State of the TBR April 2020

I was discussing with my best friend whether we fancied reading a book ‘together’ at this time of isolation, and decided to get it ALL out (and this isn’t even all of it actually as I’d put the Piles to one side. I’m not getting it all out again though!

and here’s the more usual view of it. In fact, it’s doing quite well (a bit well), because the books on the back aren’t all in horizontal piles any more, just two piles and a normal row of books.

That might be down to the fact that I read FIFTEEN books in March, although a lot of those were on Kindle on our holiday at the beginning of the month. FIFTEEN though. And I’m still working very much (very, very much) full time at the moment.

Coming up next are these four lovelies. I’m just finishing Jane Linfoot’s “Christmas Promises at the Little Wedding Shop” (I’ll be reviewing the three in this series I read in March together next) and then it’ll be on to Ada Leverson’s “Love at Second Sight”, which is the third volume in the “Little Ottleys” trilogy. Volume two was a bit nail-biting as the Ottleys’ marriage is threatened, and I had a little change before going back to the third. I’ll be reviewing those together, too, and was reading them along with Heaven-Ali so we will try to link our reviews when they’re done.

Then it’s on to my Paul Magrs of the month: “Could it be Magic?” which is the third in the Phoenix Court series and features a man giving birth to a leopard-skin furry baby, as you do. After that comes Helen Lewis’ “Difficult Women: A History of Feminism in 11 Fights” for which I did the transcriptions; I want to read it anyway and am reviewing it for Shiny New Books. Hopefully I’ve persuaded a couple of other people to read it alongside me, too – hooray! And then Delia Owens’ “Where the Crawdads Sing” for which I have seen both glowing and scathing reviews but which Matthew read recently on audio book and absolutely loved, so exhorted me to buy and read.

There have been some more incomings on the Kindle front, via NetGalley, which I am always forgetting to update on here.

Clare Pooley’s “The Authenticity Project” is a cafe-based random acts of kindness novel that appealed in January.

“Diary of a Confused Feminist” by Kate Weston is a YA book about trying to be a feminist as well as everything else in today’s times (well, not today’s actual times right now: that would involve sitting in your house being a feminist at Joe Wicks’ PE or something, wouldn’t it).

Catherine Sanderson’s “The Bystander Effect” is about the effect peers / crowds have on helping behaviour and will hopefully have hints on how to stand up for what is right, because that’s how it was advertised.

“Our House is on Fire” is by Greta Thunberg’s parents about what it’s like raising and living with a world icon in climate change activism.

Beth Moran’s “How not to be a Loser” is a novel about a come-back to running with an inspirational group, I saw it on another blog and requested it.

And Brit Bennett’s “The Vanishing Half” is a novel about twin sisters who grow up together in a small southern American black community but then take wildly different paths, one remaining at home and the other moving away and passing as white.

That’s only the most recent ones but I am looking forward to everything there!

A readalong a readalong a readalong a readalong?

So I was wondering, does anyone have any of these lovely books coming up and would like to read along with me? I’m going to share the whole TBR now, apart from two really old 2nd hand books no one is going to have, and I managed to miss Madness’ “Before We Was We” off the photos below but am up for that one, too. I hope you can see these, let me know in the comments if you’d like to draw together and do a shared read of any of these in April/May. Something to look forward to.

 

State of the TBR March 2020 plus new acquisitions #bookconfessions

Well, I have got all the TBR on one shelf apart from my little pile of Paul Magrs’ Phoenix Court novels and Icelandic trilogy. But there are Piles. And I’m going to reveal the back row …

Of course, my little challenge for myself still means I just have to get down to one above Rebecca Front’s “Curious” by the end of the year … Anyway, here’s it all put together.

Piles in the back neatly obscured by piles on top of the front row!

I’m currently finishing “Windblown” by Tamsin Treverton Jones, a book about the Great Storm of 1987, telling the story of the storm in great detail and then talking about its aftermath and the remarkable regeneration that has gone on in the places that were destroyed. Not entirely the best book to read in public (on a train, going down to a book launch) as, having been in the middle of the storm, aged 15, it brought it all back in horrible, visceral detail and quite shocked me. I have read another two books this month which will be reviewed next week, taking my total for February to ten, which is not too bad.

These are the oldest books on the TBR so will be picked up next. I can’t really get at the newest ones at the moment, although I might be able to sneak the very newest off the back shelf at some point. Odd that I ended up with two Tolkien books quite close together. At least this has changed a bit since the picture last month!

Also next up will of course be my next Paul Margs – second in his Phoenix Court series, “Does it Show” is another I really don’t remember as I read it last in 1996! And I really need to dive back into the NetGalley backlog on my Kindle, although that does work against the white male writing I’m seeing a lot of right here. So it’s all good, right?

And new books in …

New books in

OK, so I picked up Rakesh Satyal’s “Blue Boy” at our BookCrossing meetup last weekend: my friend Sian brought it and recommended it. Set in Cincinnati in the 1990s, our hero, Kiran, lacks the knack for fitting in – but some divine intervention is just around the corner. Lovely Kaggsy from the Ramblings sent me “Motherland” by Jo McMillan as she knew it was on my wishlist but had been unable to locate it in her stacks. A mother and daughter, the only Communists in Tamworth, go behind the Iron Curtain in East Germany – sounds fantastic. Everyone seems to be reading Lennie Goodings’ “A Bite of the Apple” which is about her work at Virago Books, ending up their editor, and I was pleased this published earlier than expected, as I’d pre-ordered it (why is that such a thing with me when I have so many books? However, this is the one most likely to slip off the end of the TBR and into my reading hands very soon). David Crystal’s “Let’s Talk” is a book about conversation OUP have kindly sent me to review for Shiny New Books. I love Crystal’s books so am so looking forward to this (which will obviously be read and reviewed soon).

Finally, Helen Lewis’ “Difficult Women: A History of Feminism in 11 Fights” I picked up at the book launch, to which I was invited because I worked on the transcriptions of the interviews Helen did for the book. I don’t just work for ghostwriters and this was one of my favourite books I’ve worked on, and I was honoured to find myself in the Acknowledgements! (I only looked on the train home from London, of course). It’s set to be a fabulous book and I was thrilled to meet a couple of the interviewees, as well as Helen, at the launch – I hardly ever get to meet my clients, let alone the people whose interviews I transcribe, so this was a massive treat.

Have you read any of these? Or are you planning to? What’s your March reading looking like?

State of the TBR February 2020

Well, I’m pleased to say that I finished 13 books in January, of which six were ebooks (I have one left to review), so I feel I’m doing well with the print TBR. Some of those books were from my Christmas acquisition pile but you will see a change in the start / oldest part of the TBR which is cheering after some stasis there.

So here’s the TBR as it stands. The Christmas books are on it (and could have been piled higher!) – you might be able to just see them behind the Magrs Mars books to the right. I am going to leave them stacked horizontally, as (well, hm, see below) they mark the point on the shelf I want to get up to by the end of the year.

Currently reading

I’m currently reading two books from the oldest part of the TBR (I really wanted to read them and couldn’t face shoehorning books from the front row off to get at pre-Christmas ones!). Simon Garfield’s “On the Map” is a really super exploration of the history of maps, from the very earliest ones to modern stuff around Google Maps, etc. It’s got nice illustrations (though printed on the page so a bit fuzzy sometimes) and is very engaging and fun to read. John Carter and Nicholas Barker’s “ABC for Book Collectors” is a newish edition of a firm favourite which I first encountered when I worked in Special Collections at the university library in 1992 – it goes through all the parts of a book and how books are made and described, but is far from dry, as it has all these funny and wry little notes scattered through it. Fun to dip into and perfect for reading at the dinner table.

Up next

Well first off of course it’s my Paul Magrs book for the month – going back to the Phoenix Court novels which were his first, and “Marked for Life” (which I think he wrote second but published first) so a lovely bit of magical realism set in North-East England estates and precincts. There are two bonus short stories in this Lethe Press edition, plus an intro by Paul. “Mr Loverman” is by Bernadine Evaristo and I’ve picked it off the October 2019 bit of the TBR (bought from a charity shop in Penzance when I thought I didn’t want to read “Girl, Woman, Other” because it was “written in poetry” – rather ironically, alternate chapters are in the same experimental style) because a) my friend Laura has just read it, b) Bookish Beck has just read it and I want to not have to keep her review for another 9 months before I can read it, and c) it sort of ties in with Valentine’s Day, right? It’s the story of what happens when a pillar of the West Indian community in London is discovered to be secretly gay and looks so well done and interesting. Finally, Hiromi Kawakami’s “The Nakano Thrift Shop” which I also bought in October will mean I can take part in The Japanese Literature Challenge 13 – I’m only taking part in challenges I can do from my TBR so was pleased to remember I did have a Japanese book!

Oldest on the TBR

The Oldest book on my TRB picture has changed quite a lot from January, as I’ve read four of the books that were on there and am currently reading another two. As I mentioned above, this really pleases me as it feels like I am actually reading the books I’ve pounced on with such glee in various places. So I have books on travel in Tahiti, running (a history and a memoir about blade-running), a book about the Great Storm of 1997 and the renewal of those fallen trees (how is that long enough ago to have a book about it, mind??), a book about where artefacts belong, one about Icelandic women travellers and one about birdwatchers.

I do have some novels on NetGalley that I will be getting to, as well, and those three works of fiction above, so a good mix, I think. Will I delve further into the back shelf? Not sure!

 

 

New in!

As people who read my running posts (not sure how much overlap there is!) will know, I have a reserve place in the London Marathon with my running club. This means I hopefully won’t have to run it, as the two people who got the places will be all fine and able to do it, but I do need to train up and be ready to do it just in case. So training to not do a marathon. While I intend to do a DIY marathon the week after London, taking a fun trip around a long bus route in Birmingham, it’s sometimes a bit hard to motivate myself, and having had a cold for the last week I wasn’t really adoring my 16-mile training run today. HOWEVER, all was made infinitely better by finding a rectangular parcel when I got home – a gift from the very lovely Verity of Joan Aiken’s “The Serial Garden”, which is all of the brilliant Armitage Family stories in one volume. Hooray!

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How was your reading in January and what do you plan to read in February? Have you read any of these books?

State of the TBR January 2020 and reading stats / best books of 2019

Oh, goodness me. Oops, even. So I acquired a beautiful stack of books for Christmas (see them all here) as well as a book token and the exciting promise of a trip up the high street for charity shop book shopping and a cuppa after my birthday, and even with all the reading I did in December, there was NO WAY all those books were fitting on the shelf. So here’s the top shelf, double-stacked, with two pony book reprints and four Jane Linfoots, the Christmas volumes of which I didn’t get to this year, with the previous incomings and my BookCrossing secret santa books tucked in on the back shelf. Colonising one of Matthew’s shelves are my Christmas books in a pile (left) and my upcoming Paul Magrs books plus a trilogy I haven’t got round to and some random books in series where I need to either get the missing books in the series or basically get over myself. Ah well. Worse problems to have, etc.

I other people’s challenges (while I’m here). I have happily found that I have an Irish book (“Too Many Ponies”) for Reading Ireland Month in May and “The Three Miss Kings” for Australia Reading Month in November, plus two Du Mauriers for Ali’s week, enough Viragoes and Persephones for more than All August, and will be doing Non-Fiction November and 20 Books of Summer again.

My first book of the year was Paul Magrs’ “Aisles” and I took a somewhat alarming photo of myself with it for the First Book of the Year blog – it didn’t make it onto there, probably because I committed some terrible transgression, but here you go:

That’s “Aisles” in the middle, with the four Phoenix Court books which are the next four months’ reads, around me. See more on my Paul Magrsathon here.

Up next on the physical TBR are these lovelies. We’re going back to May 2018 here so I’m going to make a concerted effort to get some of these read and get the Christmas books fitted on before I revert back to my one from the oldest, one from the youngest, one on Kindle routine.

So “Footnotes” by Vybar Cregan-Reid (why we run), Dave Heeley’s “From Light to Dark” (his story as a blind runner), Harold Nicolson’s travel memoir “Journey to Java”, Sarah Henshaw’s self-explanatory, “The Bookshop that Floated Away”, Simon Garfield’s “On the Map”, Carter and Barker’s “ABC for Book Collectors”, George Eggleston’s mysterious “Tahiti” and Thor Gotaas’ history of “Running” – I’m hoping to read all of these this month.

2019 stats

For the first time, I’ve kept breakdowns of various book stats. So here they are with little to compare them with apart from the totals and genders!

I have got 2018 (in parentheses) figures for this first bit. So in 2019 I read 116 (115) books, of which 62 (56) were fiction and 54 (59) non-fiction. 79 (75) were by women, 35 (39) by men, 1 (1) by both (multiple authors) and 1 by a non-gender binary person (a new category this year, as it was for a few people whose blogs I read).

Where did my books come from:

gift	20
netgalley	17
bookshop online	16
publisher	14
bookshop physical	14
charity shop	10
bookcrossing	7
bookshop online second hand	7
own	3
bought from publisher	2
bookshop second hand	1
passed on	1
bought from author	1
loan	1
unbound subscription copy	1
author	1

How lovely that so many of my books were gifts!

Most books by far were set in the UK (74) with the US second (17) and then 14 other countries plus one set in a fantasy world.

I read books by 53 different publishers, the most common being Vintage (12) (Iris Murdochs in the main), Penguin (9), Virago (9), Avon (8), HarperCollins (6) and Thames & Hudson (5).

I read most books published in 2019 (30), which surprised me, although I reviewed a lot of books for Shiny and NetGalley. Eight of my top ten years were in the 2010s with only 1941 represented there from a much older decade. However, I did read books from 39 different years, from 1910 to 2020, although no books from the 1930s.

Onto diversity of authors and themes. 88% of the authors I read were white (as far as I could tell), with 12% People of Colour (I put everyone who was non-white in this category after a lot of fretting). The UK is apparently 87% / 13% so I’m  not far off that, but I want to increase the diversity. I might record nationality next year as well. Out of the 116 books I read, I assigned a diversity theme to 39 of them (feels like this should be higher), so 12 books specifically talking about women’s issues, 8 about race (plus one about indigenous peoples’ experience which I counted separately and one about women of colour), 6 LGBTQI+ issues, 4 mental health, 2 about gender in general, 1 about disability, 1 about class, 1 about race and class, 1 about non-neurotypical people and 1 about people with prosopagnosia. This doesn’t meant such themes didn’t come up in other books, just that they weren’t the main theme. It’s good to keep an eye on my intersectional reading and I’ll see if this changes with some of the books I bought towards the end of the year.

Top 11 books of 2019

And finally, my top eleven! Well, that represents just under 10% of my reading, so I think that’s OK. Links to reviews. 7 women and 4 men (about right), 7 non-fiction and 4 fiction (I did read a lot of nice light series set in Cornwall). Not mentioned as they’re somehow a given: the 12 works by Iris Murdoch I re-read this year.

Tirzah Garwood – “Long Live Great Bardfield” (my first book of the year!)

Jennifer Niven – “Holding up the Universe”

Stephen Rutt – “The Seafarers”

Harriet Harman – “A Woman’s Work”

Margaret Atwood – “The Testaments” (because it was such an event and because I HAD wanted a sequel)

Richard Grant – “Dispatches from Pluto”

Bernadine Evaristo – “Girl, Woman, Other” (this was probably my book of the year)

Clair Wills – “Lovers and Strangers”

Tayari Jones – “An American Marriage” tied with Kiley Reid – “Such a Fun Age” – both important books about modern black lives in America (so OK that’s 12 then)

Joe Harkness – “Bird Therapy”

Mark Mason – “Walk the Lines” (see, I was right not to compile this list until today)

Have you read and rated any of these? Are you taking part in any reading challenges? Are you joining me in the Paul Magrsathon (there might be a giveaway tomorrow …)?

 

State of the TBR – November 2019

Well, may I say that this is in a much better state as it’s all vertical – I did have a Pile but I’ve been reading quite a lot this month.

Thanks mainly to our holiday at the start of October, I read 13 books last month, and most of them were print ones, too. So that did have an effect, and although I acquired a few, it’s still just about in balance.

Currently reading

I’ve actually just finished Clair Willis’ wonderful “Lovers and Strangers” about the first wave of post-WWII immigration into the UK. It’s made me want to join Nonfiction November so I might just do that, as I think I can still just squeak in. Simon Napier-Bell’s “Ta-ra-ra-boom-de-ay” is an exposé of the business of music. It’s started with the history of music publishing from the 18th century onwards, and is written in an accessible and somewhat scurrilous style. Different enough from the book on record shops I just read.

Coming up next

I’m continuing my sort of plan to do one of my oldest books on the TBR, then one of my newest, so up next for  my downstairs read will be Bill Jones’ “The Ghost Runner” which I bought last week. Then it’ll be my next Iris Murdoch, “The Green Knight”, one which I have loved before. Then I picked Philippa Ashley’s “A Perfect Cornish Summer” off the piles on top because I’ve won the Christmas one from NetGalley, and “Crazy In Love at the Lonely Hearts Bookshop” because I recently bought the sequel to that one, so reading these two will enable the reading of two more.

Coming up afterwards – oldest acquisitions

Here’s the current start of the TBR (it’s changed at last!). I might have to leave the first one, on political and protest songs, as it might be too much music industry in a short space of time. “Footnotes” about why we run is calling to me, as is the wonderful Dave Heeley’s autobiography. Looking at this, I can see why I fancy doing Nonfiction November!

Coming up afterwards – newest acquisitions

Here’s the End of Things, with the tiny book on gender I re-bought, notes on rewilding yourself which I also gave to Emma for her birthday, so might do a readalong, and that Winter Kiss novel that comes after “Crazy in Love”.

All good books to keep me going! And something from the Kindle of course …

What are you up to?

Any of these pique your interest? Did you see my post about my next reading challenge? It’s good to have something to look forward to as I wend my way to the end of Iris Murdoch, and she will pop up again then …

State of the TBR October 2019

So it’s state of the TBR again and amazingly, even with all those incomings, it still fits (exactly) on its double-stacked shelf!

 

Having started and very much enjoyed Phillipa Ashley’s “Cornish Cafe” series, I decided to pull the rest of that trilogy plus another Cornwall book (having a trip coming up makes me want to read and take with me  books from the place I’m going – I assume everyone does that) off the TBR (the two trilogies I have were balanced on top of the back row). Then, as we’re busy stocking some shelves that go at a rate of knots, I pulled some BookCrossing books off to read and release. So here’s my next-up stack.

Gavin Knight’s “The Swordfish and the Star” is a non-fiction (supposedly) book about the area we stay in, but I’ve heard mixed reviews from local folk so will take it with a pinch of salt.

“Dispatches from Pluto” by Richard Grant – an adventure writer spends a year in the Mississippi Delta after having originally looked to buy in New York. A fish out of water/ethnography book recommended and sent by Cari.

In “Running Outside the Comfort Zone”, runner and writer Susan Lacke decides to get her running mojo back by taking on runs involving all sorts of challenges. Another from Cari.

Tony Wilson’s “24 Hour Party People” is apparently a novelisation of the film, but tells the story of Factory Records and the Hacienda. I do like a good music book and thank Sian for this one.

Of course I also have my Iris Murdoch of the month to read: “The Message to the Planet” this time, which I am slightly worried about as it has not traditionally been a favourite. However, I have changed my mind on a few of hers this time re-reading them, so you never know!

Do you read local books when you travel? What’s your best intersection of book and place? Mine might be reading Murdoch’s “The Philosopher’s Pupil” (set in a spa) in the reception area of a Turkish hammam ….

State of the TBR August 2019 #WITmonth #20BooksofSummer @PersephoneBooks @ViragoBooks @ShinyNewBooks

OK so although the TBR is about the same size as it was last month, it has been worse within the month, as I had to turn the end of the front shelf into a pile to fit it all in.

I completed eight books in July and one of them is yet to be reviewed here, as I read the rather marvellous “The Seafarers” to review for Shiny New Books – I’ll share some thoughts on the book and my review when it’s up.

Currently reading

I’m currently reading Harriet Harman’s autobiography, “Woman’s Work” which I’m greatly enjoying (as you can see from the forest of post-it notes sticking out of the side of the book!

I love that, just like when she went for Deputy Leader of the Labour Party, she basically wrote this book because she saw all the men writing their self-aggrandising memoirs and wanted to explain the way women’s issues had been tackled and promoted during her time in politics.

It’s very engagingly written and really cooperative, taking time to mention people who’ve helped her along her way – an excellent read.

Next up

Next up it’s time for not one, not two, not three but FOUR reading projects! Oo-er.

I’ll be reading Iris Murdoch’s “The Good Apprentice” for my re-reading project, the Great Iris Murdoch Readalong, book 22 which means there’s not long to go until the end.

Then it’s All Virago / All August month this month, run by the lovely Virago Readers on LibraryThing. I have a mix of Viragos and Persephones (also allowed) to use for this, the pile of which you can see on my piece about my 20 Books of Summer project in my State of the TBR June post, as I’m, as usual, combining the two. First up is my longest-standing Virago on my shelf, Margery Sharp’s “The Eye of Love”. I’m not doing hugely well with my 20 Books, so we’ll see how it goes.

Finally, I’m very much hoping to read Sayaka Murata’s “Convenience Store Woman” for Women in Translation Month. I’ve never managed to take part in this before, as I’m always as careful as I can be with Reading Months etc to only read books already on the TBR. And I’m obviously not great at reading women in translation (none of my Viragoes or Persephones count, for example). You can read more about the Month here and there’s a hashtag on Twitter and it’s all very exciting. It’s a small book with quite big print and wide spacing, so hope I can make it!

I also have two more review books to read for Shiny New Books, both looking lovely and tempting, so they will be joining the roster.

What are you up to?

So what are you reading in August? Taking part in any of these challenges/projects/Months? Think I can read 13.25 Books of Summer in one month and three days??