Pokarekareana and the Very Late-Running Train

It would appear that it is September; admittedly, a bit late in the year to decide that you're going to read 75 books that year. Technically, I've already read 76 books this year, but some of those were for my degree and I'm not going to include them because, well, that feels a bit like cheating. So, not counting the contribution from the wonderful world of academia, I've read forty-something books so far this year.

Wouldn't it be great if I could magic up a thread in which I detail my first forty books of the year for your delectation and delight? Ah ha! In true Blue-Peter-style, here's one I made earlier: http://www.librarything.com/topic/85634

Since that thread ended, I've finished said dissertation, and now I am gainfully unemployed; I spend my days writing job applications and retreating into books when I lose the will to list every job I've ever had, every exam I've ever passed, and every National Insurance number I've ever failed to commit to memory, despite it being SIX DIGITS - why can't I remember them?!

In this thread, I promise to try and write something sensible about the books I read, since in my previous one I did not write anything very useful at all. I promise - Brownies' honour.

So, thirty books, four months... ready, steady... oh, look, time for tea!

1. The Bookshop
2. The Naming of Eliza Quinn
3. A Book Addict's Treasury
4. Wuthering Heights
5. Beside the Sea
6. Village Secrets
7. Town Beyond The Wall
8. Badenheim 1939
9. Ex Libris
10. I'm A Believer
11. The Story of You
12. The Camel Bookmobile
13. The Boleyn Inheritance
14. The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society
15. The Year of the Flood
16. Charlotte's Web
17. Tipping The Velvet
18. Nocturnes: Five Stories of Music and Nightfall
19. The Very Thought of You
20. A Short History of Myth
21. The Magic Finger
22. Suite Francaise
23. The Kissing Gates
24. A Vintage Affair
25. The Bell Jar
26. The Same Earth
27. Jigs and Reels
28. All The Nice Girls
29. A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian
30. Dreams from My Father
31. The Accident by Elie Wiesel (dodgy touchstones don't seem to be able to cope with this one!)
32. The Lacuna
33. The Longest Night
34. Her Fearful Symmetry
35. The Red Tent
36. Brave New World
37. Tales from the Thousand and One Nights
38. Ireland (Horrible Histories Special)
39. The Pirates! In an Adventure with Napoleon
40. Watership Down

The other books that I've read since I finished my forty-books-challenge are:

41. A Rose for Winter by Laurie Lee
42. Geisha of Gion by Mineko Iwasaki
43. A Little Love Song by Michelle Magorian
44. Vanishing Acts by Jodi Picoult

45. Year of Wonders by Geraldine Brooks

Growing up in Derbyshire doesn't do much for your sea legs (being seventy miles from the coast) but it does guarantee numerous school trips and family outings to the village of Eyam. Part of me feels sad that it took an Australian-American to write this book, and not a fellow Derbyshirapodeian; I think that's just a personal issue - I must learn to understand that we are not the only ones qualified to write books which frequently refer to sheep and hills.

Overall, I liked it a lot - the plot was mostly perfect. My little bugbear was the ending, which felt a bit contrived and I don't know if it was convinced by it. I thought I had worked out what was going to happen, but then it went off on a bit of a wild tangent. Ten pages from the end, I was sure that this was going to be a five-star book which I would physically hug when I got to the end, but then the ending happened and I was left thinking "Hmmmmmmmmmmm?!"

I loved Brooks' use of language contemporary to the period, and felt it worked really well. Her characters were very rounded figures, persuasive and constantly developing. This book is definitely worth a read.

Welcome to the group! You have a great list of books.

I agree with you about the ending of Year of Wonders. I have the same problem with Brooks' People of the Book.

Welcome! Nice list, indeed.

Welcome! Some excellent books in the list so far: I'll be interested to see what else you read this year.

I knew I was bound to miss one - I've edited the list above to include A Little Love Song. Since I joined LT about eight months ago, I've read a lot more YA books. I'm not sure how I managed to miss this one, especially as Goodnight Mr Tom was a staple of my early adolescence.

It has come to my attention that I'm acquiring books faster than I can read them, once again.

Anyway, I've just finished:

46. The Light Years by Elizabeth Jane Howard

This book reminds me of a soap opera for several reasons. There are a lot of characters - each has their own role to play but I spent the first half of the book flipping back to the family tree at the beginning. Some of the characters were lovely, and others did and said things so ridiculous I wanted to hit them with the book. Howard is very good at creating tension, which is happily resolved in the end, but anyone with an ounce of historical knowledge knows that this is bound to be short-lived. My fellow Brits will know what I mean when I say that I could almost hear the EastEnders "doof-doofs" as I read the last few pages.

My bugbear for this book was that a few events were left unresolved, and I really hope these are picked up again in the next three books, because this family has a lot of secrets and I'd be disappointed if they never got to air their dirty laundry!

I'd definitely recommend this book - I stayed up very late two nights in a row to finish it!

#7: Well, I went to add The Light Years to the BlackHole and discovered it was already there. I guess I had better move it up a bit!

Heehee! Every now and then that happens to me - I've got almost 700 books on my wishlist and it still surprises me when it does.

#9: Let's just say that the BlackHole is a bit bigger than your wishlist (by a factor of 10 or so, lol.)

Is the Black Hole books you own but haven't read yet?! Or just books you're lusting after?

I don't think I'd be allowed THAT many books - actually, they would probably just cause serious structural damage and I'd be ostracised by all my neighbours.

#11: The BlackHole is both - books I own but have not read as well as books I want to read but do not own.

47. Eva Luna by Isabel Allende

It started out beautifully, dripping with Allende's skill for storytelling, and evoking a rebellious, impassioned Latin spirit rarely seen in literature. Sadly, it runs out of steam towards the end. The last fifty pages were quite difficult to get through, because I had lost interest as the story reached its climax. The characters were intriguing, and the action was compelling through the majority of the book; the ending let the whole book down and I didn't enjoy this anywhere near as much as Allende's other work. A bit disappointing.

#12 - Ah ha, I see! I've only fairly recently started collecting lists of books I'd like to read, so I'm sure it will expand faster than the waistline of a fat kid at Christmas over time.

I've decided on a particular bent for my next bout of reading - I'm going to concentrate on getting rid of my pre-2010 TBR pile, which numbers just under 30 at the minute, before starting on the 70-odd books I've acquired this year.

I may have been lying a little bit in my last post - I've been reading The Resurrectionist by James Bradley, otherwise known hereafter as The World's Most Disappointing Library Book (a position previously held by The Girl In The Red Coat, in case you were wondering). Needless to say, I abandoned The Resurrectionist after 120 pages, and wrote this review:

"Really disappointing. I gave up after 120 pages as I just couldn't get into it at all. My main problem was that all the characters were very forgettable, so when I made the mistake of putting it down to go about my daily life, and came back to it eight hours later, I had forgotten what had happened in the part I'd already read.

I've never been so glad that I got a book from the library and didn't spend money on it!"

Hope your next read is more satisfying. So what do you recommend by Allende, I've only read one of her children's books.
Just looked at the LT page for The Resurrectionist and looks like a lot of readers have found it less than favourable.

I enjoyed Paula and The Sum of Our Days the most, although the first one I ever read was My Invented Country (when I was about seventeen) and that got me hooked. Her adult stuff is quite different to the stuff she's done for young people, but not in a bad way.

Sounds like I can safely skip The Resurrectionist! I really hope you enjoy your next read to make up for that one.

49. The Yacoubian Building by Alaa Al Aswany

Hmm, well, where to begin? At least I made it to the end of this one, but I didn't particularly enjoy it. None of the characters were particularly likable; almost all of them are motivated wholly by sex (especially the women) money or religious fundamentalism. By the end of the book, I found I just didn't care what they did, or what happened to them.

Two of the male characters were engaged in a homosexual relationship which didn't work out well; without spoiling the plot, I felt this was quite a negative depiction and wonder why Al Aswany chose to do this when it might have been more powerful to just leave it as it was earlier in the book.

The premise of the book - to describe the interlinked lives of people living and working in a particular building - was a really great idea but I don't think it was executed very well. It took a long time for the story to get going, the characters' lives remained quite insular, and when I turned the page and discovered it was the end of the book, it all felt very anti-climatic and as if the story had just fizzled out to nothing.

Rating - 2.5 stars, mostly because of the pretty cover.

50. Henrietta's War by Joyce Dennys

Finally! The book drought is over! I was captivated by this book and read it in a single sitting - it recounts a woman's experience of war on the Home Front in a rural part of Britain, through the letters she writes to an old friend who is away fighting. Henrietta, who comes across as a slightly eccentric figure, describes her neighbours in a funny, charming way, and while the war never quite reaches Devon properly, she talks about evacuees, the blackout and rationing in a really endearing way. I can only imagine what the recipient of the letters would have thought! This book makes me want to go to Devon in 1941.

Rating - 4 stars, just for brightening my day.

Glad the drought is over!

Ack... someone told me to try The Yacoubian Building even though I didn't like Aswany's novel Chicago (at all)... in fact, your description of The Yacoubian Building makes it sound JUST LIKE Chicago, but set in a different city. Blech. Maybe I'll pass on this author for good -- I think his work just isn't for me.

#19 I've not read the book, but I thought the film of The Yacoubian Building very good indeed.

#20: Oh, I bought that one last year but I have not read it yet. I am glad you enjoyed it! I will have to dig up my copy.

Glad to see that your book drought is over. I hate those things.

#7 I'm a big fan of Michelle Magorian, yet somehow I also didn't find A Little Love Song until last year. It's absolutely beautiful. I've been on a Magorian kick for the last couple of weeks, re-reading Goodnight Mr Tom and Back Home and now contemplating whether I can find some of her others.

ETA: Hmm, now I need to add Henrietta's War to my wishlist - it sounds really good.

Mm, I'd love to read more of Michelle Magorian's work - I've only read Goodnight Mr Tom and A Little Love Song. I think I imagined the setting of Henrietta's War and A Little Love Song as the same village, so yes, read it!

51. All Quiet On The Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque

I loved this book. It is a German soldier's account of trench warfare in the First World War, and Remarque brought it alive in an astonishing, poignant way. One of the most powerful elements was the strong relationships developed between the characters, made all the more so by a constant barrage of bullets and bombs falling around their ears.

It's not all about the war, though. Baumer, the protagonist, goes home on leave to the town where he and his brothers-in-arms (and previously his classmates) were raised, and it's here where Remarque's capacity for being true to his subject becomes clear; we hear a lot these days about how difficult it is for soldiers returning from Iraq or Afghanistan to return home and 'get back to normal', and Remarque makes it clear that this isn't unique to our era. It was just the same for our enemies almost a century ago.

A must-read.

#27: I agree with you: A must-read.

Ooooh, a speedy-reading weekend. I also went on a one-day writing course yesterday which was amazing; I did a ten-week course when I lived in London which really irritated me because the tutor wasn't great and the other people were a bit pretentious, whereas everyone yesterday was very, very down to earth, and the tutor was great and gave me lots of lovely ideas. (I even have a shiny new notebook - YAY!)

So, this weekend's offering is...

52. Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris

This book lingered on my bookcase for about two years before I got round to reading it. I forget why I'd been putting it off, but I've recently decided that I have to get rid of some of my oldest TBRs. It was a quick, unchallenging read; Sedaris is quite funny and his style is very readable. He has had a relatively colourful life, getting into drugs, not getting through college, and eventually moving to Paris and having various adventures trying to learn to speak French.

It's quite funny in places, but I don't think I'd especially recommend it, because I think it's unremarkable and thus quite forgettable - I doubt I'll remember much of it in a month. Probably quite good for a bathroom library, because you can pick it up and read a chapter completely independently from the rest of the book.

I've had two books on the go this week, and I've just finished the first of them, which was great.

53. Before the Storm by Diane Chamberlain

I'd already read and loved "The Lost Daughter", so I'm really glad this wasn't a let-down. The characters really get under your skin, because Chamberlain has such a fascinating way of making them all seem very human and ever so slightly imperfect, although in my head they are all supermodelishly attractive people. I accidentally discovered whodunnit by reading the blurb of another of Diane Chamberlain's books, but even knowing what I wasn't meant to know didn't spoil my enjoyment of this one.

The cover of the book I read says that you should read it if you like Jodi Picoult. I'd recommend leaving Jodi Picoult in the library or the bookshop and reading this instead.

#30: Thanks for the recommendation of that one. I will see if I can locate a copy.

I owe you all a review for 54. Notwithstanding but here's my ER review for 55. The House Martin by William Parker.

This is one of the most engaging books I've read all year. The character of Ben is prone, innocent and ultimately quite intriguing. Struggling to cope with life at the great British boarding school in the 1960s, and trying to hide his mother's alcoholism from his classmates, he finds himself bound up with secrets and eventually collapses under the strain. I found this book to be more honest than I expect fiction to be; his emotions were tangible throughout Parker's writing and as a result, I kept thinking about it in between readings and got through the entire thing in under a day.

Definitely one of the year's best reads.

#32: Nice review of The House Martin. Thumbs up from me!

54. Notwithstanding

I want to live in a world populated by these batty characters, punctuated by all the funny, bizarre and touching moments which de Bernieres skillfully embroiders into his most recent book. The English village of Notwithstanding is a long way from the hills of Kefalonia described in Captain Corelli's Mandolin but it is a testament to de Bernieres' skill as a writer that he has made both places equally real and equally intriguing in my mind's eye. He has a clever way of interspersing the funny and the tragic into his writing so each washes over you quite unexpectedly, and I'd definitely recommend this. He does, however, present English people as uniformly interested mainly in fishing and farming, and I'd like to present a word in my countrymens' defence; we also like mocking the Royal family. That is all.

#34: Adding that one to the BlackHole. Thanks for the recommendation!

55. The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox by Maggie O'Farrell

The premise for this book was a great idea; discovering you have an elderly relative you've never heard of who has languished in a mental institute for her entire adult life? It should have been fantastic. Sadly, it wasn't very well executed; this novel was lacking a solid resolution.

I found the characters engaging and interesting figures, and enjoyed the complex structure - the perspective shifts around a lot, and it isn't always clear whose 'mind' we're in at a given point. I've seen this done poorly, and think Maggie O'Farrell has managed to pull it off quite well - I suddenly had a moment of clarity part-way through and understood what each of the different voices represented.

The ending was very disappointing; I'm still not sure I really understand what happened! I feel like the author got bored and couldn't be bothered to end what was otherwise a perfectly readable book properly.

Three stars for this one.

#36: I have that one in the BlackHole already due to numerous reviews of it here in the group, but I do not recall anyone mentioning the ending as being disappointing. I guess I will see for myself when I finally get it read!

56. Moments of Reprieve by Primo Levi

Primo Levi returns to some of his old characters, describing his experience of each of them in the same intriguing style employed in "If This Is A Man" et al. The tone of the book seems more hopeful and less despairing than his other Auschwitz memoirs. An essential read for anyone who has read Levi's more famous works.

57. Dear Everybody by Michael Kimball

The idea of this novel was absolutely intriguing - a man commits suicide, and his estranged brother sifts through the detritus of his life, trying to work out why Jonathon took his own life. Most of the book consists of a series of letters written by Jonathon to everyone from his ex-wife to the Easter Bunny, along with input from his brother's conversations with his father and others.

This style could so easily have been overcomplicated, become distracting, or simply have failed to be as intriguing as Kimball intended, but it was perfectly executed. I read the entire book in one sitting, because I found that the style in which it was written compelling.

A small niggle - Jonathon and his parents are wonderfully well-developed characters, but everyone else feels peripheral to the storyline, even when it's clear that they played a key part in Jonathan's life. One gets the sense that he feels attached to these other characters, but without the feeling of participating in an extended relationship with them.

#38: Thanks for the mention of that one. I have read a couple of Levi's books but not that particular one. I will look for it!

58. The Long Song by Andrea Levy

Throughout this book, glimpses emerged of Levy's talent, but I must admit it was a struggle to get to the end. I found the characters engaging and universally irritating - I'm sure some of this was intentional on the part of the author, but towards the end I felt that the story was just dragging unbearably. I didn't really understand why Levy chose to use a narrator to describe the story, because her story and that of her son didn't add much to the overall effect. While it was interesting to read about Thomas' experiences in London, it clashed with the background of July's story as a slave on a Jamaican plantation - it felt a bit like Levy was trying to shoehorn two stories into one book and it didn't work.

#41: I have heard mixed reviews of that one. I think I will stay away from it a bit longer, especially as I still have not read Small Island.

59. The Widow and Her Hero by Thomas Keneally.

I wanted this book to be wonderful. Schindler’s Ark was such an iconic piece of literature, and I was hoping that my second jaunt into Keneally’s world would touch me in the same way. I must admit that I’ve studied the Holocaust in great depth and thus part of the attraction to Keneally’s most famous work stems from that, but The Widow and Her Hero was sadly lacking. Parts of it were written in a fast-moving, captivating manner – I loved the parts about Grace’s life as the girlfriend, wife and widow of an Australian seaman during the Second World War. I felt a connection to her touching but not overly sentimental story, and had Keneally kept it to that, he would have written a fine book that explored ideas of love and grief in a really interesting way.

Sadly, the bit that really ruined the book for me were the parts that really defined Keneally’s overall purpose – writing about the reality of war, of carrying out espionage far from home, and ultimately falling victim to a tyrannical enemy. Some parts were interesting, but I struggled to the end, especially with the uncomfortable meeting between one of the Japanese characters and Grace in Australia long after the war has ended. Some of Leo’s colleagues came across as dull and I think I got them confused in the end. I would recommend this if you’re interested in military history, especially in the Pacific front of World War Two, but that wasn’t what I was looking for and as a result I didn’t particularly enjoy large chunks of this book.

#43: I may give that one a try some time as I am interested in the Pacific theatre of WWII.

I am sorry you did not enjoy it more. I hope your next read is more to your taste!

60. PopCo by Scarlett Thomas

The cover told me that this book might change my life. It didn’t quite manage that, although it did tempt me to commit petty acts of vandalism in my local supermarket. Alice works for an international toy company, and is happy in her work until a curious work trip takes her and her colleagues to Devon, where she is asked to work on a special project. Alice’s fascination with numbers and cryptography is piqued by a series of mysterious notes, which lead her eventually to question all that she had previously supposed about her employer, about big business, and the world around her.

I found Alice to be a fantastically likable character, and I see elements of her in myself, or vice versa. She never quite follows the crowd, but seems to exist on the edge. A little bit kooky, and not quite in touch with her inner self, she suddenly finds her world tipped upside down over the course of a few days. Scarlett Thomas has produced an intriguing story, although perhaps not quite as gripping as The End of Mr Y.

To end, a small disclaimer, and a word of reassurance; I won’t lie to you. There’s quite a lot of maths-talk in this, about which I was a bit worried before I started reading. I’m an incredibly unmathematical person, but I found Thomas’ way of explaining things quite interesting, and definitely on my level. My fears that I was going to need to do a maths degree to understand what was happening were unfounded, and in the end, this was a thoroughly enjoyable read. (Please don’t tell my high school maths teacher that I liked a book with maths in it.)

61. Pereira Maintains by Antonio Tabbuchi

Lisbon in 1938, and Dr Pereira swelters in the heat of summer and political oppression. Germany, Spain and Italy have fallen into Fascist hands, but as a journalist himself, he feels no compunction about publishing controversial works by foreign authors. Still mourning the loss of his wife years earlier, he finds himself dissatisfied, overweight and frustrated by his lot in life. He takes on an assistant, Rossi, to prepare obituaries for the cultural section of the newspaper for which he works, but is baffled by Rossi’s seemingly inability to separate politics from eulogy. Finding himself drawn into Rossi’s underground, and attracting the hostile attention of the editor-in-chief, Pereira begins to find his voice stifled until a tragic event forces him to stand up for his own principles.

Tabucchi has produced a masterpiece. It isn’t often that I get to say that, but this book is fantastically well-written; the sense of lingering, tormenting heat was palpable, and I found the character of Pereira intriguing, since he seems to live so much in the shadows until the last few pages, when he is suddenly thrust into another world. The ending itself, though not entirely unexpected, brought this beautiful story to an exhilarating conclusion and I had been worried that Tabucchi might ruin a great book by writing, well, something other than what he did. My concerns were unfounded, and this was easily one of the best books I’ve read in 2010.

62. The Diving Bell and the Butterfly by Jean-Dominique Bauby

I read this beautiful, beautiful book in a single sitting, late last night. I lay awake for hours afterwards thinking about it. Perhaps already famous for having been written by a man who communicated only by blinking one eye, there was always the danger that this book would turn out to be trite, poorly written, even dull. None of these came to pass. I’m quite sure that Bauby could have had a long career as the writer of great literature, had things turned out differently.

As it happened, Bauby found himself imprisoned. Trapped in his failing body, suddenly unable to move, when previously he had been an active forty-something with a family and a high-flying job, Bauby’s bewilderment is the most clear and profound message of this book. He speaks eloquently of his experience of the hospital, of each of his torturous days, of his few jaunts into the outside world. Perhaps most touching is his description of the day of his stroke, which was like any other until his world was torn from its moorings. That sense of a sudden horror resonated like a bell for me; serious illness swoops unexpectedly from nowhere and scrambles human lives into something unrecognisable.

Would I recommend this book? Yes. Would you want to read it? If you’re not afraid of powerlessness, of frustration, of suffering that cannot properly be expressed, and a sense that Bauby was one of the great writers we never really got to read.

Only thirteen books left to go this year - woo!

#46: Only thirteen books left to go this year - woo!

Great!

Hello, Stasia, you seem to be the only person reading my sad little thread. Thank you for sticking with me!

I've just realised that I've forgotten that I read The Night Villa by Carol Goodman about six weeks ago. It was passably good although I've forgotten the complexities of the story - mostly about archaeology, Pompeii, scary encounters and lots of rushing about through tunnels. I realise this is not a particularly helpful review, but I thought The Lake of Dead Languages was fantastic, and that this one was disappointing by comparison. That takes me to 63 books for the year.

64. A Room Swept White by Sophie Hannah

I'm not really one for crime and mysteries and things like that, but I thought I'd try and branch out a little. I quite liked this book and got through it at a fair pace, but I had an inkling about the ending quite early on, so I got a bit bored waiting for the situation to resolved. The characters were a bit flat, and I don't think the main character was meant to be as irritating as she was.

I enjoyed Goodman's The Lake of Dead Languages too. Thus far, it is the only one of her books that I have read.

No problems with me sticking around. I stick to everybody :)

Delurking to say that I wander by occasionally. *waves hello*

I found The End of Mr Y bizarre but interesting, so I may give PopCo a go. I found The Diving Bell and the Butterfly both beautiful and haunting, too.

I'm a lurker, too. There may be more of us than you think :)

Definitely more of us here than you think - I've also been lurking. You've reveiwed a couple of books lately that I've had my eye on, although I've now shuffled The Long Song back down my TBR stack after reading you thoughts.

You've read a lot of the same books I have or that I'm aspiring to read recently. I liked The Long Song better than you did though.

I'm also a lurker. I also loved The Diving Bell and the butterfly, the movie is excellent as well. I have Carol Goodman's Night Villa book, sounds like I should look out The Lake of Dead Languages first.
#43> Was that a recent one by Keneally? I want to read more of his work and have only read Schindler's Ark so far and that was when it first came out.

{delurks} I'm reading, because I like your way of writing about your books, but I haven't read any of these so I'm not chatting. {lurks}

Oh, hello, lurkers and Stasia! It's good to know you're all out there, reading my witterings!

Anyway, yes, there's about a week left of this year and I'm well aware that at the last count, I had eleven books to go. This month, I have mostly been getting ill with flu, recovering enough to go back to work for a day, going on holiday to Madeira (small Portuguese island off Morocco; mostly full of old biddies but much warmer than petrifyingly-cold-UK at the moment!) I need to actually devote some time to working out what I've read since I last posted to this thread, but I have a couple of reviews for your delight and delectation in the meantime.

65. Ellis Island by Kate Kerrigan

Ellie grows up running in fields and climbing trees with her friend John in Ireland, and it isn’t unpredictable that as they become teenagers, they fall in love. Ellie is at boarding school while John goes away to Dublin, ostensibly for an apprenticeship, but it’s not long before he’s embroiled in the Irish civil war. John and Ellie marry against their parents’ wishes, and soon John is injured in action. Nursing her husband back to health takes its toll on Ellie, and she finds herself the recipient of an invitation from a friend to work as a housemaid in New York. Anxious to scrape together the money that will get John walking again, and despairing of her poverty-stricken life in Ireland, Ellie decides to go to America for a year.

In New York, Ellie lands on her feet, making a living and a new life for herself. She conveniently bumps into the same wealthy man several times over the course of months, and finds herself fighting her own emotions. This part of the story grated slightly; she seemed to be angry with John for his unwillingness to come to America as she asked, and seemed not to be very much in love with him any more. I didn’t really understand why she chose to return to Ireland, although at the same time it felt sadly predictable.

Passable, but probably not worth all the rave reviews.

66. In The Springtime of the Year by Susan Hill

I feel like I don’t have much to say about this one, simply because it was so perfectly written. It was elegant, it was dignified, and it never tried to make the death of a spouse into anything more than it needed to be. Other writers might have tried to throw more twists and turns into the plot, but the simplicity of the story was perfectly counterbalanced by the emotional complexity. I’d never read any of Susan Hill’s work before but I will definitely be reading more.

67. Handle with Care by Jodi Picoult

Warning: may contain spoilers.

An absolute Jodi Picoult classic; a family struggles with unlikely-but-not-completely-implausible catastrophe, and experiences conflict, then turmoil, and finally a resolution to it all. And (to paraphrase) then Picoult goes and spoils it all by doing something stupid like... the ending. I thought this book was mostly excellent, until the last five pages. The characters were intriguing, irritating and engaging in equal measure, the plotline was gritty, and I couldn’t put it down, but the ending was just painful. I had the same reaction to My Sister’s Keeper. I genuinely threw the book on the floor in disgust, because I lost a bet I’d made with myself ten pages earlier that she really wouldn’t do it again, but she really did. Oh Jodi... what were you thinking?

Worth a read, but only in paperback; the hardback would hurt if it landed on your foot in the course of aforementioned-throwing-on-floor-in-disgust-at-dire-ending.

I hope you are recovered from the flu! A terrible time of year to be coming down with it!

Are you joining us for next year? The 2011 group is up and running: http://www.librarything.com/groups/75booksin20111#forums

A few more reviews, in anticipation of the end of the year...

68. David Golder by Irene Nemirovsky

This book left me a bit cold; I thought Suite Francaise was beautiful, and so I had high expectations for this one. It was very well written, and I don’t think it helped that I recently read Pereira Maintains; this reminded me of that, and I was constantly comparing the two. I feel that this book was put there to teach me a lesson; just because an author writes one superb book, this doesn’t mean that it is helpful or satisfying to assume that all their work will move you to the core of your being in the same way. Consider me told!

69. Marking Time by Elizabeth Jane Howard

The second of the Cazalet chronicles; it is 1939 and war has just broken out. The Cazalet family are variously struggling to deal with the tension of the so-called Phony War, and all the pressures and worries that this brings to the surface. I only discovered this series by chance when my mum borrowed the first one from the library and I read it in a single sitting. I feel this is a good example of writing from a shifting perspective that works very well, and it moves quickly without being confusing. I like the characterisation very much, and think I’d quite like to go to tea with this lot because they’re so frightfully British about everything, darling. Definitely worth a read, particularly if you’re into the social aspects of wartime Britain.

70. Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift

I had a picture book version of this as a child, which I loved and which became suitably dog-eared over time. The grown-up version is equally delicious, and just the most perfect form of adventure. I must admit I can’t understand why you’d ever go to sea again after going to Lilliput, because I think I would be truly apprehensive, but there’s an adventurous spirit at work in this book that you don’t often see in literature. I read this very quickly, because I found it engrossing and the exploits grew increasingly, well, a little bit strange... definitely one to read!

71. A Book of Nonsense by Edward Lear

As expected, it reminded me of the nonsense verse I used to love as a child. I have no great interest in poetry, but something in this kind of funny, nonsensical turn of phrase intrigues me. A very quick read for a wet morning when you need the literary equivalent of a tickle!

72. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and Other Tales of the Jazz Age by F. Scott Fitzgerald

I’ve seen the film of this story twice, and never really felt much affinity with it, and now I’ve read the book I realise that this is simply down to the fact that the original story doesn’t particularly lend itself to being made into a film. Fitzgerald has a certain flair that needs to be read, or at least not mangled slightly, projected onto the silver screen, and dressed up with bells, whistles and Brad Pitt. It worked much better in my own imagination. The other stories were equally well-written, happily, and overall it was a great little read.

I hope you had a great Christmas!

I am such a dingbat. I keep forgetting books I've read. I just remembered:

73. A Gate At The Stairs by Lorrie Moore

Tassie Keltjin gets a job as a part-time nanny whilst studying, and finds herself becoming embroiled in the lives of the family that employs her. I got a sense of struggling to become an adult against the backdrop of 9/11 and the resulting war, and that was something I could empathise with as I'm a similar age. I don't think I particularly enjoyed the book but felt carried along by it, and wanted to reach some kind of resolution. My lasting impression is that Moore has created an intriguing character, but some of her behaviour is nothing short of disturbing and I think I wanted there to be some acknowledgement of that. A bit odd.

#60: Not a dingbat, Jen. I think it is just the time of year. Too many things going on.

61 - Thanks, Stasia! I'm glad it's not just me!

Anyway...

74. Why Don't Penguins' Feet Freeze? And 114 Other Questions from New Scientist

I'm not a scientist at all. The only reason I liked science at school was because it occasionally gave me the chance to spell long and unpronouncable words. Like its predecessor, Does Anything Eat Wasps, I found this to be really interesting and enjoyable. The format of the book works especially well for somebody like me who has minimal knowledge of most areas of science; it's in the form of questions and answers posted by members of the public, so the answers range from impenetrable professorial tomes to homework answers written by nine-year-olds. It's gross in places, genuinely baffling in others, but I think I may even have learnt something from reading this. Hooray!

75. War Horse by Michael Morpurgo

Having seen the stage production of this book on the West End (London's answer to Broadway, darling!) I already had a hunch that I might just love it. I had never read any of Morpurgo's work, although I understand that he is quite a prolific childrens' writer, but I feel like I could sit down and read everything this man has written. I was struck by how well he combined things that some children will absolutely love reading about (namely animals, or more specifically, horses) with things that older children probably need to be reading about (war, presented realistically and not glamourised). Using an equine perspective, rather than a human one, worked tremendously well and I think it would have been a mistake to try to tell the story from Albert, the boy's, perspective. An absolute must-read - I wish I'd discovered this earlier!

Well, ladies and gentlemen, that brings me neatly and happily to the end of my 75-in-2010. In trying to name my favourite book of the year, I've got myself completely stuck and I can't decide. I shall, instead, declare a stonking victory for the French; Suite Francaise and The Diving Bell and the Butterfly are two 2010 discoveries that will stay with me for a long, long time.

Thank you for following my thread this year, especially to my newfound lurking community! Please form an orderly queue and walk this way for the 2011 thread: http://www.librarything.com/topic/105457 See you on the other side!

Happy holidays and congratulations on finishing your 75 books! A book from a horses perspective sounds intriguing. I'll be heading over to your 2011 thread, see you there :-)

Congrats!