Book Plan Update - April

For those of you who don't follow my life in intimate detail (what's wrong with you?), you may not realise that back in January, I  made a plan to try to read through books I owned, and not buy new books until I'd made a substantial reduction in the (unread) books I owned. How am I doing? Ok. Not brilliant, but ok.  To wit:

• In January I didn't gain any books, but also didn't remove many titles from my list as I read a lot of library books and had some re-reads. (2 titles removed, 0 added; net result -2)
• In February, I made bigger inroads in my owned titles (7 titles removed, 1 added; net result -6)
• In March, well, you win some, you lose some (4 titles removed, 10 titles added; net result +6)

Reading in April: 

• I managed to read 6 titles from my list (The Book of Madness and Cures by Regina O'Melveny, Half Blood Blues by Esi Edugyan, The Cat's Table by Michael Ondaatje, Rough Music by Patrick Gale, Enchanted Inc by Shanna Swendson, A Humble Companion by Laurie Graham). 
• I bought 5 books from charity shops (Tree Surgery for Beginners by Patrick Gale, If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things by John McGregor, The Crane Wife by Patrick Ness, The Circus of Ghosts by Barbara Ewing and A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian by Marina Lewycka)
• and one book from Abe Books (Enchanted, Inc by Shanna Swendson)
• and added one book to my reading list, passed on to me by Geoff (The Anatomy of Ghosts, Andrew Taylor)
• I read 2 library books this month (Climbing the Mango Trees by Madhur Jaffrey, The Buried Giant by Kazuo Ishiguro)
• I re-read a few books we own My Brother Michael and Thornyhold by Mary Stewart, Voyage of the Dawn Treader by C S Lewis) including Alex's bedtime book
• and read one YA title that my girls have been recommending (and which we already owned), but which wasn't on my list (The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky), so it counts in the books read for the year, but can't be subtracted from the total waiting TBR (not quite finished, but almost, so counting it in April)

April's tally is therefore...  

books read: 12

6 titles removed, 7 titles added; net result +1

Here's the updated list of Books to Read in 2015.  There are now 56 books on the list, with 8 months to go.

1. Isabel Allende, City of Beasts (charity shop, March 2015)
2. Margaret Atwood, The Blind Assassin (charity shop, March 2015)
3. Gerhand Bakker, The Twin 
4. Charlotte Betts, The Apothecary's Daughter (Waterstones, March 2015)
5. Jessie Burton, The Miniaturist (Mother's Day 2015)
6. Bill Bryson, One Summer: America 1927
7. Michael Collins, The Resurrectionists
8. Wilkie Collins, The Moonstone (this one would be a re-read)
9. Arthur Conan Doyle, The Hound of the Baskervilles
10. Jim Crace, Harvest
11. Jeffrey Eugenides, The Virgin Suicides (Waterstones, March 2015)
12. Barbara Ewing, Circus of Ghosts  (charity shop, April 2015)
13. Jim Fergus, One Thousand White Women (Summer 2013)
14. Anne Fine, All Bones and Lies
15. Fannie Flagg, Can't Wait to get to Heaven (Feb 2015, charity shop)
16. Ford Maddox Ford, Parade's End (Nov 2012 - birthday present - bought after the BBC adaptation - but I knew I wouldn't read it straight away as I wanted to let time pass from the adaptation.  Enough time has probably passed now...)
17. E M Forster, Howards End
18. Karen Joy Fowler, We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves (Christmas 2014)
19. Miles Franklin, My Brilliant Career
20. Robert Galbraith, The Silkworm (Waterstones, March 2015)
21. Patrick Gale, The Whole Day Through 
22. Patrick Gale, Tree Surgery for Beginners (charity shop, April 2015)
23. Gabriel Garcia Marquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude (re-read, bought shortly after his death - spring 2014 - as I was reminded how much I enjoyed it and I didn't seem to own a copy - think my old one fell apart, probably...)
24. Elizabeth Gaskell, North and South
25. Rumer Godden, Kingfishers Catch Fire
26. Graham Greene, Brighton Rock
27. Nicholas Griffin, The House of Sight and Shadow
28. Jane Haddam, Glass Houses
29. Laurell K Hamilton, Bloody Bones
30. Anjali Joseph, Sarasawati Park
31. Marina Lewycka, A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian (charity shop, April 2015)
32. Jim Lynch, The Highest Tide
33. W Somerset Maugham, The Magician
34. John McGregor, If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things (charity shop, April 2015 - will be a re-read as have read it in (apparently) October 2004 for a book group)
35. Tom McNeal, Goodnight, Nebraska (AbeBooks, March 2015)
36. Azar Nafisi, Reading Lolita in Tehran
37. Patrick Ness, The Crane Wife (charity shop, April 2015)
38. Kate O'Brien, The Land of Spices
39. Anuradha Roy, An Atlas of Impossible Longing (Winter 2013, bought in a cheap shop in Oxford)
40. Kathy Reichs, Spider Bones
41. Kathy Reichs, Virals (charity shop, March 2015)
42. Carlos Ruiz Zafon, The Watcher in the Shadows (Christmas 2014)
43. Richard Russo, Straight Man (Waterstones Piccadilly, not sure of date)
44. Simon Sebag Montefiore, One Night in Winter (Waterstones Piccadilly, not sure of date)
45. Muriel Spark, Memento Mori (Waterstones Piccadilly, not sure of date)
46. Mark Slouka, The Visible World
47. Betty Smith, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (Summer 2013 - a re-read, as I read it when a teen)
48. Magda Szabo, The Door
49. Amy Tan, The Valley of Amazement
50. Andrew Taylor, The Anatomy of Ghosts (passed on from Geoff, April 2015)
51. Laini Taylor, Dreams of Gods and Monsters (Waterstones, March 2015)
52. Rose Tremaine, Merivel (Birthdy, 2014)
53. Rose Tremaine, Music & Silence
54. Barry Unsworth, The Ruby in her Navel 
55. Ayelet Waldman, Love and Treasure (new in December 2014)
56. December, Elizabeth Winthrop