Wonderlake's 4x10 2010 attempt

Here I am looking forward to my reading year in 2010.

I have just started my 40th book for 2009:
http://www.librarything.com/topic/53607

so I would like to set myself a challenge to read (at least) 40 books in 2010.

My categories are going to be:

1. Babbling books- this is the online bookgroup I like to participate in. Although they will obviously be choosing a further 24 books in 2010, I already have a pile of prev reads that I have never gotten around to...

2. 1001 reads

3. Around the world in 80 sleuths
http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/features/crime-fiction-aro...

4. Ten of my OH's books as he is always saying "why don't you read XXX next?" (one of his) and I never do

Babbling books:

xx1. Wuthering Heights, Emily Bronte
xx2. The Food of Love, Anthony Capella
3. Captain Corelli's Mandolin, Louis de Berniéres
4. A Gathering Light, Jennifer Donnelly
5.The Memory Keeper's Daughter, Kim Edwards
6. A Spot of Bother, Mark Haddon
7. The Lollipop Shoes, Joanne Harris
8. To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee
9. A Short History of Tractors in Ukranian, Marina Lewycka
10. Atonement, Ian McEwan
11. The Testament of Gideon Mack, James Robertson

...12. We Need to Talk About Kevin, Lionel Shriver
13. Fingersmith, Sarah Waters

1001 reads
I have loads of these in my library ...

1. Alias Grace, Margaret Atwood
OR The Blind Assassin
OR The Robber Bride 2011* Atwood April
2. The Book of Illusions, Paul Auster
3. SuperCannes, JG Ballard
4. Drop City, T.C. Boyle
5. Wise Children, Angela Carter
6. The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, Agatha Christie
7. The Devil and Ms Prym, Paul Coehlo
8. Youth, JM Coetzee
9. The Body Artist, Don DeLillo
10. City of God, E. L. Doctorow

11. The Tin Drum, Gunter Grass
12. Perfume, Patrick Suskind

Thanks for the great sleuth link. I also find the rest of your list interesting and have starred this thread.

Around the world in 80 sleuths

1. The Yiddish Policemen's Union, Michael Chabon; Alaska
2. Raven Black, Ann Cleeves; Shetland Islands
3. The Moonstone, Wilkie Collins; Yorkshire
4. Last Bus to Woodstock, Colin Dexter; Oxford
5. Fury, G. M. Ford; Seattle
6. The Wrong Kind of Blood, Declan Hughes; Dublin
7. The Buenos Aires Quintet, Manuel Váquez Montalbán; Buenos Aires
8. A Gentle Axe, R.N. Morris; St. Petersburg
9. Knots and Crosses, Ian Rankin; Edinburgh
10. The Case of the Missing Books, Ian Sansom; N. Ireland

...11. The No.1 Ladies' Detective Agency, Alexander McCall Smith; Botswana
12. Mr. Clarinet, Nick Stone; Miami
13. Dead Simple, Peter James; Brighton

Hi Neverstoptrying - a very inspirational screenname !

Thanks for the comment. Are you doing the challenge, if so what is your thread under ?

My lists are all going to be subject to change I think- for example I have a LOT of 1001 reads on my shelves, and I believe they are going to release a 3rd edition of the list in March- which of course I will HAVE to get :>

I really enjoy reading, and lists of books so what better way to start my reading year in 2010 with some lists I have made MYself, which I then get to have the pleasure of crossing off as I go along

My screenname has changed since I signed up for the 1010 Category Challenge. I started out only expecting to catalog my books and not use the social space, so I used my usual technical alias of bk04011. And then, and then ... so when I finally got a chance to change it to something more human I did. My 1010 link is http://www.librarything.com/topic/70716.

Jerry's
1. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, Michael Chabon
2. The Wapshot Chronicle, John Cheever
3. The Collector, John Fowles
4. Red Harvest, Dashiell Hammett
5. The Assistant, Bernard Malamud 2012
6. Keep the Aspidistra Flying, George Orwell
7. The Optimist's Daughter, Eudora Welty- one of my Christmas presents 2009 :)
8. Dangling Man, Saul Bellow

... he is also threatening me with Other Voices, Other Rooms, by Truman Capote. After reading In Cold Blood, Breakfast at Tiffany's, and Answered Prayers- and finding them all a bit >meh

Here I am 1/01/2010 and all ready to begin!

I'm going to read my books in alphabetical order of author's surname, so will start w/ The Book of Illusions, by Paul Auster- (saving Margaret Atwood for April). This will be my first read by him, although he does have several titles included in the 1,001 list:

1. The Book of Illusions *not 2nd ed.
2. The New York Trilogy: -City of Glass
- Ghosts
- The Locked Room
3. Moon Palace
4. Mr. Vertigo *not 2nd ed.
5. The Music of Chance
6. Timbuktu *not 2nd ed.

A friend loaned me The Book of Illusions about three years ago and it's still sitting in my bedroom, glowering.

Finished The Book of Illusions. Actually I was late going back to work from my lunchbreak in order to polish it off :>

However, I didn't think it was that great. I didn't really care about the narrator I guess. It was a book about the grief of losing his wife & children, but I had no idea about their relationships in order to fathom this. What I Loved was much better.

*I have recently joined theauteurs.com -- a website a bit like Librarything - but for films. And on there they have details of "THE INNER LIFE OF MARTIN FROST"... the one of Hector's later films that Zimmer manages to watch out on the ranch ??

SuperCannes, J. G. Ballard
(A re-read for me, according to my note in the front I got this in 2000! )

Another writer with a fair few in the 1001 book:

1. The Atrocity Exhibition
2. Cocaine Nights
3. Crash
4. The Drowned World
5. Empire of the Sun
6. High Rise

* Both The Book of Illusions, and SuperCannes feature aircraft accidents.

I have nominated SuperCannes for February's group read at my online book group...

Read and really enjoyed Drop City. He also has World's End included in the 1,001.

I started to do a re-read of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, excited about the upcoming film version, but second time around I was just finding it really dry as I already knew 'whodunnit'... :(

So I consoled myself with starting Raven Black, by Ann Cleeves as one of my 80 crimes list. I actually managed to pick this up in the chip shop!

It is the first in a Quintet:
1. Raven Black
2. White Nights
3. Red Bones
4. Blue Lightning

Read Val McDermid's The Torment of Others, which is not in any category LOL

This was the 4th in the series, I have:
Beneath the Bleeding, and
Fever of the Bone remaining.

Ok, I was reading Wuthering Heights, but then one morning I was a little 'tired' and didn't feel up to it for my morning commute...
so picked up The Da Vinci Code instead *_*
which I have nearly finished

And my next read is
Dangling Man, by Saul Bellow- one of Jerry's choices as he has been grumbling that I haven't touched any of his yet.

Running total:

1. The Book of Illusions, Paul Auster *1001 1
2. Super Cannes, J G Ballard *1001 2
3. Drop City, T C Boyle *1001 3
4. Raven Black, Ann Cleeves
---The Torment of Others, Val McDermid ---
--- The Da Vinci Code, Dan Brown ---
5. Dangling Man, Saul Bellow *1001 4
6. Alias Grace, Margaret Atwood *1001 5
--- Blood Line, Mark Billingham ---
7. The Collector, John Fowles *1001 6
8. Wise Children, Angela Carter *1001 7
9.The Optimist's Daughter, Eudora Welty *1001 8
10. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, Michael Chabon *1001 9
---Handling the Undead, John Ajvide Lindqvist
11. The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, Agatha Christie *1001 10
12. The Wapshot Chronicle, John Cheever
--- The Snowman, Jo Nesbo ---
--- Blindsighted, Karin Slaughter---
--- The Girl who kicked the Hornets Nest, S Larsson ---
--- Ritual, Mo Hayder---
---Postmortem, Patricia Cornwell---
---Well Schooled in Murder, Elizabeth George---
13. The Moonstone, Wilkie Collins *1001 11




1997

14. Dead Simple, Peter James

Well, I read, and enjoyed Alias Grace... but it seemed to take me forever !
It reminded me both of Oscar and Lucinda, and What I Loved.

Now I am 'cheating' and reading Blood Line, by Mark Billingham- not one on any of my lists but more of a 'quick-hit'.

OH suggested I read The Collector next, so I am doing.

I updated my 1001 books to read before you die with my 'new' age, and I now need to read 18 1001 titles per year if I am to complete the list before I die ...

The Collector was wonderful. Made me feel trapped in my own life of home /work/ home

Have moved onto The Food of Love which has already irritated me with the character (all?) American Laura, with her blond hair, slim honey-brown calves and taut stomach. I note that this was in the running for the "Bad Sex in Ficton Award" (2004). I haven't got that far yet... but it does make me wonder if this is one I am going to be tossing aside rather than finishing it...

Yup, unable to finish The food of Love. Put it down as I do most of my reading during my weekday commute, and was unable to pick it up again Monday morning.

Hopefully Wise Children, by Angela Carter will be better.

Wise Children is proving enjoyable, and reminding me of Geek Love by Katherine Dunn which I read back in summer 2008.

*I saw someone reading The Collector on the bus earlier in the week

**Do both The Collector & Wise Children feature Mitsuoko perfume...?
I may have to find out what this smells like...

*Wise Children has mentioned Ma Rainey's Black Bottom- we went to see a play about this !!

Finished Wise Children, a real soap opera of a book!

Fancied one of my Crime reads next, but then last night Jerry was asking me if I'd read the Eudora Welty book he'd gotten me so I guess that should be next up- The Optimist's Daughter.

Finished The Optimist's Daughter, and after much deliberation am now reading The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay.

Lolz there's a new Mark Billingham out- From the Dead, Thorne No.9 apparently

Getting close to the finish of The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, which for me dipped around the start of the Radioman section, but has skipped forward 10 years or so and is back on track. Guess I don't want to say too much -about what I didn't like- incase of SPOILERS.

And my 2010 Challenge...? Well it hardly seems that I'm going to manage 40 books this year but overall I'm not too bothered about that I guess.

I was casting about for my next read, but I spoke to my dad on the 'phone last night and he reminded me that he'd loaned me Handling the Undead, so I guess I'd better read that !

I really wanted to have finished reading Handling the Undead by now, but have still got about 50 pages left- hopefully will complete it on the bus ride home... I saw the thing with the rabbit happening from a mile off!

We were talking about films, or film reviews where the critic claims to have seen the plot twist "from a mile off" and my OH was saying that he _never_ does. Isn't it the sign of a good film(Maker) that you don't know what to expect ?

Joseph Kavalier in The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, vs Josef K in The Trial ?

Finished off Handling the Undead in the bath :) When I finished Let the Right One In I had a look on Amazon etc. to see if I could get a cheap copy of HtU but never did. Having now read the book, I'm glad I didn't bother...

Next I am going for The Murder of Roger Ackroyd- I was browsing my emails and got a Bookcrossing release alert about it (not my copy LOL but it made me want to read it-again?)

Started The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, in which the title itself is a bit of a spoiler...?

I got my copy off Bookmooch, and it is O.L.D. . I think I'm going to take it out of circulation (i.e. bin it) when I finish reading it. And no, I don't think I've read this one before. It really does baffle me how people think old, yellowed paperbacks are acceptable to list on Bookmooch. Okay they're still _Readable_ but as an object that I want to own/touch/ give space on my bookshelves for? I don't think so.

Ha! You can get a graphic novel of The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, by Bruno Lachard *wants

Well I hope to finish The Murder of Roger Ackroyd to-day, as to-morrow I am off (for work) to a site in Normanton which promises to be a 2-hour journey there, and back again = 4 hours of reading time!

I've thought about taking my DSi (Dragon Quest IX) but fear it'd be too nerdy, and would probably run out of batteries as well.

Sadly (!) the journeys were more like 1.5 hours rather than 2 yesterday, but I managed to get a good start on The Wapshot Chronicle regardless, which I think will be my Second Pulitzer Prize winner this year (The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay).

Hmm, you can tell the guy's a short story writer... is it reminding me much of The Floating Opera ?

I keep on daydreaming of Kindles...

Started on The Moonstone today.

Wapshot was... okay, probably 3 out of 5... I finished reading it but, didn't think it was Amazing. Not enough plot in it for me.

Wilkie Collins's The Moonstone is revered as much for its sophisticated plot as for its status as the first British detective story. But the setting – a remote country house – is a big part of its appeal.

Ok we went away for the weekend for OHs birthday; 23rd- 25th Oct. I wanted to finish reading The Moonstone before this so I could tuck into something new on the train journey...

Except OH got me a Kindle !!!
Natch I was able to download The Moonstone for free, but I wanted a page-turner to read on the train, so I also got The Snowman, by Jo Nesbo. OH had mentioned seeing this in work stickered claiming that he's the new Stieg Larsson. Overall it was good, but the claim doesn't really work. For me I loved the Millennium books because of Lisbeth (still need to read the 3rd one!), and Harry Hole is clearly nothing like her. However The Snowman is actually the 7th book in the H.Hole series so I'd gladly go back to the start

1. The Bat Man
2. The Cockroaches
3. The Redbreast
4. Nemesis
5. The Devil's Star
6. The Redeemer
7. The Snowman
8. The Leopard, Jan 2011

And now I'm reading Blindsighted, by Karin Slaughter on it :)

The first two on the above list do not appear to be available in English translation yet

I chose Blindsighted, 1. because it was cheap, 2. because it's included in the list

Femmes Fatales- The cream of crime novels by women, from The Independent on Sunday 27/09/2007

1. The Not Knowing, Cathi Unsworth
2. A Dark-adapted Eye, Barbara Vine
3. Postmortem, Patricia Cornwell
4. Killing the Shadows, Val McDermid
5. Blindsighted, Karin Slaughter
6. Well Schooled in Murder, Elizabeth George

Finished Blindsighted, which overall was a bit ridiculous- tend to agree with the one-star reviews on Amazon, (well apart from the bit about throwing it across the room), and have proceeded to download The Girl Who kicked the Hornet's Nest, which has been gazing at me in a paper-based form from the bookshelf since Easter- OH got me a couple of paperbacks instead of a chocolate egg this year!

Nearing the end of The Girl who kicked the hornet's nest (79% thru) and thinking of my next read... I've seen that Simon Kernick has a couple of cheap ones on Amazon Kindle, but... I'd only be reading him because of 1. being on Kindle, 2. being cheap on Kindle ??
Perhaps I should set a restriction on myself that for every book I read @ Kindle I then have to read a paper-based one.

We had a look in the Oxfam bookshop the other weekend; there were tonnes in there I would have liked to get and all priced at £2.99- made my Kindle seem kindof redundant

Hooray I have conquered the Millennium trilogy! I feel that I should be able to get a badge or something for it. The final book was ...harrumph. I'm glad I hadn't dropped everything 1. to buy it when it came out, 2. to read it as soon as I got it. Ok, I also downloaded The Last 10 Seconds by Simon Kernick for my next Kindle read.

However I have gone for a paper-book next; Ritual, by Mo Hayder which I won in a prize-draw & chose as my next read prompted by the review for it over on the Eurocrime blog: http://www.eurocrime.co.uk/reviews/Ritual_3.html

Haha the top recommendation for The Last 10 Seconds on here is Buried, by my mateMark Billingham.

Ritual is going well, the first Mo Hayder I have read- I'm normally such a stickler for reading things in order-- the character Jack Caffery first appeared in Birdman, 2000, then The Treatment.

At times I would say it almost crossed the line into horror, certainly not your routine police-procedural (Mark Billingham I'm looking at you). Unbelievably his book Death Message won Crime Novel of the year 2009- up against Ritual!

In the back of Ritual, Mo thanks Karin Slaughter for "regularly scaring the pants off her" or something similar- I thought Blindsighted was pretty weak...

With my remaining pennies before payday I purchased another e-book; Postmortem, by Patricia Cornwell, which is my new read -finished Ritual last night. I'm really on a crime spree huh?

EEk I saw another lady reading a Kindle on the bus this morning !

Plodding on with Postmortem, but it's not great. I am bored by the pages-long conversations >> not enough action ? All the characters seem a little flat to me. Dated too, e.g. everyone smokes, having a pager, receiving Electronic messages as opposed to Emails, the lame bits about her computer having been hacked into...

Well, finished, and rather unimpressed with Postmortem... *wonders exactly how many Scarpetta books there are out there.

Following on with the Femmes Fatales list- Well Schooled in Murder, by Elizabeth George, another first read (& paper based).

Edit- typo

Good lord, there are 18 books- to date- in the Scarpetta series, and Good lord Postmortem won the 1991 Edgar Award for Best First Novel !

Aha! Maybe for my next read, The Redbreast, by Jo Nesbo would be suitably 'festive'... or at least the title is

Hooray, another list:
Anne Holt's top 10 female detectives
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/dec/08/anne-holt-top-10-female-detectives

and top of the list is the female "side kick"? in my current read, Well-schooled in Murder
1. Barbara Havers
In my opinion, Barbara Havers is modern crime fiction's most endearing misfit. Drably dressed and working class, Havers is the perfect foil to the urbane and handsome Lord Lynley. She behaves like a temperamental teenager with a chip on her shoulder when it comes to authority figures. She still lives at home and cares for her parents, surviving on a diet of pop tarts and the occasional kindnesses of her neighbours, a Pakistani professor and his daughter.

Hooray, finally finished The Moonstone. Annoyingly the bus pulled into the stop in town when I had about 1 pages left to read, and then even more annoyingly (I was reading it on my Kindle), on the way home my Kindle crashed - I couldn't get it to "wake up" ALL the way home :P

Now reading Dead Simple by Peter James- not on any of my lists initially, however it is an 80 Sleuths book- Brighton:

The South Coast has never been more sinister than in these novels featuring Detective Superintendent Roy Grace. Peter James writes about Brighton as if it were some godforsaken American town.

Dead Simple is the first in the Roy Grace novels series:

1. Dead Simple, 2005
2. Looking Good Dead, 2006
3. Not Dead Enough, 2007
4. Dead Man's Footsteps, 2008
5. Dead Tomorrow, 2009
6. Dead Like You, 2010
7. Dead Man's Grip, 2011

2010 Reading Review
Overall I have managed 23 books this year; 13 Challenge books and 10 'others'.
Out of the categories I set out to tackle I have read:
6- 1001 reads
2- 80 Sleuths
5- Jerry's
and 0 Babbling Books- !

I guess I feel a bit disappointed by my progress, and should probably adjust my expectations for 2011 accordingly...