Genny's attempting to return

Well I barely tipped my toe in the water of LT at all last year, so it was not just the 75 group I neglected.

Hoping to do better this year, but not sure how I will make sure that happens.

The year has got off to a slow start, reading-wise, as I was away visiting family and friends for the first week of the new year, with little time to myself for reading. I did try listening to an audiobook during the many long miles of driving I did -but found that it made me drowsy. Consequently, I still have about 1.5 hours left of my current audiobook Anna Karenina to listen to.

Currently reading

Paper books
Thief of Time - Terry Pratchett

eBooks
Peter the Great - Robert Massie (8% completed) - no progress in past month

Audiobooks
The Sword in the Stone - T H WHite (70% completed)

I have this afternoon made a start on adding recent book acquisitions to my catalogue - something I've neglected since last summer. I hardly received any books for Christmas, so made up for that my visiting one of my favourite Oxfam shops back up north last week. I'll put the list of new books in a following post.

Read in January

1 The King's general - Daphne du Maurier - VMC
2 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy - audiobook
3 The Mowgli stories - Rudyard Kipling - audiobook
4 The bull from the sea - Mary Renault - VMC
5 The cutting season - Attica Locke

Read in February

6 Gaudy night - Dorothy L Sayers - re-read
7 H is for hawk - Helen Macdonald
8 Daniel Deronda - George Eliot - audiobook
9 The high mountains of Portugal - Yann Martel
10 The zig-zag girl - Elly Griffiths
11 The ghost fields - Elly Griffiths
12 The woman in blue - Elly Griffiths
13 The cuckoo's calling - Robert Galbraith

Read in March

14 The once and future king - T H White - audiobook - re-read
15 Thief of time - Terry Pratchett - re-read
16 The amazing Maurice and his educated rodents - Terry Pratchett
17 The girl on the train - Paula Hawkins
18 Busman's honeymoon - Dorothy L Sayers - audiobook - re-read
19 The Edwardians - Vita Sackville West
20 Thrones, dominations - Jill Paton Walsh/ Dorothy L Sayers - audiobook - re-read

Read in April

21 The Saturday big tent wedding party - Alexander Mccall Smith
22 Down and out in Paris and London - George Orwell - audiobook
23 Miss Mapp - E F Benson - audiobook - re-read
24 Middlemarch - George Eliot - audiobook - re-read

Read in May

25 Vanity fair - William Makepeace Thackeray - audiobook
26 The girl with the dragon tattoo - Stieg Larsson - audiobook - re-read
27 Queen's play - Dorothy Dunnett
28 Night watch - Terry Pratchett
29 Clarissa Oakes - Patrick O'Brian
30 The wine-dark sea - Patrick O'Brian
31 The commodore - Patrick O'Brian
32 The yellow admiral - Patrick O'Brian

Read in June

33 The hundred days - Patrick O'Brian
34 Voices - Arnaldur Indridason
35 Raw spirit - Iain Banks
36 Monstrous regiment - Terry Pratchett - re-read

Read in July

37 Congo's children - Kem Knapp Sawyer - ebook
38 Earthly possessions - Anne Tyler
39 The dog who came in from the cold - Alexander McCall Smith
40 State of wonder - Ann Patchett
41 Toxic shock - Sara Paretsky
42 The woman who wouldn't die - Colin Cotterill
43 The camomile lawn - Mary Wesley
44 The price of love - Peter Robinson
45 Black is the colour of my true love's heart - Ellis Peters
46 All the colours of darkness - Peter Robinson
47 Rainbow's end - Ellis Peters

Read in August

48 Set in darkness - Ian Rankin
49 The long way home - Louise Penny
50 A thousand splendid suns - Khaled Hosseini
51 Farewell to the East End - Jennifer Worth
52 City of gold and shadows - Ellis Peters
53 Don Quixote - Miguel de Cervantes - audiobook
54 The grapes of wrath - John Steinbeck - audiobook
55 Emotionally weird - Kate Atkinson

Read in September

56 A sensible life - Mary Wesley
57 Rubicon - Steven Saylor
58 The spider's web - Peter Tremayne
59 The old curiosity shop - Charles Dickens - audiobook
60 No great mischief - Alistair Macleod
61 Toby's room - Pat Barker

Read in October

62 Blue at the mizzen - Patrick O'Brian
63 The land of green ginger - Winifred Holtby
64 The Lost Words - Robert McFarlane (given away)
65 The red and the black - Stendhal - audiobook
66 Last seen in Massilia - Steven Saylor

Read in November

67 Going postal - Terry Pratchett - re-read
68 Moon over Soho - Ben Aaronovitch
69 The snowman - Jo Nesbo

Read in December

70 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens - audiobook
71 Barchester Chronicles (BBC radio dramatisation) - Anthony Trollope - audiobook - re-read
72 Hard time - Sara Paretsky
73 Matter - Iain M Banks - audiobook
74 The lord of the rings (BBC radio dramatisation) - J R R Tolkien - audiobook - re-read
75 Burn marks - Sara Paretsky - ebook
76 The Silmarillion - J R R Tolkien - audiobook - re-read (first time listening)

Acquired in 2017

1 I may be some time - Francis Spufford - non fiction
2 Hard time - Sara Paretsky - read
3 The age of wonder - Richard Holmes - more non fiction
4 Letter to Sister Benedicta - Rose Tremain - an early work by a favourite author
5 The music of the spheres - Elizabeth Redfern
6 Cotters' England - Christina Stead - original green VMC (didn't know anything about it when I bought it, but this one looks like a stinker according to reviews here!)
7 Greenmantle - John Buchan - read
8 Peter the Great: his life and world - Robert K Massie - eBook; reading
9 The girl on the train - Paula Hawkes - read
10 Faithful Place - Tana French
11 Abattoir blues - Peter Robinson
12 Congo's children - Kem Sawyer - eBook; read
13 Clarissa Oakes - Patrick O'Brian - read
14 The woman who wouldn't die - Colin Cotterill - read
15 The woman in blue - Elly Griffiths - read
16 The ghost fields - Elly Griffiths - read
17 Slow dollar - Margaret Maron
18 Surrender none - Elizabeth Moon
19 The lions of Al-Rassan - Guy Gavriel Kay
20 The amazing adventures of Kavalier & Clay - Michael Chabon
21 Faith breaks fear - Ann Instone
22 A god in ruins - Kate Atkinson
23 Toby's room - Pat Barker - read
24 As once in May - Antonia White
25 Death of an avid reader - Frances Brody read
26 The disorderly knights - Dorothy Dunnett
27 The last kingdom - Bernard Cornwell
28 The hundred days - Patrick O'Brian - read
29 Gemini - Dorothy Dunnett
30 The ringed castle - Dorothy Dunnett
31 Red earth and pouring rain - Vikram Chandra
32 The green branch - Edith Pargeter
33 Flood of fire - Amitav Ghosh
34 Mourning Ruby - Helen Dunmore
35 The soul of kindness - Elizabeth Taylor - VMC
36 Black seconds - Karin Fossum read
37 The Jupiter myth - Lindsey Davis
38 Multicolour mysteries - Mary Fleeson (colouring book, not part of TBR pile)
39 The case of the gilded fly - Edmund Crispin
40 A conspiracy of friends - Alexander McCall Smith
41 Smoke and mirrors - Elly Griffiths
42 A place of refuge: an experiment in communal living - Tobias Jones
43 Richard Temple - Patrick O'Brian
44 Bad boy - Peter Robinson
45 The serpent pool - Martin Edwards
46 A gladiator dies only once - Steven Saylor
47 Soul pain - Jennifer Tan (ed)
48 Leaving church: a memoir of faith - Barbara Brown Taylor
49 Summer half - Angela Thirkell (VMC)
50 Before lunch - Angela Thirkell (VMC)
51 The lost words: a spell book - Robert Macfarlane - read; given away
52 Falling angels - Tracy Chevalier
53 Uncommon clay - Margaret Maron read
54 When the music's over - Peter Robinson
55 Sidney Chambers and the problem of evil - James Runcie
56 Sidney Chambers and the shadow of death - James Runcie read
57 The hanging tree - Ben Aaronovitch
58 Broken homes - Ben Aaronovitch
59 Sidney Chambers and the perils of the night - James Runcie
60 Burn marks - Sara Paretsky eBook; read
61 Marvellous to behold: miracles in medieval manuscripts - Deirdre Jackson
62 Pilgrimage to Iona: discovering the ancient secrets of the sacred isle - Claire Nahmad
63 Once upon a time in the North - Philip Pullman
64 Wonder - R J Palacio read
65 Dancing in the streets: a history of collective joy - Barbara Ehrenreich
66 A knight of the seven kingdoms - George R R Martin
67 Elmet - Fiona Mozley
68 And the rest is history - Jodi Taylor

12 of these read as of the end of 2017

Hi Genny, good to see you here!
Happy reading in 2017!

Welcome back!

I'm thrilled to see you here! Welcome back, Genny.

I am part of the group.
I love being part of the group.
I love the friendships bestowed upon my by dint of my membership of this wonderful fellowship.
I love that race and creed and gender and age and sexuality and nationality make absolutely no difference to our being a valued member of the group.

Thank you for also being part of the group.

Likewise it is great to see you back, Genny.

Welcome back, Genny!

Hi, Genny, good to see you have a thread this year. Would love to get caught up with you again.

Thanks for all your welcomes. I've really missed everyone and am very behind on all the latest book recommendations! Not that I have any shortage of books to read of course...

I never intended to absent myself, and did make a very belated start last year with a new thread, but never kept it up. I guess I have not quite found a rhythm of life in my new(ish) setting that includes regular LT time. When I was trying to work full time while also living with chronic illness, LT and this group were my lifeline - my main way of relaxing and socialising. Now that I'm no longer in paid work, struggling to do a full time job with half my energy, in theory I have more time. But I suppose that I'm doing more socialising in real life, and have space for other ways of unwinding like art class, as well as a fair amount of voluntary work to keep me busy. And still limited energy... But I really want to catch up with all my LT friends again and find out what I've been missing!

Welcome back Genny.

Hi, Genny! So glad to see you back!

Hi Genny! It's great to see you back!

>11 calm:, >12 tymfos:, >13 cbl_tn: Thank you, it's good to be back. I hope I don't fizzle out again...

I'm working on updating my catalogue and adding details of books read last year (which I do have a list of, but didn't record on my thread last year because I barely used it). Slow progress on that because I keep getting distracted by other tasks. But here's the end of year meme that many people used, the answers all drawn from books I read in 2016. You will see several authors recurring there...


Describe yourself: The nutmeg of consolation

Describe how you feel: Outrage

Describe where you currently live: The house of green turf

If you could go anywhere, where would you go?: The far side of the world

Your favorite form of transportation: The speed of dark

Your best friend is: The sunne in splendour

You and your friends are: Love songs from a shallow grave

Your favorite food is: Beggar's banquet

What's the Weather Like?: Arctic chill

You fear: Marking Time

What is the best advice you have to give: All change

Thought for the Day: No signposts in the sea

How I would like to die: The beautiful mystery

My Soul's Present Condition: How the light gets in

Hi, Genny! - great to see you back. :)

Welcome back, Genny! I hope to see you in person again later this year.

Great meme answers, Genny!

Hi Genny, good to see you back.

Welcome back, Genny! It's the best surprise of the week to find you here. I'll be back on the real keyboard where I can matter on.

>14 gennyt: Great to see you back and posting Genny.

It is highly likely that I will be relocating back to the UK within the first quarter of this year so there will be opportunities to finally meet-up. We almost managed it that day I renewed my passport in Durham.

Have a lovely weekend.

Belatedly stopping by to say it's lovely to see you have started a thread for this year. It would also be lovely to see more of you in the group but I do understand it can be difficult finding that rhythm with all the other demands life places on us.

Hello >15 lyzard:, >16 kidzdoc:, >17 ronincats:, >18 avatiakh:, >19 LizzieD:, >20 PaulCranswick:, >21 souloftherose: - thank you all for stopping by. I'm just about keeping my toe in the LT water although I haven't put much here so far. Working again on adding last year's book acquisitions to the catalogue, but I thought I'd better do an update on this thread before I continue.

>15 lyzard: Lovely to be back and to see so many familiar names still here.

>16 kidzdoc: Thanks Darryl, yes I look forward to trying to connect up next time you are visiting.

>17 ronincats: Thanks Roni! I hope you are well - haven't got round to visiting many threads yet so I'm very behind.

>18 avatiakh: Thank you Kerry, good to see you too.

>19 LizzieD: Thank you Peggy. It's partly the relative inaccessibility of a real keyboard I think which has made my LT participation so irregular these past 2 years. I have my smartphone with me constantly, and can if necessary post on there, but it is fiddly and slow on the small screen using just one finger rather than touch typing properly on a proper keyboard. My laptop, before I moved from my home in the North East, used to live on my coffee table pretty permanently and was always there when I felt like going on LT and writing lengthy or frequent posts. But now the laptop has no permanent home, can't be left out downstairs because the space is used several times a week by different groups and people, and thus is rarely at hand when I want it. (With the added problem of painful achilles tendons in recent years so that going up or down stairs more than necessary is something I've been avoiding).

>20 PaulCranswick: Hello Paul. That's interesting to hear that you may be relocating back here shortly - any more news on that? I really must read your thread to find out more, only it's such a busy one to keep up with! It would be good to meet finally - I remember that near miss in the North East!

>21 souloftherose: Not belated at all, Heather - but a timely new post on my thread reminding me that I hadn't posted at all. I know you've been following something of my recent adventures in my new home via Facebook (which is easier to post on than LT from a smartphone, as it is usually just a matter of a few photos and a brief caption, not lengthy literary discussions!) but it's not the same as encounters on LT, and I've quite lost track of what you're reading and what's going on for you - even missed out on recent meet-ups too. So it's high time I found a way of checking in here more regularly...

My 11th (!) Thingaversary was last Saturday. When I remembered late on Friday (in the midst of being laid low with nasty flu which I'm still recovering from) I panicked and quickly did some Amazon orders of books towards my quota of Thingaversary gifts to myself. I would be entitled to acquire 12 new books, on the rule of one for each year of membership and one to grow - but while I am all for excuses to get more books, I can see that this ever-escalating permission each year will do nothing to help me contain the massive TBR pile, especially as I seem to be reading a little more slowly in my new life. I wonder whether after reaching 10 one ought to start again at 1? In any case, I initially added 12 books to my Amazon basket and then decided, with a remarkable show of willpower, to remove most of them and only bought 5. The willpower was aided by the threat to my bank balance, since 12 books add up to quite a bit when they are mostly Marketplace purchases costing only 1p but with £2.80 postage.

So I contented myself with 5 new books, all of them next-in-series to allow me to progress further with my series reading. While awaiting their arrival, I have gone back to catching up with cataloguing new books bought last year, which I'd neglected since about April 2016. No sooner did I gather the stockpile of said books, than I discovered that three of the five titles I'd just ordered were already in my possession among these new but not-yet-catalogued books!

Hmm, this was one of my main reasons for wanting to catalogue my books in the first place - to avoid duplication! I guess this means that I have only really acquired 2 new books for my Thingaversary after all. Those two are:

Clarissa Oakes - next in the Patrick O'Brian Aubrey/Maturin series which I am loving so much I really don't want to reach the end.
and
The woman who wouldn't die - the next up for me of Colin Cotterill's Dr Siri books

Congrats on your purchases, Genny! I'm sure most of us always find a reason to buy more books. And I also have the same problem as you. Whenever I enter a bookstore with a budget and see all these amazing books, I get conflicted on which ones to buy and get heartbroken on the ones I didn't pick.

Good luck on your reading, and I hope you'll be able to adjust and be able to fit reading in your time schedule. :)

Hi Genny, lovely to see you about again. I think it is my 10 Thingaversary later this month. Where did that time go? I remember a friend lobbing the LT link at me, saying 'this one's for you', how right he was.

Belated happy 11th Thingaversary, Genny!
Two new books isn't bad either, don't forget to add them to LT ;-)

Belated happy thingaversary Genny! My husband's a big fan of the Patrick O'Brien series too.

Hope everything is well with you Genny, xx

Just stopping by to say hi, Genny.

Belated Thingaversary greetings! 11 years, oh my!

Happy Thinga to you. I didn't give myself any books at all this year for my 7th Thinga. Before LT I had a reasonable number of books waiting to be read, no more than 30 or 40, now it is utterly ridiculous! Up in the 100's!

Am so glad to have found you, I've missed your presence here.

Oops, a week of March already gone, and a month since I posted here. I have been looking in on the occasional thread but still not found a proper routine for keeping up to date with LT.

Life has been busy: in the past 6 weeks I've furnished a bedroom ready for a young refugee guest, and welcomed her into the house. Then the day after she arrived began a week when I was flattened with proper flu-like virus (still some lingering symptoms a month later) so she had to fend for herself. Then had a week-long visit from a potential new full time, long-term resident for the community house - on a trial visit to make sure we get on ok before she commits to moving in. That all passed off well, and she'll be moving in at the beginning of April. That gives me a few weeks to declutter certain areas that I've spread into, and to finally finish unpacking some boxes that have been lurking for two and a half years in the unoccupied room. I've achieved three small sorting and decluttering jobs in the past few days, but plenty more to go!

Meanwhile I've been involved in helping to set up a new weekly community cafe, using food that would have been scheduled to be thrown away (part of The Real Junk Food Project, tackling the scandalous problem of food waste). Last Thursday we had a trial run, cooking and serving food for both a lunchtime and an after school session in a local church community centre to a number of invited guests. All went relatively smoothly for a first attempt - but personally I was on the go from 9.30am until 6pm, most of that on my feet (after an already busy few days before) and it took me about 4 or 5 days to get any energy back - so one thing I've learned from the trial run is as suspected I can't afford to do such a long day every week when we get started in earnest. There was a great community atmosphere though, and a good rapport among the other volunteers helping.

With all this, I am surprised that I've got any reading done at all - but I have been fitting in a reasonable amount. Currently I have two main books on the go: I'm listening to The Once and Future King - this is a re-read, the first time in many many years I've gone back to this. The first part of the book, The Sword in the Stone, which tells of Merlyn's tutoring of a boy called the Wart, I had as a separate publication as a child, and it was one of my favourites. Hearing it again after so long was like meeting up with a long lost friend. I was quite tearful in places, and loved hearing the still-so-familiar turns of phrase and re-encountering all the characters - and realising where I acquired thanks to T H White some of my rag-bag of rather arcane knowledge both of medieval customs and vocabulary and of natural history. I never liked the Disney version of the Sword in the Stone, I think because it smoothed out and removed all this strange, ungainly, over-the-top enthusiastic sharing of esoteric information.

The remaining parts of The Once and Future King, telling the story of the grown-up Wart, aka King Arthur, I had read only once before, in my mid-late teens. A couple of gruesome descriptions of animal cruelty early in the second book, along with a bad case of a mother neglecting and emotionally abusing her children, set the tone for a much darker narrative which I have not been in a rush to return to. I've not yet finished my re-read, and I know that the last book, the Book of Merlyn, returns to the education of Arthur with further magical visits to different kinds of animals to learn from their lives and social structures. I'm looking forward to that part.

The desire to re-read the T H White was prompted by finally reading H is for Hawk, which, as those of you who have read it will know, is not only a memoir of someone grieving while training a goshawk, but also a kind of conversation with T H White's The Goshawk about his own disastrous attempt to train such a hawk. Helen Macdonald shares some of the biographical information she learned about White which helped her make sense of The Goshawk - in particular his struggles with his homosexuality and with a sadistic tendency - and while this did not make me particularly keen to read The Goshawk, it did send me back to the later book interested to see White's preoccupations and struggles transmuted into, in particular, the characters of Merlyn and Lancelot.

As for paper books, I'm currently a little way into Thief of Time, in my oh-so-slow re-read/read through the whole of Pratchett's Discworld series, begun about 7 years ago! This is one of those I have read before (in August 2009 according to my LT records!), and remember particularly enjoying, though I haven't got far enough back into it yet to remember why I liked this one.

>25 ASplashOfMusic09: Thank you, I do seem to be finding the time to read, just not so much to visit here and keep up to date on the site.

>26 Caroline_McElwee: Yes, can't believe how time has flown - even though I'm not currently so active on the groups and threads, I can't imagine being without LT: checking my catalogue when browsing in a bookshop, looking up a title or author when a friend is recommending a book but can't remember the details... it's an essential part of this book-lover's life!

>27 FAMeulstee: Thanks Anita! Nearly up to date in adding my new books...

>28 souloftherose: Hello Heather. Your husband has discerning taste! They are so well written. And often so funny, and sad too - a wonderful portrait of an unlikely friendship between two very different men. I think someone once described the series as Jane Austen at sea - and not just because it's the right time period but because of the quality of the prose and of the observation of human behaviour and foibles.

>29 PaulCranswick: Keeping busy, Paul! (see >33 gennyt:). How are things progressing with you? I must check your thread to see how far you have got.

>30 ronincats: Thank you Roni for visiting!

>31 tymfos: Oh my indeed! Though only really active from 2010, apart from some half-hearted inconsistent attemtpts at cataloguing in the first few years, so really it's only 7 years.

>32 sibylline: Thanks Lucy. Don't talk to me about ridiculous TBR piles (shelves)! It has really got so out of hand. One more reason for trying to be more active here again is keeping up to date with recording acquisitions and stats about books acquired vs books read (and given away, which I am starting to do with some). If I don't do this, I'm liable to continue blindly acquiring more and more without daring to count. I've missed you too, and have just had a quick look at the first few posts on your thread (love the crazy cat pose at the top) - as ever, I want to give time to catching up properly as there is so much interesting stuff on there. So I'll let you know when I've got to the end...

Ha! You liked Thief of Time because SUSAN and Lu-Tze. I always have difficulty with the second and fourth parts of The Once and Future King myself and find myself actively avoiding them. You sound SO busy!

>35 gennyt: About two steps forward and one and a half back, Genny. That means generally forward, I think. Lovely to see you posting.

>33 gennyt: exhausted just reading that Genny. Glad you took some recovery time. Hope you are over the lurgy too.

Looks like you have some interesting things going on in your community in the foreseable future. I hope it all pans out.

I must take H is for Hawk off the shelf, I've been meaning to read it for ages.

The bio aspect of TH White was fascinating and alarming in H is for Hawk. What a good idea to listen!

I'm just finishing up listening the Discworld Witches (I'm reading it in series, not chronologically). Granny Weatherwax is so fabulous! I only have one left -- Maskerade.

I liked H is for Hawk but I wasn't as blown away as some of our peers were.

Have a great weekend, Genny.

H is for Hawk has been in the BlackHole forever. Maybe one of these days I will actually read it.

Happy to see you here whenever you can make it, Genny. DO take care of yourself!!!! People will let you stretch way beyond what is healthy, and you will look at things that you'd adore to be involved in and over-commit - that's how it is with me anyway, and I don't have any issues to speak of.
I need to read the White *Arthur* series again - it's been at least 45 years, but I don't need to do it now. As for *Hawk*, I expect it will turn up here someday, and I'll finally get to it someday after that. We won't talk about how many of my books I haven't read. I always wanted a library, and now I have a growing one (I suppose somebody might interpret that as blindly acquiring). So there.

Hope to hear from you again soon!

Just dropping in to say hello, Genny!

Missing you here Genny. xx

This is a time of year when I as a non-American ponder over what I am thankful for.

I am thankful for this group and its ability to keep me sane during topsy-turvy times.

I am thankful that you are part of this group.

I am thankful for this opportunity to say thank you.

It is that time of year again, between Solstice and Christmas, just after Hanukkah, when our thoughts turn to wishing each other well in whatever language or image is meaningful to the recipient. So, whether I wish you Happy Solstice or Merry Christmas, know that what I really wish you, and for you, is this:

Wishing you all good things this holiday season and beyond.

Merry Christmas from Philadelphia, Genny! I hope to see you again in London in 2018.

Returning over-late to my almost-totally-abandoned thread from last year, to say that I have just finished adding my complete list of books read during 2017 at the top of the thread, here. Off to start a thread in the 2018 group, with some promises to myself to be better at updating regularly...

I just topped the 75 mark with 76 read - not that that really matters, I know. Looking back, I read lots more audiobooks than in some previous years (which tends to mean lots of classics, as I've mostly bought very long classic novels with my Audible subscription, to get my money's worth!). There were also a great many re-reads of old favourites.

Some stats:

Format
Audiobooks - 20
eBooks - 2
Paper books - 54 (Hardbacks - 2, Paperbacks 52)

Date acquired
2004 - 1 (reread)
2005 - 2 (1 reread)
2009 - 2 (both audiobooks)
2010 - 5 (all audiobooks)
2011 - 5 (1 audiobook)
2012 - 4 (3 audiobooks)
2013 - 9 (2 audiobooks)
2014 - 3 (2 audiobooks)
2015 - 10
2016 - 24 (6 audiobooks)
2017 - 11

Source

New - Gift 1
New - Real bookshops - 1 + 1 + 1
New - discounted (supermarkets, the Works etc) - 1 + 3
New - Digital shops (Kindle/Audible etc) 20 + 2
Used - charity shops 1 + 6 + 12 + 4
Used - second hand bookshops 3 + 10 + 1
Used - church/community book sale 1 + 1 + 2 + 1
Used - online (amazon/ebay/abebooks) 3

(No new books from Amazon; nothing from Bookmooch this year, and no library books)

Number of re-reads: 14

Authors - new/old/female/male

New to me authors: 8
Familiar authors: 43

Female/male author ratio: 21:30
Number of books by female/by male authors ratio: 31:45

Decade/century of original publication:

17th century - 1
19th century - 8
1920s - 2
1930s - 5
1940s - 1
1950s - 1
1960s - 3
1970s - 5
1980s - 2
1990s - 13
2000s - 18
2010s - 17

Genres

Fiction - 70
Non-fiction - 6

I'm not going to analyse the individual genres of fiction - too complicated with many blurred boundaries.

Best reads of 2017

Among those that were not re-reads, the following got 5 stars from me:

The grapes of wrath - Steinbeck
Don Quixote - Cervantes
Night watch - Pratchett
The lost words - Robert Macfarlane (beautiful large-format book of poems/spells with accompanying paintings to conjure up the names for plants and animals in danger of being forgotten by an increasingly screen-obsessed culture)

Closely followed by 4.5 star reads:
No great mischief - MacLeod
Vanity fair - Thackeray
Queen's play - Dunnett
H is for hawk - Macdonald
Anna Karenina - Tolstoy
and several of the final few Aubrey/Maturin series by Patrick O'Brian, which I have now concluded (but look forward to re-reading in the future).

Also, as usual I read very little non-fiction in 2017, This short e-book was completely different from most of my reading but perhaps had the more impact because of that:
Congo's children - Sawyer (short collection of articles about various projects working with war-damaged communities and children/young people in DRC).

To anyone who is still catching up on the tail end of 2017 - hello and farewell, maybe we will meet again in the threads in 2018! You can find my new thread for 2018 here.

Congrats on 76! Hope to see you soon in the 2018 group!