogy and I'm pretty sure I have the second on the TBR pile somewhere, so I'll get to that at some point.

March Book #12 Yertle the Turtle and other stories by Dr Seuss

In one sense this is fairly typical Seuss fare, humour, rhymes, graphic style. A set of stories with a bit of a message - one which felt unnervingly appropriate in today's political climate across the world. One is about a turtle who believes himself to be King of all he surveys, so constantly needs to survey more to expand his kingship. Another about a bird who wants to be more glamorous and needs to learn that beauty is both in the eye of the beholder and also only skin deep. The final story is about two animals arguing of who is best until they are outdone by another creature who shows up their foolishness.

>96 Peace2: That seems both foolish and premature. I suspect they want more space for the higher priced items you mention, but they might find that a lot of customers no longer bother to go in if there are no books, etc. Personally I only go to charity shops for the books, and I do buy far too many thus giving them a fair amount of revenue.

>96 Peace2: £20,000 seems like it would be a pretty significant portion of the income. A sofa might make more money than a book, but it takes up a whole lot more display space.

It's the only really large charity shop with room for lots of furniture and lots of clothes - maybe they're thinking of concentrating on having a different focus to the others (only one other does furniture at all and it's much smaller (think a single room as opposed to a small supermarket size). I still personally think it would be a mistake as even when I'm looking for furniture they rarely have the piece I'm looking for but I'll invariably come away with a film or multiple books.

March Book #13 The Colour of Magic by Terry Pratchett

This is the first of the Discworld novels and I read it many years ago, probably not all the long after it first came out. I remembered very little of it in the intervening eons of time (what? Not eons... decades then). Rincewind the wizard of sorts finds himself lumbered with a tourist Twoflower who seems to have a distinct propensity for finding trouble. There is humour - I personally love Twoflower selling his In-sewer-ants among others - danger, action but despite the cleverness, this doesn't feel as deft as some of the other books. Lots and lots of worldbuilding and introducing of the how things work in the Discworld make it feel a little heavy but then perhaps it was this set up that lets the later books grow. I'm looking forward to reading onward (The Light Fantastic and Equal Rites are both on the pile, as well as a number of Vimes and the Watch books, some of those in the already read some not yet). I shall keep my eyes open for more titles.

March Book #14 Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader by Anne Fadiman

I have @SylviaC to thank for this little gem after she suggested it upthread. I loved it, despite being horrified by a 'book lover' who is more than happy to put books down face down, spreading the spines... Clearly this is a matter of much debate. I found myself reaching for the dictionary to check on words that I wanted to know what they meant and laughing and smiling along with her stories. And interesting part about marrying libraries after getting married made me think of @gilroy. Interesting information about different ways to organise personal libraries (and I think I'd have murdered the interior designer who rearranged someone's library by colour and size.... Part of me wishes I could have kept this one and not had to return it to the library. I can imagine most of the GD patrons enjoying this one.

>101 Peace2: I loved Ex libris and, like you, winced at the book lover breaking the spines of the books. The marrying libraries chapter is excellent.

I'm glad you liked Ex Libris.

My reading history for The Colour of Magic is similar to yours, so I've only recently gotten into the series. The Light Fantastic is a continuation of the first book, so it might be your best choice for your next one.

>101 Peace2: It's hard to go wrong with Discworld :) Even the early books where Pratchett's still working things out are fun.

>104 Narilka: I'm interested in seeing how I feel about the Pratchett books this time around - I'm fairly certain that my interest waned in some of them previously and I ended up only reading the Watch related ones, not an active dislike but more a case of a time when I had very little relaxation time and so was being very selective about what I spent my time with. I'm getting through a lot more books again now and so am more likely to give things I'm not sure about a try and stick with them until I'm sure one way or the other - I expect TP will fare much better now.

March Book #15 Drowned Wednesday by Garth Nix

This was the final book I read for the library challenge (meaning I got my final stamp and was entered into the draw to win a prize - books!), it's also the third part of a series of 7 books for older children/ young teens. Arthur returns again to the House, this time trying to retrieve the third part of the Will and Wednesday's key. Wednesday however is willing to give up the key but only if Arthur can get back the stolen Will. A different type of peril but still a similar goal to the previous two books (read last year). Some familiar characters return for small parts of the book, but Arthur spends the bulk of his journey with new characters. Like Arthur, I shall head forward to face Sir Thursday.

So this month, I've read a book for each decade from the 1920s through to the 2010s, borrowed them from the library in order to do so, of the 4 personal books I have read, when I came to mark them down I discovered that I hadn't actually listed three of them previously. Terrible for reducing the number of books that I own and haven't read.

Given I've lost the charger/transfer cable for my MP3 player, I can neither add new books to it, nor charge it to finish listening to the ones already on there (I am becoming convinced I've got a poltergeist), so my consumption of audio books will be somewhat diminished until further notice *sigh* It's here somewhere!

Congratulations on completing the challenge, and good luck finding your cable!

>107 SylviaC: Thanks and I found the cable - in the drawer with the T-shirts (which either suggests there's something the matter with my filing technique or supports the poltergeist theory depending on how you look at it!)

March Summary

Total Number of Books Read : 15
Books Retained After Reading : 1 (this is reflective of having read so many library books this month).

Books on Shelf Prior to 1st Oct 2016 : 6
Books on Shelf Prior to 1st Jan 2016 : 6

Books Abandoned : 2 (11.8% - this is again due to the library challenge, I had several suggestions that probably wouldn't have come home with me in normal circumstances but it's still good to give different things a try I think - once in a while)
Series Finished as far as I intend reading : 0

Non-Fiction Reads : 1 (6.7%)
Fiction Reads : 14 (93.3%)

Male Authors (first time to read that author this year): 9 (current yearly percentage 52.3%)
Female Authors (first time to read that author this year): 6 (current yearly percentage 47.7%)

Books by Male Authors : 9 (current yearly percentage 48.9%)
Books by Female Authors : 6 (current yearly percentage 48.9%)
Books by Collaboration : 1 (current yearly percentage 2.1%)

Books acquired : 10 (some of these were given rather than me buying!)

Goal to read 20000 pages from Mt. TBR by the end of the year : 876 read this month (current total is 6,370 pages which leaves 13,630 pages left to reach goal)

End of March update on Walking to Mordor : 1060.39 miles just under 250 miles to go to get to Rauros - currently predicted to get there by 23rd June.

>101 Peace2: I'm so glad you enjoyed Ex Libris. It's one of my favorites, too. Nice work, @SylviaC.
I'm a bit sad because I cannot for the life of me remember who it was told me I needed to read it back in 2006. :o( I'm pretty sure it was a person in RL and not a Thinger... Maybe I should do some thread dredging.

Another Anne Fadiman fan here. And of her father as well.

So I've been working on the TBR pile this month. I've not been online much so am behind with my posting even though I've been reading slowly.

April Books 1, 5 and 8 Vampire Knight Volumes 1-3 by Matsuri Hino

A vampire manga - two groups of students attend the same school - one set by day and the other by night - only a few know the nature of the night students. Clearly this is the set up for a larger story arc with certain individuals having past histories that intertwine. I liked aspects of this. the artwork was good, certain parts of the story line were interesting but overall it felt like there was too much filler and not the progress that makes it a good read. There were also (in my opinion) too many asides and alternative conversations between the author and the reader that were nothing to do with the story. So overall mixed feelings about it - art and story potential good, delivery not so much.

April Book 2 Planetes Omnibus Volume 2 by Makoto Yukimura

This was the combined second volume of a manga set in space. The story deals with relationships - love, marriage, family but also man's relationship with space itself. What is man in the great vastness of space? It's interesting and throws up some things to think about afterwards in terms of man's effect on his environment (be that Earth or as he spreads further, his effect on Space). Interesting series that I intend passing on to a friend's husband as I think this might be right up his street.

April Book 3 The Raven Boys by Maggie Stiefvater

I liked this a lot. Blue lives with her mother who is a psychic. It is foretold that when Blue kisses her true love, he will die. At the outset of the story, Blue has no psychic powers of her own, but does amplify those of the people around her which becomes increasingly relevant in her interactions with other people. We are also introduced to a group of Aglionby Boys - rich privileged boys from an elite Academy - except each of them is more than what they appear to the outsider. They have more depth and backstory as Blue discovers as they begin to interact and her first opinions begin to change. The book encompasses psychics, history and mythology within its storyline. I'm keen to read on with this and its on my radar to look out for the sequels when I can start to add to the TBR pile again (or if it comes up really cheap in the Ibook store). Definitely one of my better recent reads.

I'll come back later to list the others that I've finished so far this month.

April Book 4 We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson (author's touchstone removed as it lead to the wrong person I think and the 'alternatives' were Harry Potter! Book touchstone is working correctly)

So I had an ulterior motive to acquiring this one - I'd seen that it was being made into a film to be released later this year and I figured it would be a good one to try reading beforehand. I wasn't quite sure what I was embarking on, but it was an interesting book. Two sisters live in a huge mansion with their uncle, isolated from the world around them for most of the time. The story is told by the younger of the sisters. There is a history to their situation and to their few interactions with the townspeople that is gradually revealed over the course of the story. The tags here on LT described it as gothic and horror (among other things that I won't say here for fear of spoiling anything). While I would definitely say that the setting is very gothic, I waver slightly on the horror. I guess I'm always slightly wary with horror - I don't think of myself of a fan of horror, because I don't like being frightened or seeing lots of gore - this for me doesn't risk falling into either of those but at the same time, although I figured out early on certain significant details, this is a somewhat unnerving read. Many of the characters aren't likeable people. Glad I read it and different to my normal fayre.

April Book 6 Look into my Eyes by Lauren Child

I was familiar with Lauren Child's works for younger children and would highly recommend books like Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Book and my five year old niece loves Hubert Horatio Bartle Bobton-Trent. She is also the creator of Charlie and Lola and Clarice Bean. This is the first in a new series aimed a bit older, I would say the 9-12 age range, although it has been tagged as YA as well. Ruby Redfort is a whizz when it comes to code breaking and as such finds herself recruited by the highly secret agency Spectrum to help them solve a potential forthcoming bank robbery. Crime busting adventure with gadgets, incompetent adults and some danger thrown into the mix. Overall a bit of fun reading for the age range. I shall pass it on accordingly.

April Book 7 Four by Veronica Roth

This is a series of short stories mostly telling the back story of the character Four from the Divergent Trilogy. There weren't any great new insights, although some of the menacing interaction between certain factions is elaborated. It was an okay read, but not an essential part of the series. Although technically most of the stories happen before the Trilogy, I don't think this could be read before it as certainly my understanding of these was aided by having read the books (and seen the films) beforehand.

That's me up to date with my record of what I've read so far this month. I need to buckle down and get through some more now.

>113 Peace2: I love the Charlie and Lola books! I've seen her illustrations around, but haven't read any of her other children's books. I really should look for some of them...and revisit Charlie and Lola.

>113 Peace2: The one mentioned above Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Book? and also Beware of the Storybook Wolves are ones that I would very highly recommend trying.

>115 Peace2: I'll see if I can find them.

>112 Peace2: I had some of the same issues with Vampire Knight as you. I gave up the series at about volume 6, I think, when it wandered too far from what I had perceived as the main storyline. A pity, because it is beautiful.

>117 Sakerfalcon: Thank you for your thoughts on it because I've been trying to decide whether I should try to track down further titles in the series - unfortunately in this case beautiful art isn't really enough for me. I shall have to move my attention to a different manga series . . . (or concentrate on reading some of my other books that are waiting or something).

>113 Peace2: I started We Have Always Lived in the Castle over the winter and then had to put it down because a couple of digital loans came in at once. I didn't go back, but I do still plan to!

I have wondered about Four. I'm not sure your review makes me feel like I need to read it. Doesn't make me feel like I need to stay away from it either. LOL

April Book #9 Sir Thursday by Garth Nix

The next in the Keys to the Kingdom series. Sir Thursday is in charge of the army and Arthur unexpectedly finds himself called up to serve, while Leaf returns home with the goal of finding and thwarting the plan of sinister factions in the House. A new character appears late in the book (one we've heard many mention of) who appears to be directing more of the action in this book. The problem with this kind of series is that even though each book has Arthur and his associates tackling a new and different threat, there is a certain degree of feeling repetitious nonetheless, even when what's happening is different - perhaps it's the emotional element? There's just something that makes me feel like 'I've been here already, even though the events are new'. I'm not sure how better to explain that right now - maybe I need to think on it some more. Still three more books to go all of which are on the shelf, so I'll be continuing. It does feel like a bit of a race to the end at the moment.

April Book #10 Ten Thousand Sorrows by Elizabeth Kim

The biography of a woman born in Korea to a Korean woman and a GI who had left before her birth. When the author is about 5, her mother is killed by other members of the family - an honour killing for the disgrace she brought upon them and the girl is sent to an orphanage from where she is adopted into an American fundamentalist Christian family and is physically, verbally and mentally abused until she is married to a man who is extremely violent. It is a tragic story of horrific treatment without question, but at times I found myself questioning certain of the facts about her life in the US as I couldn't believe other people would be party to the events in the way portrayed and not act in some way. Still having said that, Elizabeth Kim's resilience and efforts to rebuild her life and move on with her daughter's support is admirable. A very strong woman.

April Book #11 Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card

The story of a young boy taken from his family to train in a Battle School as Earth searches for the future generation of soldiers and military leaders who will fight off an alien race who they have already battled once and overcome years previously. I didn't love this but it was okay. As it's quite a well-known book, I'm pleased to have listened to it - at the moment, I don't have any intention of reading on. I listened to an unabridged audio version of this which for the most part was fairly well read although I found the narrator used for Valentine irritating (to my mind she sounded too dreamy or perhaps even half stoned!) This version also held a lengthy postscript read by Orson Scott Card, some of which was interesting.

April Book #12 The Ancient Magus Bride Volume 2 by Kore Yamazaki

The second in the series, again the story seems interesting but there's still a lot of set-up and at times I'm getting a bit confused as to who is who/what is happening. I'm not sure if this is just my current level of brain power or if it's a problem with the book. Although the characters are interesting, I haven't latched on to any of them with the same degree of fondness that I did in say the Black Butler or No. 6 series.

Just realised that I hadn't done a summary of April's reading, so belatedly here is that post.

April Summary

Total Number of Books Read : 12
Books Retained After Reading : 5 (although three of these made be passed onward if I decide that I'm definitely not continuing with the Vampire Knight series).

Books on Shelf Prior to 1st Oct 2016 : 8
Books on Shelf Prior to 1st Jan 2016 : 3

Books Abandoned : 2 (+1 that was abandoned as the sequel to one of the earlier abandons - I've abandoned 11% of books so far this year - if one includes the sequel)
Series Finished as far as I intend reading : 2 because I've reached the end and 3 because I'm not overly inclined to continue with them

Non-Fiction Reads : 1 (8.3%)
Fiction Reads : 11 (91.7%)

Male Authors (first time to read that author this year): 1 (current yearly percentage 47.1%)
Female Authors (first time to read that author this year): 6 (current yearly percentage 52.9%)

Books by Male Authors : 3 (current yearly percentage 44.1%)
Books by Female Authors : 9 (current yearly percentage 54.2%)
Books by Collaboration : 0 (current yearly percentage 1.7%)

Books acquired : 0

Goal to read 20000 pages from Mt. TBR by the end of the year : 2409 read this month (current total is 8,779 pages which leaves 11,221 pages left to reach goal)

End of March update on Walking to Mordor : 1128.5 miles just over 180 miles to go to get to Rauros - currently predicted to get there by 29th June. Unfortunately a bad month health wise which meant that for almost 2 weeks I was lucky to add 1/2 mile a day to the total - hence the fact that I'm currently predicted to get there later than I was last month. I'm now trying to recoup the lost miles and see if I can make up the six gained days.

May Book 1 Backlash by Lynda La Plante

An audio version read by Kim Hicks, this is a police procedural. A man is pulled over by the police for reckless driving and in the back of his van that find a just murdered woman. Taking the man into custody, in interview he makes comments about two other missing women, one a well known case, the other less familiar to the police in question. Anna Travis is brought in to help with the cold cases. This is actually the eighth book in the series, but it didn't really matter, the characters soon become clear and distinctive and the story itself stands independently (aspects of the individual police clearly follow from previous stories, but I didn't feel that I was too adrift). It's an okay book, but not one I intend to keep now I've read it.

May Book 2 The Death of Grass by John Christopher (this book is also known as No Blade of Grass)

Written in the 1950s, this book is by the author of The Tripods and The Prince in Waiting trilogies but whereas those were written with a more teenage audience in mind, this does seem to have been aimed more at adults. It does, however, retain, John Christopher's style - it's too the point, he doesn't waste time in florid descriptions (barely any descriptions) and gives the information you need to progress the story rather than fleshing it out. I have a recollection of saying something along those lines when I re-read the Prince in Waiting series last year where the whole trilogy would amount to approximately the same number of pages as one book in the Hunger Games or Divergent series.

It is also worth noting that his attitude to women is not any better in this than it was in his teenage audience books. Women are there to cook and look after the children - their opinions are rarely sought and generally ignored even if they are sought.

The premise of the story is that a virus hits crops in China, wiping out their yield and resulting in a famine. News of the virus and famine doesn't spread out of the country until the virus itself has spread to the neighbouring countries. The story itself takes place in Britain and follows an architect, his family and friends as the virus in a new mutated form has gained control there and their struggles as they flee London and head for his brother's secluded farm.

Having read 'The Road' fairly recently, this actually felt like a precursor to that - the 'how' to its end. It finishes at a point where the initial journey is over, but not with an ending and a resolution for the future. It's bleak (I can see now why the school I went to didn't stock it, when I was trying to track it down back in my teens after reading The Tripods and the Prince in Waiting).

In this age of genetic modification of crops and how much modern wheat has changed from that which our grandparents ate, one can't help wondering how much we might be opening ourselves up to the potential for this sort of disaster and the introduction to this new edition of the book also references that sort of idea.

So overall impression, I didn't like it as much as I had liked his work when I was younger, but I liked it enough to keep it on the shelf now it's finished. It raises some interesting thoughts, but it's bleak, but not as unrelenting as something like The Road. It's shorter and the pace keeps moving, not dwelling on the action, leaving the thinking about the events to the reader, not telling them what they should think about things. I found myself pausing at points to try to imagine myself or people I knew in the same situation and what actions they would have taken, so I guess I was less attached to the individual characters rather pondering the situations and events with greater depth.

I'm looking forward to reading The World in Winter by the same author (apparently this is also known as The Long Winter) which has also been recently reprinted along with a re-read of The Tripods trilogy (and its newer prequel which I have also got a copy of).

May Book #3 Wrongful Death by Lynda La Plante

This book followed on from Backlash discussed above which was a coincidence as I didn't pick them up together, but both were rare audiobook acquisitions from charity shops. I'd stated above previously that it didn't seem to matter about reading previous books in the series, well I'd echo that here. Although some of the characters carry from one to the next, it jumps a period of time and there's no immediate sense of continuity. The story again revolves around Anna Travis. A suicide case is being looked at again after an accusation is made several months later that he was murdered. A nightclub owner supposedly committed suicide at home due to depression and possibly financial commitment issues. His wife was out at a charity ball with her sister and mother. The mother is very wealthy and a Lady who appears in the glossy home magazines for her horticultural and charity work. Langton is about to leave to spend time with the FBI and has arranged for Anna to also attend an FBI course but before she goes she is given the suicide case to take a look at. They are joined by an FBI agent who is working in the UK for experience. The US agent is obnoxious - all of the awful traits that are displayed when someone is making a caricature of an American seemed to be present - the woman was so awful that I found it hard to believe in her at all, let alone that she was being touted as one of the finest Special Agents, but then this book is filled with truly horrible characters - caricature of a rich, upper class gentrified woman, spoilt brat of an adopted daughter.

The story was convoluted, the truth unbelievable and the outcome ridiculous. Not impressed at all.

May Book #4 Artemis Fowl: The Eternity Code by Eoin Colfer

I'd borrowed this from the library a couple of years ago, but then on a visit earlier in the year they were selling their audio copy of as read by Nathaniel Parker and I couldn't see it go to waste. I cleaned up the discs and they played okay. I enjoyed this, Artemis, the sneaky teen genius works again with the fairies overcoming hitches and although he's working for good now, he's still finding a way to work around the rules that don't fit with his plans.

May Book #5 The City Between the Books & The Bridge People by Christian Ellingsen

So this was an ebook that I picked up last December I think and it won't surprise you to know that I was drawn by the title of the first story (except it was actually the second in the book!). So, these are two short stories. The Bridge People is Hannah's story. Hannah lives with her mother and believes in fairy tales, so much so that when she crosses the bridge into the town, she believes the noises below come from a troll, even though what she sees is nothing like the trolls in her storybooks. The second story is Lex's. Lex is a student at a university and is supposed to be finishing up an essay and so is hunting in the library for some books to help her but she can't figure out why the books aren't together and so she begins to rearrange the books. At some point she sees a glow between books where they shouldn't be one and so she investigates, ending up in a parallel place. Nothing appears to be alive on the other side at first until after a while of searching through the city she begins to hear a grunting sound.

Based on this experience, I wouldn't hunt out anything further by the same author. Hannah's story did at first engage me but it didn't fully hit the mark of being a great read and Lex's story did nothing for me.

May Book #6 Behind a Mask: her unknown thrillers by Louisa May Alcott

I wasn't sure what to expect of these. I re-read Little Women not all that long ago but had a feeling that this would be nothing like that. This is a collection of four short stories Behind A Mask; Or, A Woman's Power, Pauline's Passion & Punishment, The Abbot's Ghost or Maurice Treherne's Temptation and The Mysterious Key, and what it opened. Apart from Pauline's Passion & Punishment (which I couldn't help but feel like it sounded like something one might find on an erotica shelf), I quite enjoyed reading these. Women manipulating the people around them to gain a better position in life was a familiar theme, secrets coming back to haunt. These are not 'thrillers' by the modern day sense in that I was never on the edge of my seat with anticipation or anxiety. The pace was slower, even though they were short and there were twists. Sometimes the villain of the piece won the day, sometimes they were won over and turned from their 'evil' ways to a better path. My problem with Pauline's Passion & Punishment was that I really didn't like Pauline and I wanted Manuel to refuse her demands. While in the other stories, I didn't necessarily like the characters for some reason I was curious about them and so was willing to go along with their shenanigans, but I just couldn't reach that place for Pauline.

>125 Peace2: Oooh, that Alcott looks tempting!

>126 clamairy: If you use an i-pad and the Ibooks store - three of the individual stories were available on there for free and Pauline's Passion & Punishment wasn't very much (49p in UK money). I downloaded the freebies and read the hardcopy version of the other as the book I had wasn't in terribly good condition and also smelled of stale smoke (which always aggravates my head when I'm reading). Some of them were published under the pseudonym A.M. Barnard.

I have another on a shelf somewhere by her called The Chase (or A Long Fatal Love Chase apparently!) which I also haven't got around to trying yet.

>127 Peace2: All four Kindle editions are free on Amazon so I snagged them. Thanks!

I read Alcott's The Inheritance, which she wrote as a teenager and probably never intended to publish. While I can't recommend it for the plot or the characters (unless you're into sentimental melodrama), it did provide an interesting look at her development as a writer.

Has anyone read The Essex Serpent by Sarah Perry? I've had three attempts at listening to it now and I just can't seem to engage properly with it. I made it through two whole discs and my first thought as disc three started was how much longer is this going to last, which can't be a good sign. Is it me? Am I missing something? Anyway, for now I'm abandoning it (again!).

Not sure if anyone has mentioned it elsewhere (life is and I'm not doing well at keeping up with tracking threads no matter how hard I try at the moment!), but I came across this article here(it's at Collider.com but if you google it, there are now lots of links, so perhaps it's only me that hadn't heard about this) about Jeff Vandermeer's Annihilation being made into a movie that's to be released next year and I remembered lots of people around here had read it, myself included.

A slow month - too tired to make it to the end of many books so only one more to talk about

May Book #7 Artemis Fowl: The Opal Deception by Eoin Colfer

This was a re-listen before I pass the audio on - I'd acquired it a couple of months ago in the library sale having listened to it back in 2014 or 2015 and as the library was getting rid of it, I decided another chance to listen to Nathaniel Parker was a definite plus and then a friend could have it for her children. This isn't my favourite in the series, but NP is a great narrator - I think I could probably listen to him read the cereal packets. Artemis is called on by Captain Holly Short to help the fairy people avert disaster, but she's in trouble herself. Great for the 9-12 age range.

May Summary

Total Number of Books Read : 7
Books Retained After Reading : 1 (The Death of Grass by John Christopher)

Books on Shelf Prior to 1st Oct 2016 : 3
Books on Shelf Prior to 1st Jan 2016 : 0

Books Abandoned : 1 (The Essex Serpent)
Series Finished as far as I intend reading : 2

Non-Fiction Reads : 0 (0%)
Fiction Reads : 7 (100%)

Male Authors (first time to read that author this year): 3 (current yearly percentage 48.2%)
Female Authors (first time to read that author this year): 2 (current yearly percentage 51.8%)

Books by Male Authors : 4 (current yearly percentage 46.3%)
Books by Female Authors : 3 (current yearly percentage 52.2%)
Books by Collaboration : 0 (current yearly percentage 1.5%)

Books acquired : 0

Goal to read 20000 pages from Mt. TBR by the end of the year : 1344 read this month (current total is 10,507 pages which leaves 9,493 pages left to reach goal)

End of May update on Walking to Mordor : 1220.54 miles - Hoping to get to Rauros round about the end of this month beginning of next. In other news, my current walking audio book is .... The Fellowship of The Ring which seems appropriate.

June Book #1 Lady Friday by Garth Nix

The fifth in the series introduces a new set of problems for Arthur, Leaf and friends in the form of Lady Friday, yet another selfish and self-centred Denizen of the House. I'm making my way through these slower now, not because they're not good, but because I'm being distracted to look at other things more easily and because I'm tired by the time I'm picking them up. Still I do want to know how the series end, so I'm not giving up - but I think part of that slowing down might also be because I'm actually not as enthralled as I was at the beginning - these are a good set of kids books, but I'm actually not so in the mood to read them at the minute as I was earlier in the series.

June Book #2 The Alchemist's Secret by Scott Mariani

I enjoyed this so much more than I expected to. Ben Hope is a man with a tortured past and he spends his time trying to track down abducted children. This is the first in the series, and Ben is introduced to a man who doesn't want him to find a missing child, but rather to find a cure for his dying granddaughter. Ben tries to refuse, before guilt at the prospect of a child dying when he could have done something gets the better of him and he sets of to France in search of the elusive Fulcanelli manuscript. He travels to Paris in his search and then down to the former Cathar regions of France, tying his quest into that of the Cathar history. I'd be curious enough to read some more of the series if I happen across them, but I have a distinct fear that it might be the kind of series that got repetitive fast (thinking of Da Vinci Code type things here).

My reading is going very slowly at the moment, but my reporting on it is clearly going even slower! Too many other things that I'm having to put my mind to, I fear.

One of the virtues of slow reading and slow posting in the Dragon is that it is readily understood; everybody has lives that interfere from time to time. It's okay. You'll still find people here when you return!

>135 jillmwo: That's good to know because this is one of my favourite places to come visit.

June Book #3 Seraph of the End: Vampire Reign Vol 1 by Takaya Kagami

The start of another manga series. The story begins with a virus that kills adults, leaving the children living underground captured by vampires as food, but soon it begins to appear that all is not entirely as they have been told.

I like the art, there are some interesting characters so far, I'm keen to continue for a while at least to see how it develops.

June Book #4 A Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett

This is another re-read from many years ago. A couple of months ago I re-read The Secret Garden and was disappointed in it, the opposite was true of this. I believe this one actually retained a lot of its appeal and although Sarah is somewhat too good to be true, she is likeable and her escapism is understandable. She is thoughtful towards others even when things are going well for herself. A lot more going in its favour I feel than its counterpart, captures the feel of the period in the muddy and dingy streets of London with its contrast of warm, glowing interiors (or not as the case maybe).

I'm now trying to make my way through Gone With the Wind which has been on my shelf since some time prior to 2011 without being touched. It's huge!! And the type is really tiny, the actual physical copy may have to be passed on, because there's no way I'm going to manage to read that type, however, I've managed to get a copy on to my phone which is somewhat less heavy to carry and I can adjust the size of the font making it readable. Still seems a bit heavy going so far - Scarlett seems really unpleasant at this point and no one else has really been introduced to an extent that I could like them (so far I've met her father, Mammy and the twins, with references to her mother, Ashley and other people to a lesser extent). I'm not yet sure whether I'm going to be able to stick with this, but ... I'll try.

I'm nearing the end of the audio version of The Fellowship of the Rings by JRR Tolkien but I'm not sure that I'll go straight on to the next volume. I may catch up on a couple of library audio loans first.

I’m glad A Little Princess held up better than The Secret Garden!

I’ve never tried to read Gone with the Wind but, when I was younger, my mom used to love watching the movie. Every time I tried to watch it with her, I was so annoyed by Scarlett that I couldn’t stick with it. I think the furthest I ever made it was halfway through.

I think A Little Princess is the childhood favourite that I'm most afraid to revisit. I loved it so much that I just don't see how it can live up to my memories. And there are some aspects that I can think of that might bother me more now. It's encouraging that it has held up for you, so it might be worth taking a chance on it. I did pretty well with The Secret Garden when I reread it a few years ago.

>137 Peace2: & >138 YouKneeK: GWTW was a "yuck" book for me. Scarlett never gets better or changes in spite of everything around her, at least, that is what I remember.

>138 YouKneeK: and >140 MrsLee: I shall stick with it a bit longer, but at least I'll be in good company if I don't make it through. This has been on my shelf for years (I think from the time of the BBC Big Read when it was one of the top 100 books and I was trying to give all the books a go because supposedly they were good! But like all things of that ilk, not everything is to everyone's taste).

I loved GwtW, but I was 19 when I read it. Just saying...

I've not given up on Gone With the Wind yet, but there's still a long way to go. But to update on things I have finished.

June Book #5 Harvest by Tess Gerritsen

Not one of her Rizzoli and Isles series, this book focuses on Abby, an second year medical student at Bayside Medical. She looks to have a promising career ahead of her, until she begins to question some of the events around her. Working with another doctor, she helps ensure that the heart of a car crash victim goes to a young boy. She questions the hospital's procedures when the wife of a high profile business man receives a heart just at the right moment. Events lead to further questions and she finds herself becoming deeply embroiled in a situation well beyond anything she'd previously imagined. Although in some respects it feels like this is an author finding her way (I believe this is her first or one of her first published novels), it still shows a good strength of writing and her own experience in the medical profession brings home some of the events (the descriptions of medical procedures at times are graphic). Certain elements felt a little far fetched, but overall it was well paced.

June Book #6 Seraph of the End: Vampire Reign, Vol 2 by Takaya Kagami

The second in a manga series. I'm still curious about where this is going although there wasn't a huge development in these chapters. Yuichiro has now earned the position on the Imperial Demon Army and has his own cursed weapon, along with two other characters who each have something to learn about their own strength, determination, teamwork and so on.

At some point I hope to get some more of the series when I've worked a little further on the TBR pile.

June Summary

Total Number of Books Read : 6
Books Retained After Reading : 2

Books on Shelf Prior to 1st Oct 2016 : 6
Books on Shelf Prior to 1st Jan 2016 : 4

Books Abandoned : 0
Series Finished as far as I intend reading : 2

Non-Fiction Reads : 0 (0%)
Fiction Reads : 6 (100%)

Male Authors (first time to read that author this year): 2 (current yearly percentage 48.3%)
Female Authors (first time to read that author this year): 1 (current yearly percentage 51.7%)

Books by Male Authors : 2 (current yearly percentage 44.4%)
Books by Female Authors : 2 (current yearly percentage 51.4%)
Books by Collaboration : 2 (current yearly percentage 4.2%)

Books acquired : 0

Goal to read 20000 pages from Mt. TBR by the end of the year : 2112 read this month (current total is 12,235 pages which leaves 7,765 pages left to reach goal)

End of May update on Walking to Mordor : 1320.67 miles - I've reached Rauros on the 26th June and have set out for Mordor. I also finished listening to The Fellowship of the Ring today. I'm going to leave it a few weeks before starting on the next installment, after all I've got at the moment an estimated 153 days to reach my destination.

June was a slow reading month although in terms of what I did read, it has all benefitted the size of the TBR piles.

I've also decided in the light of eye strain and imminent death by falling book piles, to download a bunch of free classics and to donate my matching collection which are not in special editions and have type that is too small to read easily without inducing a headache. Also let's be honest, it's easier to keep track of the pages in War and Peace or Anna Karenina on the tablet than the heavy tomes (possibly in several different ways of looking at it) that I'm donating.

"I've reached Rauros on the 26th June and have set out for Mordor. I also finished listening to The Fellowship of the Ring today."

I love that you're listening and walking. :o)

I hear you on the classic ebooks. I was collecting them for a loooong time. I have stopped. I haven't gotten rid of any yet, but I'm sure it's just a matter of time.

Urgh! And I thought June was a slow month... July is taking that to whole new levels.

July Book #1 An Almond for a Parrot by Wray Delaney

The story is a cross between romance and historical fiction. Set in the 1700s, the story begins with the central character Tully Truegood in prison and pregnant, awaiting trial. Tully looks back over her life and how events brought her to that position. When she was 12, her father sold her in marriage to clear his debts, but both her and her husband were masked so she never knows who she was married to as her husband leaves immediately.

Tully is innocent (sometimes unbelievably so) as she moves through her life, escaping her father to find herself living with prostitutes and in 'relationships' with certain gentleman (there are some explicit scenes in this book). She has a strange magical gift that leads to some convenient rescues and makes one wonder why she didn't use the same gift at other times.

The marriage early on, becomes relevant when a man appears later in the book claiming to be her husband and drives a number of the events that occur and Tully's prison destination.

I listened to this in audio and it was well read. It was okay, I gave it 3 1/2 stars so I wouldn't rush for more of it's type but I wasn't tempted to give up on it - it was the title that made me curious.

My apologies to everyone whose threads I was following earlier in the year, along with the slow reading month generally, I've managed to fall behind in keeping up with threads. I will try to catch up but things don't seem to be getting any easier with that regard so I may have to just read the most recent posts and try to get back into things... (all of this is said with a certain degree of hopefulness).

July Book #2 Superior Saturday by Garth Nix

The sixth part of the Keys to the Kingdom series (only one more to go). My interest in these is waning but I do think it's because I'm not the target age, not because they're badly written. I started reading the series last July! I can't believe it's taken me this long to get through them. Arthur continues to try and piece the Will back together and acquire the Keys to give him mastery of the House. This time he is having to overcome the conniving of Saturday who is determined to reach the Upper House and the domain of Lord Sunday.

July Book #3 In Bitter Chill by Sarah Ward

Two young girls, Rachel and Sophie, (primary school age) are abducted in the 1970s as they walked to school together, only one of them is found wandering barefoot and confused, the other is never found. Years later, Rachel has pieced a life together working as a genealogist, doing her best to put her past behind her. Everything begins to fall apart when Sophie's mother seems to have committed suicide in a hotel bedroom thirty years later and the police and Rachel begin to question why now and why in that particular hotel. From there an investigation begins that delves back into the unsolved abduction as well the current events. It's quite an interesting piece, with the different police personnel being interesting in their own right as well as Rachel's attempts to build a life after her abduction and the difficulties she faced in dealing with people. I was a little disappointed in the actual resolution, but overall it was not a bad book. This is apparently the first novel by this author, and so she may well be someone to watch in the future. Her second book has already been released and features at least some of the same police personnel - if I come across it, I'm likely to give it a try.

Had a bit of a dash at the weekend to try and get the book count up a bit for the month (I'll be honest I picked the final book because it would be quick and easy to read but was genuinely in the pile waiting to be read - along with its partner which I may well get to this month).

July Book #4 Must Love Otters by Eliza Gordon

A very predictable comedy romance - girl goes on weekend 'spa' alone to escape failed romance and falls for wealthy handsome business man who sweeps her off her feet, only for the twist which isn't really a twist when you saw it way back when. There were humorous bits that I did find funny, but nothing to lift it beyond the predictable and after a while the main character's 'accidents' just began to wear on me as tiresome rather than amusing.

July Book #5 Scandanavia by Lonely Planet (can't get it to link to the right book)

I didn't read the whole of this book, only the section on Iceland as a friend and I are hoping to travel there next year and I wanted to read up and begin to plan so that we see as much as possible in the time we have and can work out what to prioritise for the time of year we were there and so on. This was a great start and I've taken pages of notes of things to find out more about and have picked up two more books to see what they have to say by comparison. I borrowed this from the local library. When I buy travel guides, I very often purchase the Dorling Kindersley Eyewitness books which I particularly like the layout and visual qualities of - I didn't like this as much, but there did seem to be some useful information and I'm looking forward to continuing my research over the next couple of months.

July Book #6 Captain America: Castaway in Dimension Z volume 1 by Rick Remender

At times I found this story difficult to figure out. The basic premise is the Steve Rogers is tricked into entering a train in a tunnel that no one knows where it goes and from there finds himself in another dimension facing untold evils for many many years and trying to escape and work out how to get back to his own dimension.

Given that he got on the train in a civilian suit and carrying nothing, how come he has a sort of Captain America suit and his shield once he's in Dimension Z? Time passing and children aging appears to be a strange fast slow combination. I can't say that this is going to be a favored run but for semi-completionist reasons it will remain on my shelf (I'm missing a few but given that the only place I've managed to see listing those particular volumes is asking £300+, I won't be adding them to my collection right now and will wait until I happen across them far more cheaply. The high prices make me inclined to keep the bits of series I have even when I'm not so keen on the actual stories or art work.

That was my final book of the month so I will post a round up of the month's/years reading statistics tomorrow.

>147 Peace2: No need to apologize. Many of us are having the same issues. I've been trying to keep posting in my own thread, but it's hard to keep up with reading everyone else's this time of year. There so much going on in RL it's difficult to find big blocks of time for LibraryThing.

July Summary

Total Number of Books Read : 6
Books Retained After Reading : 1 (four of the boos were library books anyway)

Books on Shelf Prior to 1st Oct 2016 : 2
Books on Shelf Prior to 1st Jan 2016 : 1

Books Abandoned : 0
Series Finished as far as I intend reading : 1

Non-Fiction Reads : 1 (16.7%)
Fiction Reads : 6 (83.3%)

Male Authors (first time to read that author this year): 0 (current yearly percentage 45.9%)
Female Authors (first time to read that author this year): 3 (current yearly percentage 54.1%)

Books by Male Authors : 1 (current yearly percentage 42.3%)
Books by Female Authors : 3 (current yearly percentage 51.3%)
Books by Collaboration : 2 (current yearly percentage 6.4%)

Books acquired : 0

Goal to read 20000 pages from Mt. TBR by the end of the year : 359 read this month (current total is 12,694 pages which leaves 7,306 pages left to reach goal)

End of July update on Walking to Mordor : 1412.19 miles - I've reached Rauros on the 26th June and have a long way still to go before I reach Mount Doom (a bit less than 370 miles).

>147 Peace2: We are the kind of friends you can not see for ages, but when you do, you can pick up right where you left off. For the most part, we simply want all of our friends to live well, even if that means we are not able to hear from them for awhile. :)

Woo Hoo! for your walking!

>152 MrsLee: This is what make LibraryThing, and the Green Dragon in particular, so wonderful!

>147 Peace2: I hope you find time to do the things that are most important to you.

What she said in >152 MrsLee: and in >153 Sakerfalcon:. Besides I would love to hear what you're planning to do in Iceland.

>150 clamairy:, >152 MrsLee:, >153 Sakerfalcon: and >154 jillmwo: Thank you for the reassurance. The past couple of months have been difficult, a death in the family, increased work load at work, some slight health issues and so on. Reading anything is not going overly well at the moment, even when I'm enjoying or looking forward to it. To be honest, brain power is at a minimum I think and half the time as soon as I relax enough to start reading, I'm falling asleep. Still, I picked up a new to me Flavia de Luce audio at the library this week, so just need to get time to start that. I hope it doesn't disappoint.

Iceland is on the cards for probably March next year - so at the moment, I'm planning to do everything in the guide books I've read so far because time when I'm there is infinite and at the moment there's only me to please - later once I've met and chatted with the friend I'm hoping to go with, things will be more refined - we'll actually look at the things we'd both like to do, what will fit into the time we've got and fits best with what the conditions are likely to be when we're there. If anyone wants to throw in suggestions, feel free - the biggest hope is that we get to see the Northern Lights, but looking at the books there seem to be so many wonderful spots to see that are scenically/geographically/culturally significant that the time we have will be nowhere near sufficient.

In the meantime I'm trying to organise a holiday for about three weeks time. In theory this will be easier to organise (book a boat to France and go from there). We're having to bring it forward by several weeks, which means the original plan of heading to either the Carcassonne area of France, the Pyrenees or Barcelona have been put off. On our last trip to Carcassonne, the weather was too hot for us to do the amount of walking/sightseeing we wanted to do and we just couldn't cope, so we'd hoped to go a little later (mid-late September) when it would be still nice but not quite so intense.

Currently under consideration are driving up to Amsterdam and visiting places like Arnhem, Rotterdam, Antwerp, Ghent on the way back, or heading across to Evreux in France in order to visit Giverny (Monet) and Versailles and other as yet to be decided places. So who knows? Then again, I may end up taking a couple of days off and having a staycation... Saving the pennies for Iceland.

In other news, I'm still plodding slowly through Gone with the Wind. I'm a little over a quarter of the way through it, so plodding is the right word. I still don't like many of the principal characters - so many of them are pretty selfish and self centred, but for learning about the period in which the story takes place and the attitudes it's quite interesting. When I say learning about the period, I'm not meaning in the sense of a literal this is what happened 'accurate' historical account (one could say that all historical writing is subjective and so not entirely accurate but I'm sure you know what I'm driving at), but a showing of the attitudes and behaviours of the period, beliefs of types of people who would have been in the area and so on and is different to the bit of reading I've done on that sort of period previously.

Which reminds me to ask does anyone know of a not too heavy accurate historical non-fiction on the subject of Arnhem during WW2? Before visiting Pegasus Bridge a couple of years ago, I read Stephen E Ambrose's Pegasus Bridge which was fascinating and gave me so much more perspective when we visited that I'm interested in reading something in a similar fashion. Given the current lack of brain power, I'm not wanting to tackle a tome, but something to inform me before I go (if that's where we end up going).

So August reading did not go well - I only read one book from beginning to end, and three I dipped in and out of as suited my purposes - that isn't good for my plans to demolish the TBR pile over the next while! The while which was going to need to be big anyway, is going to be even bigger if I continue at this rate.

Anyway the book I did finish was Midnight Sun by Jo Nesbo and it wasn't my cup of tea as they say. It was a short book but still took me the majority of the month to get through. Set in Finnmark, Norway, the story begins with a man on the run getting off a bus in a remote village. Over the course of the book, we find out who he is on the run from, why and how he got himself into that predicament, but we also begin to get to know some of the people in the village that he has stopped in. Their lives begin to intertwine and pasts begin to catch up with people (more than just his). Although short, I still found it slow moving, I didn't really find myself invested in the characters sufficiently. I don't know whether this is just my current position of struggling a bit with my reading or if this is just that Jo Nesbo doesn't suit my tastes (I don't know how typical this is of his work as it was my first dip into his writing) but at this point I'm thinking I probably won't be rushing to try anything else.

The three books that I dipped in and out of were Dorling Kindersley travel guides. DK Eyewitness Travel Guide The Netherlands (link removed as it goes to an older 'Holland' version of the same book), DK Eyewitness Travel Guide Amsterdam and DK Eyewitness Travel Guide Brussels, Bruges, Ghent, Antwerp. I liked the Netherlands one of these the most, finding it most useful and with some great ideas for some of the places we visited. I didn't get on as well as I hoped with the Amsterdam one, but this may have been time constraints in relation to time spent there and how much time I had to read this beforehand. The Belgian City book was also a little disappointing - but perhaps this was because I was using it specifically for Antwerp which of the four listed cities seemed to have a relatively small amount of pages dedicated to it. In all three cases, I felt there were good places to visit that barely got a mention.Still, there is a lot of visual appeal to these guides, providing you don't want too much detail.

>156 Peace2: Some months are like that.

Are you one who feels that once you have begun a book, you must finish it?

When I find myself bogged down and not invested in a story, I skip to the end and see if anything has changed or if all is still the same. If it has changed, I will go back and read some more, or at least skim to find out if there is a point where my interest picks up. Usually though, I find that I won't be missing much if I quit reading it and move on to something fresh. This recently happened with me reading The Toilers of the Sea. I really love Victor Hugo's writing, but this one was so dense and slow I decided to skip and see what happened. I was glad I did because I would have been mad if I had invested the time it would have taken to read it for the ending he gave it.

Having a completely different type of reading material on hand, like your guides, is good too.

>157 MrsLee: Unless I absolutely hate a book for some reason, I do have a tendency to struggle through them, feeling obliged. I keep trying to convince myself that I don't need to waste the time doing so because there are way more books out there than I'm ever going to be able to read, so I should at least enjoy or find some value in the books I do read (by that I'm meaning that some books aren't 'enjoyable' as such, but I'm gaining an insight or information or being educated about something that I don't feel I know enough about). If I'm appalled by the actual standard of writing or plotting, then it's far easier to say I'm not going to waste my time on this, although I'll still sometimes give it more than one go, to be certain that I didn't miss something. When a book is either credited with being a real classic or something special or is by a really well known author that lots of other people think well of, then I tend to stick with it - although if I get to the end and still don't like it, I'll take some real convincing before I pick up another by the same person. My Dad passed Midnight Sun to me and I've already said to him that if this is typical Jo Nesbo fare then I won't read the others that he was offering me - it wasn't that I thought it was awful writing, just that it didn't work for me and engage me. Stieg Larsson is another author that I only read the first of and couldn't get any further, but my Dad and sister really enjoyed the series.

September Book #1 The Mephisto Club by Tess Gerritsen

One of the Rizzoli and Isles series by Tess Gerritsen, in this the two characters find themselves rather at odds with each other. I virtually flew through this book and lots of the references in it had me wanting to go away and read other things to find out more about the sources. It wasn't an overly complicated story in terms of the plot and figuring out the whys and wherefores but it did make me want to find out more about some of the religious and historical backgrounds that were relevant. I'm curious now as to the contents of the Book of Jubilees and the Book of Enoch. I think the curiosity for other reading and research is probably why I enjoyed the book so much, rather than because of the story itself.

September Book #2 Tale of a One-Way Street and other stories by Joan Aiken

This was a collection of short stories for children illustrated by Jan Pienkowski. Some of the stories have a bit of a moral but not all. The title story for instance is the story of a young boy who moves with his family to live on a street known locally as the one-way street, because everyone always travels down hill and never walk upward. So what happens when the little boy does. In another story, a lazy and selfish man lives with his hardworking and kind sister. Due to her kindness she gets given a gift, a gift that at first seems to bring her benefits. When her brother steals the gift, he does not initially reap a benefit, however, in the end even his 'punishment' ends up being not so bad. Short stories with interesting ideas, fascinating illustrations, probably not as enticing to children nowadays as the stories are dated (written during the 1970s I think) - horses being used to make deliveries, even telephones and televisions aren't a given in all of the stories but a pleasant enough read.

September Book #3 I Know What You Did Last Summer by Lois Duncan

A thriller of sorts that was 'made' into a movie. The story begins one year after four teens are involved in a car accident in which a child is killed. Although they called the ambulance, they didn't stay at the scene and were never caught. One year on, the past begins to catch up with them. This is an updated version of the original story according to information from the author at the back of the book to keep it more current. It's more of a young adult book than I had realised when I acquired it. The characters are interesting in their differences, the contrasts that they present both in the lives they lead and their reactions and motivations to the people and events around them.

If you've seen the movie, you quite possibly won't recognise this book as being the movie's origins according to the author information as the story was changed so significantly and became a horror rather than a mystery.

Overall the book was fine, but I don't feel the urge to acquire anything else by the same author any time soon.

>160 Peace2: I loved Lois Duncan's books when I was in my teens and devoured as many of them as I could find! I remember going on holiday to Florida when I was 16 and bringing back some of the ones that weren't published in the UK. I'm wary of trying to reread though, as I suspect the suck fairy will have got to them in the years since then.

September Book #4 A Book of Nonsense by Mervyn Peake

A collection of poems written by Mervyn Peake, author of The Gormenghast Trilogy. On the whole confusing but some of them were more enjoyable than others.

September Book #5 As Chimney Sweepers Come to Dust by Alan Bradley

Another in the Flavia de Luce series. Flavia has been packed off to Canada to a boarding school, what could possibly go wrong? Needless to say, Flavia has barely arrived before a body turns up and so she sets her sights on solving the crime. I do like Flavia and Alan Bradley's plots.

I also really like the narrator as this was an audio book.

>158 Peace2: Re Steig Larsson: Me too. I enjoyed the first of his trilogy well enough, but there wasn't enough in it to draw me to the others. But I'm like that - with exceptions, I'd usually rather a new author than the complete works of.

>163 stellarexplorer: I find I'm increasingly unlikely to read an author I like's books back to back as time goes on, but the intention is there to keep going with series until they're finished. I can't really say why that is though... Maybe I need to put some thought in to that. Particularly as I often don't start a series until most or all of the books are at least published if not in my possession!