Friday 23 September 2011

A year in books


I said I was going to blog about each book I read as I finished it.

I was wrong.  Instead, for a whole year, I've done this with them:


I like to think they add a certain je ne sais quoi (messiness?) to the room.   But perhaps they're easier to see like this:

That's a year in books, or at least the books I read at home.

The best of that lot?  The Christopher Brookmyre or the Margaret Atwood
The most annoying? Definitely Sebastian Faulks
The most unnecessarily hyped? The Slap
The most useful? Probably the potty training one...

And for completeness' sake, here are some other books I read in other places:





It's a suitably random selection, if nothing else...

8 comments:

  1. I took a photo of my bookshelves for a post on books yesterday!

    Both husband and I love Christopher Brookmyre; have got Rory reading them now.

    Agree about The Slap. Have given up on the Sebastian Faulks - which one was it, I can't see it in your pile?

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  2. Oh I see the Sebastian Faulkes one now. I've been reading one of his for months now, something about mental illness, and it's just too long and detailed.

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  3. What did you make of your Malcolm Gladwell? I read 'What the Dog Saw' and quite enjoyed his perspective, but I'm not sure if I want to take the bold step of ordering anything else by him. I'll have your Michael Chabon please. I keep looking to see if my bookshop's english language section will get some books by him in, but they never do. But I've heard he's great.

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  4. We read From Heaven Like by Seth in my IB English class with a particular teacher you might be familiar with! :) I liked it.

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  5. make that "From Heaven Lake" haha

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  6. Actually I've realised, when B expressed surprise that I liked the Chris Brookmyre that much, that actually maybe it wasn't quite as good as One Day (don't want to see the film though) or the Michael Chabon...

    Anyway, Fiona, if you want it, it's yours. You'll have to send me an address though...

    Emmy, it's fab isn't it? He's got good taste, that man!

    Trish, I have to say I think Sebastian Faulks is all a bit Emperor's New Clothes. I haven't really liked any of his, although I haven't read Birdsong, but certainly Charlotte Grey was dull, Human Traces (is that the one you're talking about) was more dull, and this one (A Month in December) was irritating - reminiscent of Ian McEwan's Saturday but less than half as good.

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  7. Couldn't agree more about Sebastian Faulks - Human traces was almost unreadable, the December one annoying BUT Birdsong was AMAZING.

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  8. Yes, it was Human Traces. You'd think I'd remember the title as it's been on my bedside table for months. I have given up on it now as I realised I couldn't give a monkeys about what happens to the characters. I do agree with PantsWith Names - Birdsong was excellent.

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I know. I'm sorry. I hate these word recognition, are you a robot, guff things too, but having just got rid of a large number of ungrammatical and poorly spelt adverts for all sorts of things I don't want, and especially don't want on my blog, I'm hoping that this will mean that only lovely people, of the actually a person variety, will comment.

So please do. Comments are great...