What are you reading in January 2019?

How are you kicking off your reading year? I will probably do a bit of tidying up with a Doctor Who audiobook for company: Classic Doctors, New Monsters, Volume 2.

When I get bored with cleaning, I'll continue reading The Wars of the Roses, by Dan Jones.

I am having trouble deciding. I want something fun and not too taxing. I'm thinking I might read Passing Strange first. It has a gorgeous cover. I got it for Christmas.

I'm about a third of the way through Of Blood and Bone by Nora Roberts and thinking about which nonfiction from the library to start as my second book.

I've just started One Step Beyond by Chris Moon, which is my TBRCat read for this month, and I also have Red Dust Road about to start (for RandomCAT).

I'm starting my year long read of A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth. I'm also reading The All-Girl Filling Station's Last Reunion by Fannie Flagg and listening to Stephen Fry narrate Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle.

I hope to read The Thirty-Nine Steps by John Buchan

I haven't cracked open a book yet, I've been prepping dinner for today and back to work lunch tomorrow and tidying up. Hopefully later this evening I can start The Devil All The Time. I also want to start Police because of the way that Phantom ended.

I'm finishing off Dawn On a Distant Shore by Sara Donati, as previously stated this the American series to rival Outlander. That's only book 2 of seven and 886 pages, so I won't jump right into book 3. I've also started my January read for the RTT group, Lost in Shangri-La by Mitchell Zuckoff (The theme is survival). I've read Zuckoff's Frozen in Time and I really like his books.

I'm working on finishing The Man who loved Children, which I started as a 1001 group read in December. It's not going to be a favourite.

>6 lsh63: I absolutely love Harry Hole. I believe Nesbo jumped on the crazy train with this series, but I still enjoy them. Police is one of the better books in the series. Enjoy it!

>9 luvamystery65: Hi Roberta, well you sold me, I'll start Police later this evening!

I'm beginning the year mid-way through The Real Lolita by Sarah Weinman and I have just begun Warlight by Michael Ondaatje.

I'm starting with Nine Perfect Strangers, The Royal Wulff Murders, and a reread of Anne of Green Gables for my book club.

I have started off 2019 by listening to the unabridged audiobook version of The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy - after a false start with an abridged version! - and will soon be dipping into Andrea Camilleri's novella The Fourth Secret as I spend January getting caught up with my Inspector Montalbano series reading.

I'm kicking off the year with Speak Easy, Speak Love by McKelle George, which is a YA retelling of Much Ado about Nothing set in the 1920s!

I'm reading Life after Life and, for the series CAT, Thumbprint by Friedrich Glauser.

No touchstones. Will try again later.

OK now.

I started Educated: A Memoir by Tara Westover early last month but never finished, so that one will be my first book of 2019. After that, I'm thinking of moving on to something for January AlphaKIT -- maybe The Quiche of Death, the first Agatha Raisin book by M.C. Beaton.

Just started a re-read of Gone With The Wind, and have about 20 pages of The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie to go.

Well, I ended 2018 on a really disappointing read--what was marketed as horror turned out to be time travel, more sci-fi, and I'm picky about time travel even when it's really well done... which this wasn't. So, to start off on a high note when I had a whole evening to read, I went to a horror novel I'd been meaning to read for ages, The House by Christina Lauren. It started out disappointingly because I'd had no idea it was YA, and hadn't been in the mood for that--there's NO indication on the book or in the blurb that it's YA, and I'd been looking forward to the dark, creepy read the cover seems to promise--but, I kept going, and now that I've gotten used to the changed expectations, it's turning into an interesting read. Not what I was in the mood for, and the marketing for it was clearly way off, but I think I'll end up enjoying it.

I've also started Terra Nova, which I'm sure to enjoy--it just isn't the darkness I wanted last night. I don't usually read MG and YA at the same time... but, as I said, I had no idea that the second book I was starting was YA until I got into it.

I finished The Haunted Bookshop last night and will probably start The Leavenworth Case tonight, unless something else catches my eye. I'm also continuing Theology and the Arts from 2018.

I'm starting off the year with a re-read of Left Neglected by Lisa Genova for my book club and The Gardener's Bed-Book by Richardson Wright (and others) which has a subtitle of "Short and Long Pieces to Be Read in Bed By Those Who Love Growing Green Things". This will be a year-long read so I'll only mention it here.

Yay, I finished the Dan Jones book in >1 rabbitprincess:! First read of 2019 was a good one.

On the bus, I'm making good progress with The King's Agent, by J. Kent Clark. With luck I should be able to finish it tomorrow.

Forgot to mention that now that I've finished the Dan Jones book, next up in mealtime/at-home reading is Natural Causes, by Barbara Ehrenreich.

I'm currently reading In Our Time by Ernest Hemingway for a short story class at our retirement community, and Watership Down by Richard Adams for a book club. I also plan to read Glass Houses by Louise Penny for the RandomCAT, Learning to See by Elise Hooper for LT Early Reviewers and The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller for another book club. All of these excepting the Hemingway book qualify for BingoDOG.

Correction: all qualify for BingoDOG

Just finishing Divisidero by Michael Ondaatje for TbrCAT - first in, last out. I'm filling in spaces in Rankin's series and have started The Black Book for CalendarCAT - Burn's Night. And I'll be reading The Address by Fiona Davis and A Murder of Quality by John le Carré for AlphaKIT.

I've finished Of Blood and Bone also Cave of Bones by Anne Hillerman. Started $2.00 a Day and will probably read either Alif the Unseen or Storm Front for my next fiction book.

Quickly read The White Darkness by David Grann and have also started The House of Broken Angels by Luis Alberto Urrea from the ToB short list.

Should finish The Bird Box today as it's only 200 pages. I've also started Black Forest, White Rose, a fictional account of a young woman who finds a half-dead man in the snow in Luftwaffe uniform.

> I will be interested to hear what you think of Bird Box. We watched the movie over the holidays, having never heard of it before. I thought it was quite an interesting story; hubby thought it was stupid! I have the book on hold at the library.

>28 JayneCM: Wow--I'm really out of the loop by not watching TV--had no idea it was a movie! I have about 20 pages to read and then I will watch the movie (if we get it--we don't have cable but have Netflix and Amazon Prime).

>29 Tess_W: It is on Netflix so you should have access. I thought the movie was a pretty good adaptation. It was hard for me to imagine how they would put that book on film, since so much of it depends on not seeing things, and I think they did a good job. John Malkovich is great, as always.

>29 Tess_W: >30 sturlington: I think it just came out on Netflix. We don't have Netflix so only saw it as we were visiting our daughter for Christmas. Just a random choice. Agree - John Malkovich is great in everything he does!

Finished Natural Causes, as stated in >22 rabbitprincess:, and will be continuing the trend of death-related reading with With the End in Mind, by Kathryn Mannix. This was a Wellcome Book Prize nominee in 2018 and looks really interesting.

Finished The King's Agent and started Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine, by Gail Honeyman.

I finished the fast paced Police, which was a good follow up to Phantom. I see that the next book The Thirst, is available at the library, but I'm going to restrain myself and try to make a dent in The Autobiography of Martin Luther King Jr,.

>34 lsh63: The Thirst can wait. Enjoy the wrap up Police gave you for Phantom.

I just finished The Secret of Chimneys by Agatha Christie and I am moving on with I Am Legend by Richard Matheson and The Other Side of Dawn by John Marsden.

>36 DeltaQueen50: Did you like TWTWB? I remember reading that series in about a week! Lots of late nights.

John Marsden actually started and runs a school here in Victoria, Australia - I so desperately wanted my boys to go there! But it is not in our area and not near anywhere hubby can work. It looks totally amazing!

I finished up the last book in the Lady Helen trilogy, The Dark Days Deceit and didn't know what to follow up with so have made a start on several and continued a few 2018 leftovers, I think Spinning Silver will be my next main read.

My first book of the year was Chernobyl Prayer by Svetlana Alexievich - a 5-star read that I just blazed through; I hope it's a good omen for my 2019 reading! My husband just finished Bob Woodward's Fear: Trump in the White House and passed it on to me so we could discuss it together; it's going quickly so far. Next up is The Thirty-Nine Steps.

A little light Sunday-afternoon entertainment: The Christmas Invasion, by Jenny T. Colgan. Watched the episode again earlier as a refresher. This was the very first episode of Doctor Who I ever watched :)

I've just started The Penguin Pool Murder by Stuart Palmer.

>37 JayneCM: I have been enjoying John Marsden's series for the past few years, reading one or two books a year. I am going to miss it when I finish this last one, but I am planning on continuing to read about Ellie in "The Ellie Chronicles".

>42 DeltaQueen50: The Ellie Chronicles were good, but of course not as exciting as it was after the war. I probably need to re-read the whole series as I read them so quickly!

>42 DeltaQueen50: I loved The Ellie Chronicles books and I never read the last couple of books in the first series.

I've picked up Indigo Dying by Susan Wittig Albert for my first book for the Alpha Kit for this month.

I'm reading What Happens in London by Julia Quinn, which is (as expected) a fun bit of fluff so far!

About to start Amber & Dusk by Lyra Selene...probably not something I would have picked up on my own, but a friend of mine bought me a subscription box for January, and this was the book included. I do like fantasy and political intrigue, so we'll see!

I have finished two books so far this year - The Ice Princess by Camilla Lackberg for a group read, and Rain: Four Walks in English Weather by Melissa Harrison, which is a lovely book. I'm currently reading The Bafut Beagles by Gerald Durrell and listening to Something Rotten by Jasper Fforde. In addition, I'm reading a few pages a day in Dog Tales & Pup Parables, Poems of Robert Burns selected by Ian Rankin, and Many Long Years Ago by Ogden Nash. I should finish all three by the end of the month.

I just finished $2.00 a Day and am currently reading Alif the Unseen and Sapiens. I'll probably start Lethal White soon as it is a two week library book that I may not be able to renew.

I have just started A New Day by Beryl Matthews and I have pulled Their Eyes Were Watching God down from the shelf to start later on this afternoon.

>48 cbl_tn: Poems of Robert Burns selected by Ian Rankin?! I have to get a copy of that for my mum! (And I will borrow it first.)

Today I finished up the delightfully disgusting The Royal Art of Poison, by Eleanor Herman. Not just poison; it covers cosmetics, medicine, and sanitation in various royal households from about the Renaissance onward.

Next up in at-work reading is All the Hidden Truths, by Claire Askew. The author read from her book at Bloody Scotland, just before the Louise Penny and Ann Cleeves event, as part of the "Crime in the Spotlight" initiative that highlights debut novelists. So when I saw it in the library catalogue I had to check it out!

>51 rabbitprincess: Yep! I discovered it in the public library's Overdrive collection. :-)

So, I just did my usual thing where I started about four or five books to see which one grabbed me the most. So far So Long, And Thanks For the Fish by Douglas Adams is the winner with The Alice Network by Kate Quinn following close behind. I've also started The Color of Magic by Terry Pratchett, The Appeal by John Grisham and Small Island by Andrea Levy.

I'm visiting my parents for a long weekend and finished Doctor Who: Classic Doctors, New Monsters, Volume 2 on the train. Big Finish audio dramas make train rides pass most pleasantly!

When I go home on Sunday, I'll likely start The Harper's Quine, by Pat McIntosh, an ebook I borrowed from the library.

I've started Oolong Dead by Laura Childs and am also working on The Danish Girl by David Ebershoff for an e-book read.

I just finished Elizabeth for the ScaredyKIT. I then started Scribe and I've been dipping into What if This Were Enough?, a collection of essays.

>54 rabbitprincess:

I liked The Harper's Quine enough to hunt down the next one in the series and have now read at least three of them.

I finished Ordeal of Innocence, a so-so Agatha Christie without Hercule Poirot or Miss Marple. I am still finding books of hers that I haven't read, although it's hard to track sometimes because of the multiple book titles.

I also finished A Double Life, which was not very good, but I kept plugging away thinking something was going to happen, but alas, it did not. I'm glad it was a short book, and I was glad for the rushed ending.

I finished Fear: Trump in the White House by Bob Woodward - not too many surprises there. Then raced through The Thirty-Nine Steps by John Buchan for the ScaredyKIT. And looking forward to starting Slan by A. E. Van Vogt tonight.

I recently finished Warlight by Michael Ondaatje, a book about memories and beautifully written in a hazy sort of way.

I'm currently rereading The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead for my real life book group and also for January's RandomCAT. There is a character named Ridgeway.

I'm also reading a crime novel called The Lonely Witness by William Boyle, which is not great, but will hopefully pull itself together and make sense of the main character's odd behavior.

And I've just started Speak No Evil by Uzodinma Iweala for the Tournament of Books.

>60 RidgewayGirl: - I just started Speak No Evil too.

I finished So Long, And Thanks For the Fish as well as So Lucky by Nicola Griffith (a ToB pick) over the weekend. I'm currently reading The Alice Network by Kate Quinn.

I'm reading Sapiens by Harari and Lethal White by Robert Galbraith.

I am reading American War by Omar El Akkad and At the Sign of the Sugared Plum. Both are good reads, with American War following some of today's issues of displaced people, climate change and political divide into a very scary future. At the Sign of the Sugared Plum is a YA historical story about the Great Plague in London during 1665.

While I was on vacation at the beginning of the month I whipped through a stack. Currently I'm doing the slowest read ever of A Maltese Falcon.

We are going to the beach for a week and then my son's basketball tournament for three days, so I have just picked up a pile of books from the library in preparation.

I have just got to the stage of having to use 1.5 magnifying glasses to read. Optometrist said no need for prescription glasses yet but it will be coming! So I borrow large print to take away so I don't have to remember to carry the glasses everywhere!

My stack includes:
Rabbit Cake
Hollow Crown
The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake
The Cottingley Secret
In Farleigh Field
Goodbye Christopher Robin
The Yellow Wallpaper

Hoping that will keep me going!

>65 JayneCM: Yay, Rabbit Cake! :D

Today I finished Doctor Who: Rose, one of the Target novelizations of New Who episodes. Russell T. Davies does a great job with this one (fitting, given that he wrote the original episode...).

I also started Race to Hawaii, by Jason Ryan, which is about the early days of trans-Pacific flights from the US to Hawaii (this was before Hawaii became a state).

I have started The Chosen by Chaim Potok. I have heard lots of good things about this one.

I finished My Sister, the Serial Killer. Still reading Scribe, What If This Were Enough, and Down Girl.

And plodding through The Catcher in the Rye - not enjoying it at all. I can see glimpses of why it was so influential, but the dated language is really grating on me.

I just finished Hotshot Doc by R.S. Grey and am now starting Crooked Heart by Lissa Evans.

I started I'm Travelling Alone yesterday and it's a real page turner!

I'm late to the conversation, but I have to say I'm jealous of all the great series people are reading.

>36 DeltaQueen50: I loved the Tomorrow When the War Began series - I used to recommend it all the time to teens who had to read a Science Fiction book for a school assignment. I agree with >43 JayneCM: that the Ellie Chronicles aren't as good, but still enjoyable.

>46 christina_reads: Loved most of the books by Julia Quinn. Have you read Lisa Kleypas? - very similar.

>48 cbl_tn: I enjoyed the Thursday Next series, but I read it way back when it was first published and had to wait a year or so between publications. I bet it's even better if you can read it at your own pace and while each book is still fresh in your mind. Hmmm . . . might be worth a reread for me.

>25 hailelib: Love the Dresden Files. Been waiting FOREVER for the next book, but I'd rather wait and have it be great than have it be just a filler. I have the first book of his previous series, Furies of Calderon loaded on my Kindle.

>65 JayneCM: I know what you mean about the reading glasses. I can never keep mine free of smudges. That's the main reason why I LOVE my Kindle Paperwhite - I can read myself to sleep at night, in bed, with the lights out, and the font so large I don't need glasses. Never thought I'd be an ebook reader, but I'm a convert.

I just started Goblin Quest by Jim C. Hines for the AlphaKIT. I liked the author's Libriomancer series, and so far this book has gotten a few snorts of laughter out of me.

For MLK day I'm reading Our Man in the Dark.

Just finished yet another Doctor Who novel: Doctor Who and the Claws of Axos, by Terrance Dicks.

In a radical change of pace, I'm preparing to start A Place of Greater Safety, by Hilary Mantel, as my next bus book.

Finished I'm Travelling Alone and starting on All Together Dead.

I am reading The Alice network by Kate Quinn and just about to start The Country Girls by Edna O'Brien.

Having finished Sapiens, I'm reading The Hunt for Red October as my main book. I'll be starting either the next Dresden or the next Fandorin soon.

I am reading The Strangler Fig.

I've finished Peace Like A River by Leif Enger and have started What We Keep by Elizabeth Berg for my Random Cat book.

>76 DeltaQueen50: I'm going to start The Alice Network tomorrow as my breaktime read!

>80 rabbitprincess: I hope you enjoy The Alice Network, RP!

>81 DeltaQueen50: I didn't get much of a break today but what I did read was interesting so far!

I'm a few pages into The Paragon Hotel, and I'm pretty sure that I am going to love it. This was one of the few times I was first in the library queue.

I also finished March Book One yesterday afternoon which seemed appropriate for the holiday.

I'm reading two books for the upcoming Tournament of Books. Milkman by Anna Burns is a wonderfully written story about a young woman living in a city in Northern Ireland durning the Troubles and Call Me Zebra by Azareen van der Vliet Oloomi is an ornately written story about a pretentious and annoying young woman whom I deeply dislike.

I'm also reading Lying in Wait by Liz Nugent, a crime novel set in Dublin, Ireland.

Ebook-Pachinko which takes place during the Japanese occupation of Korea before WWII--very good so far! Tree book is Forest Rose and oldie that is no longer in print (since 1959) that I found a copy of for $1 at a garage sale!

Currently reading Small Island by Andrea Levy and The Untold Stories of Broadway by Jennifer Tepper.

I'm reading His Excellency by Émile Zola. I rather like it but IMO it is a bit over the top.

I am just starting The Secret Chord by Geraldine Brooks and a historical mystery set in 1930s Oklahoma called The Yard Dog by Sheldon Russell.

ETD: Now that I have started The Yard Dog I find it is set during WW II during the 1940s.

I started reading a Norwegian mystery, Death in the Blue Lake, last night. So far it is great.

I'm reading The Song of Achilles by Madeleine Miller that so far is excellent. I put a hold on Becoming by Michelle Obama when the library ordered it some time ago and was lucky enough to be the first to borrow it. Not too far into it yet, but what a classy lady!

I'm reading what is a strong contender for Best Book Title of My 2019 reads: The Mystery of the Exploding Teeth and Other Curiosities from the History of Medicine, by Thomas Morris.

>91 rabbitprincess: Ouch!

I'm spending way too much time dreaming about retirement (maybe 6 years or so?) and escaping the toxic work environment with my reading during my commute and in the evenings.

I'm reading Transcription, The Paragon Hotel, and Cane River. The Kate Atkinson book may turn out to be just okay, but I'm a big fan, so I will keep plugging away at it. Parargon Hotel appears to be a winner so far, a just right combination of historical fiction based on what seem to be well researched facts.

Cane River is also very good so far. I do enjoy multigenerational storylines.

I've finished The Right Side by Spencer Quinn for the Alpha Kit (Q). I downloaded The Keeper of Lost Causes by Jussi Adler-Olsen in audio although I'm not sure this was a good idea for my first audio book and/or the first book in a series. I'll listen for a while to see what I think. I may look for a couple of short stories instead. And I've started Indigo Slam by Robert Crais.

I've finished Scribe, What if This Were Enough, and The Auctioneer--an interesting mix of books. I've started The Silence.

Just finished Fool Moon and am reading The Death of Achilles. Not catching my attention as quickly as other books by Akunin.

Just finished Murder on the Links by Agatha Christie.
A more complex plot than is usual for Christie, but the puzzle is just as entertaining. One by one I put a number of the characters in the guilty category but still got it wrong. I love how Hastings will fall for every pretty face he meets.

Reading Outline by Rachel Cusk and finding it dull.

I've finished All Together Dead and am about a third way of the way through Pointed Roofs the first book in Pilgrimage.

I'm reading Erebus, by Michael Palin (yes, THAT Michael Palin), and a single sentence about the Mount Erebus plane crash in 1979 has led me down the rabbit hole of reading the Royal Commission of Inquiry report into that crash: http://archives.govt.nz/exhibitions/currentexhibitions/chch/downloads/AntarcticR...

It's nearly 200 pages, so I'm counting it as a "public-domain ebook" for my records ;)

My husband picked up Erebus from the library but we've both read a lot already on the topic so it might go back unfinished, we'll see. I used to work in a polar research library with researchers including Owen Beattie who wrote Frozen in Time: the fate of the Franklin Expedition.

>93 lsh63: I absolutely loved The Paragon Hotel. Lyndsay Faye outdid herself.

I've read a bit less than a fourth of The long Earth by Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter. I find it really engaging and I'm reading it quite quickly.

>102 luvamystery65: Hi Roberta, Lyndsay Faye is an excellent writer and I am enjoying the storyline. The only thing I'm finding the dialogue to be just a bit too clever, or maybe it's just me.

I'm rereading Agatha Christie's Sad Cypress. It's flying by -- she's so easy to read! I do remember who the murderer is, so the fun is in noticing all the little hints peppered throughout the book.

>101 VivienneR: Beattie gets name-checked in Erebus! :) And one of the colour plates shows the scary mummified corpse, which I did not need to see over breakfast this morning. I enjoyed reading about Erebus's life pre-Franklin.

I've finished The Keeper of Lost Causes by Jussi-Adler Olsen my last Cat book for this month.

>106 rabbitprincess: I remember everybody reading the Edmonton Journal saw that photo with their breakfast one morning when the book came out. Beattie was very surprised with the best seller status for what he thought was an academic work. As it was published in the UK first out of respect to the Franklin family, I had my mother sent me a copy. When I asked him to sign it he said it was the first one he'd seen.

The Reader by Bernhard Schlink

This novel is set in post-war Germany where a teenage boy forms a relationship with an older woman. He reads to her and she comments on the books although he doesn't get to know much about her past. Only much later as a law student he finds out more about her life before he knew her. In a well-reasoned manner, the story weighs degrees of guilt.

The author says: "Since the book came out, I have been facing the charge that in the character of Hanna Schmitz, the perpetrator becomes a heroine and gets an unacceptably human face. But if the perpetrators were all monsters, the world would be simple."

I saw the movie years ago and was delighted to find the book. With its beautifully lyrical writing it more than lived up to expectations.

I'm about to start Sally Thorne's new book, 99 Percent Mine, although I may not finish it before the end of the month.

I'm mostly reading Fever Season which is the second book in the Benjamin January series.

Finally started Kingdom of the Blind by Louise Penny and am also reading another ToB The Golden State by Lydia Kiesling.

>111 hailelib: - You know - I read the first one a few years ago for one of the Cats and really liked it, but I've never gotten back to the series. I should make an effort to do that.

>113 dudes22:

I read the first one for the 2012 Challenge and soon afterwards bought Fever Season and then it just sat on the shelf. The Calendar CAT nudged me into reading it at last. It's pretty good so far.

>114 hailelib: - That's when I read it too.

>104 lsh63: She does a lot of research for her books and she probably liked the phrases of the time. She's been tweeting about it. I think she did get cutesy with the dialogue but I did enjoy the book.