Jäsenkitzyl

About My Library

Reviews are linked in the thumbs.

2024 in Review: Favourites Under Construction
My goal this year is cull down my TBR pile ratio (aiming for less than 1/6 of the total bookshelf) and also to get closer to author gender parity in both the author and their books.
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Dishonourable Mentions
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2023 in Review: Favourites
I enjoyed and reviewed 29 books. On the success front, I finally culled some books (674:134 total:tbr), and am slowly getting to my gender parity goal (188:167 f:m with 334:336 books allocated f:m).
An Astronaut's Guide to Life on Earth by Chris Hadfield,
The Mirror and the Light by Hilary Mantel,
Alone in Berlin by Hans Fallada,
The Hopkins Manuscript by R. C. Sherriff.

Dishonourable Mentions
Journey Under the Midnight Sun by Keigo Higashino.

2022 in Review: Favourites
I enjoyed and reviewed 19 books, culled but added more to my TBR pile (702:185 total:tbr), and further unbalanced my gender parity goal (201:163 f:m).
The Ice House by Nina Bawden,
Stalin's Daughter: The Extraordinary and Tumultuous Life of Svetlana Alliluyeva by Rosemary Sullivan,
Am I Too Loud? by Gerald Moore,
More of Milly-Molly-Mandy by Joyce Lankester Brisley,
El Deafo by Cece Bell,
The Tortoise and the Hare by Elizabeth Jenkins,
Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata.

Dishonourable Mentions
The Overstory by Richard Powers,
Books, Baguettes and Bedbugs: the Left Bank World of Shakespeare and Co by Jeremy Mercer.

2021 in Review: Favourites
I enjoyed and reviewed 32 books, culled and added to my TBR pile (644:151 total:tbr), and overshot my gender parity goal (196:173 f:m).
Cancer Ward by Aleksandr Solzhenit︠s︡yn,
The Tree in the Yard by Betty Smith,
On Broadway by Damon Runyon,
La Belle Sauvage by Philip Pullman,
My Life in France by Julia Child,
Iron Gustav by Hans Fallada,
The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl by Ryan North and Erica Henderson,
Mr Bridge by Evan S. Connell,
Girl, Woman, Other by Bernardine Evaristo,
Cousin Harriet by Susan Tweedsmuir,
The Complete Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi.

Dishonourable Mentions
Young Hearts Crying by Richard Yates,
The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell.

2020 in Review: Favourites
I read and enjoyed and reviewed 36 books. Year-end, my TBR:overall ratio is 199:663 (from 388:808) and the gender M:F is 181:188 (49.05% to 50.95%).
Woodswoman by Anne LaBastille.
The Moon by Colin Barrett,
Wise Children by Angela Carter,
He Never Came Back by Helen McCloy,
The Manuscript Found in Saragossa by Jan Potocki,
Roman Fever and Other Stories by Edith Wharton,
The Fountain Overflows by Rebecca West,
The Weather in the Streets by Rosamond Lehmann,
Moonglow by Michael Chabon,
Musashi by Eiji Yoshikawa,
The Journals of Anais Nin: Volume I, 1931--1934 by Anais Nin,
A Rope - In Case by Lillian Beckwith.

Dishonourable Mentions
The Mayor of Casterbridge by Thomas Hardy.

2019 in Review: Favourites
2019 marked my fifth year on LibraryThing! It saw more non-fiction, in particular nature-reads and memoirs, and an abundance of short stories. It has also edged the year-start 56.38% - 43.62% (male-female) ratio to a more even 50.7% - 49.3%.
The Summer Book by Tove Jansson,
Locking Up Our Own: Crime and Punishment in Black America by James Forman Jr,
Madame Zilensky and the King of Finland by Carson McCullers,
Collected Stories by Bernard MacLaverty,
The Unwomanly Face of War by Svetlana Alexievich,
Lord Peter Views the Body by Dorothy L. Sayers,
The Enchanted Places by Christopher Milne,
Invitation to the Waltz by Rosamund Lehmann,
The Light in the Piazza by Elizabeth Spencer,
Bartlett and the Forest of Plenty by Odo Hirsch,
The Parasites by Daphne du Maurier,
Wilding by Isabella Tree,
20 Years from the Waist Up by Richard Morecroft
The Fate of Food by Amanda Little,
The Skin Chairs by Barbara Comyns.

Dishonourable Mentions
Independent People by Halldór Laxness,
The Sportswriter by Richard Ford,
The Botany of Desire by Michael Pollan,
A Sport and a Pastime by James Salter,
White Noise by Don Delillo,
Quartet in Autumn by Barbara Pym,
Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell,
Zorba the Greek by Nikos Kazantzakis.

2018 in Review: Short Stories, Favourites
My 2018 reads mostly consisted of short story collections and authors who are women. There were lots of new-to-me authors, new voices,new styles for me to get acquainted with. I also reacquainted and consolidated my love for Decca Mitford and George Orwell.
Priestdaddy by Patricia Lockwood,
Secondhand Time by Svetlana Alexievich,
Boys in Zinc by Svetlana Alexievich,
The Collected Stories by Grace Paley,
The Visiting Privilege by Joy Williams,
Reasons to Live by Amy Hempel,
A Manual for Cleaning Women by Lucia Berlin,
Women and Fiction edited by Susan Cahill,
Down and Out in Paris and London by George Orwell,
Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter by Simone de Beauvoir,
The Home by Penelope Mortimer,
Yonnondio by Tillie Olsen,
Packing for Mars by Mary Roach,
The Husband Stitch by Carmen Maria Machado,
Memories of a Catholic Girlhood by Mary McCarthy,
Saturday Lunch with the Brownings and Other Stories by Penelope Mortimer,
The Pursuit of Love by Nancy Mitford.

Dishonourable Mentions
Pachinko by Min Jin Lee,
Eileen by Ottessa Moshfegh,
Swamplandia! by Karen Russell,
The Trauma Cleaner by Sarah Krasnostein,
The Mothers by Brit Bennett,
Liars and Saints by Maile Meloy,
4 3 2 1 by Paul Auster.

2017 in Review: Literature Forming, Favourites
I had hoped for more poetry and plays, but ended up just with more nonfiction and just one poetry and two plays. A lot more of world history and social awareness this year though, which I'm pleased by.
The Love Child by Edith Olivier,
Decca: the letters of Jessica Mitford by Jessica Mitford,
After the War: volume 125 of Granta,
Shostakovich: a life remembered by Elizabeth A. M. Wilson,
A Place of Greater Safety by Hilary Mantel,
The Same Old Story by Ivan Goncharov,
The Land of Green Plums by Herta Müller,
Night by Elie Wiesel,
Behind the Beautiful Forevers by Katherine Boo,
Laughter in the Dark by Vladimir Nabokov,
Gulag by Anne Applebaum,
We wish to inform you that tomorrow we will be killed with our families by Philip Gourevitch,
Celebrations by Maya Angelou,
Le Testament Francçais by Andreï Makine,
Negroland: a memoir by Margo Jefferson,
The Earth and Sky of Jacques Dorme by Andreï Makine,
The Gathering by Anne Enright,
Arcadia by Tom Stoppard,
Self-Help by Lorrie Moore,
The Pumpkin Eater by Penelope Mortimer,
The Girls of Slender Means by Muriel Spark,
Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi,
The Way We Live Now by Anthony Trollope.

Dishonourable Mentions
The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas,
Stoner by John Williams,
Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng,
Boy, Snow, Bird by Helen Oyeyemi,
Here I am by Jonathan Safran Foer,
My Name is Asher Lev by Chaim Potok.

2016 in Review: Partly around the World, Favourites
As most of the authors I read before were English or American, I sought to broaden that this year with authors from Russia, France, Japan, Canada, and Poland. It is still a fairly narrow range, but it's a work in progress.
The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton,
Wives and Daughters by Elizabeth Gaskell,
Nothing to Envy by Barbara Demick,
Persuasion by Jane Austen,
Gilead by Marilynne Robinson,
The Makioka Sisters by Jun'ichirō Tanizaki,
The Razor's Edge by W. Somerset Maugham,
H is for Hawk by Helen Macdonald,
Oblomov by Ivan Goncharov,
Black Narcissus by Rumer Godden,
My Ántonia by Willa Cather,
Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky,
Darkness Visible by William Styron,
Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson,
The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers,
Seabiscuit by Laura Hillenbrand,
The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet by David Mitchell,
The Bone Clocks by David Mitchell,
Life, a User's Manual by Georges Perec,
Suite Française by Irène Némirovsky,
A Good Man is Hard to Find by Flannery O'Connor,
Lark Rise to Candleford by Flora Thompson,
The Shadow of the Sun by Ryszard Kapuściński,
The Custom of the Country by Edith Wharton,
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Alexander Solzhenitsyn.

Dishonourable Mentions
The Light Between Oceans by M. L. Stedman,
All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr,
The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri,
Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury,
I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith,
Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen,
Crossing to Safety by William Stegner,
A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry,
Shogun by James Clavell,
Mansfield Park by Jane Austen,
Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke,
The Book Thief by Markus Zusak,
The Mandarins by Simone de Beauvoir,
The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood,
Wild Swans by Jung Chang,
A Good School by Richard Yates,
The Years by Virginia Woolf,
Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck.

2015 in Review: Progress towards Gender Equality
As the gender ratio of authors I read was skewed male, 2015 sought to rectify this with January being an all-female month with every book afterwards alternating. The practices of female-January will be carried over until the 42.46% female in my library is in its rightful place of 50%. Of the 34 books read this year, below were the favourites:
The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt,
The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood,
Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier,
Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer,
The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro,
Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri,
The Tin Drum by Günter Grass,
Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf,
The Hired Man by Aminatta Forna,
Blindness by José Saramago,
The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov,
All My Puny Sorrows by Miriam Toews,
If on a winter's night a traveller by Italo Calvino,
The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton,
A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth.

Dishonourable Mentions
Bitter Greens by Kate Forsyth,
The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer,
The Reader by Bernard Schlink,
A Constellation of Vital Phenomena by Anthony Marra,
The Orphan Master's Son by Adam Johnson,
Snow Flower and the Secret Fan by Lisa See,
Catch-22 by Joseph Heller,
Fingersmith by Sarah Waters,
Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout.

2014 in Review: Getting Started
I had only read eighteen books since joining LibraryThing four months ago so there are not many to talk about. Note that a favourite book does not necessarily mean best rated book but may coincide. My favourites this year in my chronological reading order with links to my review/book/author:
The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver,
Angelmaker by Nick Harkaway,
Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel,
One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez,
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon,
The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco,
Possession: a romance by A. S. Byatt.

Dishonourable Mentions of books that I could not finish and therefore I did not review nor linked to the books nor authors but I linked to scathing reviews that I agree with:
Cross Stitch by Diana Gabaldon,
Atonement by Ian McEwan.

If you find any mistakes in the links, please feel free to contact me.

About Me

I sell excellent secondhand books by women in my Biblio store, with 100% of sales going towards Women's Community Shelters

Kotisivu

https://biblio.com.au/search.php?dealer_id=3305158&order

Parhaillaan lukemassa

Collected fictions (tekijä: Jorge Luis Borges)

Complete works (tekijä: William Shakespeare)

Selected writings of Gertrude Stein (tekijä: Gertrude Stein)

REMEMBRANCE OF THINGS PAST 1 (tekijä: MARCEL PROUST)

Opened ground : poems, 1966-1996 (tekijä: Seamus Heaney)

Looking for Genet: Literary Essays and Reviews (tekijä: Alfred Chester)

The D.A. Calls a Turn (tekijä: Erle Stanley Gardner)

Malinovka Heights: New Translation (tekijä: Ivan Goncharov)

FROM FIRST TO LAST (tekijä: Damon Runyon)

The Collected Short Stories of Roald Dahl (tekijä: Roald Dahl)

Crying in H Mart: A Memoir (tekijä: Michelle Zauner)

Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982 (tekijä: Cho Nam-Joo)

Lempikirjailijat

Svetlana Alexievich, Lillian Beckwith, Jasper Fforde, Erle Stanley Gardner, Ivan Goncharov, Laura Hillenbrand, Carson McCullers, Jessica Mitford, Penelope Mortimer, Alice Munro, Marilynne Robinson, Vikram Seth, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Muriel Spark, Edith Wharton

Favorite Lists

Best books about books, Best Campus Novels, Best of World Literature, Favourite Virago Modern Classics, Female Protagonist, Literature About Women and Girls, Magic Realism, Russian Literature, Significant works of postmodern fiction

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