January Book Update

This year, I'm just going to keep track of books I read as I go through the year - not worrying about how many books I have waiting to be read or anything like that. So each month's roundup will just be a picture collage showing the books I've read, with a running tally for each month. I think I'll break down new (to me) books and re-reading as well. And maybe pick a favourite each month. This could change as the year goes on... Once again, I'll set my goal as 100 books - it's about what I have time for, more or less.

So, in January:  new (to me) books read: 6; books re-read: 3

Favourite book in January:  Once Upon a River, Diane Setterfield

• I re-read a fantasy series (Graceling, Fire, Bitterblue by Kristin Cashore) to start the year off
• I read one book in a crime series which I really like - some I've read before, but I hadn't read the series in order, so I'm working my way back through it book by book. Which means that some are re-reads, but this one (Doctored Evidence, Donna Leon) was one which was new to me. 
• I read a book I picked up in the Phoenix airport at the end of my summer trip to the US as I only had one book with me and was worried I'd run out of reading on the plane. As it happened, I was able to sleep quite a lot, so I didn't need the book, and it's taken until now to get around to it (Clock Dance, Anne Tyler)
• I read a book whcih I picked up originally solely based on its cover (I am totally a judge-a-book-by-its-cover kind of girl - at least in terms of what attracts me to a book in the first place, if it's not an author I'm familiar with, or hasn't been recommended, etc) which I thought was fantastic. Sets the bar really high for my best books of the year list in December... (Once Upon a River, Diane Setterfield)
• I read between half and two thirds of a book which has been on my pile for a while, picked up in a charity shop  in (apparently) July 2016. (The Incarnations, Susan Barker) It took a while to make my mind up about this one. I didn't like the first chapter at all, but then I quite liked some of the subsequent bits, but in the end (or rather, in the middle), I just decided that I didn't care that much.  Despite some of the interesting history, the relationship between the central characters in all their incarnations just didn't interest me that much. In its comparison to David Mitchell, I think it came up lacking, as the voices were, for me at least, nowhere near as appealing.
• I read a book by an author I like a lot (Kate Atkinson, Transcription).  This one was good, though not my absolute favourite of hers. But I do always enjoy her characters and she crafts a good story.
• I read a teen crime book passed on to me by Sarah (Two Can Keep a Secret, Karen McManus) by an author I've read another book by.  This was a good young adult crime novel - I wasn't entirely sure how it would resolve, though the possibilities were fairly limited, so it wasn't a complete surprise. But it was well written and gripped my attention. (Though I did read it in one sitting over a long evening.)
• I read another crime fiction book from a series set in Venice (not the Donna Leon) - Venetian Masquerade by Philip Gwynne Jones.  I don't like these as much as the Donna Leon ones, but I enjoy the slightly different perspective here.