Back at the beginning of 2015, 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 already had. Here's the scoop
- 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)
- In April, better, but not perfect (6 titles removed, 7 added; net result +1)
- Not too bad in May, either (5 titles removed, 6 added; net result +1)
and in June?
- I managed to read 11 titles from my list (All Bones and Lies by Anne Fine, Bloody Bones by Laurell K Hamilton, Love and Treasure by Ayelet Waldman, The House of Sight and Shadow by Nicholas Griffin, The Highest Tide by Jim Lynch. The Silkworm by Robert Galbraith, The Whole Day Through by Patrick Gale, The Twin by Gerhand Bakker, Kingfishers Catch Fire by Rumer Godden, Damsel Under Stress by Shanna Swendson, The Book of Lost Things by John Connolly)
- I removed one book from my list after trying a bit of it and not really getting into it (The Door by Magda Szabo)
- I bought 1 book from a charity shop (an emergency purchase when I was caught somewhere with a spare hour and no book - but I read it right away so it didn't even get added to the list!)
- I bought two books from Waterstones online - an "emergency" purchase after I realised that what I thought was the second book in a series was actually the third, and I needed to get ahold of the second... (The other book being required to hit the free-shipping-over-£10)
- I read 1 and a bit library books this month (a bit of Dark Aemilia by Sally O'Reilly, all of Not the End of the World by Kate Atkinson)
- I re-read one book we own (Daughter of Smoke and Bone by Laini Taylor) to remind myself of it before reading the sequel.
books read: 13
titles removed: 11, titles added: 3; net result -8
Here's the updated list of Books to Read in 2015. There are now 48 books on the list, with 6 months to go - 8 books per month if I don't read anything else or buy anything else (which isn't going to happen, let's face it).
- Isabel Allende, City of Beasts (charity shop, March 2015)
- Margaret Atwood, The Blind Assassin (charity shop, March 2015)
- Charlotte Betts, The Apothecary's Daughter (Waterstones, March 2015)
- Jessie Burton, The Miniaturist (Mother's Day 2015)
- Michael Collins, The Resurrectionists
- Wilkie Collins, The Moonstone (this one would be a re-read)
- Arthur Conan Doyle, The Hound of the Baskervilles
- Jim Crace, Harvest
- Jeffrey Eugenides, The Virgin Suicides (Waterstones, March 2015)
- Barbara Ewing, Circus of Ghosts (charity shop, April 2015)
- Jim Fergus, One Thousand White Women (Summer 2013)
- Fannie Flagg, Can't Wait to get to Heaven (Feb 2015, charity shop)
- 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...)
- E M Forster, Howards End (late 2014)
- Karen Joy Fowler, We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves (Christmas 2014)
- Miles Franklin, My Brilliant Career
- Patrick Gale, Tree Surgery for Beginners (charity shop, April 2015)
- Gabriel Garcia Marquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude (would be a 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...)
- Elizabeth Gaskell, North and South
- Graham Greene, Brighton Rock
- Jane Haddam, Glass Houses
- Alice Hoffman, The Museum of Extraordinary Things (Waterstones online, June 2015)
- Anjali Joseph, Sarasawati Park
- Marina Lewycka, A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian (charity shop, April 2015)
- W Somerset Maugham, The Magician
- Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian (charity table, Wetland Centre, May 2015)
- 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)
- Tom McNeal, Goodnight, Nebraska (AbeBooks, March 2015)
- Azar Nafisi, Reading Lolita in Tehran
- Patrick Ness, The Crane Wife (charity shop, April 2015)
- Kate O'Brien, The Land of Spices
- Tracy Rees, Amy Snow (WH Smith, May 2015)
- Kathy Reichs, Spider Bones
- Kathy Reichs, Virals (charity shop, March 2015)
- Anuradha Roy, An Atlas of Impossible Longing (Winter 2013, bought in a cheap shop in Oxford)
- Carlos Ruiz Zafon, The Watcher in the Shadows (Christmas 2014)
- Simon Sebag Montefiore, One Night in Winter (Waterstones Piccadilly, not sure of date)
- Mark Slouka, The Visible World
- Betty Smith, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (Summer 2013 - a re-read, as I read it when a teen)
- Shanna Swendson, Don't Hex with Texas (Abe Books, May 2015)
- Amy Tan, The Valley of Amazement
- Andrew Taylor, The Anatomy of Ghosts (passed on from Geoff, April 2015)
- Laini Taylor, Days of Blood and Starlight (Waterstones online, June 2015)
- Dreams of Gods and Monsters by Laini Taylor (Waterstones, March 2015)
- Rosie Thomas, The Illusionists (WH Smith, May 2015)
- Rose Tremaine, Merivel (Birthdy, 2014)
- Barry Unsworth, The Ruby in her Navel
- December, Elizabeth Winthrop
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