sulkyblueblog | Entries tagged with books

41 books this year! a massive improvement on last year's utterly embarrassing 10, but a little behind the previous year's count of 49. All of the books were new to me, although there's a number of things I want to re-read it always feels a more pressing task to read new things.

After last year's truly embarrassing book count I reinstated my page count targets, which I acknowledge is a bit daft but it's a method that actually works to get me to read more. I initially set myself a target of 50 pages per day (on average) but after a couple of months realised that I wasn't going to hit that target and decreased it to 40 a day. My reading was far from regular though, alternating bursts of activity with stretches where I might not pick up a book for a week. I hadn't added the numbers up during October and November and thought I was miles away from hitting my goal, but on December 28th I discovered I was 750 pages short of my target, which seemed too close to let go. So despite actually being out for 2 of the 4 remaining days, I burnt through the pages to come in dead on target at about 11.30 on New Year's Eve. Not exactly a resounding success, but a very exact one. It did remind me that spending a whole day on the sofa with a book was just as enjoyable as burning through a box set.

I think I shall keep the 40 page target this year again as I do find it motivates me to read and that I actually enjoy the reading when I force myself to do it. It's not necessarily logical, but it does work for me.

E-reader
I finally gave in and got an e-reader this year, a basic Kindle. My primary motivation was so that I could go back to sharing books with my housemates who made the shift almost entirely 'e' last year. I really missed being able to easily follow their recommendations and thanks to some sort of technical wizardry we can now have a shared library again which has greatly contributed to the number of fantasy and sf novels I've read, particularly from new authors.

I'm still not completely convinced though. I certainly love the size and weight of the thing, which makes reading on crowded tubes a doddle and allows it to slot into the smallest of bags or even pockets without thought. I usually try to have a fiction and non-fiction on the go at the same time and this would be a great way to allow me to switch back and forth, but I never managed to synchronise so that both my on-the-go books were on the kindle. The ease of purchasing is also a big plus, instantaneous delivery anywhere there's wifi and plenty of cheap or even free books on offer.

But there are downsides. The biggest one for me is that I still love visiting bookshops. I just don't buy the same breadth of stuff online as I do from wandering around a Waterstones and seeing what draws my eye. I also love owning books and having them on my bookshelves (although that's constantly battling with lack of space). From a practical point of view I have some issues with the kindle user-interface when it comes to things like footnotes and just the lack of ease for flicking back and forth to double check things.

To me, the practical ease is in constant conflict with the fact that I just love BOOKS. So I'll probably continue to alternate back and forth.

Authors
There are a total of 35 authors, two books each had two authors, there were five authors I read two books for and one author I read three books. 18 of those authors were new to me (including the trilogy writer and two of those I read twice) which at 51% is a little bit down on previous years. The gender balance is pretty poor with only 8 women (23%). All the books were written in English which I'm a little disappointed by, 57% british authors, 40% American, two Canadians and a South African.

Non-Fiction
I read 10 non-fiction books this year, 24% of the total which is exactly the same ratio in 2012. It's a percentage I'm quite happy with given that they tend to be longer and require more concentrated reading. Actually there was an eleventh one, a book on Agile project management, but I failed to review it at the time and now can't find it (it wasn't anything spectacular). I'm also quite pleased with the diversity of subjects a couple of work related books, a bit of history, a bit of culture, biographies, some science and a couple about language.

Listed roughly in order of quality:

Life on Air by David Attenborough - an extraordinary life, eloquently and entertainingly told.

David and Goliath by Malcolm Gladwell - fascinating, challenging and entertaining as always.

The Pragmatic Programmer by Andrew Hunt and David Thomas - useful for anyone working in or adjacent to programming, it's got some interesting ideas and is very readable, although maybe a little less practical than Refactor Your Wetware

The Etymologicon and The Elements of Eloquence by Mark Forsyth - both are very entertaining to read, although I confess to not really being able to retain any of the information in them.

Hatchet Job: Love Movies, Hate Critics and It's Only a Movie by Mark Kermode - Hatchet Job is by far the better book offering an insight into the practical and ethical lives of critics. It's Only a Movie is less well structured, but both have a refreshingly frank and self-deprecating tone and are filled with entertaining anecdotes.

Tricks of the Mind by Derren Brown - some bits are entertaining, some bits are informative, but as a whole the book's a bit of a mess and far from Brown's best.

A Little History of Science by William Bynum - I don't know who this book was aimed at, it was way to patronising for adults of even young adults, but the fast and furious delivery of facts across a huge range of subjects isn't going to engage younger readers. Really disappointing.

Seventeen Equations that Changed the World by Ian Stewart - far too complex and mind-numbingly boring.

Fiction
I read 31 fiction books this year. Three of them are part of ongoing series that I pick up in hardback as soon as they are released (Pratchett's Discworld, Aaronovitch's Rivers of London and Brust's Jhereg) and I'm still slowly trudging through O'Brian's Master and Commander Series. There are a couple of other authors whose new books I pick up with varying speed - Baxter, Rowling, Atkinson, Doctorow and Gaiman, and a couple that flutter around the edges like Bacigalupi and Willis.

Many of the new names on my list are thanks to my housemates reading and their commitment to new sf and fantasy writers. We don't always agree, but their picks are always interesting and prompt enthusiastic discussions. Given that most of the books on my reading list this year were recommendations from them, it's not surprising that 26 of the books could be considered sf or fantasy of some sort, although with even authors like Atkinson taking a swerve towards the genre side of things they seem to be coming from all sides!

I've rated 18 of the 31 books 'good' or 'outstanding' this year which at 44% is pretty high. The real standouts for me though were:

Foxglove Summer by Ben Aaronovitch - The Rivers of London series continues to excel, even when taken out of London.

Life After Life by Kate Atkinson - A real showcase for Atkinson's ability to write fantastic characters

Wool by Hugh Howey - un-put-downable. Not necessarily a hugely original idea, but extremely well written. Sadly the other two books in the series (Shift and Dust) didn't quite live up to the very high standards, but made a satisfying trilogy.

Nine Goblins by T Kingfisher - a hilarious dry sense of humour and wonderful characters, just a shame it was so short.

The Deaths by Mark Lawson - the characters are somewhere between annoying and hateful, yet the book is completely compelling. A very impressive trick.

The First Fifteen Lives of Henry August by Claire North - a stunningly well developed concept at its heart which is beautifully explained.

Redshirts by John Scalzi - an exceptional piece of writing that has the passion of a fan and the awareness of an insider, a clever, surprising, satisfying and elegantly short joy.

At the other end of the spectrum there were three non-fiction books that fall into the category of 'very disappointing':

The Incrementalists by Steven Brust and Skyler White - I love Brust but this book was a mess. It's a complex concept badly explained leaving this 350 pages of technicalities.

Pirate Cinema by Cory Doctorow - not a book, but a political agenda looking for a structure. I broadly agree with Doctorow's politics on this, but the opposing point of view is given such a weak and brutal voice, and the 'heroes' are such a bunch of Mary Sues that I was just left feeling I'd been suckered into listening to someone rant on a soapbox.

Constellation Games by Leonard Richardson - inferior in every way to Ready Player One, the universe was poorly developed, characters less engaging, plot muddled and had none of the nostalgia for video games.

And the rest:

Ship Breaker by Paolo Bacigalupi - much better edited than The Windup Girl, more punchy for the young adult market but losing none of the beautiful world building.

Proxima by Stephen Baxter

Zoo City by Lauren Beukes

Hawk by Steven Brust - Vlad's running a caper and Kragar is back!

The Dresden Files: Storm Front by Jim Butcher - the only reason I didn't get lost in this series is that I was reading the Kadrey series instead.

Hawkeye - My Life as a Weapon by Matt Fraction - I love this approach to the character, it really felt like Joss Whedon's kind of hero, but I just don't get on with the graphic novel/comic format.

The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman

Burton and Swinburne in the Strange Affair of Spring Heeled Jack by Mark Hodder

Sandman Slim and Kill the Dead by Richard Kadrey - an interesting series with a nice style and great central character, (the author is definitely a fan of the TV series Supernatural, as I am)

The Mauritius Command by Patrick O'Brian

The Truth by Michael Palin

Raising Steam by Terry Pratchett

The Casual Vacancy by JK Rowling - definitely proves Rowling is more than just Potter. Stunningly depressing.

Cat Out of Hell by Lynne Truss

The Palace Job by Patrick Weekes

The Gordonston Ladies Dog Walking Club by Duncan Whitehead

Blackout and All Clear by Connie Willis - utterly engrossing but actually not very good. Massively too long and the plot relies on the 'smart' characters to be idiots.

Originally posted on my website

October was a pretty strange month, I started off embracing my unemployed status, throwing myself into sorting out my room and throwing away or gifting to charity vast amounts of stuff (mostly clothes I no longer fit in – in a good way!) and making it once again usable as somewhere to sit and work in. Then by the end of it I was back at work, seemingly in a job as close to my dreams as I've really allowed myself to hope (as I explained to someone on twitter, I'm a project manager, we dream within deliverable tolerances).

I hold the rather glamourous title of Portfolio Performance Manager in the Project Management Office at the BBC. That basically means that I collate reports and do some analysis of the critical programmes running at the BBC, which were described to me as the "biggest, hairiest" projects. I'm still settling in of course, but thus far it's fascinating to be looking at projects that are at least one order of magnitude larger than anything I've worked on before. It's nice to be a step removed and looking at the projects from more of an assurance point of view than a delivery one, but I'm getting to bring a lot of my experience in as well to keep things as practical as possible. Also the commute is about half hour door to door, the people are incredibly smart and lovely and it's the freakin' BBC! The picture on the right is where we had our team away day!

Baking
A housemate's birthday gave me an excuse to try something that I've wanted to give a go for a while – an opera cake. I based it on this recipe, but swapped the raspberries for cherries and used kirsch to make it more blackforest gateaux. It was my first attempt at a joconde sponge, which didn't do too badly, although could've been a bit thicker, and also at French buttercream which was a lot easier than expected and I think may turn into my go-to frosting. Overall I was very pleased with the result even though it took me well over 5 hours to make and used every bowl I own at least twice.

Another first this month was making soufflé. An early dinner presented time to make a pudding and I decided to give these a go. I was actually surprised at how well they came out for a first attempt with three out of five rising and only two collapsing in a sad but tasty heap. I did chase down lots of "top tips for perfect soufflés" online (completely coat the dishes in butter and sugar, wipe around the rim of the bowl, eat immediately).

A third first was trying éclairs, inspired by the Great British Bake Off. These were probably the least successful new thing, mostly because the recipe I followed turned out to be for mini-eclairs without really making that clear. I got bored filling and chocolating them, so turned most of them into a sort of Eton mess, very tasty, but not what I'd planned.

I'm falling in love with hot water crust pastry, it's so easy to make and handle and turns out really impressive pies. I did a layered pie with stuffing on the bottom to absorb moisture, then pork, red cabbage and apple sauce and it was amazing.
Finally, I succumbed to these dinosaur moulds from Lakeland and made little sponge dinosaurs. How could I resist?

Books
Starting a new job put rather a dent in my reading towards the end of the month, putting me 143 pages down on my month's target and pretty much wiping out the buffer that I had built up at the beginning of the year. It also means that I've only got 3 books to report back on. The Incrementalists by Steven Brust and Skyler White was really disappointing to this Brust lover. It had a very interesting idea, but it was so complicated that the whole book turned into a giant piece of exposition. On the other hand, the second in Richard Kadrey's Sandman Slim Series, Kill the Dead was as entertaining as the first, although I kind of wish the story wasn't moving so fast so I could relish each phase a bit more before it all changes again. One non fiction for the month and it was a good ‘un. Hatchet Job: Love Movies, Hate Critics by Mark Kermode is a great book for anyone who loves film or has ever tried to write a review of anything. It's very well thought out and also a lot of fun to read, full of self-deprecating anecdotes and a huge love of film.

Films
Four cinema trips for three very different films! Lucy was a very satisfying little sci-fi film, that bounded along with enough ideas to keep it interesting and enough action to keep it bouncing along, not revolutionary, but a lot of fun. Before I Go to Sleep is a very good adaption of the book and given that I'd forgotten the various twists, it really pulled me in and kept me guessing. The casting is excellent! Pride is a wonderfully heart-warming film that ha me laughing and crying. I will say however that I don't think it's the masterpiece that others do as it fell down in some critical, practical issues of storytelling, but that didn't stop me thoroughly enjoying it. Boyhood was an incredible piece of film making and was a fascinating idea, but ultimately I didn't think the content of the film quite lived up to the concept. The characters were all complex and well played, and watching them develop was interesting, but I didn't really like spending time with them and was often bored by individual segments.

Three more Disney films, all on the older end of the spectrum. Dumbo was lovely, bringing all the building blocks of music, story, characters and message together very neatly. Lady and the Tramp
was sweet, but ultimately forgettable, ultimately feeling like a draft run at The Aristocats. The 1940 Fantasia (1940)
on the other hand though was far better than the 2000 version with some absolutely classic pieces of animation.

Cloud Atlas - Truly awful, I gave up after less than an hour.

The Colour Purple

Her - another great scifi film, taking a concept and fully exploring it. A little heavy on whimsy at time, but excellent performances.

Nebraska - dull. And pretentious. And REALLY dull.

Cuban Fury - a sweet and funny film utterly spoiled by Chris O'Dowd's pantomime villain.

Die Hard - dated, but still the quintessential action film.

10 Years - great idea and impressive ensemble, but the balance of time spent on individuals wasn't quite right so some bits dragged and other bits were under-developed.

Dr Zhivago - utterly gripping despite its ridiculous run-time.

Marvellous - reviews itself. Sweet, funny, charming and just plain lovely.

TV
Following the timings of the American television year, I did my wrap up posts of the year's new shows and the shows that I watched full seasons of. I seem to have watched 26 American pilots (roughly 50% of all new dramas) and 30 full series, which is actually down on previous years. I don't think 2013-14 was a particularly amazing year for television in general, there were very few things, and no new shows that really made me sit up and pay attention is. On the plus side though, it's certainly a glorious time for women in television, on both sides of the pond, with many of the most memorable and impressive performances coming from women.

I caught up on a lot of last year's pilot reviews which I grouped together and included The Night Shift (bit rubbish, but good fun, I watched through the rest of the season in a couple of days). Intelligence (solid, but not remarkable), Chicago PD (quintessential police procedural), Rake (refreshing and fun), Black Sails (daft but entertaining), Crisis (nice idea, well put together), Legends (weak) and Halt and Catch Fire (fine, left me uninspired). Finally I reviewed a couple of new shows that recently started in the UK, both about disease outbreaks - The Last Ship and The Strain. The former is a lot of fun which is a long way from smart, but isn't quite as dumb as it seems; the latter thought it was smarter than it really was and fell apart under its own contrivances. The only full series I reviewed in September was the utterly excellent House of Cards: Season 2 which I highly recommend.

August, a month I largely remember as being depressingly grey and miserable. I once again find myself between jobs (or 'practising for retirement' as someone described it. My contract came to an end at Espresso Education after almost a year, which given I was only supposed to be there 2 months, isn't bad going! So I'm having a bit of a break and then back to job hunting.

Most of the month was focussed on that, so I haven't really been up to that much. I did make it to Cambridge for a couple of visits, and got a trip to London Zoo to visit the baby tigers in at the end of the month (I'm still sorting photos, so watch this space), but that was about it.

Baking
One of the things I miss most about work (other than the lovely colleagues and the pay cheque of course) is the willing guinea pigs for my baking. Without an office full of hungry mouths to feed, I'm forced to consume more calories than I should and force feed my housemates until they think I'm trying to kill them with cholesterol.

My going away gift to the office was a lemon curd swiss roll (loosely based on this GBBO recipe, but with extra lemon zest in the sponge and a buttercream to bulk out the filling) and a chocolate orange loaf (this recipe - I didn't need the orange juice as the mix was already runny enough, so I added some orange essence and it gave a really nice, strong orange flavour, I left off the icing). We've had a big crop of apples from the garden so I made an apple, sultana and ginger pie (I pre-cooked the apple, blind baked the pastry and put a layer of sultanas to absorb the moisture and actually managed a non-soggy bottom!) and an apple, ginger and syrup upside down cake which was almost more of a pudding due to sogginess, but was spectacularly tasty. I also made my first banoffee pie which was more 'asembling' than baking and was pretty catastrophic, in a very very good way!

Reading
Not a great month for reading, I was down 147 pages on my target of 40 pages per day, but I'm still up on my target for the year, so no harm done. Now that I'm not working, I'm getting a bit more into a pattern of going out for a coffee and reading, which is helping me hit and exceed my daily targets a bit more.

I finished off Hugh Howey's Wool trilogy with Shift and Dust. I felt the middle book suffered a bit being built of multiple threads of flashbacks which left me a bit bored because I knew where they would all end up. The final book though picked things back up and barrelled along. Overall I think the trilogy didn't quite live up to the polish and readability of the first book, but I'll certainly look out for this author in the future. I also read The Palace Job by Patrick Weekes which was a really fun idea poorly delivered due to amateur mistakes by the author such as overloading introductions and very poor editing.

I will say that all those books I felt actually suffered from being read on ebook. I really missed the easy ability to flick back and forth and double check things, particularly in the Wool series where each chapter is set in a different place and time and not being able to jump back and double check the time differences was very frustrating. Mind you, I'm staring at a two foot high pile of books that I have no space for on my shelves, so having spent the last 6 months reading mostly ebooks has at least meant the pile hasn't been added to!

I briefly tried reading History of Histories by John Burrow, but after two chapters I was bored to tears. It's a lot drier and more academic than I really wanted to read and also I felt spent more time talking about the actual history than how the historian was reporting it. Also I was extremely frustrated that the author didn't question whether someone writing about a war that was still ongoing was in fact a journalist rather than an historian.

Films
Two cinema trips this month and they could not have been more different films! Guardians of the Galaxy was a pure joy of a film to watch, completely hilarious and just really good fun from start to finish. The soundtrack album (Awesome Mix 1) is enough to make me smile. Lilting meanwhile was a small indie film that did have moments of humour, but was mostly about grief and heartache. It was pretty well done, but one of the central elements about translation became extremely tiresome after a while. I saw it at the new Curzon in Victoria though and it is a truly wonderful cinema to see even a mediocre film in.

I'm somewhat disappointed that Lovefilm's dvd delivery service is deteriorating now that it's been integrated to Amazon. I'm finding the site harder to use, delivery times slower and more things not available. Guess I'm just old fashioned wanting things by post. Still, I managed to tick off four more Disney films. I coincidentally watched Aladdin just a couple of days before the heart-breaking news about Robin Williams and I'm glad I did, because I wouldn't have been able to fully appreciate the lightness and brightness of the film afterwards. The Lion King is another film of that period that's holding up stunning well and is still a vibrant and original work. Surprisingly the same can be said of Cinderella which I really enjoyed, particularly appreciating the spunky heroine. Pinocchio sadly broke the trend and although I liked the warmth of the opening scenes I thought the story was just too unfocussed.

Other films were:

The Double - an ok film, but so deeply unsettling in tone that I came very close to switching it off.

Captain America: Winter Soldier - boring. Just alternating fighting and exposition. Mind you I was completely spoiled on the plot.

Calvary - Not exactly an easy or cheerful film to watch, but extremely good.

Winters Bone - I was surprised at how easy and engaging I found this film, I was expecting something a lot more pretentious, but Jennifer Lawrence completely drew me in.

Struck by Lightning - a good high school movie, capturing an interesting tone. But ultimately a quite depressing story.

Television
I went through the Emmy nominees just before the awards explaining who should and shouldn't have been nominated, who should and would win. My predictions were pretty far off, but then so were most people's it would seem. Maybe the critics have moved on from Breaking Bad, but clearly the voters haven't. I was very happy to see Julianna Margulies win and all the awards for Sherlock, but most of the other awards left me a bit uninspired. The ceremony itself (or the edited down version that Sky Living showed) was fine, the opening monologue made me laugh, and at least these actors can read an auto-cue which is more than the people at the BAFTAs ever manage.

The Honourable Woman - fantastic performance from Maggie Gyllenhaal, and fascinating stories and characters, but the plot got away from me and there were a few clumsy moments.

Fargo: Season 1 - on my first pass of the pilot I wasn't inspired, but I watched it a second time so I could write a review and I actually got hooked and compulsively watched the series through in a couple of days. Amazing performances, quirky tone and a twisty story drew me in and kept me gripped.

True Detective: Pilot review - A second viewing of this pilot however only reinforced my lack of interest. A nice idea and a leading pair made in heaven, but the tone and direction left me bored and un-engaged.

The Following: Season 2 - stupid entertainment, nothing more or less.

Almost Human: Season 1 - a brilliant buddy cop series with a pretty good sci-fi skin on it. Sad that it didn't get more viewers.

I've also been trying to polish off some pilots in advance of my end of year round-ups (hopefully coming this week). So I plodded through various teen offerings: Reign (going to endlessly trip over historical problems, and too uneven in tone), The 100 (potentially interesting story and characters) and Star-Crossed (25 year olds pretending to be teenagers and bodging together old ideas in a not very interesting way).

"Things I did in June. Um... Crap, I'm really not sure that I actually did anything! I don't even seem to have gone to the cinema. I went to Kew Gardens for a picnic, but spent the whole day just sitting eating and chatting, which was lovely, but not really of blog worthy report. I didn't even go to Cambridge, they came to me for once! I finished Batman Arkham Origins, and frankly that isn't really worthy of the pixels taken to write that sentence. I'd like to say July will be more exciting, but given it's nearly half way through by the time I'm writing this, I wouldn't get your hopes up.

Baking

I did bake some stuff at least. I'm doing a wedding cake in a couple of weeks so have been practising my Victoria sponges. I never really make them, or chose them, always going for other more exciting cakes, but I forget how tasty a fresh Victoria Sponge can really be. After some experiment I'd say fresh whipped cream and raspberries are best (strawberries are a bit too wet and slippery), although they're logistically harder as the cream doesn't keep. So I'm going to have to assemble the cake on site which is a bit tricky. I'll report back next month!

For the picnic, despite only being 4 adults and 3 children I made sausage rolls (shop bought pastry, I felt dirty), mini spinach and feta pies (also shop bought pastry, I don't feel bad about that, I draw the line at making filo!), chocolate biscuits from a random book that weren't really all that amazing and an apricot and marzipan loaf from the Great British Bake Off Showstoppers book that was so good I made another one the following week.

Films I watched

The Emperor's New Groove had some sharp dialogue and stylish animation but the plot was a pickle.

Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit – I thought this was a spoof at first, it got better and Pine and Knightly are good, but Branagh badly misjudged the direction and the Russian accent.

Ender's Game – love the book, great performance from Asa Butterfield, but the script and adult performances were phoned in.

Robocop – somewhat muddled tone and subject left me mentally switching between watching an action shootup and a psychological thriller.

Double Indemity – a group of hateful characters left me disconnected from the elegant plot.

Shakespeare in Love – I remembered it as a middling romantic comedy, but I'd either missed or ignored the actually rather clever writing.

For a Fistful of Dollars – I like spaghetti westerns more than I do normal westerns... but not much more.

Hunger Games: Catching Fire – Excellent adaption of the book, but that means it carries the same structural issues. Lawrence is superb, I wish she had better male leads to bounce off.

Prisoners - another film ruined by bloated runtime. The tension of the issues, the stylish direction and the powerful acting was utterly undermined.

Mortal Instruments: City of Bones - fine, but nothing more.

Inside Llewyn Davis - rather charming, I even liked the music.

Reading
Two non-fiction and two fiction in June, not bad! The two non-fiction were a mixed bag, The Etymologicon by Mark Forsyth is a good book for short commutes (or I guess a bathroom book) as the information comes thick and fast, but with a lot of humour. When I tried to read in longer installmants though it overwhelmed. A Little History of Science by William Bynum suffers from trying to cover too much too briefly and seems to be targeted at a very young audience, but I'm not sure that anyone who didn't find the language patronising would be able to engage with the subject.
I continue to work through the backlog of ebooks from my housemates so am reading a lot of sf and fantasy. Gaiman's The Ocean at the End of the Lane didn't work for me as well as his other works have, I thought the concept wasn't as solidly built and didn't really connect to the characters. Paolo Bacigalupi's Ship Breaker however was a really punchy interesting work with a fascinating world behind it. It was a little disjointed at times, but it was a fun read.

Television
I'm stuggling to keep up with my reviewing as many series come to an end, so there's a bit of a backlog. I've recently posted:

The Good Wife: Season 5 – practically perfect in every way

Game of Thrones: Season 4 – far from perfect, but better.

Agents of SHIELD: Season 1 – a very long way from perfect, but it had some good moments

Mad Men: Season 7 part 1 – utterly non-perfect. I'm calling it, this show is awful

Happy Valley – Back to perfection

I'm not great at posting regularly to my blog, and then when I look back at the big gaps I rather regret it. So I'm gonna go back to doing monthly catch-ups, if for no one's amusement but my own!

My brother took me to see Matilda last week as a belated birthday present and it was utterly utterly lovely. A beautiful story (which I was actually quite happy I didn't know going in), wonderful acting from young and old alike, fun music and stunning set design. My only complaints would be I occasionally couldn't make out the lyrics and it did get a little screechy a times, but the children in the audience loved those bits. I always say I should go to the theatre more and then completely fail to do so, although the price is rather terrifying!

I've been back and forth to Cambridge a few times to visit the Whitfield clan who get more wonderful every time I see them (well the twins do, their parents are a consistent level of wonderful with an increasing veneer of exhaustion). We've had a few adventures to a nearby zoo, the rather lovely Orchard Tea Gardens and have thus far avoided a trip to the hospital! I also went to The Wetlands Centre.

Baking
I've been asked to help out at a wedding in a couple of months, so I've been practising macarons, much to the delight of friends and colleagues who seem to have no problem being experimented upon. I'm still uncertain about attempting to do at least 200, but I think with some ebaying for equipment and something of a production line it should be doable, particularly if I try to restrain myself with flavours. I also tried my hand at decorating for my brother's birthday cake, it meant a lot of food colouring, but I think the minion came out ok.

Couple of other recent new recipes:
A very tasty fruitcake and an interesting idea for a crumbled marzipan topping, but it didn't stick very well so was a bit messy to eat.
A spectacularly simple ginger traybake, not the most gingery of cakes, but the treacle adds and interesting flavour and I liked the candied ginger on the top.
This apricot couronne is still my go to for any sweet bread, either in a crown, as a long plait or sliced into individual rolls, I've done it with apples and cinnamon and recently with orange zest and chocolate chips.
Chcolate, hazelnut and raspberry torte. SO good, so pretty and gluten free!
This apple and cinnamon pull-apart bread was fantastic, this pesto bread was ok but not spectacular.

Films
I'm up to 56 films already this year so I won't mention them all, just some of the new releases in the cinema and some of the older ones that I'd recommend. The rest are all on my website.

I had a day of cinema last Monday and went to see Godzilla (a very poor story, script and casting in the main roles that left me bored and unengaged), X-Men: Days of Future Past (excellent cast, sparky script, solid story and entertaining action, thank heavens Bryan Singer is back!) and Kaze Tachinu/The Wind Rises (beautiful story, gorgeous animation, interesting look at engineering, tiresome love story, but too long). Other recent cinema trips covered The Amazing Spider-Man 2 (an entertaining mess), Muppets Most Wanted (very disappointing, completely lacking the soul of the most recent Muppets) and The Lego Movie (bonkersly entertaining if you let yourself just go with it). Also I didn't manage to catch one of the limited showings of Veronica Mars but I did rent it and absolutely adored it.

I had a bit of an X-Men blitz, partly in preparation for seeing the new film, but I actually only saw half of them before the new one. It did remind me of how good X-Men 1 and 2 are, how less good Last Stand and Origins: Wolverine were and how frustrating the poor supporting cast on First Class was compared to Fassbender and McAvoy (and indeed the original series). I'm also having a bit of a Disney year, re-watching many of the classics. Thus far I've love The AristoCats, been ambivalent about Bambi and very disappointed by Fantasia 2000.

Other films of note, I really enjoyed The Broken Circle Breakdown, The Croods, The Selfish Giant, August; Osage County and The Way Way Back. On the flip side La Grande Bellezza (The Great Beauty) was pretensious gibberish and I don't care what the critics say.

Reading
After reading a truly pathetic 10 books last year, I decided to commit to another reading challenge, targeting 50 pages per day. Unfortunately, April was a terrible month and pretty much blew that goal out the window, so I reduced it to 40 pages per day at which point, following a 'good' month in May, I'm back on track. May was helped out by the 1100 page, immensely readable Blackout and All Clear two volume epic by Connie Willis, unfortunately though despite how easy and entertaining it was to read I still found it hugely disappointing and extremely frustrating. There's a longer review at my website, but basically it was far far too long and relied upon stupid characters and cheap tricks to keep the pages turning.

Other recent reads include Redshirts by John Scalzi and Nine Goblins by T. Kingfisher, both very clever, elegant and entertaining. I also greatly enjoyed Life After Life by Kate Atkinson and David Attenborough's utterly charming autobiography Life on Air, he'd definitely be at my dream dinner party!
Other disappointments include Cory Doctorow's Pirate Cinema (a one sided political rant undermined by the absence of an opposing argument), Constellation Games by Leonard Richardson (inferior in every way to Ready Player One) and Hawkeye by Matt Fraction, great characters and story, but reminded me of exactly why I don't read more graphic novels. Oh, and Seventeen Equations that Changed the World by Ian Stewart should be avoided unless you have a maths degree or deep seated insomnia.

Television
I continue to try and post twice a week at Narrative Devices, although it often ends up being slightly less, but I did recently pass the 500 posts mark. I selflessly watched through all the pilots and read all the press releases as the US channels announced their schedules for next year, very little got me excited to be honest, Ascension on Syfy has got actual spaceships, Gotham on Fox has got great material to work with, The Leftovers on HBO looks impressive but depressing, The Strain on FX is by Guillermo del Torro which is enough for me, iZombie on The CW could be fun, Madam Secretary on CBS could be a heavenly blend of The Good Wife and The West Wing and How to Get Away with Murder on ABC may be Shonda Rhimes addictiveness.

A few other reviews:
The Blacklist: Season 1 – James Spader is absolutely fantastic, everything else is a bit meh.
The Smoke Season 1 – doesn't know whether it's gritty firefighting or love triangle soap opera. Either would be fine, both is a mess.
The Muskateers: Season 1 – very uncertain tone, felt like a 6pm on a Saturday show awkwardly transplanted to 9pm on a Sunday
The Walking Dead: Season 4 – not the strongest season, some less than outstanding characters/storylines but also some phenomenal moments. Still one of the best shows on television.

Other things I'm watching and enjoying at the moment – Almost Human, Happy Valley, The Good Wife (omg SO good!), SHIELD (greatly improved, I'm still a few behind) and Mr Sloane.

Gaming
I lost a month to compulsively playing Lego Marvel Superheroes until I'd got absolutely all the achievements (the first game I've done that for!) and was thoroughly entertained the whole time. I was trudging through Thief on the Xbox 360 until I finally decided I just wasn't enjoying it. I was playing a non-murderous non-detected method and was finding it epically slow and frustrating. I seemed to spend far more time sneaking back and forth the same alleyways between missions then actually doing any thieving. Also I was endlessly irritated by his haphazard ability to jump 20 foot gaps and then be flummoxed by knee high crates. I may start a new game with a more bloodthirsty approach, but for now I've given up. I switched briefly to Formula 1 2010 because I picked it up for a quid pre-owned but gave up quickly when it gave me no tutorial and then just told me off for driving into people.

I've just started Batman Arkham Origins, which thus far is entertaining, but I've only been playing for an hour. I'm also hopelessly addicted to Hay Day and Jelly Splash on my phone, but I have at least given up Candy Crush on level 350odd.

It's been a really pretty miserable failure of a year for me as far as reading went. In 2012, in a drive to increase my reading I set myself a 50 page a day target, which drove my book tally up from round about 20 a year to 49. I decided against continuing that for 2013 and have correspondingly seen my reading drop not just back to the 20odd, but to an all time low of just 10 books.
I think there are two reasons for this. Firstly I spent most of the year unemployed. I didn't really have a regular structure to my day, rarely travelling far by public transport, and reading just didn't seem to slot in. I filled my time watching films and television instead, which had the knock on effect for me of needing to spend time writing reviews. When I did finally get a job it's a blissfully short commute which is mostly walking, again making it tricky to read.

The second reason is that a lot of the books I did pick up turned out to be disappointing and often turned into a slog to read rather than a pleasure. I've got a weird mental glitch that means I feel obligated to finish a book no matter how little I'm enjoying it which means I'll spend 4 months carrying around a disappointing book, forcing myself to read 10 pages here and there, rather than giving up and finding something better. When my lifestyle means that I have to really want to read a book to get round to doing it, it's not a good combination.

The numbers:
It feels almost silly to do any sort of statistics on such a small pool, but here we go:

10 in total: 8 Fiction, 2 non-fiction (20%) down a bit on last year's 24%

4 New authors, of the 6 authors I'd previous read books by, 3 were part of a series.

1 woman - pretty poor, but I'm the sample size is so small I'm not gonna kick myself about it.

2 books from 2013 (both purchased in hardback), 2 from 2012 (paperback), 4 from 2011. 1 from 1995 and then only one that I'd describe as 'old', from 1908.

5 British Authors, 4 American, 1 Indian. All books were written in English.

1 SF, 3 fantasy, 1 crime novel, 1 kid's book, 3 sort of non-specific

Fiction

Scott Lynch: Republic of Thieves - A great series, but the long delay between book 2 and 3 has had a serious impact on momentum that this book isn't quite good enough to overcome.

Mark Haddon: The Red House - Unlikeable characters and terrible layout choices (speech and thoughts both indicated by italics) made this book unsatisfying and difficult to read. Massively disappointing.

Ernest Cline: Ready Player One - Superb. Full of wonderful and loving references and an absolute joy to read.

Michael Chabon: Wonder Boys - Somehow Chabon managed to make a story where nothing happened with unpleasant characters un-put-downable.

Ben Aaronovitch: Broken Homes - With every book Aaronovitch moves up my list of favourite authors, he never puts a foot wrong. The Rivers of London is clever, original, interesting, exciting and hilarious.

Aravind Avaga: Last Man in Tower - Dull, predictable and full of unsympathetic characters. This may be the book that killed my reading this year.

Imogen Robertson: Anatomy of a Murder - Second book in a series and apparently I'd forgotten about it completely by the time I wrote a review. So probably a solidly middling book.

Kenneth Grahame: The Wind in the Willows - Not well suited to an adult audience, the construction of the world makes no sense (some animals are animals, some are anthropomorphic), the morality is dubious and the writing style more suited to reading aloud.

I'd roughly label them as three good (Ready Player One, Republic of Thieves, Broken Homes), two middling (Anatomy of a Murder, Wonder Boys) and three bad (Wind in the Willows, Man in Tower, The Red House). That's not a particularly good balance and backs up my feelings that it was partly a lack of enthusiasm for the books in question that left me with such a miserable tally for the year.

Clearer than ever to me is that I rely more on characters to enjoy a book than I do on subject matter. They don't necessarily have to be likeable, but they do have to be interesting, realistic and complete. A book like Man in Tower was beautifully written, with prose that leapt off the page, but I found all the characters short sighted, proud, stubborn and ultimately dooming themselves. If there'd been even one character who pointed out the stupidity of the others' actions I might have forgiven it. But I took no satisfaction spending time with selfish people heading towards their own self-created doom.

My favourite book of the year I think was Ready Player One. It was original, entertaining, interesting and passionate about its subject matter without making me feel stupid if I didn't get all the references. Not only did I love the book, but it reminded me of why and how I love video games as well. Aaronovitch's Broken Homes was a close second, the series is absolutely wonderful and a complete joy to read. The only way I chose between the two was because Ready Player One is a standalone book and that feels somewhat more worthy of praise.

Non Fiction

Simon Jenkins: A Short History of England - Phenomenally dry and boring. I was hoping for something to fill in my knowledge of history, but I found it impossible to keep track when and where I was and was bored rigid.

Alan Sepinwall - The Revolution was Televised - A wonderfully written and researched book by someone with a passion for television which he manages to share beautifully. I was fascinated reading about the shows I knew nothing about and learnt new things about the ones I already loved.

Just the two non-fiction, but at 20% of my reading, that's about average. It's hardly even worth the pixels to type that the Sepinwall was my favourite, it completely exemplified what I look for in non-fiction, a passionate and knowledgeable writer who clearly explains everything for the expert and novice alike.

Originally posted at my website where you can also find summaries of previous years' reading.

After a horrible bug in April, I managed to top that in May and actually got flu! It's been so long since I've had flu that it took me a couple of days to work out that's what was causing the pounding headaches, fever and chills and general misery. It was so bad I didn't even feel like watching tv!

Unsurprisingly that means I haven't done much this month, the reviews are a little thin on the ground and the activities even less numerous than usual. My only notable excursion was to finally get round to seeing Wicked (I tried to see it in New York, but there weren't any discount tickets available) which I thoroughly enjoyed. It wasn't the best, or most impressive musical I've ever seen, but I did thoroughly enjoy myself. I found the music a bit disappointing, with the exception of Defying Gravity and For Good, none of the tunes really stuck in my head and I actually found it difficult to make out the lyrics a lot of the time. But it was a really interesting story with plenty of funny dialogue and entertaining numbers. I went to Kew Gardens and took photos too and spent a fair amount of time in the garden watching wildlife like this gardening squirrel... that's about it.

Television
End of season reviews for Blue Bloods – Season 2, The Bridge: Season 1 and Homeland: Season 1 (in order of increasing quality from rubbish to entertaining to outstanding. I finally got round to watching and reviewing Twin Peaks which went through the same three levels of quality but in the opposite order.

Most of my reviewing time was taken up with upfront coverage, where the US networks reveal what they've renewed and introduce synopses, casts and trailers for the 2012-13 season's new shows. I wasn't really blown away, but then I seldom am. Upfront coverage for: CBS, ABC, Fox, NBC, The CW

Books
I did just about make my page count this month, but somehow I only seem to have read three books, I'm very confused about that. Also annoying is that each of the books

The Secret Life of Bletchley Park by Sinclair McKay was excellent when it focussed on the culture and people in the Park, but the 'diversions' into talking about the code breaking itself has been better handled by other books (e.g. Michael Smith's Station X)

The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes is last year's Booker winner and I wasn't massively impressed, it was very readable at least but the two halves didn't really match up in my opinion.

One of Our Thursdays is Missing by Jasper Fforde, the sixth book in the Thursday Next series. Sadly, while the fifth book was a lot tighter and more coherent, book six is back to the old tricks of having too many things going on that don't quite feel solid. Mind you, I keep buying his books, so he's clearly not that awful.

Films
A relatively quiet month for films as well, usually when I'm sick I just sit and watch back to back films, but this time I was too sick even for that! The high point was the surprisingly excellent little British alien invasion film Attack the Block (and The Avengers, but I claimed that one last month). Less impressive but still pretty solid were Never Let Me Go (which disappointed me in different ways to the book) and The Guardian (entertaining fun spoilt rubbish ending) and Meet the Robinsons (lost me towards the end). Unknown was pretty rubbish and Melancholia was pretentious, ridiculous wallowing. I also had a bit of a Robert Downey Jr marathon with re-watches of Iron Mans 1 and 2 and Sherlock Holmes (2009) - but only the first Iron Man was as much fun as it was the first time.

I sort of didn't do anything in April. Mostly because I got horribly sick with something and sat around the house for a fair amount of time feeling sorry for myself.

Films
I have watched a fair amount of rubbish this month. There were a sudden flurry of kids films for some reason, Rango and Cars 2 were just all over the place, The Tale of Despereaux and 9 were both a bit better, but could both do with some polishing up of the narrative. Also I don't care how many people tell me Muppet Treasure Island is the best thing since sliced bread, for some reason I just don't get on with it. The 2011 version of The Three Musketeers could also be labelled a kids film because it's utterly brain dead and suffering from a terrible cast where Orlando Bloom is the high point because at least he's TRYING to be over the top.

A friend of mine is doing a 1982 movie challenge, because a surprising number of great films are 30 years old this year. I can't resist a challenge so watched Poltergeist and Tron start to finish in one sitting for (rather embarrassingly) the first time. Both were very entertaining and surprisingly original feeling, even after 30 years, but both lost it towards the end.

I picked up Moneyball to rent as soon as it was out because I love all things Aaron Sorkin, and although I liked everything about the film, the fact I didn't have a clue what was going on with the baseball meant it lost some impact. I'd also been looking forward to Super 8 but was massively disappointed, I think it relied too much on nostalgia for things like ET and The Goonies and once I'd gotten over that, the film felt rather flat and dull. Other random rentals were The Lincoln Lawyer (intriguing and entertaining, but another drawn out ending), Green Zone (excellent action fun), True Grit (2010) (surprisingly witty and entertaining) and Limitless (perfectly fine). (Also - Kick-Ass, see the book section.)

April really belonged to Joss Whedon though, with both The Cabin in the Woods and The Avengers coming out with a lot of hype - 3 years of delays for Cabin and massive budgets and expectations for Avengers. I was blown away by both of them. (Although technically I saw Avengers in May... but I couldn't wait). Both have classic Whedon touches with witty dialogue, charismatic characters, interesting relationships, entertaining action and unexpected twists. These are both smart films, but they're also just hugely entertaining, with dozens of laugh out loud moments, jumps and edge of seat action and special effects. I really enjoyed both of them immensely and could cheerfully have gone straight back into the cinema to re-watch them.

Books
I didn't have a very good reading month, largely thanks to getting ill leading to days of work (no reading while commuting) and sleeping instead of reading. Consequently I only hit my 50 pages per day target on 19 days, and mustered an average page count of just 49.1. Boo.

The five books I read were largely unremarkable, not bad, but not amazing either. I got Simon Mayo's kids book Itch because I'm a fan of his radio show. It was ok, perfectly fine but nothing to make me really recommend you to seek it out. Neal Asher's The Skinner was extremely enjoyable, it's the first Asher I've read and he reminded me a lot of Iain Banks, just without the complicated pretensiousness that has made me give up on the Culture series. Jon Ronson's The Psychopath Test was also perfectly fine if you want a very very surface analysis of some issues, but was far too focussed on the writer and not enough on a thorough investigation of the subject for my taste.

I also read the Kick-Ass graphic novel (Mark Millar and John Romita Jr.) after really enjoying the film. I loved the idea, the characters and the tone of both the pieces, but felt that the book made some big miss-steps. Chiefly the last third had some big problems, and the characters motivations were very frustrating (although it had been pointed out to me that that could be considered part of the 'message'). Also the level of violence in the comic was too much, not because of any squeamishness, but just because it didn't make sense in the context of trying to present real human beings in superhero costumes - they'd be on the floor by the first panel of any fight, utterly unable to move. The film however fixed a few of these issues, which probably annoyed fans, but to me at least gave a much more rounded and more satisfying story.

TV
It was also a relatively slow month writing at Narrative Devices, I usually aim for 2 posts a week, but missed a couple out what with coming down with the plague. The end of season stuff is starting to kick in with several of the shorter seasons coming to an end. The second seasons of The Big C and The Walking Dead both had substantial changes from their first season. For the Big C it meant a big change in tone making it almost a different show, still very very good, but less comedy and more bleak. The Walking Dead showed a massive improvement, the first season was practically just a trailer for this more focussed and deeper show. Luck meanwhile only got the one season and while the horse racing footage was breathtaking, my inability to understand either the words the characters were saying, or anything about the plot rather hampered my enjoyment.

There were also three pilot reviews. ITV's Titanic has already been and gone thankfully because it was bloody awful. The Danish/Swedish The Bridge started with an intriguing set up but maybe lacks a little in delivery and the really rather good Awake starts on Sky Atlantic tonight.

Last year I managed monthly updates, this year appears to be more like quarterly. Oops.

Films
After last year's Oscar project, I was sort of happy that I'd actually seen this year's winner at the cinema before it won, except unfortunately, I really didn't think much of The Artist. Fine, so it's black-and-white and silent, but it's also dull and predictable. It is beautifully shot, I'll give it that, but I'm not sure a film that relies so heavily on a cute dog should really be winning Oscars. There were far better films that didn't even get nominated, the traumatic but brilliant Tyrannosaur, the chilling Awakening and Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy although to be honest, I didn't like that one a massive amount on first viewing either, although I suspect a second viewing will improve my opinion. I would even say that The Muppets deserved a nomination for it's pitch perfect update, I can't remember a more joyful, entertaining film.

I've been on a bit of a mini-quest to clear the relevant character films before The Avengers comes out and have therefore sat through the massively ridiculous Thor and the far more entertaining and well put together Captain America. I have no idea how all these characters can possibly exist on the same screen, but I'm looking forward to finding out. In other comic book movie news, X-Men: First Class was awful, a bad idea from the get go, badly cast and badly written.

Other films of note - Easy-A because it was hilarious, bright and fresh, Micmacs à tire-larigot because it's charming and weird and Tangled - because it really felt like all the best things of old school Disney mixed with modern writing . On the flip side The Princess and the Frog was dull and incomprehensible, Tamara Drewe was a funny trailer which turned into stupidity when pushed to full length, Brideshead Revisited (2008) was dull, sanctimonious and too obvious and Bedtime Stories was so awful it got the lowest score I've ever given a film.

I saw The Hunger Games last week (which I paid an astronomical £15.60 to see in Leicester Square!) and was really relieved that it turned out to be a brilliant adaptation of the book and had enough directorial flare that I wasn't bored like I was in some of the Harry Potter films. While I won't be going to see either Wrath of the Titans (the first one was cataclysmically awful) or John Carter ~~of Mars~~ (sorry, but the trailer was enough to put me off even before the miserable reviews and stupid marketing choices), and there's no way in hell that I'd go and see Titanic, there's still a few films that will lure me to the overpriced mediocre experience that is the cinema these days. April's a superb month to be a Joss Whedon fan, with Cabin in the Woods is FINALLY out on the 13th and the aforementioned Avengers (or Avengers Assemble as it's apparently called in the UK) on the 26th. I also find myself rather tempted by the utterly ridiculous looking Battleship, is that bad of me?

Television
Busy couple of months at Narrative Devices. Pilot reviews of GCB (enjoyable but awful), Touch (poor pilot but has potential), Luck (incomprehensible but beautifully shot), Smash (problematic but fun), House of Lies (good but bad?), New Girl (funny but I didn't stick around for more episodes) and Alcatraz (nice idea but badly written).

There are full season reviews of Borgen: Season 1 (which also has a pilot review), Terra Nova: Season 1, Merlin: Season 4, Sherlock: Season 2, Case Histories, The Cafe: Season 1 and American Horror Story: Season 1

I also did a little Battle of the Shows, based on my irritation at someone else's version whereby they made lots of wrong decisions - it starts here

Books
My new year's resolution to read more seems to be doing pretty well, averaging out over the first three months of the year I've been reading 51.3 pages a day, so just over the target of 50, although I've only actually read 50 pages plus on 77% of the days, so I tend to be a bit more boom and bust. January was the worst month, partly because I missed three days at the start before I'd actually committed to it. Here have a graph!

So what's the effect, a quarter of the way through the year and I've read 14 books, comparing to 8.5, 8.25, 11.25 and 7.75 for previous years quarterly averages. So I'm well up on previous years. Eight fiction books:

Before I Go To Sleep by S.J. Watson - not a particularly original story, but very well told

Keeping it Real by Justina Robson - too much going on

Rules of Civility by Amor Towles - an enjoyable read, shame about the lack of plot

The Inimitable Jeeves by P.G. Wodehouse - entertaining

Death and the Penguin by Andrey Kurkov - simple but complex, really very good

Midnight Fugue by Reginald Hill - an enjoyable mystery

The Martian Ambassador by Alan K. Baker - weirdly unimaginative, overcrowded with ideas

The Somnambulist by Essie Fox - utterly unmemorable 2 weeks later

I've also read more non-fiction as I've been tending to have two books on the go at a time, one non-fiction for commuting, and one fiction for evenings, so I've read 6 non-fictions, already equalling 2011's total for the whole year! Anybody got any recommendations for non-fiction?

The Importance of Being Trivial: In Search of the Perfect Fact by Mark Mason - diverse and fun

The Good, The Bad and The Multiplex by Mark Kermode - entertainingly ranty while being factually solid

My Year of Flops: The A.V. Club Presents One Man's Journey Deep into the Heart of Cinematic Failure by Nathan Rabin - surprisingly balanced between factual analysis and hilarious swearing

Periodic Tales: The Curious Lives of the Elements by Hugh Aldersey-Williams - educational and fun

Venice: Pure City by Peter Ackroyd - flowery, dull and badly structured

101 Things You Thought You Knew About the Titanic...But Didn't! by Eloise Aston and Tim Maltin - fascinating analysis of testimony without sensationalism.

Every year I intend to read more, and every year I fail. I can't even really claim that I've replaced quantity with quality as looking at the list it is a really quite spectacularly random collection of stuff. I'll make the same resolution again, but this year I'm 'formalising' it in an objective to read 50 pages per day. I'm not sure whether it will be an average, or just a straight pass/fail. It's not a resolution because I firmly expect to fail to meet it, but it's still a worthy aim.

Authors
One of my few successes this year was reading a higher percentage of female authors, 33% up on 27% from last year. The geography of authors however is less good with only English writing authors (65% Brits, 26% American, one from Ireland and one from Canada).
I read considerably more new authors (new to me that is, not necessarily first time authors) than last year (74% vs 50% last year), my favourite of whom was easily Ben Aaronovitch who was also one of only 3 duplicated authors. Returning authors were mostly those who I'm committed to series for (Pratchett, Brust, Atkinson, O'Brian, Fforde) and only Neil Gaiman and Yann Martel were returning authors with no real series.

Genres
Once again, less non-fiction than I'd like, only 18%. Non-fiction takes considerably more time and attention to read and I'm not great at that. I used to try and set aside coffee shop time to read them, but these days that time is eaten up by writing.
Of the fiction, about 50% of it fell into fantasy, science fiction or somewhere in between. I seem to be reading more fantasy these days - plenty of vampires, magic and ghosts on my list, but not a single spaceship! I wonder if it comes down to the attention (and page count) issue again, or the fact that most of my books come from Waterstones' 3-for-2 tables which doesn't feature so much SF.

Years
21% of books were from this year, including plenty that I hadn't even realised were that recent - again mostly thanks to the Waterstones' 3-for-2 (which I'm clearly going to miss terribly). Book of the publishing year for me was actually my favourite book of my overall reading year - Rivers of London by Ben Aaronovitch.
With 21% of the books I read published this year, 29% from last year and another 32% from the rest of the 2000s, that makes 82% from the latest decade. I usually try to read a bit broader range than that, picking off some of the older classics, but this year I read just 2 from the 90s, and 1 each from 60s, 70s and 80s.

Reviews
I don't tend to rate books, but when I compile these lists I go back over my reviews and pull out the books I hated, the books I adored and whatever is left in the middle. This year 15% I would recommend people not touch with a barge pole.

Kraken by China Miéville - messy, overstuffed and smug. I know others that love it, but I found it an utter slog.

Solar by Ian McEwan - purportedly a comedy, not in the slightest bit funny or interesting.

Doctor Copernicus by John Banville - neither historically accurate nor fictionally enjoyable

Money: A Suicide Note by Martin Amis - apparently one of Time Magazine's best 100 English language novels since 1923, utter utter tedious rubbish.

Map of a Nation: A Biography of the Ordnance Survey by Rachel Hewitt - painfully slow and dense and weirdly lacking in actual maps.

44% of my reads fall into the not too bad, not too great category. Some of them will have been good books that were somehow flawed, or just middle-of-the-road unremarkable works.

Jamrach's Menagerie by Carol Birch

Screen Burn by Charlie Brooker

Hiccup: How to Train Your Dragon by Cressida Cowell

The Tower Menagerie by Daniel Hahn

Information is Beautiful by David McCandless

The Hare With Amber Eyes: A Hidden Inheritance by Edmund de Waal

When It Changed by Geoff Ryman

The Last Dragonslayer by Jasper Fforde

Left Early and Took the Dog by Kate Atkinson

Slaughterhouse 5 by Kurt Vonnegut

Anita Blake 1: Guilty Pleasures by Laurell K. Hamilton

The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi

When God Was a Rabbit by Sarah Winman

Taltos 13: Tiassa by Steven Brust

Beatrice and Virgil by Yann Martel

41% of books I decided were rather good, which is way up on the 30% from last year. Am I becoming more positive? What a thought!

The Backroom Boys by Francis Spufford - interesting *and* entertaining, the holy grail. If only there were a partner book 'Backroom Girls' that would make it perfect.

97 Things Every Project Manager Should Know by Barbee Davis - a compilation, so some were good, some were bad, but all were interesting one way or the other.

Moon Over Soho and Rivers of London by Ben Aaronovitch - a wonderfully written series which feels like it's written just for me with jokes, attention to detai, likeable but flawed characters and mystery plots that reveal themselves at just the right pace.

HMS Surprise by Patrick O'Brian - another solid entry into this series

The Help by Kathryn Stockett - I couldn't put this book down, entertaining and moving and also one of my favourite films of the year.

Vet on Call by Marc Abraham - a new James Herriot! Hilarious and lovely in equal parts.

Dark Matter: A Ghost Story by Michelle Paver - a suitably atmospheric ghost story set in an unusual location, just a bit different to most of what I read.

American Gods and Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman - two Gaiman books, each doing a wonderful job of capturing a time and a place and infusing it with magic and mystery.

The Hunger Games, Catching Fire and Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins - a brilliant series, right up there with things like Enders Game imho. The first was the best, but the series as a whole is still superb

Snuff by Terry Pratchett - Pratchett back on form after a previous disappointment. The intricacy of his writing, the elegance of the jokes and the ideas is phenomenal.

This year I’ve read a really rather pathetic 33 books, down 12 on last year. On the positive side none of them were re-reads, but even still I really wish the total were higher. Given such a small sample it’s not really worth trying to compare them and come up with any sort of ‘best of’list, so here’s just a few random thoughts.

Authors
73% male, 27% female - worse than last year despite the fact that I really thought I was doing better.
42% Brits, 36% American, 22% other – a pretty good balanceand a couple of books not originally written in English.
The only repeat author was Iain M Banks and given my continued disappointment with his works, I think those might be his last. Exactly 50% of the authors were new to me, which I’m very happy with as a balance. Unusually absent from the list is Terry Pratchett.

Genres
18% non-fiction – every year I vow to read more non-fiction, every year I fail, largely because non-fiction doesn’t tend to work well as bedtime reading, or “half a chapter on a bus” reading. Also they tend to be quite dull.
Of the fiction - 7% kids books and 7% media tie ins – less than usual, maybe I’m growing up!
30%sf, 26% fantasy, 33% generic drama type stuff – the fantasy was a surprisingly large percentage, although frankly I’m getting increasingly confused between what’s sf and fantasy. Magic is fantasy right? Monsters? Where does alternate history fall? Gagh. It’s all too confusing.

Years
15% published in 2010 – frankly I was surprised it was that many! I rarely buy hardbacks and only have a small number of authors who I pounce on as soon as they release something. Easily the best of the small sample was Iorich, the latest in Steven Brust’s Taltos series, but it’s not much of a competition.
30% were published in 2009 and of those and the ones reviewed last year, the top three are The Book Thief by Markus Zusak which I read last year and bizarrely two non-fictions from this year Columbine and Free. I really don’t think I could chose between them.
The others were all published in the 2000s except for 2 from the 90s, and 1 each from the 70s and 30s (the latter heavily re-edited).

The reviews
On a very hand-wavey grading system, I recon 21% of the books I read this year were bad, that’s considerably up on the 8% the previous year. Maybe I’m getting grumpy and fussy in my old age, but I suspect this percentage didn’t help with my apathy towards reading more. (Follow the links for more detailed reviews at my website)

Transition by Iain M. Banks – the world(s) he created didn’t make sense to me and I wasn’t confident that Banks had a good grasp of how they worked either.

Use of Weapons by Iain M. Banks – nothing happened. At least nothing beyond hints and implications.

The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery - irresistible title, pretensious and boring book

The Dinosaur Hunters by Deborah Cadbury – Exciting title, really boring book

The Magicians by Lev Grossman – extremely poorly written, bad plot, borderline plagiarism, miserable characters, bad pacing.

Her Fearful Symmetry by Audrey Niffenegger – ghosts? Really? where Time Traveller’s Wife made me sob on crowded tubes, this one made me swear out loud at the ludicrous choices the characters and writer made.

Swiftly:A Novel by Adam Roberts – nice idea, really boring to read

I’d describe 48% as ‘adequate’, ‘fine or ‘perfectly ok’. They tend to do what they need to do in non-spectacular fashion. There’s a lot of throwaway type fiction in here, things to enjoy on the commute and pretty much forget about immediately after (many of these I had to actually re-read my reviews to remind myself what they were about). They’re not bad, they’re just not great.

Shades of Grey by Jasper Fforde

The Oxford Murders by Guillermo Martinez

Twilight 4: Breaking Dawn by Stephenie Meyer

The Year of the Flood by Margaret Atwood

A Little History of the World by E.H. Gombridge

Artemis Fowl and the Atlantis Complex by Eoin Colfer

The Fuller Memorandum by Charles Stross

Paint Your Dragon by Tom Holt

Ghosts of Manhattan by George Mann

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson

The Transit of Venus: The Brief, Brilliant Life of Jeremiah Horrocks by Peter Aughton

Gridlinked by Neal Asher

Post Captain by Patrick O'Brian

Supernatural: Bone Key by Keith R.A. DeCandido

Makers by Cory Doctorow

Supernatural: Witch's Canyon by Jeff Marriote

Given those criteria I think the fact that I found 30% of my reading better than that is pretty impressive. There were 11 books that I thought were outstanding or remarkable in some way.

Columbine by Dave Cullen – extremely difficult to read, but an impressive piece of journalism investigating all the sides of the tragedy with a relatively open mind.

The Observations by Jane Harris – there didn’t seem to be much plot, but somehow the 500+ pages were enjoyable and compelling.

Taltos 12: Iorich by Steven Brust– extraordinarily satisfying, the whole book just made me smile both with it's written humour, it's implied humour and just with the sheer slickness of its characters and writing.

Pragmatic Thinking and Learning: Refactor Your Wetware by Andy Hunt – although there’s a lot of common sense in the book, there’s also a lot of theory to explain why what you know is actually really true. Not only informative, but really fun to read as well.

Free by Chris Anderson – occasionally preachy, but well researched, interesting and even enjoyable to read

The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga – well deserved Man Booker Prize winner, a book that benefits from thought and discussion

A Thread of Grace by Mary Doria Russell- a beautiful work, touching on issues of faith, courage and hope without becoming preachy or patronising

Bel Canto by Ann Patchett – beautiful and fascinating use of language and music, although I felt the ending let it down a little

Acting English by Shappi Khorsandi – the Iranian ‘troubles’ told from the eyes of a child transplanted into London, who would eventually become a comedian.

The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman– A charming book screaming out for Tim Burton to make a film.

I only spent half the year having to drive to work, so managed to get through half as many books again as last year. However I don't really feel that I've read much of note.

By the Numbers

45 books in total (0 re-reads!)
39 authors
38 fiction
7 non-fiction
18 good
23 middling
4 bad

13 female authors (just under a third, that’s a lot better than last year!
27 male authors

6 SF
12 fantasy
6 media tie ins
3 books for children (ish)

1 SF Masterwork (Dune)
1.5 Hugo winner (Yiddish Policemen’s Union and Dune, which tied)
1 Costa winner (Sebastian Barry’s Secret Scripture)

7 2009 books
33 from the 2000s
4 from the nineties
1 from the eighties
2 from the seventies
1 from the sixties
3 from the fifties
1 from the thirties

I read 7 books published in 2009 and absolutely none of them are worthy of the label ‘best of the year’. To name the top three would be to list three books that were ok but nothing remarkable. Pratchet's Unseen Academicals was badly structured, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies was a brilliant idea, but got boring and The Osiris Ritual, which was fun but not exactly startlingly brilliant. If I expand the range to cover books from the last few years (excusable because some books take a long time to work through to bookshops) I’d rate The Book Thief as the best book, a book that should be depressing but through beautiful writing is surprisingly enjoyable.

I only read 9 non-fiction books, but they were mostly pretty good. The best was Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers, which was both fascinating and enjoyable. Starbucked is now a bit dated, but was interesting and quite well balanced.

There are a few classics I finally got round to reading and really appreciated. I’ve always loved the film Rebecca and the book was equally great. I was surprised at how much I enjoyed McCaffrey’s The White Dragon, expecting cheesy dragon-fic and finding a beautifully crafted world and story. Dune started extremely well but gradually lost me, The Once and Future King did the opposite starting off slowly but gradually drawing me in.

Worst books is a bit tricky, I don’t read much that’s actually bad and most of those that I rate that way are actually due to bad marketing, such as The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher which I thought was going to be an interesting work of historical fact meets murder mystery and turned out to be stunningly dull and un-mysterious. There were a lot of mediocre books which were either instantly forgettable, unnecessarily full of themselves or containing good characters but poor plots or vice-versa.

I can’t really write this without acknowledging my slightly embarrassing summer obsession with Stephenie Meyer and Twilight. I know I’m not the only ‘non target age group’ person to become addicted to these books which makes me feel a little better. My abiding memory of summer 2009 may well be sitting in the garden with a glass of Pimms, ploughing my way through these enjoyable, relatively well written, cheesy teen vampire books. I was even more impressed with The Host, which proved she has more than one story inside her (take note Ms Rowling) and I enjoyed maybe even more than Twilight.

( Full list of books )

Periodically I peer at my To Read shelf and discover there's nothing there that actually appeals. My solution is frequently to declare loudly to my housemates that I need something to read and see what appears. As they have a more focussed reading pattern in the fantasy and SF genres they can generally be relied upon to either produce an interesting new author (Scott Lynch, Naomi Novik) or older authors I’d not encountered (Stephen Brust, Alan Dean Foster). This time they recommended Anne McCaffrey.

I've always been quietly dismissive of McCaffrey, without reading a single one of her books I'd written her off as a fantasy author who churns out hundreds of books with tacky covers and no real meat to them. I should have known better really, that an author doesn't really get to publish dozens of books without having some merit, even if it's just in their early works before they start cashing in.

There was a considerable debate about which book I should read, either Dragonflight the first in the Pern series or The White Dragon the third book in the series. I generally prefer to read series books in publication order, on the theory that it stands the best chance of making sense. However the counter-argument that White Dragon was a better book swung me round, so I opted for that one first.

It didn’t get off to a great start. At 8 o’clock on a Monday morning while waiting for my tube to arrive I opened the book to be confronted by twenty pages of concentrated exposition covering the previous books. Ordinarily I’d probably find that quite helpful, but in my slightly bleary pre-work state there were a lot of names to assimilate – who lived where, what guild they were part of, which dragon belonged to who, weyrs, holdings, stars, thread and oh, apparently time travel too! By the time I’d finished it I was a little bit stunned, but also intrigued. I very nearly stopped reading the 3rd book and went back to the 1st, but didn’t for the simple reason that I’d just been spoilered.

So I ploughed on into the book, where I had a similar response to when I read Dune for the first time at the tender age of 30. Here was an extremely complicated set up with a deeply rooted mythology and yet it all made sense in a very satisfying way. Each time a new character was introduced they were brought in so carefully that they almost instantly had a personality and a place within the universe, without any cheesy narrative clichés. The only things I had difficulty with was keeping track of which dragon was associated with each person, but it didn’t really matter if a few references were missed and if all else failed there was an appendix, or rather ‘dragondex’ to help out.

The plot meanders around a bit, but at its core is a young man finding his place in the world, sorting out his relationships and establishing his position as a leader of his people. It’s fairly standard stuff – who am I, where did I come from and where am I going. Meanwhile he and his fellow leaders are asking the same questions for their race as a whole, where did they come from and where are they going? It’s all a fairly loose plot, there’s no real start or end and very few particularly significant events along the way. It’s more that we’re sharing a chunk of these people’s lives, important things happened before and will happen after, which may or may not I guess be in the other books of the series, but this book works perfectly well as a self contained work.

Of course the key thing missing from that paragraph is any mention of the dragons, because to be honest while they’re important to the mythology and context of the book, they’re not huge factors in the plot. That’s not to say they don’t contribute OR that they are used just as convenient devices. they’re secondary characters in the same way that the people are, but they have a very limited scope of involvement. The dragons are powerful creatures, vital to the survival of the settlements, but they’re not very intelligent, they have poor memories and react largely on instinct. What’s fascinating though is the bond between a dragon and his or her rider. They are telepathically linked and utterly devoted to each other. Whilst the riders may posture and compete between each other, with their dragons they’re unashamedly affectionate and it’s really very sweet. The smaller fire lizards are even more pet like and are very endearing with their constant chattering and fussing.

Based on this one book, I would say McCaffrey excels at writing characters and relationships. There’s probably two dozen notable characters in this book and a complex network of relationships between them but the characterisations and interactions are all instantly clear and real. Be they the complete devotion between a boy and his dragon, or the difficult politics between rival leaders bandying for power, each relationship is logical and fascinating. They are also for the most part all positive relationships – there’s no unreasonable hate or maliciousness, just people and creatures reacting according to their histories and trying to do their best for themselves and those that depend on them.

To be honest, this review is probably a lot longer than the book really requires. I could sum it up by just saying that it’s a very enjoyable, extremely competent work with some interesting concepts at its core. However that doesn’t really give enough weight to just how important and rare I find those qualities. Even when an author actually has a coherent story worth telling, too often they end up trying too hard to sound clever, or they get too precious and fail to be ruthless in their editing. McCaffrey has clearly been an inspiration to a lot of writers (Naomi Novik should practically have paid royalties!) and The White Dragon was a real pleasure to read. Now my only decision is whether to allow myself to be lured in to the rest of the series!

I find there's something indulgent about settling in for a good read. Most of the time reading for me is something done in short bursts. When I worked in central London it used to be this was while commuting to work, now that I have to drive to work though, reading on the commute tends to scare my passenger. Daily reading is now restricted to a couple of chapters before switching the light out at night, a good way to gradually slow the brain down and distract it from thinking about the day just gone or the one to come.

My special treat to myself comes at the weekend though, when first thing on a Saturday morning, me and my book walk into Ealing to sit for a glorious solitary hour in Starbucks. This last weekend I was particularly struck by just how much I adore my Saturday morning routine. I loaded up my ipod and set off into town listening to the Radio 4 Friday Night Comedy podcast which is the perfect length to cover the walk there and back. There were a few people out on the common jogging and walking dogs, but it's pretty quiet at 9am on a Saturday, no one to get scared by the crazy woman laughing to herself. I find there's a satisfaction in getting up 'early' on a Saturday, as if you're somehow cheating the universe into giving you a longer weekend then you're really allowed.

I was greeted at Starbucks by one of the regular weekend baristas and we had a pleasant chat about the pleasant weather while she prepared my usual order. I headed to my usual table in the window asking the other early morning reader if he would mind sharing. He perfectly understood that it was accepted behaviour to ask to share a table with comfy seats in preference to one of the empty hard seated tables and we two complete strangers shared a coffee table and two armchairs in companionable silence.

So with my cinnamon swirl, grande chai tea latte and my book I settled into the giant comfy chair and resisted the urge to make a very satisfied "hmmmm" noise. This is my completely guilt free 'Me' time. Sitting at home, even in the garden just doesn't feel the same way, although you try to ignore it you know that there's a mountain of chores loitering nearby, waiting to be done. But in Starbucks, there really is no choice but to sit and read until you've finished your drink. A grande chai latte will last me pretty much exactly an hour. A tall is acceptable for a quick mid-week lunch break, a venti required only on very rare traumatic days, but for a Saturday morning a grande is just right.

This means an hour of unashamed reading. Not until my hour is nearly up do I start evaluating the length of each new chapter to see if it's acceptable to start reading it. Too often when I read before sleeping I end up really wanting the chapter to end because my eyes are closing. It's not the book's fault, it's simple biology and I feel bad for the book. But for daytime reading there's no such force and I can read for hours on end if I can outlast the guilt.

Sitting in Starbucks last Saturday morning I had one of those moments of perfect happiness, reading a book that has not only been on my to-read list for about a decade but has very happily turned out to be truly excellent. Everything faded away except for my latte, my cake and the vivid creation of characters, issues and events which I had never experienced. I sank deeper into my book and my chair until I finally reached the end of my drink and gradually resurfaced to confront the real world - the one outside of my book and outside of my Starbucks.

Fiction
The Gods Themselves by Isaac Asimov
Taltos 11 - Jhegaala by Steven Brust*
Criminal Minds: Jump Cut by Max Allan Collins
Criminal Minds: Killer Profile by Max Allan Collins*
The Princess Bride by William Goldman
Runemarks by Joanne Harris
A Cure for All Diseases by Reginald Hill*
The Affinity Bridge by George Mann*
The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen - Vol 1 by Alan Moore
Watchmen by Alan Moore
Temeraire by Naomi Novik
Temeraire 5: Victory of Eagles by Naomi Novik*
The Age of the Pussyfoot by Frederik Pohl
Jem by Frederik Pohl
Nation by Terry Pratchett*
Truckers by Terry Pratchett
Primeval: Shadow of the Jaguar by Steven Savile*
The Android's Dream by John Scalzi
I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith
Star Maker by Olaf Stapledon
Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
The Amulet of Samarkand by Jonathan Stroud
The End of Mr Y by Scaralett Thomas
The Day of the Triffids by John Wyndham

Non-Fiction
Brilliant Project Management by Stephen Barker and Rob Cole
Six Thinking Hats by Edward de Bono
Let My People Go Surfing by Yvon Chouinard
An Utterly Impartial History of Britain by John O'Farrell
Tribes by Seth Godin*
As You Do by Richard Hammond*
How They Started: How 30 Good Ideas Became Great Businesses by David Lester

All books are reviewed on my website.

By the Numbers
31 books in total
29 books that were new to me, I re-read the first Temeraire and Truckers
27 authors
24 fiction
23 male authors
19 good
18 British authors
15 new authors
11 SF
9 American authors
8 middling
8 2008 books
7 non-fiction
7 fantasy
4 books for children (ish)
4 bad
4 female authors (wow that's terrible!)
3 SF Masterworks (Jem, Star Maker, Day of the Triffids)
1 Hugo winner (Gods Themselves)

Best book of 2007 - Terry Pratchett's Nation
I've been waiting a long time for Pratchett to write this book and I didn't realise it until about 50 pages from the end when I realised what a stunningly brilliant piece of writing it was. I've always enjoyed Pratchett books, but rarely have I been able to say that they are great pieces of literature. Nation however is a really wonderful piece of writing.

Worst book of 2007 - Seth Godin's Tribes
Not really worthy of the descriptor 'book' as it's really just a collection of potential blog postings or random thoughts in a notepad with no coherence and the faint impression that you're being persuaded into a cult.

Best non-fiction - Yvon Chouinard's Let My People Go Surfing
Well I only read 7 non-fiction (although at 22% that's a better percentage than last years 17%). The best of the lot was Yvon Chouinard book about the foundation and running of the outdoor equipment company Patagonia. The way he runs his business is inspirational and the book does an extremely good job of verbalising his ethics and attitudes. It's one of those books that could feasibly change your life.

Miscellaneous Awards
"Read the Book Skip the Film" - The Princess Bride, personally I didn't like the film, but the book was absolutely lovely and completely bizarre
"Skip the Film and the Book" - League of Extraordinary Gentleman - love the
concept, unimpressed with the storytelling
"Should Have Read it Ages Ago" - Watchmen was brilliant, Day of the Triffids was a lot of fun and I Capture the Castle would have been even better when I was 14.
"Too Much Thought Required" - Starmaker and The End of Mr Y both were a little more intellectual than I was prepared for.
"Lured by the Shiny Covers" - Affinity Bridge and End of Mr Y were both pulled off of Waterstone's 3-for-2 tables because they had pretty covers and turned out to be quite enjoyable random reads.
"Cool Title and a Cool Book" - The Android's Dream is a great title and a really good book to back it up.

( Full list of 59 books )

By the Numbers:
59 books in total
56 books that were new to me, I re-read a couple of Potters and I accidentally re-read Babel-17 as I'd forgotten I'd read it
53 different authors (including 4 books by 2 authors)
49 fiction
41ish books I consider Good
38 male authors
31 new authors
26.5 UK authors (Malcolm Gladwell was born in the UK but raised in Canada)
20 American authors
19 books that were part of a series
19 Fantasy books
15 female authors (I feel a bit bad about that)
14 SF books
13 2007 books (according to a quick check on amazon)
10 non-fiction
9 books that are kinda written for children
7 books I consider Bad
5 Masterworks (one fantasy, four sf)
3 Hugo Award Winners (lord of light, dispossessed, starship troopers)
2.5 Canadians authors
1 each of Irish, Italian and Indian authors

Best 2007 book
I think this goes to One Good Turn by Kate Atkinson, which I actually finished at about 12.30am on January 1st 2008, but felt should be included in the 2007 list. It's a great mystery novel that effortlessly intertwines plots and characters and is perfectly paced throughout.
Honourable Mention - A Spot of Bother was a lovely read for a summer afternoon, wonderfully real characters and very entertaining.

Worst book of 2007 and possibly of all history - The Diviners by Rick Moody, I stuck with it through over 500 pages, just 'cos I assumed it was going to go somewhere or do something. I was wrong.
Dishonorable mention - Foucault's Pendulum, if you like 500 pages of exposition about the vagueries of the Templars it might be ok. I do not.

Best non-fiction - of the somewhat pathetic 10 non-fiction books I'd recommend 5 of them. Long Tail, Tipping Point and Don't Make Me Think are all interesting and well written. Penguins Stopped Play is hilarious wether you know anything about cricket or not. I felt cheesy buying Richard Hammond's biography, but then stayed up until 4am to finish it and found it to be a remarkable insight into dealing with brain injuries.

Walking away with most of the other good awards will be Scott Lynch for his brilliant Gentleman Bastard series. Lies of Locke Lamora takes the best book of the year award and Red Seas Under Red Skies was only deprived the 2007 award because I expected slightly better from the plot. He would also take awards for best characters, best universe, "I can't believe he did that!" and "Most eagerly awaited sequel". I can't recommend these books highly enough, they're extremely well written and hugely entertaining to read.

Miscellaneous Awards
Best title - Special Topics in Calamity Physics, how brilliant is that?! Not a bad book either actually.
Best concept poorly told - toss up between The Brief History of the Dead and The Book of Dave
Best concept well told - an alternate history with dragons during the Napoleonic Wars. Genius.
What the blithering heck is going on? - Lord of Light
Best Book I Should Have Read Ages Ago - Starship Troopers, absolutely brilliant.

Via

johnckirk

"These are the top 106 books most often marked as 'unread' by LibraryThing's users (whenever someone started this meme). Bold what you have read, italicize those you started but couldn't finish, and strike through what you couldn't stand. Add an asterisk to those you've read more than once. Underline those on your to-read list."
( 28 of 106 )

Bloody decorating and a cold interfered with my plans to spend all day reading, but thanks to waking up at 7am yesterday, 24 hour opening at Tescos and some sod hammering on a door outside early this morning, I've gotten through the book quite quickly anyways.

Non-spoiler review:
I enjoyed most of the book, most of it I found extremely hard to put down and thought it both developed and concluded the story, characters and universe really well. Rowling made some moderately tough choices admirably and had me laughing and sniffling a few times each. On the other hand... there was a stunningly poor choice of sub-plot which was just pointless filler and a whole section in the middle of the book where I just kept shouting "get on with it!" at her. A satisfactory ending, but Rowling hasn't really learnt from mistakes she made with earlier books.

( more spoilery expansion )

Current Mood: sick
Current Music: The European GP

Via

coalescent The Top 100 books since 1982 according to Waterstone's staff. I think I muster 23, but I kept losing count.

( Full list )

I do not understand people that say they don't read or don't like books. That's like not eating, or not liking fresh air. 'With a book you are never alone' is a phrase uttered by someone pretentious, probably trying to sell his services as a critic, but it is indeed true. Sitting by yourself staring at your lunch, or into space on a park bench induces either sympathetic glances or edging away. But if you've got a book, no one thinks you're a crazy loner. Well I might be deluding myself there, but at least if I'm staring at a book I can't see the people giving me funny looks.

Bookshops are like religious institutions to people like me, be it a small specialist bookshop or a giant chain, they fill the reader with a sense of possibilities. If you're the type of person who knows exactly what they want, you may as well purchase it online and have it arrive on your doorstep. However if you're just after ‘something interesting' then you really have to go to a bookshop, feel the covers and browse the shelves.

If I'm planning a purchase of a non-fiction book, particularly one with a heavy emphasis on pictures I'll try to visit a proper bookshop to compare different books. I'll usually approach this with the intention of then buying it on Amazon where it will likely be cheaper, but inevitably decide to just buy it then and there. Bookshops are increasingly expanding their collections to get to people that are easily tempted away by the 'simplicity' of Amazon. So now you can buy board games in bookshops. Or pretty stationary. Or a whole variety of little gift books, boxes, bookmarks and trinkets that twinkle at you as you queue.

I'm a particular fan of the 3-for-2 deals that most of the large chains do. Logic would usually dictate that as I can only read one book at a time, I should only buy one book at a time. Also I have a stack of books on my 'To Read' shelf that loom at me and make me feel guilty every time I pass them. However with a 3-for-2 deal it really is more financially sensible to buy three books at a time. It's saving money. Honest.

This also gives me an excuse to take a chance on some random works, books that I would never come across on Amazon, but which call to me across the promotions table. Whether it's a shiny cover, a 'recommended' sticker or just the fact that it's been left in the wrong place, something about this book calls to me and demands to be investigated. Once it's made it into my hands the strangest thing can tip the balance – the feel of the paper, the author picture in the back cover, the use of a particular word in the blurb. I must look a bit odd in bookshops, picking a book up and turning it over. Although I'm not as bad as someone I could mention who is a Page Sniffer. Watch people in bookshops, there's almost always a Page Sniffer loitering around the glossy coffee table books.

Once I've browsed all of the books with the 3-for-2 stickers I'll inevitably find I have 4 books; one that I'd actually planned to purchase all along, one that's a bit of a guilty pleasure and two of the Siren books that have just enchanted me. After a bit of soul searching and peering at my wallet I'll either drop one book (usually the one I'd gone into the shop to buy) or go in search of two more books and promise to not go out until they're finished. This process can take anywhere up to an hour and has been known to drive my shopping companions to distraction.

Many of the larger chains are re-enforcing the appearance of book shopping as a whole experience, not just the stop between M&S and HMV. They're dotting comfy seats around the shelving so you can agonise over your decisions from an armchair. Some shops are even throwing in coffee bars to combine two of my favourite places into one location of perfectness. If you've just obtained new reading materials this saves you trekking out into the cold unpleasantness of the high street to reach the sanctuary of Starbucks. If you take long enough to drink you're coffee you can finish your book and start the whole process over again.

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Sulkyblue's Blog

Entries tagged with books

Books of 2014

October: Unemployed and Employed Again!

August - Another job ends

June - Nothing much happened

May catch-up

2013 - Books

May - sick again

April showers and sneezes

3 months or reading, watching and writing

2011 Reading

2010 - Books

2009 Books

Book Review: Anne McCaffrey - The White Dragon

Saturday morning heaven

Books of 2008

Books of 2007

Unread books meme

Finished.

Top 100 books since 1982

Heaven on Earth: Bookshops