Midsummer review

Picture from http://pinetribe.com/celebrate-midsummer-abroad/


A quick post to pick out a few highlights from my reading year so far now we’re halfway through – and I’m on track to emulate last year, having read about the same number of books 68 vs 71 last year, and close to the same number of pages 18300 vs 18500 – if you add in my three DNFs for this year – SNAP!

I awarded 10/10 to a whopping fifteen books – all brilliant. They are:

  1. Transcription by Kate Atkinson – Review – Period spies / Thriller
  2. The Dry by Jane Harper –  Review – Aussie / Crime
  3. The Train in the Night by Nick Coleman – Review – Memoir / Medical / Rock’n’roll
  4. Slow Motion Ghosts by Jeff Noon – Shiny review – Rock’n’roll / Crime
  5. Graceland by Bethan Roberts –  Shiny review – fictionalised Elvis – Rock’n’roll
  6. MI5 and Me by Charlotte Bingham –  Review – Period spies / Memoir
  7. No Minor Chords by Andre Previn –  Review – Memoir / Hollywood (re-read)
  8. The Bothy by Trevor Mark Thomas –  Review – Gangland / Thriller
  9. Daisy Jones and The Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid –  Shiny Review – Rock’n’roll
  10. Some Kids I Taught and What They Taught Me by Kate Clanchy –  Review – Memoir / Education
  11. West by Carys Davies –  Review – Pioneer / Novella
  12. Modesty Blaise by Peter O’Donnell –  Review – Classic / Period spies / Thriller
  13. There There by Tommy Orange –  Review – Multiphonic
  14. The Girl Before by JP Delaney –  Review – Psychological thriller
  15. Why You Should Read Children’s Books… by Katherine Rundell –  Review – Essay / Reading

A few themes emerge from inside wider categories of crime & thrillers, and memoirs. Rebecca would maybe call this book serendipity, but spread over six months I’d say it’s probably more of an unconscious bias towards reading themes I love more than any others! I adore period spy novels, (well, spy novels from any period actually) and anything with some Rock’n’roll to it.

What else have I read this year?

  • POETRY! This is where going to the library again is coming up trumps for me. 5/68 + one book about the subject.
  • The Wellcome Book Prize shortlist – it’s a shame this prize has been put on hiatus, but I love books that fit in its criteria anyway, so they’ll continue to feature in my reading.
  • Non-fiction in general makes up 16/68 books read this year (24%).
  • The longest book I read was The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay at 640 pages of very small type.

These are my highlights. What were yours?

6 thoughts on “Midsummer review

    • AnnaBookBel says:

      My ratings are always purely of the moment – a few I’d probably revise down on hindsight.

  1. kaggsysbookishramblings says:

    I don’t do ratings, but I guess highlights would include Dostoevsky’s The Possessed and Jeremy Cooper’s Ash Before Oak. Olivia Laing was good. And Osipov’s Rock Paper Scissors too…

  2. Calmgrove says:

    I loved the reminders of the reviews you’d written, a few of which I think I’ll go back and reread. I’m very unimaginative about ratings however; when I cross-post my reviews on Goodreads I tend to give most of them 4/5 stars, just a few I rate as 3* as being a bit blander. Can’t remember the last I gave 5/5 fro but I know there’ve been maybe three or four out of the forty-odd I’ve read this year.

    And library books—I do support our local library, but I tend to keep renewing books I borrow as I’ve already so many other titles on the go! Anyway, well done on a grand accomplishment so far, I’m a little envious…

  3. Café Society says:

    I’d have to check but I suspect the only book I’ve given 5 stars to so far this year has been Anna Burns ‘Milkman’ which I genuinely thought was a work of genius.

  4. Liz Dexter says:

    Wow, good going! I have had a few good ones but am right down on numbers and am going to have to read wildly in the second half of the year!

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