August Book Update

I liked the way I kept track of my book reading last year, so I'm going to do something similar this year - just monitor books in and out, without any pressure to declutter or read things in order, etc. I'm once again setting a goal to read 100 books in the year - I read 102 in 2018. Otherwise, my only goal is to keep reading and keep enjoying books!

In January: books read: 9; books out: 2; books in: 5; books on windowsill: 59
In February: books read: 10; books out: 0; books in: 0; books on windowsill: 54
In March: books read: 4; books out: 0; books in: 0; books on windowsill: 52
In April: books read: 6; books out: 4; books in: 2; books on windowsill: 48
In May: books read: 10; books out: 0; books in: 3; books on windowsill: 48

In June: books read: 9; books out: 0; books in: 0; books on windowsill: 46
In July: books read: 2; books out: 0; books in: 0; books on windowsill: 46
In August: books read: 16; books out: 0; books in: 2; books on windowsill: 47

July was a crazy month with virtually no reading, and August was pretty mad, too, but as it happens,  lot better for reading. I spent the summer at my mother's house in the US trying to get her ready to move to Arizona.  At the start of the month, I read very little, though I did manage to get through a few very light titles. Just too tired at the end of the day to read much.  By a little later on, things were a bit better. And then we went on the road, lol.  Here's what I managed:

• I read a quartet of romances by Nora Roberts (The Last Honest Woman, Dance to the Piper, Skin Deep, Without a Trace)
• And a trio of romances by Muriel Jensen (First Born Son, Second to None, Third Wise Man)
• I re-read a few historical romances (Savannah Purchase  and Here Comes a Candle, both by Jane Aiken Hodge; The Smile of the Stranger by Joan Aiken, The Capricorn Stone by Madeleine Brent)
• I read/re-read a couple of mysteries in a series I'd read before (Shakespeare's Landlord, Shakespeare's Christmas by Charlaine Harris)
• I re-read a book I've read twice before - I had an extra copy of it at home for some reason, so it was a good one to take with me and know I didn't need to bring back. Such a great book (The Road, Cormac McCarthy)
• I read one title from my list, which I'd brought with me (The Music Shop, Rachel Joyce)
• I re-read one mystery  in the Dominic Felse series by Ellis Peters (Piper on the Mountain) and started another, but didn't finish it before I had to leave the book at my mother's - so busy and tired once we got to AZ that I didn't have much time to read at all.
• I bought a couple of books in a used book shop in Maryland, in case I needed more reading for the plane on the way home...

Here's the updated list of Books to Read in 2019. These are the books hanging out on my windowsill upstairs, waiting to be read. Or discarded. But hopefully, read. I started the year with 60 books on this list - you can see how long the books have been knocking around by the dates in brackets.

1. 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...)
2. Elizabeth Gaskell, North and South
3. 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...) 
4. Daphne du Maurier, Frenchman's Creek (Waterstones Piccadilly - 2016? bought in principle for the girls, but thought I might read it again as it's been ages)
5. Daphne du Maurier, Jamaica Inn (Waterstones Piccadilly - 2016? bought in principle for the girls, but thought I might read it again as it's been ages)
6. Susan Barker, The Incarnations (charity shop, July 2016)
7. Orhan Pamuk. A Strangeness in Mind (Christmas present 2016)
8. Andrew Taylor, The Ashes of London (passed to me by Geoff after he read it, April 2017)
9. Mark Haddon (Introduction), States of Mind: Experiences at the Edge of Consciousness (Waterstones Piccadilly, April 2017)
10. John Irving, Avenue of Mysteries  (Waterstones Piccadilly, April 2017)
11. Mikhail Bulgokov, The Master and Margarita (charity shop, April 2017)
12. Jane Smiley, Early Warning (Abe Books, May 2017, after finishing the first in the series)
13. Siri Hustvedt, A Woman Looking at Men Looking at Women (Waterstones Wimbledon, July 2017)
14. Lucy Worsley, A Very British Murder (Waterstones Oxford, August 2017)
15. Sebastian Barry, Days without End (Abe Books, January 2018)
16. Arundhati Roy, The Ministry of Utmost Happiness (passed to me by Geoff, Feb 2018)
17. Bella Pollen, Hunting Unicorns (Kingston Hospital Charity Bookshelf, March 2018)
18. Sebastian Faulkes, A Week in December (Charity Shops, March 2018)
19. Jose Saramago, Blindness (Lisbon, April 2018)
20. Margaret Atwood, Oryx and Crake (passed on by Geoff, April 2018)
21. Spark, Alice Broadway (Waterstones Wimbledon, April 2018)
22. The Mime Order, Samantha Shannon (Abe Books, May 2018)
23. March, Geraldine Brooks (Abe Books, June 2018)
24. Salt to the Sea, Ruta Sepetys  (Waterstones Picadilly, July 2018)
25. Selected Stories, Alice Munro (charity shop, July 2018)
26. The Murderer's Ape, Jakob Wegelius (Waterstones Wimbledon, August 2018)
27. The Snack Thief, Andrea Camelleri (passed to me by Geoff, Sept 2018)
28. Even the Dogs, Jon McGregor (Abebooks, Sept 2018)
29. Islands in the Stream, Ernest Hemingway (Abebooks, Sept 2018)
30. Throne of Glass, Sarah J Maas (Waterstones Wimbledon, October 2018)
31. The Mistletoe Bride, Kate Mosse (charity shop, November 2018)
32. Milkman, Anna Burns (Waterstones online, December 2018)
33. Hillbilly Elegy, J D Vance (Waterstones Piccadilly, December 2018)
34. Homegoing, Yaa Gyasi (Christmas present, 2018)
35. Theft, Peter Carey (charity shop, January 2019)
36. The Crossing, Cormac McCarthy (charity shop, January 2019)
37. Elinor Oliphant is Completely Fine, Gail Honeyman (Waterstones Wimbledon, January 2019)
38. Little Fires Everywhere, Celeste Ng (Waterstones Wimbledon, January 2019)
39. And the Mountains Echo, Khaled Hosseini (charity shop, Harborne, April 2019)
40. Kate Atkinson, Transcription (Waterstones Wimbledon, May 2019)
41. Laini Taylor, Muse of Nightmares  (Waterstones Wimbledon, May 2019)
42. Emily St John Mandel, Last Night in Montreal  (Waterstones Wimbledon, May 2019)
43. The Case for Jamie by Brittany Cavallaro (AbeBooks, June 2019)
44. The Red Queen by Christina Henry (Waterstones online, June 2019)
45. The Venetian Masquerade by Philip Gwynne Jones (Waterstones online, June 2019)