ONE HUNDRED BOOKS

Just calling in to wish all my fellow 100 Bookers a very merry Christmas and a wonderful new year! I hope you all write literary masterpieces next year and are atop the bestseller lists for Christmas 2018.

You'll get there, Sage!

106. The Sparrow - Mary Doria Russell

See you all next year!

I had a storming December and managed 13 books to take me over my 150 book target to a final tally of 152 (technically it was 153 if you include the manuscript that I beta read).

1. Blame by Jeff Abbott.
2. Nairobi Heat by Mukoma Wa Ngugi.
3. Striding Folly by Dorothy L. Sayers.
4. Restless Souls by Dan Sheehan.
5. What Is Russia Up To In The Middle East? by Dmitri Trenin.
6. Narcocapitalism by Laurent de Sutter.
7. Platform Capitalism by Nick Srnicek.
8. Loos Save Lives: How Sanitation And Clean Water Help Prevent Poverty, Disease And Death by Seren Boyd.
9. Need To Know by Karen Cleveland.
10. I, Witness by Niki Mackay.
11. Clockwork City by Paul Crilley.
12. Anatomy Of A Scandal by Sarah Vaughan.
13. The Magic Misfits by Neil Patrick Harris.

I have set my 2018 target at 125 because I found that I was avoiding longer books in case they prevented me from hitting my target - plus I found it changed the way I was reading, made me more anxious so that I focused on quantity rather than quality. I've got a load of very long books that have been sitting on my To Read Pile for far too long so I really want to check out this year and this will allow me to do so in good conscience.

GooseAmbassador:
Good grief, you have read 139 books and written reviews for them, all in one year?!! That's incredible - I can't imagine how you find the time! I will definitely have a look through some of your reviews this evening. I hope you enjoyed them!

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Ha! Thanks, GooseAmbassador. I spend about 2 hours on the Tube every day, which makes it easy to get a lot of reading done. Hope you enjoy the reviews.

All reviews are on my blog https://ireadthereforeiblog.wordpress.com if you're interested in checking them out.

Best wishes to all for 2018. Here's hoping for a good one.

MM

Sage said:

100. Half-Life by S.L. Huang

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***Well done Sage - you did it!!!***

I appreciate how hard you had to work to get there, and I think it's amazing that you did it! You definitely deserve the Christmas or new year treat of your choice!

Momento Mori said:

I have set my 2018 target at 125 because I found that I was avoiding longer books in case they prevented me from hitting my target - plus I found it changed the way I was reading, made me more anxious so that I focused on quantity rather than quality. I've got a load of very long books that have been sitting on my To Read Pile for far too long so I really want to check out this year and this will allow me to do so in good conscience.



Ha! Thanks, GooseAmbassador. I spend about 2 hours on the Tube every day, which makes it easy to get a lot of reading done. Hope you enjoy the reviews.

All reviews are on my blog https://ireadthereforeiblog.wordpress.com if you're interested in checking them out.

Best wishes to all for 2018. Here's hoping for a good one.

MM

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I found exactly the same thing, MM. I loved the reading challenge and had a lot of fun, but it also meant that I avoided reading books that were too long or dense, for the sake of reaching an arbitrary target, and this is a bit self-defeating for a writer, I feel! I'll do it again next year, but I won't be rushing to reach 100 - I'll just follow my normal reading habits and see where that gets me. 60 or 70 or 80 would be just fine.

I have read a few of your reviews and enjoyed them a lot! Your writing flows very easily and is clear and lucid - a pleasure to read, in other words! I'll be reading a few more whenever I have a moment!

Happy new year to you too, and I wish you both lots of good writing and reading in the year ahead.

The first five of the year!

1. Children of God - Mary Doria Russell
2. Erasure - Percival Everett
3. Big Brother - Lionel Shriver
4. Collected Poems - Philip Larkin
5. Highland Fling - Nancy Mitford

I think my reading task for this year will be to read every Anthony Burgess and Iris Murdoch novel that I haven't already read. There aren't very many - about a dozen each - and that'll be a worthwhile accomplishment, even if I don't get to 100 books by the end of the year. I love Burgess and Murdoch; Anthony Burgess is quite possibly my favourite novelist, and I'm sure there are a few undiscovered gems in the year ahead.

6. Christmas Pudding - Nancy Mitford
7. Wigs On The Green - "
8. Pigeon Pie - "
9. The Pursuit of Love - "
10. Love in a Cold Climate - "

11. The Blessing - Nancy Mitford
12. Don't Tell Alfred - "
13. A Study in Scarlet - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
14. The Sign of Four - "
15. The Hound of the Baskervilles - "

So I've had a fairly good start to 2018 with 12 books under my belt for January (4 of which were YA so I can hold my head up high on this Forum). I'm mixing my reading up as I wanted - mix of long and short books and fiction/non-fiction. I've had a bit of a change in circumstances and don't know how that's going to impact on my ability to hit the 125 target for this year so I may end up having to revise it at some point but I'll cross that bridge before I nuke it.

1. How To Hang A Witch by Adriana Mather.
2. In Pursuit Of Memory: The Fight Against Alzheimer’s by Joseph Jebelli.
3. The Cruel Prince by Holly Black.
4. Satellite by Nick Lake.
5. The City Of Brass by S. A. Chakraborty.
6. East Of Hounslow by Khurrum Rahman.
7. The Woman In The Window by A. J. Finn.
8. Seventeen by Hideo Yokoyama.
9. Now We Are Dead by Stuart MacBride.
10. Why Democracies Need Science by Harry Collins & Robert Evans.
11. Bioinformation by Bronwyn Parry and Beth Greenhough.
12. Blackbird by N. D. Gomes.

As always, reviews are up on my blog https://ireadthereforeiblog.wordpress.com if you're interested in checking them out.

MM

16. The Valley of Fear - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
17. Anthony Burgess (a biography) - Roger Lewis
18. The Goshawk - T.H. White
19. The Master - "
20. England, Have My Bones - "

21. The Book of Merlyn - T.H. White
22. The Discovery of King Arthur - Geoffrey Ashe
23. Merlin - "
24. A Brief History of King Arthur - Michael Ashley
25. Cram Me With Eels! - J.B. Morton

I'm sensing a bit of a theme, GooseAmbassador.

I had a productive February, managing another 13 books to take my total to 25 (mix of children's, YA, thrillers and non-fiction). I have no idea whether I'm going to hit my target of 125 because I had a change of circumstances last month and everything's still bedding down but it's still early in the year so I'll wait and see what happens.

1. Nancy Parker’s Chilling Conclusions by Julia Lee.
2. There Was A Country: A Personal History Of Biafra by Chinua Achebe.
3. Star Wars The Last Jedi: Cobalt Squadron by Elizabeth Wein.
4. Summary Justice by John Fairfax.
5. A Spoonful Of Murder by Robin Stevens.
6. Hackerspaces: Making The Maker Movement by Sarah R. Davies.
7. Landscape With Invisible Hand by M. T. Anderson.
8. Can The Euro Be Saved? by Malcolm Sawyer.
9. London Rules by Mick Herron.
10. The M&A Formula by Peter Zink Secher and Ian Horley.
11. Rose Raventhorpe Investigates: Hounds And Hauntings by Janine Beacham.
12. The Art of Doing Business Across Cultures by Craig Storti.
13. The Playstation Dreamworld by Alfie Bown.

As always, reviews are up on my blog https://ireadthereforeiblog.wordpress.com if you're interested in checking them out.

MM

Netz said:

I'm sensing a bit of a theme, GooseAmbassador.

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Just a bit, yes! It was definitely a month of King Arthur studies, with a nice little digression into T.H. White's other works (all SUPERB, by the way!). Geoffrey Ashe made a convincing argument, I thought, for Riothamus (a fifth century British military leader) as the real historical personage behind the bulk of the King Arthur stories.

And now for the results of the last few weeks of the readathon -

26. Super-Cannes - J.G. Ballard
27. The Black Prince - Iris Murdoch
28. The Snow Leopard - Peter Matthiessen
29. The Poetry of Yehuda Amichai - I forget who wrote this one. Wait a minute... No, it's gone.
30. The House of Ulloa - Emilia Pardo Bazan

Jut wanted to add a quick note to say - Momento Mori, I think you're the reading champion of AbsoluteWrite!

I managed another 13 in March, taking me to 38 in total so I'm still well on course for my 125 target (although my commute is going to drastically change so we'll see how it holds out!). I managed a real mix this month as well - a lot of non-fiction and thrillers but I managed some children's, some YA and even a historical romance - which is right outside my comfort zone) - but I should admit to the fact that some of these books were pretty short, which is why I managed to cram so much in.

1. The Hamilton Affair by Elizabeth Cobbs.
2. What You Don’t Know by Joann Chaney.
3. Amelia Fang And The Unicorn Lords by Laura Ellen Anderson.
4. Horace & Harriet Take On The Town by Clare Elsom.
5. Do We Need Economic Inequality? by Danny Dorling.
6. Basic Income And How We Can Make It Happen by Guy Standing.
7. What Everyone Needs To Know About Tax by James Hannam.
8. Scythe by Neal Shusterman.
9. Society Of Fear by Heinz Bude.
10. The Ascendancy Of Finance by Joseph Vogl.
11. Flying Tips For Flightless Birds by Kelly McCaughrain.
12. Ghost Boys by Jewell Parker Rhodes.
13. Did You See Melody? by Sophie Hannah.

As always, reviews are up on my blog https://ireadthereforeiblog.wordpress.com if you're interested in checking them out.

MM