Books I Read in July

The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August (Claire North)
Thief's Magic

Two books for July:

Continuing with my temporary library addiction, I borrowed The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August following a recommendation. I had a vague recollection of skimming the back of the cover in a bookshop once but for whatever reason had passed over it. After a recent mention from a friend that they had read (and enjoyed) the book I figured I'd go and find a copy to read myself. I'm not too sure what to write about how I actually found it though... The concept behind the book is intriguing but it did take me some time to get into -- perhaps partly due to the way things bounce around a little in time (but that is a great thing about the way the story is told I think). The primary relationship in this book builds really nicely over time and is conveyed beautifully, but the more I think about it, the more I think I'd gain a lot more from the novel with a second reading -- in fact, I'm really tempted to give this another go again very soon!

My second book for the month was another read that stemmed from a recommendation (albeit rather further removed this time). As a student I was prompted to give fantasy a try and read a number of Trudi Canavan novels, starting first with The Black Magician trilogy and then later The Age of the Five trilogy (the final of which I mentioned reading back in 2007). Since then I've read little fantasy (bar the occasional Discworld) and so when I started exploring the library again I figured it was time to have another go. Thief's Magic is the first in The Millennium's Rule trilogy (and the library didn't seem to have the others...), and was a straightforward light read. I'm not sure if its my appreciation or her writing that has changed, but I didn't find this as engaging as I recalled her previous books being. I won't chase down the rest of the series, but if it turns up in the library next time I look I'll definitely see it through to the end.

Books I Read in June

Was it really just one??

Presentation Zen (Garr Reynolds)

I've been 'reading' this for a while but finally made it to the end. Where reading is in quotes only because it's not really a text-heavy book. Interesting though, and potentially useful.

Books I Read in May

The Formula (Luke Dormehl)
Knitting for Peace (Betty Christiansen)
Confessions of a GP (Dr. Benjamin Daniels)
Further Confessions of a GP (Dr. Benjamin Daniels)

Not much to report in terms of exciting reading (completed) this month...

The Formula was the second of the two books bought at the airport last month. Although the lesser of those two books, this was probably the most interesting read this month, but was just a bit shallow for my liking,

Knitting for Peace has been an under-the-bed book that gets pulled out when I'm looking for something that requires zero brain -- this month I made it to the end :)

Confessions of a GP and Further Confessions of a GP were more mindless reading for a weekend when my brain was utterly fried. Picked them up from the library and I was done with both within 24 hours. The speed of reading, however, says far more about how little I could bring myself to do that weekend than it does about how immersive the books were.

I really need to finish a good book.

Books I Read in April

Divergent (Veronica Roth)
Insurgent (Veronica Roth)
Allegiant (Veronica Roth)
How to Build a Girl (Caitlin Moran)
The Opposite of Loneliness: Essays and Stories (Marina Keegan)


My adventures with the Divergent series began with a cheap DVD. I have a habit of buying DVDs in the supermarket when I'm supposed to be food shopping... this was probably one of those.

The problem with book/movie combos is that I always feel the need to tick off the other half of the pair once I've got the first half. Read the book, watch the movie. Seen the film, read the book. For some reason this even applies if I didn't really think much of the book/film I saw first. However... pleasingly I did enjoy the DVD (and the soundtrack) and so when the second movie came out at the cinema and I spotted a box set of books in town I picked these up: Divergent, Insurgent, Allegiant. Young adult books are usually quite light reading, and so I sped through these three. Nice easy books that were obvious film fodder (even if I didn't already know the films existed).

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I once read Caitlin Moran's How To Be a Womanon a plane back from the US -- a last minute airport purchase before a long flight -- I don't remember disliking it, nor to I remember thinking it marvellous. And so I set about to read How to Build a Girl on a train journey that started a weekend of travel -- a last minute bookshop-round-the-corner-from-rail-station purchase. Perhaps my tolerance for books has lowered, but I'm going to add this one to my tedious list. Maybe it's the everydayness of the setting (although I somewhat doubt this) but I couldn't find my way into this. If I hadn't read to the end it wouldn't be listed here, but I am starting to wonder why I've bother pursuing with some of my recent reads. There's nothing notably bad about this book at all, but I just didn't care.

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As a pleasant contrast, my final book of the month was also a last minute buy before a flight to the UK from Germany. I'd browsed a bookshop earlier that day and come away empty handed, but when I spotted the same two books I'd shortlisted in the English language section of a second bookshop, I caved :)

The Opposite of Loneliness is a lovely little collection of short stories and essays. Perhaps Marina's writing would have gone unnoticed if she hadn't died so suddenly after graduation, and perhaps it would not have done. Either way, her writing is skilful and I very much enjoyed meandering through the range of pieces in this volume.

Books I Read in March

The Hourglass Factory (Lucy Ribchester)
Still Alice (Lisa Genova)
Station Eleven (Emily St. John Mandel)

Proof that you shouldn't choose a book based on its cover, I wanted to like The Hourglass Factory but when it came down to it I was bored throughout. Yes, I read to the end, but I did keep asking myself why I was bothering. Disappointing.

I read Still Alice in what was essentially one sitting, interrupted by sleep only because I knew that not sleeping would trash the weekend. Picking it up on Friday night I read enough to get me sucked into the story and first thing in the morning I grabbed it to finish off before starting my day. As someone who hugely values my own thoughts and cognitive abilities, I found the story troubling and thought-provoking. Unusually for me these days, I couldn't quite bear to part with it and so this book has been placed back on the shelves for another occasion. Since I can rarely resist the film of a book that I've read, a night with Julianne Moore might not be too far away...

Station Eleven is a real slow burner. It took some time and well over a third of the book for me to get into this, but over time it grew on me and I did make it to the end. Yet another post-apocalyptic novel, but different to the last. An interesting set of interwoven characters. If you have a bit of time, perhaps consider this one, but I wasn't too disappointed to reach the end.

Books I Read in December, January and February

The Girl with All the Gifts (Mike Carey)
The Minds Eye (Oliver Sacks)
Nothing Left to Lose (Kirsty Mossley)

I have read (start to end) just three books in three months. The most recent, The Girl with All the Gifts, barely squeezed into the end February (and only because I was too ill to do anything else). The Minds Eye was started sometime over the Christmas break and finished mid January. The third, Nothing Left to Lose, could have been anytime -- it was a free Kindle book and I used it as an experiment with the Kindle iOS app.

Two of the books I'd vaguely recommend if you're into that kind of thing. The Girl with All the Gifts joins an ever growing trend for post-apocalyptic novels but is fairly easy reading. The Minds Eye is by no means my favourite Sacks book, but it was interesting in parts for sure.

Books I read in September

Before We Met (Lucie Whitehouse)
Beautiful Oblivion (Jamie McGuire)
Beautiful Wedding (Jamie McGuire)

Books I Read in August

Beautiful Disaster (Jamie McGuire)
Ostrich (Matt Greene)
We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves (Karen Joy Fowler)
Walking Disaster (Jamie McGuire)
The Amazing Thing about the Way It Goes (Stephanie Pearl-McPhee)

Books I Read in July

Gone Girl (Gillian Flynn)
The Carrier (Sophie Hannah)
Eden Close (Anita Shreve)
The Red House (Mark Haddon)
Bridget Jones Mad About the Boy (Helen Fielding)

Book(s) I Read in June

Love Story (Erich Sega)

Books I read in May

The Circle (Dave Eggers)
The Husband's Secret (Liane Moriarty)
Knitting Rules! (Stephanie Pearl-McPhee)
Sisterland (Curtis Sittenfeld)

Books I Read in April

What's So Amazing About Grace? (Philip Yancey)
The First 20 Minutes (Gretchen Reynolds)
Mirror Mirror (Graham Benyon)

Books I Read in March

A Mind of Its Own (Cordelia Fine)
The Secret Children (Alison McQueen)
The Virgin Blue (Tracy Chevalier)
The Light Between Oceans (M.L. Stedman)
Graceling (Kristin Cashore)

Books I Read in February

How Bad are Bananas -- Mike Berners-Lee
Alys, Always -- Harriet Lane
The Rose Petal Beach -- Dorothy Koomson

This month started with an unplanned library visit.

Books I Read in January

The Book Thief -- Markus Zusak
Beautiful Creatures -- Kami Garcia & Margaret Stohl
Beautiful Darkness -- Kami Garcia & Margaret Stohl
Beautiful Chaos -- Kami Garcia & Margaret Stohl
Beautiful Redemption -- Kami Garcia & Margaret Stohl

Books I Read in June

Um, that'd be one then...

Total 1 books:
Delusions of Gender: The Real Science Behind Sex Differences (Cordelia Fine)

This book has quite mixed reviews on Amazon and my feelings are broadly similar. The book is highly critical of pop-science gender books and yet delivers something that feels broadly the same. On the plus side, there's lots of interesting research referenced - lots to follow up - with a selection of critical points. Unfortunately the criticisms seem weak and uninteresting in many cases with no significant opposition beyond the (often obvious) failures in previous research or writing. Flawed and not interesting enough to keep around or reread.

Books I Read in May

It's been a while...

Total 8 books:

American Wife (Curtis Sittenfeld)

KnitLit: Sweaters and Their Stories...and Other Writing About Knitting (Linda Roghaar & Molly Wolf)

KnitLit (too): Stories from Sheep to Shawl . . . and More Writing About Knitting (Linda Roghaar & Molly Wolf)

Confessions of a Shopoholic (Sophie Kinsella)

Shopoholic Takes Manhattan (Sophie Kinsella)

Shopaholic Ties The Knot (Sophie Kinsella)
Shopaholic & Sister (Sophie Kinsella)
Shopaholic & Baby (Sophie Kinsella)

The Lost Symbol (Dan Brown)

Easily my favourite book of the month, I read American Wife whilst on the canal with Hobnob and his parents. Beautifully written.

The KnitLit books were a recommended for you buy from Amazon based on my reading of (almost) all things Yarn Harlot. The second was probably better than the first, both were enjoyable with a mixture of tales but I probably wouldn't read them a second time (I hope I don't change my mind - they're waiting in the charity shop bag!)

I picked half the Shopaholic books up from BookMooch a while ago when I was craving trashy novels. Since I didn't have them all I never got round to reading them. In an attempt to clear the bookcase a bit I tracked the in between ones down and read them through. Done!

My final book of the month was Dan Brown's The Lost Symbol which I'd held back on until I spotted it in paperback and then a little longer in case I spotted it in the same size paperback as my other Dan Brown's - I didn't. Not bad but I prefered The Da Vinci Code to this (and I preferred Angels & Demons to that).

Er yes, so of those I'd probably recommend American Wife but wouldn't make any effort to talk you out of the others (I may even order the third KnitLit book sometime soon).

Teaser Tuesdays Times Two: The Post-Birthday World (Lionel Shriver) and The Laying On Of Hands (Alan Bennett)

It's been a long time since my last Teaser Tuesday post, and I'm reading at least one good book at the moment (I suspect the other will be but I've only just started it).

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TEASER TUESDAYS asks you to:

• Grab your current read.
• Let the book fall open to a random page.
• Share with us two (2) “teaser” sentences from that page, somewhere between lines 7 and 12.
• You also need to share the title of the book that you’re getting your “teaser” from … that way people can have some great book recommendations if they like the teaser you’ve given!
• Please avoid spoilers!

My 2 “Teaser” Sentences for today (book one):

"Irina was perched at the kitchen table over the New York Times with a lone glass of coffee, whose bottom she had carefully sponged before setting it first in a saucer, then on a coaster. In preference to explaining that in this household eating was a sign of weakness, she waved him off with a mumble about not being hungry."

Page 362 of The Post-Birthday World by Lionel Shriver

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And my bonus “Teaser” Sentences for today (book two):

"These thoughts had taken him and the procession to the chancel, where the choir filed into their pews and the spare clergy disposed themselves around, while still leaving the hymn with a couple of verses to run. This gave father Jolliffe a chance to think about what he ought to say about Clive and what he ought not to say."

Page 34 of The Laying On Of Hands by Alan Bennett

Books I Read in October

Total 12 books:

A Modern Girl's Guide To Getting Hitched (Sarah Ivens)
Glass Houses (Rachel Caine)
Hunted (P.C. and Kristin Cast)

Untamed (P.C. and Kristin Cast)

Chosen (P.C. and Kristin Cast)

Betrayed (P.C. and Kristin Cast)

Marked (P.C. and Kristin Cast)
A Lion Among Men (Gregory Maguire)
Tips for Knitters (Debbie Bliss)
Incendiary (Chris Cleave)
When Bad Things Happen to Good Knitters: An Emergency Survival Guide (Marion Edmonds & Ahza Moore)
Things I Learnt From Knitting (Whether I Wanted To Or Not) (Stephanie Pearl-McPhee)

A Modern Girls Guide To Getting Hitched (31/10) didn't really tell me anything all that useful. It was also a wee bit, well, shallow. Borrowed from the library.

Glass Houses (29/10) is the first book in the Morganville vampire series. OK, but not impressive enough to make me want to buy the rest of the series. If you're looking for more Twilight, try House of Night (below) before bothering with these. On Bookmooch.

I've been meaning to try the House of Night novels: Marked (18/10), Betrayed (26/10), Chosen (26/10), Untamed (27/10) and Hunted (28/10) ever since seeing them on Waterstones.com. Having finally given up all hope of persuading them to fix their website (tech support? Goodness no), I gave up and ordered them from The Book Depository. I ordered just the first one initially and then, after finishing that, the remaining four books in the series. They aren't the new Twilight, but they're not bad. I'm particularly enjoying the character twists as the series moves on. Will keep them around once I'm done with them so I can reread them as new books are published.

A Lion Among Men (16/10) is the third book in the Wicked series. It's a while since I've read the other books so I can't really make a good comparison. I did find it harder to follow the clock part of this book than the lion bit though.

Tips for Knitters (15/10) is another useful little knitting reference. Less things crammed into it than When Bad Things Happen to Good Knitters but still rather useful.

Incendiary (14/10) is stunning, simply stunning. On Bookmooch.

When Bad Things Happen to Good Knitters is one of the best little references I've seen. It may only provide one solution to every problem but, nonetheless, it has some useful stuff in it which I will no doubt refer back to again and again. Fab!

Much like Yarn Harlot (in fact, often rather too much like Yarn Harlot for my liking, I'm sure I'd read some of these before) Things I Learnt From Knitting was good but really not *that* good. It was OK - I read it once but quite probably will never read it again.

Books I Read in August and September

I forgot to keep track of August or much of September, no doubt this list will therefore be somewhat inaccurate.

Total 7 books:

Panicology (Simon Briscoe and Hugh Aldersey-Williams)
The Year of Living Biblically (AJ Jacobs)
Starting Over (Tony Parsons)
Songs of the Humpback Whale (Jodi Picoult)
Popco (Scarlett Thomas)
Divas Don't Knit (Gil McNeil)
Yarn Harlot (Stephanie Pearl-McPhee)

Panicology (30/09) had the potential to be a good book, the idea was pretty sound, sadly the actual writing of the book lets it down somewhat. Most notably, one of the authors appears to write coherently whilst the other rather struggles. Numerous paragraphs within the sections of this book seem to fail to make any clear point at all, usually because far too many things have been crammed into the sentences in an attempt to make 'smooth' links between points... not so smooth. I have a strong suspicion that with some simple statistics on things like sentence length, one could easily allocate the individual papers within this book into two separate author piles. I'll be listing this on BookMooch just as soon as I've finished this post.

Possibly the most intelligent thing I've read for a while (I really should make more effort), The Year of Living Biblically is a chronicle of precisely what it says on the tin. Funny and quirky, this book pointed me to some obscure bits of the bible I did know and many I didn't. My one regret is that the book wasn't terribly deep in places I might have liked it to be - I suppose they wanted people to want to read the thing though. Well-written and interesting, although I'm terribly glad I'm not his poor wife. Currently on loan to one of Hobnob's work mates, then maybe Hobnob will read it (but perhaps not) and maybe my Dad and then onto BookMooch I think.

I'm still not so keen on Tony Parson's newer books. I much preferred Starting Over to My Favourite Wife (and the truly uninspiring Stories we Could Tell) but it wasn't so good as Man and Boy, Man and Wife or One for my Baby. Reading the blurb for this novel, the plot grated a little (the whole memory effect thing seemed a bit naff - I'm just waiting for a Cecelia Ahern novel on the subject to prove me right :)). The writing was clean and easy but I don't really think I ever got over the plot. It did have some nice moments though, definitely preferable to the last two of his books I've read. Gone to Tiare (UK) via BookMooch.

I'll buy and read every Jodi Picoult once. Songs of the Humpback Whale was slightly curious as it's actually her first novel, republished for UK readers. The sad ending of this book is revealed at the start but it still manages to be almost tear-jerking in places (depending on your susceptibility to such things I suppose). Like all of her novels, the book dwells poignantly on relationships (with much success) and the controversial topic of this book appears to be age gaps between lovers (Picoult's books all have a 'controversial topic' of some kind so it's possibly worth identifying although I think this one features less heavily in the novel, when weighed against the remaining content, than in many of her others). This is a very bitty analysis of the book! Anyway, I enjoyed it. Have passed it on to MissMac (UK) via BookMooch.

With The End of Mr. Y still fondly remembered, I couldn't pass up on an opportunity to buy and read Popco when I spotted it in my local Waterstones. Like The End of Mr. Y, Popco is neatly written. I didn't find the plot quite so engaging, but it was pretty good. This book can stay on my bookshelf, for now at least.

Another knitting related book, this one totally fictional - Divas Don't Knit (14/08) was a bargain from Lillian's bookshelf as she emptied it to move house. The yarn shop setting was nice and cosy even if the celebrity friendship thing seemed a wee bit bizarre - I suppose it might happen... but never to me. An nice happy book that kept me occupied for a bit. On it's way to aganmooch (Germany) via BookMooch.

Yarn Harlot is one of a small collection (and it actually was small) of books I ordered for delivery home whilst away in the US. Cute and funny it might make a nice little gift for a knitting friend who hadn't read it already but... it would definitely make an ideal library book - I really don't see me rereading it in the near future. A good book to snack on but I'm wondering how long I can justify it sitting on my bookshelf just because it pertains to knitting.