JäsenCaroline_McElwee

Kokoelmat
Avainsanoja
Novel (2,189), R (1,758), novel (1,306), US (1,285), biography (1,017), UK (906), 2012 (898), 2014 (876), autobiography (773), Kindle (703), poetry (615), poems (580), history (527), 2017 (499), writing (487), 2013 (464), literary biography (434), art (429), 2015 (411), 2020 (401), 2018 (381), 2021 (372), memoir (339), 2008 (324), 2009 (310), Folio Society (310), 2010 (264), 2019 (259), Poetry (258), 2007 (257), DVD (254), 2016 (250), spirituality (245), 2011 (240), travel (238), writer (232), Essays (231), philosophy (225), essays (224), Art (213), France (212), EXT2023 (211), History (208), nature (201), 2022 (196), literature (195), Autobiography (191), Biography (188), 2023 (187), religion (181), Ireland (171), psychology (153), Russia (149), politics (141), Philosophy (139), Italy (129), theatre (128), Memoir (123), short stories (119), African American (113), Travel (107), crime (102), dutch (97), Short Stories (95), Holland (94), film (94), Short stories (88), Poems (87), Netherlands (85), holland (85), cinema (83), Scotland (82), Germany (82), WW2 (80), netherlands (80), Dutch (80), Australia (72), India (71), Paris (71), photography (69), writers (69), environment (69), books (69), women (68), letters (66), Canada (64), Japan (62), science (61), Jewish (59), poetry-B (59), @Es (59), Judaism (57), Nature (57), WWII (56), Islam (53), Dipping (53), Africa (52), music (51), R2007 (50), health (50), culture (49), SFE (49), Psychology (47), reading (47), Bloodaxe (46), playscript (46), Literature (45), Egypt (45), place (45), mythology (44), architecture (44), war (44), London (42), kindle (42), bloomsbury group (42), Literary biography (42), creativity (41), Contemporary US (41), Crime (41), Politics (40), Spirituality (39), Virago (39), social history (38), Religion (38), Rome (36), College of one (36), Bloomsbury Group (36), Rx3 (35), 2024 (34), Science (34), race (34), Holocaust (32), Theatre (32), food (31), russia (31), signed (31), acting (31), books about books (31), mystery (30), Spain (30), Venice (30), detective fiction (30), Amsterdam (30), cookbook (29), cookery (29), African-American (28), journalism (28), Gardens (28), feminism (27), Letters (27), Writing (27), Contemporary UK (27), historical (26), death (26), Turkey (26), Sweden (26), african american (26), interiors (26), South Africa (25), society (25), Europe (24), Wales (24), meditation (24), Gift (24), nvel (24), gardening (24), Rx2 (23), Jews (23), gardens (23), economics (23), trees (22), language (22), Photography (22), China (22), Afghanistan (22), judaism (21), Greece (21), subscription (21), ice (21), france (21), Journal (21), gift (21), War (21), myth (21), exploration (20), solitude (20), Oscar Wilde (20), muslim (20), anthropology (20), literary criticism (20), buddhism (19), jewish (19), Interiors (19), England (19), Poland (19), USA (19), landscape (19), Bloomsbury (19), Norway (19), plants (19), design (18), America (18), italy (18), animals (18), Cookery (18), book about books (18), RR-R (17), actor (17), Mythology (17), international affairs (17), Place (17), diary (17), islam (17), TG (17), Israel (17), Christianity (16), Health (16), Detective Fiction (16), holocaust (16), mind (16), space (16), fantasy (16), happiness (16), poet (16), gift-AnnaM (16), debut (16), Virginia Woolf (16), ecology (15), thriller (15), Aldeburgh (15), Music (15), journey (15), (York) (15), Buddhism (15), correspondence (15), Feminism (15), Race (15), scotland (15), Bloomsbury group (14), Writer (14), Middle East (14), china (14), home (14), U.S. (14), Gardening (14), SF (13), gift-Em (13), friendship (13), Signed (13), poverty (13), development (13), Film (13), boats (13), libraries (13), cooking (13), journal (13), arab (13), self development (13), ireland (13), WW1 (13), r (13), Architecture (13), rec-RR-Lois (12), childrens (12), biology (12), Oxford (12), sea (12), botany (12), self-development (12), arabia (12), social comment (12), mindfulness (12), sculpture (12), grief (12), japan (12), Denmark (12), Muslim (12), New York (11), rec-LT-RD (11), houses (11), india (11), classic (11), canada (11), R2008 (11), Rx4 (11), germany (11), africa (11), Iraq (11), Austria (11), consciousness (11), Arab (11), Vienna (11), Books about books (11), natural history (11), criticism (11), Britain (11), aboriginal (11), F Scott Fitzgerald (11), EXT23 (11), lifestyle (10)
Pilvet
Avainsanapilvi, Tekijäpilvi, Avainsanapeili
Väline
Ryhmät
Liittynyt
Feb 21, 2007
About Me

Photograph: (c) C J McElwee 2015

ROOT= read our own tomes (books owned for more than a year)

Favourites Read in 2022 (of 81 books read)

Fiction


Mornings in Jenin (Susan Abulhawa) (02/04/22) ****1/2

Sankofa (Chibundu Onuzo) (10/04/22) ****1/2

The Island of Missing Trees (Elif Shafak) (28/05/22) ****1/2

Lessons in Chemistry (Bonnie Garmus) (02/06/22) ****1/2

Great Circle (Maggie Shipstead) (22/06/22) ****1/2

Mother's Boy Patrick Gale) (11/11/22) ****1/2

Euphoria (Elin Cullhed, trans Jennifer Heyashida) (25/12/22) ****1/2

The Second Sight of Zachary Cloudesley (Sean Lush) (31/12/22) ****1/2


Non-Fiction


Jews Don't Count (David Baddiel) (07/02/22) *****

Red Comet: The Short Life and Blazing Art of Sylvia Plath (Heather Clark) (14/03/22) *****

On Love and Tyranny (Ann Heberlain, trans. Alice Menzies) (09/04/22) *****

Letters to Gwen John (Celia Paul) (14/04/22) *****

Real Estate (Deborah Levy) (15/04/22) ****1/2

She's Not There (Jennifer Finney Boylan) (02/05/22) ****1/2

Both/And: A Life in Many Worlds (Huma Abedin) (20/10/22) ****1/2

Super-Infinite: the Transformations of John Donne (Katherine Rundell) (25/11/22) ****1/2


Poetry

Call Us What We Carry (Amanda Gorman) (Poetry) (14/01/22) *****

You Better be Lightning (Andrea Gibson) (28/01/22) *****

Alternative Values (Frieda Hughes) (28/02/22) *****


Usually my reading is 50/50 M/F and F/NF, but that didn't happen this year.


Fiction: 46

Non-Fiction: 19

Poetry: 8

Rereads: 4

GN/NF: 1

Female: 42

Male: 21

Non-binary/other: 1








***

Read in 2021

Fiction

A Saint in Swindon (Alice Jolly) (01/01/21) ****
Summerwater (Sarah Moss) (03/01/2021) ****
The Sleeping Beauty (Elizabeth Taylor) (07/01/21) ***1/2
Nightwoods (Charles Frazier) (13/01/21) ****
The Story of the Night (Colm Tóibín) (23/01/21) ***1/2
Restoration (Olaf Olafsson) (28/01/21) ****
Moon Tiger Penelope Lively (31/01/21) (reread) ***1/2
Love and Other Thought Experiments (Sophie Ward) (08/02/21) ****
The Road to Lichfield (Penelope Lively (15/02/21) **** (Reread)
The Green Road (Anne Enright) (25/02/21) ****
Nick (Michael Farris Smith) (06/03/21) ****
Bride of Pendorric (Victoria Holt) (15/03/21) ***
The Uncommon Reader (Alan Bennett) (17/03/21) (reread) ***
You Will Be Safe Here (Damian Barr) (27/03/21) ****
Gratitude (Delphine de Vigan) (18/04/21) ***1/2
The Signature of All Things (Elizabeth Gilbert) (03/05/2021) ****1/2
The Porpoise (Mark Haddon) (12/05/21) ***1/2
The Lamplighters (Emma Stonex) (16/05/21) ***1/2
The Vanishing Half (Brit Bennett) (28/05/21) *****
The Guest Book (Sarah Blake) (05/06/21) *****
The Liar's Dictionary (Eley Williams) (10/06/21) ***1/2
The Last Bookshop in London (Madeline Martin) (27/06/21) ***1/2
The Copenhagen Trilogy: Childhood; Youth; Dependency (Tove Ditlevsen) (09/07/21) ****
Crampton Hodnet (Barbara Pym) (15/07/21) ***
Light Perpetual (Francis Spufford) (21/07/21) ****
How Much of these Hills is Gold (C Pam Zhang) (27/07/21) ****
Three Rooms (Jo Hamya) (29/07/21) ****
Migrations (Charlotte McConaghy) (02/08/21) ****1/2
Transcendent Kingdom (Yaa Gyasi) (08/08/21) ****
Klara and the Sun (Kazuo Ishiguro) (13/08/21) ****1/2
Winter Flowers (Angélique Villeneuve (29/08/21) *****
All the Light We Cannot See (Anthony Doerr) (08/09/21) ****1/2
The Ghost Clause (Howard Norman) (13/09/21) ***
A Town Called Solace (Mary Lawson) (16/09/21) ****
The Inseparables (Simone de Beauvoir, trans Lauren Elkin) (20/09/21) ****
Beautiful World Where Are You (Sally Rooney) (22/09/21) ****1/2
The Magician (Colm Tóibín) (05/10/21) ****1/2
Bewilderment (Richard Powers) (11/10/21) *****
The Performance (Claire Thomas) (15/10/21) ***1/2
The Man Who Died Twice (Richard Osman) (18/10/21) ***1/2
The Keeper of Lost Things (Ruth Hogan) (23/10/21) ***
Matrix (Lauren Groff) (02/11/21) ****
The Maiden Dinosaur (Janet McNeill) (06/11/21) ****1/2
The Nakano Thrift Shop (Hiromi Kawakami) (13/11/21) **1/2
The Fell (Sarah Moss) (14/11/21) ****

Non-Fiction

You Can Heal Your Life (Louise Hay) (17/01/21) ****
Begin Again: James Baldwin's America and his urgent lessons for today (Eddie S Glaude jnr) (05/02/21) *****
Quite (Claudia Winkelman) (11/02/21) ***1/2
handiwork (Sara Baume) (17/02/21) ****
Frostquake: The frozen winter of 1962 and how Britain emerged a different country (Juliet Nicholson) (23/02/21) ****
On Seamus Heaney (R F Foster) (11/03/21) ****1/2
Silence: Harnessing the restorative power of silence in a noisy world (Joanna Nylund) (16/03/2021) ****
Intimations: Six Essays (Zadie Smith) (04/04/21) ****
Two-Way Mirror: The Life of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (Fiona Sampson) (07/04/21) ****
The Hare With Amber Eyes (Edmund de Wasl) (08/05/21) ****1/2
Letters to Camondo (Edmund de Waal) (10/95/21) ***1/2
How to Live. What to do: In Search of Ourselves in Life and Literature (Josh Cohen) (14/05/21) ****1/2
Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear (Elizabeth Gilbert) (21/05/21) ****1/2
A Well-Read Woman (Kate Stewart) (30/05/21) ****1/2
The Wild Silence (Raynor Winn) (01/06/21) ****
Fully Human (Steve Biddulph) (13/06/21) ***1/2
The Adventures of Miss Barbara Pym (Paula Byrne) (20/06/21) ****1/2
Notes on Grief (Chimamanda Ngosi Adichie) (20/06/21) ****1/2
Being Heumann (Judy Heumann) (24/06/21) ****1/2
Vincent's Books (Mariella Guzzoni) (26/06/21) ****1/2
Things I have Withheld (Kei Miller) (25/07/21) (essays) ****1/2
Tom Stoppard: A Life (Hermione Lee) (23/08/21) ****1/2
A Year of Living Simply (Kate Humble) (28/08/21) ****
Four Thousand Weeks: Time and How to Use It (Oliver Burkman) (31/08/21) *****
The Tick of Two Clocks (Joan Bakewell) (10/09/21) ***1/2
No. 91/92: notes on a Parisian Commute (Lauren Elkin) ****1/2
The Wine Lover's Daughter (Anne Fadiman) (04/11/21) ****
The Writer's Library (eds Nancy Pearl and Jeff Schwager) (09/11/21) *****

Poetry

The Seven Ages (Louise Glück) (13/02/21) ****1/2
The Wild Iris (Louise Glück) (16/02/21) ****
Helium (Rudy Francisco) (22/02/21) ****
How to Love The World (Various, ed James Crews) (04/04/21) ****
Healing the Divide: Poems of Kindness and Connection (ed James Crews) (17/04/21) ****

Total read: 79

Female: 52
Male: 22
Non-binary:
Various: 2
Fiction: 45
Non-Fiction: 27
Poetry: 4

Reread: 3

UK: 33
US: 23
Iceland/US: 1
Ireland/NI: 4
Finland: 1
France: 3
Tasmania: 1
Nigerian-American: 1
Italy: 1
Danish: 3
Jamaican/British: 1
Asian/American: 1
Australia: 2
Gambian-American: 1
Japanese/British: 1
French/American: 1
Japan: 1

Best of 2020 (of 79 reads)

Non-Fiction

[Square Haunting] (Francesca Wade)
[Serious Noticing] (James Woods) (Essays)
[The Lost Pianos of Siberia] (Sophy Roberts)
[Recollections of my Non-Existence] (Rebecca Solnit)
[The Education of an Idealist] (Samantha Power)
[House of Glass] (Hadley Freeman)
[The Argonauts] (Maggie Nelson)
[To See Clearly: Why Ruskin Matters] (Suzanne Fagence Cooper) (04/09/20)
[Vesper Flights] (Helen MacDonald) (Essays)
[Invisible Women] (Caroline Criado Perez)
[On Connection] (Kae Tempest) (Essays)
[Sontag: Her Life] (Benjamin Moser)
[A Promised Land] (Barack Obama)
[The Light of the World] (Elizabeth Alexander)
[Ex Libris: 100 Books to read and reread] (Michiko Kakutani)

Fiction

[Girl, Woman, Other] (Bernardine Evaristo)
[The River Capture] (Mary Costello)
[The Narrow Land] (Christine Dwyer Hickey)
[The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek] (Kim Michele Richardson)
[Writers and Lovers] (Lily King)
[Dandelion Wine] (Ray Bradbury)
[In Love with George Eliot] (Kathy O'Shaughnessy)

Poetry

[A Portable Paradise] (Roger Robinson)

Re-read

[Possession] (A S Byatt)
[The Great Gatsby] (F Scott Fitzgerald) - 40th read

Fiction

A Saint in Swindon (Alice Jolly) (01/01/21) ****
Summerwater (Sarah Moss) (03/01/2021) ****
The Sleeping Beauty (Elizabeth Taylor) (07/01/21) ***1/2
Nightwoods (Charles Frazier) (13/01/21) ****
The Story of the Night (Colm Tóibín) (23/01/21) ***1/2
Restoration (Olaf Olafsson) (28/01/21) ****
Moon Tiger Penelope Lively (31/01/21) (reread) ***1/2
Love and Other Thought Experiments (Sophie Ward) (08/02/21) ****
The Road to Lichfield (Penelope Lively (15/02/21) **** (Reread)
The Green Road (Anne Enright) (25/02/21) ****
Nick (Michael Farris Smith) (06/03/21) ****
Bride of Pendorric (Victoria Holt) (15/03/21) ***
The Uncommon Reader (Alan Bennett) (17/03/21) (reread) ***
You Will Be Safe Here (Damian Barr) (27/03/21) ****
Gratitude (Delphine de Vigan) (18/04/21) ***1/2
The Signature of All Things (Elizabeth Gilbert) (03/05/2021) ****1/2
The Porpoise (Mark Haddon) (12/05/21) ***1/2
The Lamplighters (Emma Stonex) (16/05/21) ***1/2
The Vanishing Half (Brit Bennett) (28/05/21) *****
The Guest Book (Sarah Blake) (05/06/21) *****
The Liar's Dictionary (Eley Williams) (10/06/21) ***1/2
The Last Bookshop in London (Madeline Martin) (27/06/21) ***1/2
The Copenhagen Trilogy: Childhood; Youth; Dependency (Tove Ditlevsen) (09/07/21) ****
Crampton Hodnet (Barbara Pym) (15/07/21) ***
Light Perpetual (Francis Spufford) (21/07/21) ****
How Much of these Hills is Gold (C Pam Zhang) (27/07/21) ****
Three Rooms (Jo Hamya) (29/07/21) ****
Migrations (Charlotte McConaghy) (02/08/21) ****1/2
Transcendent Kingdom (Yaa Gyasi) (08/08/21) ****
Klara and the Sun (Kazuo Ishiguro) (13/08/21) ****1/2
Winter Flowers (Angélique Villeneuve (29/08/21) *****
All the Light We Cannot See (Anthony Doerr) (08/09/21) ****1/2
The Ghost Clause (Howard Norman) (13/09/21) ***
A Town Called Solace (Mary Lawson) (16/09/21) ****
The Inseparables (Simone de Beauvoir, trans Lauren Elkin) (20/09/21) ****
Beautiful World Where Are You (Sally Rooney) (22/09/21) ****1/2
The Magician (Colm Tóibín) (05/10/21) ****1/2
Bewilderment (Richard Powers) (11/10/21) *****
The Performance (Claire Thomas) (15/10/21) ***1/2
The Man Who Died Twice (Richard Osman) (18/10/21) ***1/2
The Keeper of Lost Things (Ruth Hogan) (23/10/21) ***
Matrix (Lauren Groff) (02/11/21) ****
The Maiden Dinosaur (Janet McNeill) (06/11/21) ****1/2
The Nakano Thrift Shop (Hiromi Kawakami) (13/11/21) **1/2

Non-Fiction

You Can Heal Your Life (Louise Hay) (17/01/21) ****
Begin Again: James Baldwin's America and his urgent lessons for today (Eddie S Glaude jnr) (05/02/21) *****
Quite (Claudia Winkelman) (11/02/21) ***1/2
handiwork (Sara Baume) (17/02/21) ****
Frostquake: The frozen winter of 1962 and how Britain emerged a different country (Juliet Nicholson) (23/02/21) ****
On Seamus Heaney (R F Foster) (11/03/21) ****1/2
Silence: Harnessing the restorative power of silence in a noisy world (Joanna Nylund) (16/03/2021) ****
Intimations: Six Essays (Zadie Smith) (04/04/21) ****
Two-Way Mirror: The Life of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (Fiona Sampson) (07/04/21) ****
The Hare With Amber Eyes (Edmund de Wasl) (08/05/21) ****1/2
Letters to Camondo (Edmund de Waal) (10/95/21) ***1/2
How to Live. What to do: In Search of Ourselves in Life and Literature (Josh Cohen) (14/05/21) ****1/2
Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear (Elizabeth Gilbert) (21/05/21) ****1/2
A Well-Read Woman (Kate Stewart) (30/05/21) ****1/2
The Wild Silence (Raynor Winn) (01/06/21) ****
Fully Human (Steve Biddulph) (13/06/21) ***1/2
The Adventures of Miss Barbara Pym (Paula Byrne) (20/06/21) ****1/2
Notes on Grief (Chimamanda Ngosi Adichie) (20/06/21) ****1/2
Being Heumann (Judy Heumann) (24/06/21) ****1/2
Vincent's Books (Mariella Guzzoni) (26/06/21) ****1/2
Things I have Withheld (Kei Miller) (25/07/21) (essays) ****1/2
Tom Stoppard: A Life (Hermione Lee) (23/08/21) ****1/2
A Year of Living Simply (Kate Humble) (28/08/21) ****
Four Thousand Weeks: Time and How to Use It (Oliver Burkman) (31/08/21) *****
The Tick of Two Clocks (Joan Bakewell) (10/09/21) ***1/2
No. 91/92: notes on a Parisian Commute (Lauren Elkin) ****1/2
The Wine Lover's Daughter (Anne Fadiman) (04/11/21) ****
The Writer's Library (eds Nancy Pearl and Jeff Schwager) (09/11/21) *****

Poetry

The Seven Ages (Louise Glück) (13/02/21) ****1/2
The Wild Iris (Louise Glück) (16/02/21) ****
Helium (Rudy Francisco) (22/02/21) ****
How to Love The World (Various, ed James Crews) (04/04/21) ****
Healing the Divide: Poems of Kindness and Connection (ed James Crews) (17/04/21) ****

Total read: 78

Female: 51
Male: 22
Non-binary:
Various: 2
Fiction: 44
Non-Fiction: 27
Poetry: 4

Reread: 3

UK: 32
US: 23
Iceland/US: 1
Ireland/NI: 4
Finland: 1
France: 3
Tasmania: 1
Nigerian-American: 1
Italy: 1
Danish: 3
Jamaican/British: 1
Asian/American: 1
Australia: 2
Gambian-American: 1
Japanese/British: 1
French/American: 1
Japan: 1



:



****

Best of 2019 (of 80 reads):

Fiction
My Name is Asher Lev (Chaim Potok) ROOT *****
The Samurai's Garden (Gail Tsukiyama) ****1/2
The Great Believers (Rebecca Makkai) *****
The Prince of Tides (Pat Conroy) ROOT ****1/2
Killing Commendatore (Haruki Murakami) ****
The Woman Upstairs (Claire Messud) ****1/2

Non-Fiction
The Library Book (Susan Orlean) (US) ****
One Matchless Time: A Life of William Faulkner (Jay Parini) ROOT ****1/2
Walking With the Wind (John Lewis) ROOT *****
Becoming Beauvoir (Kate Kirkpatrick) (22/08/18) *****
How the World Thinks (Julian Baggini) (03/11/19) ****1/2
Self-Portrait (Celia Paul) (12/11/19) ****1/2

Poetry
Lord of the Butterflies (Andrea Gibson) (US)(poetry) *****

Classic
The Odyssey (Homer) trans Emily Wilson ROOT *****



****

Best of 2018 (of 86 books)

Non-Fiction
The Lost Words (Robert Macfarlane and Jackie Morris) *****
Kenneth Clark: Life, Art, Civilisation (James Stourton) ****1/2
The Three Lives of Dylan Thomas (Hilly James) ****
The Salt Path (Raynor Winn) ****
Free Woman: Life, Liberation and Doris Lessing (Lara Feigel) ****1/2
Mark Rothko: Toward the Light in the Chapel (Annie Cohen-Solal)****
Conversations on Writing (Ursula K. Le Guin) ****1/2
The Perfect Summer (Juliet Nicholson) ****1/2
Call Them by Their True Names (Rebecca Solnit) ****1/2
Why I'm No Longer Talking to White People About Race (Reni Eddo-Lodge) *****
Brief Answers To The Big Questions (Stephen Hawking) *****
Becoming (Michelle Obama) ****
What Truth Sounds Like (Michael Eric Dyson) ****1/2
Natives: Race and Class in the Ruins of Empire (Akala) ****1/2

Fiction
White Houses (Amy Bloom) ****1/2
Meet Me at the Museum (Anne Youngson) ****
The Overstory (Richard Powers) *****
Warlight (Michael Ondaatje) ****1/2
The Lighthousekeeper's Daughters (Jean Pendziwol) ****1/2
Love is Blind (William Boyd) ****
Take Nothing With You (Patrick Gale) ****

Rereads: Fiction and Non-Fiction
The Guernsey Literary. And Potato Peel Pie Society (Mary Ann Shaffer) ****1/2
A View of the Harbour (Elizabeth Taylor) ****1/2
Remarkable Creatures (Tracy Chevalier) ****
A Room of One's Own (Virginia Woolf) (reread) *****
The Great Gatsby (38th read, I read it every year) *****

Poetry
The Carrying (Ada Limon)*****

Best of 2017 (94 books read, 23,492 pages)

Fiction

A Gentleman in Moscow (Amor Towles) ****1/2
The Golden Age (Joan London) ****1/2
Home Fire (Kamila Shamsie)****
Homegoing (Yaa Gyasi) *****

Non-Fiction

Utopia for Realists (Rutger Bregman) ****1/2
Just Mercy (Bryan Stevenson) ****1/2 ROOT
Plot 29 (Allan Jenkins) (03/05/17) ****1/2
Politics: Between the Exremes (Nick Clegg) ****1/2
The World-Ending Fire: The Essential Wendell Berry *****
Hope in the Dark (Rebecca Solnit) (Essays) *****
The Mother of all Questions (Rebecca Solnit) (Essays) *****
What Happened (Hillary Rodham Clinton) ****1/2
At the Existentialist Café (Sarah Bakewell) ****1/2 ROOT
This is the Story of a Happy Marriage (Ann Patchett) (Essays)) ****1/2
Out of the Wreckage (George Monbiot) ****1/2
Why Buddhism is True (Richard Wright) ****1/2

Poetry

Say Something Back (Denise Riley) (Poetry) ****1/2 ROOT
Bone (Yrsa Daley-Ward) (Poetry) *****

Best of 2016 (of 69 books read (17,693 pages))

Non-Fiction

The Greater Journey: Americans in Paris (David McCullough) ****1/2
Gratitude (Oliver Sacks) *****
On the Move (Oliver Sacks) ****1/2
A House Full of Daughters (Juliet Nicholson) *****
The Lonely City (Olivia Laing) (Kindle) ****1/2
James Baldwin in Turkey (photographer: Sedat Pakay/ text various) *****
The Trip to the Echo Spring (Olivia Laing) ****1/2
Bowie/Collector (Various) *****
Unforbidden Pleasures (Adam Phillips) ****1/2

Fiction

The Noise of Time (Julian Barnes) ****
1984 (George Orwell) (reread) ***** ROOT
The Whistling Season (Ivan Doig) AAC ****
The Red Chairs (Edna O'Brien) ****1/2
The Martian Chronicles (Ray Bradbury) ****1/2 ROOT
Life After Life (Kate Atkinson) ****1/2
A Country Road, A Tree (Jo Baker) (LL) ****1/2
The Underground Railroad (Colson Whitehead) ****1/2
Speak (Louisa Hall) ****
Golden Hill (Francis Spufford) (Kindle) ****

Poetry

Loop of Jade (Sarah Howe) ****1/2 (poetry) – Winner of TS Eliot Prize

Top reads of 2015 (of 70 books, 15,042 pages)

Deep Lane (Mark Doty) (Poetry) *****

Fiction

Plainsong (Kent Haruf) ****1/2
The Illuminations (Andrew O'Hagan) *****
Vanessa and her Sister (Priya Parmar) ****1/2
Go Set a Watchman (Harper Lee) ****1/2
Dear Thief (Samantha Harvey) ****1/2
Grief is the thing with Feathers (Max Porter) ****1/2
Our Souls at Night (Kent Haruf) ****

Non-Fiction

Being Mortal (Atul Gwande) *****
After Sebald (Ali Smith/Will Self/Robert MacFarlane et al) *****
The Future of the Past (Alexander Stille) ****1/2
Conversations with Frank Gehry (Barbara Isenberg) *****
The Nearest Thing to Life (James Wood) (Memoir Essays) ****1/2
Between the World and Me (Ta-Nahisi Coates) *****
M Train (Patti Smith) ****1/2
My Life on the Road (Gloria Steinem) ****1/2
Falling Upward (Richard Rohr) *****

---

What stood out in 2014 (Of 92 read)
Fiction

The Hamlet (William Faulkner) (20/02/14 ****
Day (A L Kennedy) (02/03/14) ****1/2
Tinkers (Paul Harding) (16/03/14)****1/2
The Legacy of Elizabeth Pringle (Kirsty Wark) (05/04/14) ****
The Song of Solomon (Toni Morrison) (12/05/14) *****
The Lie (Helen Dunmore) (16/05/14) ****1/2
Virginia Woolf in Manhattan (Maggie Gee) (novel) (13/06/14) ****1/2
In the Light of What We Know (Zia Haider Rahman) (13/07/14) ****1/2
Suddenly, Love (Aharon Appelfeld) (03/08/14) (novel) ****1/2
Last Night at the Lobster (Stewart O'Nan) (14/09/14) ****1/2
Lila (Marilynne Robinson) (16/10/14) ****1/2
A Winter's Tale (William Shakespeare) (07/12/14) ****1/2
The Clothes on their Backs (Linda Grant) (22/06/14) ****

Non-Fiction

The Road to Middlemarch: My Life with George Eliot (Rebecca Mead) (21/03/14) ****
Life Lessons from Byron (Matthew Bevis) (08/04/14) ****1/2
I've lived in London for 86 1/2 years (Joseph Markovitch/Martin Usbourne) (26/04/14) ***** (memoir/photography)
Rumi: The Persian, the Sufi (A Reza Arasteh) (GL) (27/05/14) ****1/2
This Boy (Alan Johnson) (23/06/14) (autobiography) ****
Andrew Wyeth: A Spoken Self-Portrait (with Richard Meryman)(03/08/14) ****
Until Further Notice I Am Alive (Tom Lubbock) (Memoir) (10/08/14) *****
Great Works:50 Paintings Explored (Tom Lubbock) 15/08/14) *****
Passions Past and Present (Roy Strong) (Essays) (19/08/14) ****
Van Gogh at Work (Marije Vellekoop et al) (27/08/14) *****
Poetry Notebook 2006-2014 (Clive James) (24/10/14) ****
A Painters Progress: A Portrait of Lucian Freud (David Dawson) (07/11/12) ***** (memoir/photography/art)
Essays on the Self (Virginia Woolf) (30/11/14) *****
Update: Poems 2011-12 (Dennis O'Driscoll) (29/12/14) **** (poetry)

What stood out in 2013

Fiction

Top 5

Orkney (Amy Sackville) ****1/2
Pnin (Vladimir Nabokov) ****1/2
Frances and Bernard (Carlene Bauer) ****1/2
The Goldfinch (Donna Tartt) (02/11/13) ****1/2
Toilers of the Sea (Victor Hugo) (07/04/13) ****1/2

Best of the rest

The Poetry Professor (Grace McCleen) ****
The Orchardist (Amanda Coplin) (novel) (Debut) ****
Americanah (Chimamanda Ngosi Adichie) ****
The Orchard (Drusilla Modjeska) ****1/2 (Australia)
Beowulf (Seamus Heaney trans) ****1/2
The Selfish Giant and other Stories (Oscar Wilde)*****

Non-Fiction

Top 5

Airmail: letters of Robert Bly and Tomas Tranströmer (27/07/13) *****
The Twilight of American Culture (Morris Berman) (NF) (05/01/13) ****
Straw Dogs (John Gray) ****1/2 [Essays]
William Morris (Fiona MacCarthy) ****1/2
Feral: Searching for Enchantment on the Frontiers of Rewilding (George Monbiat) ****

Best of the rest

The Letters of Leonard Woolf (ed Frederic Spotts) ****1/2
Living, Thinking, Looking (Siri Hustvedt) **** [Essays]
On Writing (A L Kennedy)) ****1/2
The Time by the Sea (Ronald Bythe) ****
This is it (Alan Watts) (Essays) ****
The Rings of Saturn (W G (Max) Sebald) *****
Virginia Woolf's Garden (Caroline Zoob/Caroline Arber: photographer) *****
At the Source (Gillian Clarke) [memoir/Wales/poetry/nature] ****

Special mention
Vincent Van Gogh sketchbooks ***** [Folio Society Facimillies]

What stood out in 2012:

Non-Fiction

Readings: Essays and Literary Entertainments (Michael Dirda)
Former People: The Last Days of the Russian Aristocracy (Douglas Smith)
The Missing Ink: The Lost Art of Handwritting (and why it matters) (Philip Hensher)
Mortality (Christopher Hitchens)
Collected Letters of Virginia Woolf: Vol 1
The Idle Traveller (Dan Kieran)
Listen to the Echoes: Interviews with Ray Bradbury (Sam Weller)
Earth Pilgrim (Satish Kumar)
Wildwood: A Journey through Trees (Roger Deakin)
Hockney: The Bigger Message (Martin Gayford)
Pilgrimage (Annie Leibovitz )

Fiction

Train Dreams (Denis Johnson)(I read it a second time in the same year!)
Satantango (Laszlo Krasznahorkai)
The Cleaner of Chartres (Salley Vickers)
Home (Toni Morrison)
A trick I learned from dead men (Kitty Aldridge)
Rules of Civility (Amor Towles)
Fame is the Spur (Howard Spring)


Stood out in 2011:

Fiction

Crossing to Safety (Wallace Stegner) (American)
Our Fathers (Andrew O'Hagan) (British)
Five Bells (Gail Jones) (Australian)
The Last Brother (Nathacha Appanah) (French- Mauritian)
Great House (Nicole Krauss) (American)
Sum (David Eagleman) (American)
The Farm Theotime (Henri Bosco) (French)
The Upright Piano Player (David Abbott) (British)
South Riding (Winifred Holtby) (British)
The Master and Margerita (Mikhail Bulgakov) (Russian)
Tender is the Night (F Scott Fitzgerald) - 5th read, and the writing and scope blew me away this time

Non-Fiction

The Blue Hour : A Portrait of Jean Rhys (Lilian Pizzichini)
My Reading Life (Pat Conroy)
How to Live - a life of Montaigne in one question and twenty attempts to answer it (Sarah Bakewell)
Zeitoun (Dave Eggers)
The Fountain (Don Cupitt)(Secular theology/philosophy)
Just Kids (Patti Smith)

Stood out in 2010

Of mutability (Jo Shapcot) [Poetry]
Dreams of Speaking (Gail Jones)(04/12/10) ****
The Book of Small Souls (Louis Couperus) quartet which includes: Small Souls/The Later Life/The Twilight of Souls/Dr Adriaan)
Nemesis (Philip Roth)
The Great Gatsby (F Scott Fitzgerald) [Re-Read 28th time!]
Virginia Woolf Diaries diaries Vols 1-5
Leslie Stephen (Noel Gilroy Annan)
Andrew Wyeth: A Secret Life (Richard Meryman)
The Idea of a University (John Henry Newman)
The Vicar of Wrexhill (Fanny Trollope)
After the Deluge (Vol 1&2) (Leonard Woolf)
Heat of the Day (Elizabeth Bowen
I Lock my door upon myself (Joyce Carol Oates) [Read twice this year]
Conversations 1970-2006 (with Joyce Carol Oates)
Trespass (Rose Tremain)
Pollard (Laura Beatty)
The Spectator Bird (Wallace Stegner)
Little Bird of Heaven (Joyce Carol Oates)
Their Eyes were watching God (Zora Neale Hurston) [Re-read]
An Equal Stillness (Francesca Kay)

I have joined the London Library and decided to start a catalogue to record the books I've loaned and to sometimes review them.

If you don't know about this lovely library you can find it here:

http://www.londonlibrary.co.uk/?gclid=CL_FmaX9gJ4CFRCY2Aod62SKpQ

I have started a separate catalogue to list those books here:

http://www.librarything.com/profile/CJM_at_LondonLibrary

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