A Year of Reading

I have spent much of the last year in a book.

Well, in a great many books, to be precise, the challenge that I had set myself in January was to read one hundred book in 2016.

It helped that I have not worked for the last twelve months, extended sick leave gave me the time to read and reading distracted me from worrying over-much about my health, so a win-win in my opinion.

It also helped that I spent so much time on cross-channel ferries, having taken six, or was it seven, trips back to Brittany meant that I spent the equivalent of a whole week on Le Bretagne, which gave me a lot of time to read.

So my 2016 book list...

It is, you will notice, heavy on Nordic Noir and twisted tales, having cancer will give one an appetite for such stories. And a few authors crop up several times; when I find one that appeals to me I tend to read as much of their work as possible, so several Sarah Addison Allen's magical feel-good novels and Val McDermid's serial killers are here.

Some books were a delight, some were disappointing and several taught me that having a story to tell is not necessarily a good reason to write a book. Time was when bad writing would be weeded out by the publishers, now anyone can put their words into print and there are some truly bad books out there. Enough said...

I have to mention A Little Life by Hanya Vanagihara, it is so uplifting and distressing and full of hope and of despair and will play your emotions like a finely-tuned instrument. I think that it should have won the Man Booker Prize.

And how is it that I had not read The Picture of Dorian Gray until last week? I suppose that leaving English Literature at the age of fifteen to focus on science meant that I missed out somewhat.

I am not sure that I will manage to read so many books in 2017.
I have some major changes to make in my life including an upheaval on the home front and, hopefully, a new profession to occupy me, and I really would like, finally, to get that horse that I have been requesting from Santa for the last fifty-five years, but who knows? Reading is addictive and in the tales told by others we can often find an escape from a world that is not always nice so...

Here are the books in the order in which I read them.