…. just a few reading challenges to wind up.
10 books from 10 consecutive decades ..
I’ve been reading the 20th century, and I’ve had a wonderful time.
Here are the books …
1900s – Sanctuary by Edith Wharton (1903)
1910s – The Third Miss Symons by F M Mayor (1913)
1920s – The Poisoned Chocolates Case by Anthony Berkley (1929)
1930s – Love in the Sun by Leo Walmsley (1939)
1940s – The Franchise Affair by Josephine Tey (1948)
1950s – Flowers for Mrs Harris by Paul Gallico (1958)
1960s – Martha in Paris by Margery Sharp (1964)
1970s – The Abbess of Crewe by Muriel Spark (1973)
1980s – True Deceiver by Tove Jansson (1982)
1990s – Snapped in Cornwall by Janie Bolitho (1997)
And I think I see another 20th century reading project of my own on the horizon …
Reading library books to support libraries …
No problem at all. I read 89 books, some new, some old, some that I might not have discovered on the library shelves, some that I wouldn’t have been able to read had wise librarians not held on to out of print books.
My list is here.
Reading books about books…
I saw so many wonderful possibilities, but I didn’t manage to read quite as many books for this challenge as I’d hoped.
The year ends with me at Bookworm level, with three wonderful books:
- Agatha Christie’s Secret Notebooks by John Curran
- Talking About Detective Fiction by P D James
- Paperboy by Christopher Fowler
I see lots more books about books in my future …
Reading 10 books published in 2010…
Mission accomplished! I’ve done more than 10 I’m sure but in some cases the dates are hazy.
Here’s a list of 10 I’m sure about and happy to recommend:
- The Missing by Jane Casey
- Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand by Helen Simonson
- A Room Swept White by Sophie Hannah
- Even The Dogs by Jon McGregor
- Secret Son by Laila Lailami
- The Wilding by Maria McCann
- The Return of Captain John Emmett by Elizabeth Speller
- Sex and Stravinsky by Barbara Trapido
- The Ninth Wave by Russell Cellyn Jones
- Florence and Giles by John Harding
Books from and about Wales …
I read 4 books and so I finish the year with a silver medal.
The Ninth Wave by Russell Cellyn Jones and White Ravens by Owen Sheers were wonderful contemporary retellings of tales from The Mabinogion.
Diamond Star Halo by Tiffany Murphy was a wonderful contemporary novel from a young author to watch.
And Winter Sonata by Dorothy Edwards was a beautiful, sad tale from the 1920s.
With a little more time it could have been a gold medal, but the year is nearly done.
Yes, tomorrow we will be in a new year, full of wonderful possibilities …
