2010 Blogosphere Book Circle Final Reading List

Here is the list!

6 votes
Novel about my wife / Emily Perkins

5 votes
Wolf Hall / Hilary Mantel

4 votes
March / Geraldine Brooks
Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress / Dai Sijie, Ina Rilke (trans.)
The lacuna /Barbara Kingsolver

3 votes
Access Road / Maurice Gee
The Graveyard Book / Neil Gaiman
Bad Science by Ben Goldacre
Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. / Jane Austen and Seth Grahame-Smith

2 votes

Replenishing the Earth : the settler revolution and the rise of the Anglo-world, 1783-1939 / James Belich.

The bolter : Idina Sackville- the woman who scandalised 1920s society and became White mischief's infamous seductress / Frances Osborne.

Love and Summer / William Trevor
Carry Me Down / M J Hyland
Day after night / Anita Diamant
Blood bond / Michael Gree
The kings mistress / Emma Campion
Empire / Orson Scott Card
The Girl on the Landing / Paul Torda
Her fearful symmetry / Audrey Niffenegger
Tears of Pearl / Alexander Tasha
Land of marvels / Barry Unsworth 
Eating Animals / Jonathan Safran Foer
Born Round: The Secret History of a Full-Time Eater / Frank Bruni
Lost City of Z: A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon / David Grann
The other hand / Chris Cleave.
The road / Cormac McCarthy.
Every Man Dies Alone / Hans Fallada.
Half Broke Horses: A True-Life Novel / Jeannette Walls 
The crimson petal and the white / Michel Faber 

1 vote 
A Thousand Splendid Suns / Khaled Hossein
The Glasshouse / Sophie Cooke
A Gate At The Stairs / Lorrie Moore
Limestone / Fiona Farrell
The Hunger Games / Suzanne Collins
In the kitchen, Monica Ali
Cloudstreet / Tim Winton
The year of the Shanghai Shark / Mo Zhi Hong.
The child thief /  Brom
Relics of the dead / Franklin, Ariana.
Big Machine/ Victor LaValle
Await Your Reply/ Dan Chaon
Strength in What Remains / Tracy Kidder
Let Me Sing You Gentle Songs / Linda Olsson
The 10pm Question / Kate De Goldi
Year of magical thinking / Joan Didion
Up till now / William Shatner
I am Ozzy / Osbourne, Ozzy
The talented Miss Highsmith / Joan Schenkar (biography of Patricia Highsmith)
Sense and sensibility and sea- monsters / Jane Austen and Ben H Winters
Blood Ties / Sam Hayes

0 vote
The echo maker / Richard Powers

Blindsight / Maurice Gee

The Believers / Zoë Heller

 The School of Essential Ingredients / Erica Bauermeister 

Good to a Fault / Marina Endicott 

Unspoken  / Sam Hayes.
Non Fiction

And then there's this : how stories live and die in viral culture / Bill Wasik.

Outliers / Malcolm Gladwell

Twitterature - the world's greatest books retold through twitter

So - after some consideration, plus a member's request that we read at least 3 non-fiction books, this is the final list by month.

February
The bolter / Frances Osborne
March
Access Road / Maurice Gee
April
Replenishing the Earth / James Belich
May
Bad Science / Ben Goldacre
June
The Graveyard Book / Neil Gaiman
July
Wolf Hall / Hilary Mantel
August
Novel about my wife / Emily Perkins
September
The lacuna / Barbara Kingsolver 
October
Pride and Prejudice and Zombies / Jane Austen and Seth Grahame-Smith
November
The road / Cormac McCarthy
December
March / Geraldine Brooks
January 2011
Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress / Dai Sijie, Ina Rilke (trans.)

If you would like a bookmark with this list on, here is one you can print off.  Right click to save the image, then print it onto some nice card.

Just for fun I got some plain journals and covered them with two different papers.  I'm giving these away to 2 members of the book circle so if you'd like one please make sure you mention it in a comment and tell me which one you would prefer.  I'll draw 2 winners out at the end of the week.  You could use them for recording book circle information, poetry, writing your own stories or whatever.

And if nobody wants them I'll use them myself! :-)

The Book circle voting list

Here is the list we're going to vote on.  We need to vote for 12 books.  You don't have to vote for the ones you suggested. 

There are 3 ways to vote.
1. Go to the shared Google doc and place a | next to the books you wish to vote for.
2. Email me your 12 selections to pdugmore2001 at yahoo dot co dot nz. (I won't reveal who voted for what).
3. Leave a comment with your 12 selections.

Last year we ended up with some clear "winners" i.e. some with more than one vote, so that made it reasonably easy to rank the 12 books.  If we do end up with lots of books with single votes, I shall randomise them and choose the first 12.  Please make your selections by 24th January 2010 and I will announce the list in my next post (which will also include a give away).

Let the voting begin!!

Fiction

The Glasshouse / Sophie Cooke

 

Carry Me Down / M J Hyland

 

Access Road / Maurice Gee

 

A Gate At The Stairs / Lorrie Moore

Every Man Dies Alone / Hans Fallada.

Half Broke Horses: A True-Life Novel / Jeannette Walls

Love and Summer / William Trevor

Born Round: The Secret History of a Full-Time Eater / Frank Bruni

The other hand / Chris Cleave.

The road / Cormac McCarthy.

The echo maker / Richard Powers.

Novel about my wife / Emily Perkins.

The year of the Shanghai Shark / Mo Zhi Hong.

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies / Jane Austen and Seth Grahame-Smith

Sense and sensibility and sea- monsters / Jane Austen and Ben H Winters

A Thousand Splendid Suns/ Khaled Hosseini

March / Geraldine Brooks

Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress / Dai Sijie, Ina Rilke (trans.)

Wolf Hall / Hilary Mantel

Blindsight / Maurice Gee

Limestone / Fiona Farrell

The Hunger Games / Suzanne Collins

In the kitchen / Monica Ali

Cloudstreet / Tim Winton

The lacuna / Barbara Kingsolver

Day after night / Anita Diamant

Blood bond / Michael Gree

The kinds mistress / Emma Campion

Tears of Pearl / Alexander Tasha

 

The child thief /  Brom

Relics of the dead / Franklin, Ariana.  

 

Empire / Orson Scott Card

Her fearful symmetry / Audrey Niffenegger

The Graveyard Book / Neil Gaiman

Lost City of Z: A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon / David Grann

Big Machine / Victor LaValle

Await Your Reply / Dan Chaon

The Believers / Zoë Heller

Strength in What Remains / Tracy Kidder
 

The Girl on the Landing /Paul Torda

The School of Essential Ingredients / Erica Bauermeister

Let Me Sing You Gentle Songs / Linda Olsson

Good to a Fault / Marina Endicott

Blood Ties / Sam Hayes

 

Unspoken / Sam Hayes.

Land of marvels / Barry Unsworth

The crimson petal and the white / Michel Faber

The 10pm Question / Kate De Goldi

Non Fiction

Replenishing the Earth : the settler revolution and the rise of the Anglo-world, 1783-1939 / James Belich.

The bolter : Idina Sackville- the woman who scandalised 1920s society and became White mischief's infamous seductress / Frances Osborne.

And then there's this : how stories live and die in viral culture / Bill Wasik.

Bad Science / Ben Goldacre

Outliers / Malcolm Gladwell

 Year of magical thinking / Joan Didion

Eating Animals / Jonathan Safran Foer

Twitterature - the world's greatest books retold through twitter

 

Up till now / William Shatner

 

I am Ozzy / Osbourne, Ozzy

The talented Miss Highsmith /Joan Schenkar (biography of Patricia Highsmith)

This is your final call

to join the blogosphere book circle :)  The suggested book list is getting longer and I think it's going to be voting time this week.  If you haven't sent in your book suggestions/added them to the google doc then please do so by Wednesday 20th Jan.

Looking forward to a year of reading!

Book Circle

"The time has come," the Walrus said,
"To talk of many things:
Of shoes--and ships--and sealing-wax--
Of cabbages--and kings--
And why the sea is boiling hot--
And whether pigs have wings."

The Walrus and The Carpenter / Lewis Carroll (from Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There, 1872)

And which books we're going to read and who is going to read them!

So.  From the comments on my last post about this, I figure we've got the following folks on board. 

• 
  
  

  Sandra

  
  
  
• 
  
  

  Sharon

  
  
  
• 
  
  

  Kate

  
  
  
• 
  
  

  Melissa

  
  
  
• 
  
  

  Katrina

  
  
  
• 
  
  

  Suzannah

  
  
  
• Me  
• Kelli 
• Michael 
• Kris
• Janine
  

If you are not on this list and would like to be, please let me know.  Anyone is welcome to join in. The only rules are you need to commit to reading at least 6 of the books, and to blog about them on your blog or somewhere (e.g. a note on Facebook).

I'd like to start pulling together a list to vote on. We can do this several ways - I've created a document in Google so if you have a Google ID I can share this document with you and you can add your suggestions.  Or, alternatively you can email me: pdugmore2001 at yahoo dot co dot nz and I'll add them.  Mel, I think you emailed me some earlier but for some reason I can't find it!  Could you resent please?  Sorry.

We should try and nail down 12 for next month (early) so we can get started.

Fiction, non fiction and any genre is welcome!

My desk at work

My desk at work
Originally uploaded by pdugmore2001.

What does yours look like?

Summer days

Been playing with my sewing machine.  Made some shorts for daycare for Missy Moo.  It was windy this day...

Went up to Omaha and stayed in a friend's bach for a couple of nights.  Lovely beach, lots of expensive boats and baches full of young, slim and beautiful people.  We felt just a tad out of place! ;-)  I decided the Oratia Farmers Market is just as good, if not better, than the Matakana one which had way too many people for my comfort.

Watching someone load their boat onto the trailer.

The simple bach we stayed in.

Views of the beach.



I've been making some pages for the Southern Cross Kids Camp drive that Trina's doing.  They are very easy to do and rather addictive.  I did 36.  I would have liked to do more, but they needed to get posted off today.

Missy Moo is three tomorrow so I need to bake a cake.  I've been given instructions - it must be PINK with PINK candles.  I think I can work with that brief.

2009 Reading Summary

Number of books read in 2009: 84
A bit less than my estimate of books read in 2008.

Average read per month: 7 (my estimated average for 2008 was 9 per month)

New reads: 79

Fiction: 53
Non Fiction: 27
hmmm... about 60/40 ratio. Not too bad I guess, not that it really matters.

Male Author: 25
Female Author: 54
This probably reflects the type of stuff I like to read is mostly written by women rather than any deliberate gender bias.

I think it's clear from my listing of genre that I still really like historical fiction (no particular era) over anything else.  The book circle books have been great for widening my tastes.  Some of the stuff I read was categorised into several subjects so the number totals won't add up to the books read total.

Genre Totals
Historical Fiction: 27
Autobiographical/Biographical: 19
Crime: 13
Literature: 10
Science: 6
Thriller: 4
New Zealand author or setting: 4
Chick Lit: 4
Fantasy: 3
Mystery: 2
Coming of age: 2
Comedy: 2
Travel/living in a different country: 2
Food: 1*
Eco-lifestyle: 1

*not really representational given I didn't record the cook books I borrow and read like novels.

I didn't record the poetry books I read this year - probably about 2-3 from memory.

December Reading Round Up

A castle in Spain / Matthew Parris.
The story of one man's dream to transform a forgotten ruin into his very own 'castle in Spain'. ~from the blurb
Parris writes about the restoration of a ruined house he discovers in Catalonia.  Enjoyed reading about the history of the house and the struggles they have to go through to get it restored.

The Lieutenant / Kate Grenville.
In 1787 Lieutenant Thomas Rooke sets sail from Portsmouth with the First Fleet and its cargo of convicts, destined for New South Wales. As a young officer and a man of science, the shy and quiet Rooke is full of anticipation about the natural wonders he might discover in this strange land on the other side of the world. After the fleet arrives in Port Jackson, Rooke sets up camp on a rocky and isolated point, and starts his work of astronomy and navigation. It's not too long before some of the Aboriginal people who live around the harbour pay him a visit. One of them, a girl named Tarunga, starts to teach him her own language. But her lessons and their friendship are interrupted when Rooke is given an order that will change his life forever. Inspired by the 1790 notebooks of William Dawes in which he recorded his conversations with a young Gadigal woman, The Lieutenant is a story about a man discovering his true self in extraordinary circumstances. ~from the blurb
Particularly liked the contrast of language learning.

A long slow affair of the heart : an adventure on the French canals / Bruce Ansley. 
Craving adventure, Bruce Ansley goes in search of happiness on the French canals. He and his wife Sally buy a canal boat in Holland and sail it through Belgium to France. With humour and a poignantly candid touch, Ansley documents a journey within a journey: the internal shifts of a marriage that just might not make it home. This memoir takes us vividly and unforgettably to France: but it takes us further than that - deep into the winding, secret interior of the heart. ~from the blurb
Think the "deep into the winding, secret interior of the heart" bit of the blurb is a little over statement but I enjoyed the travelogue and experiences the couple go through on their journey. 

Forensic detective : how I cracked the world's toughest cases / Robert Mann and Miryam Ehrlich Williamson.
Case studies from forensic anthropology. True crime, mystery and a bit of gore.. what's not to like?  CSI fans would enjoy this one.  I was particularly interested in the cases where he tries to identify fallen servicemen in places like Korea and Vietnam.

Law breakers & mischief makers : 50 notorious New Zealanders / Bronwyn Sell. 
"Law breakers and mischief makers provides the scandalous details of those who've made a name for themselves in New Zealand for all the wrong reasons. Some are monsters, some are merely rascals but all make fascinating reading." -- Back cover.
Great historical true short stories, true crime and a bit of mischief!  Excellent fun.


Flu : the story of the great influenza pandemic of 1918 and the search for the virus that caused it / Gina Kolata. 
"In 1918 the Great Flu Epidemic felled the young & healthy virtually overnight ... If such a plague returned today, taking a comparable percentage of the US population with it, 1.5 million Americans would die ... unravels the mystery of this lethal virus ... tracks the race to recover the live pathogen & probes the fear that has impelled government policy"--Jacket.
Thought this one was quite topical given the H1N1 pandemic this year.  I always enjoy the history, the discoveries and struggles people go through to find answers.   It's also interesting to see the decisions people make in times of pressure.  I'd love to see an update to this in the light of the outbreak currently raging around the world.  I've read quite a few books this year on diseases and such like, and have a few more waiting to be read.  It's an area I find extremely interesting.



Haven't managed to completely finish the book circle book!