Favourite Reads 2018 Q3

Image from Washington Independent Review of Books

Well summer is all but over, it's fall in about a week, and two weeks until October. In other words, it's time to look back on the last quarter before changing gears. Over the past three months, July through September, what were your favourite reads? Were there any true dogs? Will you be changing your reading with the change in season?

The Human Stain was good. Dogs? No. Will be switching my reading theme after lit conference in October.

I read a strange mix of books in Q3 which wasn't intentional. More non-fiction titles than normal as there were a few topics I wanted to read up on during this period.

My favourite novel was The Sea House by Esther Freud, an author whose writing I seem to enjoy more and more. Also Knausgaard's Book 4 in the My Struggle series.

No dogs for me either.

3 days left, I'm holding out because one of the books I'm reading is going to be a favorite....

Well the quarter is definitely over. Despite my best intentions, I didn't finish any more books in the last week or ten days as the weather was too nice.

Best read was actually a reread for the third or fourth time of Kim. It is always just plain fun.

A true dog was Molly Keane's Taking Chances - completely over the top.

The rest were all reasonable reads, and I did get a fair amount read, but none will stand out at year end. It was enough of an accomplishment just to get back into reading, although I am now 17+ reviews behind!

I still want to read AlisonY's favourite pick at >3 AlisonY:

I might or might not finish one more today, but it's not going to make this list, so...

My best reads (stuff I rated 4.5 or 5 stars) of the quarter:

Big Mushy Happy Lump and Herding Cats by Sarah Andersen
The View from the Cheap Seats by Neil Gaiman
The Day of the Doctor by Steven Moffat

Hmm. That doesn't seem like much of a best-of list, really.

I had quite a few good reads this quarter.

Tangerine by Christine Mangan - fun, thriller-type set in Tangiers
Pachinko by Min Jin Lee - epic family drama about Koreans in Japan
Moon Tiger by Penelope Lively
the Overstory by Richard Powers

For me, this is odd that 3 of these were published in the last couple years. I don't read that many brand new books and it's even rarer that I include them on "best of" lists.

Read a little bit less this quarter as I switched over to reading in Japanese and got back into reading comics. My best book was actually one of those Japanese books that really took me by surprise. It's a great coming of age story of a 14 year old boy going back to his dad's hometown on an (not actually real) island near the Ishigaki Islands in Japan. I loved this book.

椰月 美智子 (Yazuki Michiko) : 14歳の水平線 (14 on the Horizon)

I am at the stage in my life where I don't finish books I'm not enjoying (on one level or another), so all of the books I finish I consider very good - excellent. However, some books linger ....

Favorite reads from July - September:

Broken Ground by Val McDermid (2018). Another delicious Karen Pririe police procedural.

Scribe by Alison Hagy (fiction, 2018). An unusual and haunting book.

The Secrets Between Us by Thrity Umrigar (2018) Expert storytelling that fills you with the sights & sounds of India and a story of women's friendships.

Bodies of Light by Sarah Moss (UK, 2015) A haunting book of family dynamics during Victorian times.

I spent a lot of time out of doors and perhaps took on too many thick books, so I didn't get all that much reading done in Q3 (by my standards...). Highlights were:

- Illusions perdues by Honoré de Balzac - almost the perfect 19th century European novel
- The Makioka sisters by Jun'ichirō Tanizaki - a wonderful 20th century Japanese riff on the 19th century European novel
- The invention of tradition edited by Eric Hobsbawm & Terence Ranger - why we shouldn't trust what we think we know about the past

- and the obligatory surprise entrant: Une enquête au pays by Driss Chraïbi

Over the course of July through September I finished 41 books. Seven of them were rereads, and three were non-fiction (no overlap between the two categories). Looking at my 4.5 and 5 star ratings....

Sweetness and Lightning volumes 1-3 by Gido Amagakure
The Little Broomstick by Mary Stewart
Rise of Empire, Heir of Novron, and The Disappearance of Winter's Daughter by Michael J. Sullivan
The Complete ElfQuest volumes 1-3 by Wendy and Richard Pini
Memory and A Civil Campaign by Lois McMaster Bujold
The Penderwicks by Jeanne Birdsall
I'd Rather Be Reading by Anne Bogel

Five of the books in that pile are rereads, which makes a lot of sense; we tend to reread things we enjoy (my other two rereads were both 4 star reads).

I only had one real reading disappointment this past quarter, A Crucible of Souls by Mitchell Hogan. Lots of potential that I felt failed rather miserably in execution, but never to the point where I went "that's it, I'm done" during the course of my reading.

As for plans for changing my reading...not as such. I am still focusing on reading books I own, chipping away at my TBR shelves/mountain as the mood strikes. The book group I am in had its first meeting for the year in September (our discussion year starts in September with the start of the school year, and the first meeting is spent talking about books we have read and would recommend to the others in the group), and our first book discussion meeting is in October. I do my best to read all the books in time for our monthly discussions; October's book is A Man Called Ove.