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Leo's Litlist 2009

What have you read in 2009? Post your list here and update it as you go along! (One thread per member, please.)
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Leo62
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Leo's Litlist 2009

Post by Leo62 » Thu January 1st, 2009, 10:32 pm

OK this is one of my New Year's Resolutions cos I always forget what I've read. Everything is going on here, not just HF; I'm not up to keeping two separate lists :D

January:
1. Azincourt - Bernard Cornwell: Lots of 15th century testosterone
2. The Forbidden Zone - Mary Borden: Republished memoirs of a US nurse in WWI - wanted to get my hands on this for ages.
3. Zoo Station - David Downing: British spy in 1939 Berlin leading up to WW2. My paperback journey-to-work read.
4. Needle in the Blood - Sarah Bower: Love the tagline to this - "sex, lies and embroidery." Hmmm...plenty of sex and lies but not enough embroidery.
5. The Terror - Dan Simmons. Supernatural nasties in the 19th Century Arctic. Book of the year so far. :D
6. The Mathematics of Love - Emma Darwin. DNF :(

February:
1. The Fire Gospel - Michel Faber. A modern Prometheus in 200 pages. Short but sweet.
2. The Crowded Street - Winifred Holtby. An oldie but goodie.
3. The Fires of Eden - Dan Simmons. Mark Twain, Pele, and erupting Hawaiian volcanoes.
4. Daughters of Fire - Barbara Erskine. Timeslipping from hairy Celts to modern Edinburgh academia.

March:
1. Kept: A Victorian Mystery - DJ Taylor. Clever pastiche of Collins, Dickens, Thackerey et al.
2. Drood - Dan Simmons. More eminent Victorians; Wilkie Collins, Charles Dickens and murky, gothic goings-on in old London town. DNF :(
3. The Left Hand of Darkness - Ursula Le Guin. Groundbreaking, classic SF.

April:
1. Company of Liars - Karen Maitland. Buncha dodgy geezers flee the Black Death.
2. Human Traces - Sebastian Faulks. Pioneers of psychology at the turn of the 20th Century. Another DNF :(
3. The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzerald. Feverish 20's partying and much much more. My second Book of the Year. :D

May:
1. Sacred Contracts - Caroline Myss. Well-written, deeply felt and very well-thought-out self-help book. A re-read.
2. Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh. Interwar goings-on amid the terminally toffee-nosed.
3. A Place Beyond Courage - Elizabeth Chadwick. Bolshy medieval barons batter each other like it's the 12th century.

June:
1. Singled Out: How Two Million Women Survived Without Men After WW1 - Virginia Nicholson. For research purposes.
2. The Time of Singing - Elizabeth Chadwick. A time when men were men and women weren't all that grateful.
3. The American Boy - Andrew Taylor. Early 19th century Gothic goings-on featuring a young Edgar Allan Poe.
3. The Secret Scripture - Sebastian Barry. 100 year old woman recalls Ireland's troubled past.

July:
1. Hodd - Adam Thorpe. The real Robin Hood? Well, maybe.
2. The Little Stranger - Sarah Waters. Things go bump in the night post-WW2. Fan-bloody-tastic :D

August:
1. The Winter Sea - Susannah Kearsley. Nice writing, shame about the dull, dull Jacobites. DNF :(
2. Fingersmith - Sarah Waters. You gotta pick a pocket or two. ;)

September:
1. The Seance - John Harwood. More Victorian things going bump in the night.
2. The Crimson Rooms - Katherine McMahon. Female Lawyer in the 1920s.

October:
1. The Fabric of Sin - Phil Rickman. Things go bump in the Welsh borders.
2. To Dream of the Dead - Phil Rickman. More of the above :D

November:
1. Candlenight - Phil Rickman. The only author I can read at the moment it seems...
2. The Wisdom of No Escape - Pema Chodron. NF.

December:
1. The Winter Ghosts - Kate Mosse. 1930's man haunted by Cathars. Readable if predictable.
2. The Man in the Moss - Phil Rickman. Yep, him again.
Last edited by Leo62 on Tue December 22nd, 2009, 11:20 am, edited 27 times in total.

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Post by diamondlil » Thu January 1st, 2009, 10:59 pm

I always list everything I read.
My Blog - Reading Adventures

All things Historical Fiction - Historical Tapestry


There are two ways of spreading light: to be the candle or the mirror that reflects it.

Edith Wharton

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Post by Leo62 » Tue January 6th, 2009, 4:15 pm

[quote=""diamondlil""]I always list everything I read.[/quote]

Cool :cool:

Been meaning to get round to this for years...so glad I found this forum :D

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Post by Leo62 » Mon January 12th, 2009, 12:36 pm

Finished Zoo Station so my new journey-to-work read is Needle in the Blood.

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Post by Leo62 » Fri January 23rd, 2009, 8:33 pm

Finished Needle in the Blood last night. Bit of a curate's egg...started well, but dragged in the middle & was not entirely convinced by the ending either, and not enough about the actual embroidery...on the plus side, great characters, well-written, convincing relationships...needed a more aggressive editor perhaps ;)

Just started The Terror by Dan Simmons, recommended by Telynor on this very site. :D

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Post by Leo62 » Tue February 3rd, 2009, 4:49 pm

Finished The Terror, which totally blew me away. Utterly amazing book, though not for the fainthearted. I thought I was a fairly hardy reader, but the last third of this book really got to me.

Off for some therapy. ;)

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Post by Leo62 » Mon February 9th, 2009, 12:55 pm

Oh dear - The Mathematics of Love was a DNF :(

Not bad as such, just a bit pallid after The Terror.

Already half-way through The Fire Gospel by Michel Faber, a modern retelling of the Prometheus myth.

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Post by Leo62 » Fri February 13th, 2009, 11:41 pm

The Fire Gospel lasted me about a day. :D

At a bit of a loose end reading-wise right now. Madly waiting for Drood to come out in pb at the end of this month...

I dug out an old secondhand bargain that I hadn't got around to reading - The Crowded Street by Winifred Holtby, set in the 1910's and 20's.

Holtby is most famous for South Riding and for being friends with Vera Brittain. She died tragically young in 1935. I bought this book when I started to get interested in interwar-period authors while researching my WW1 novel. Somehow never got around to reading it...

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Post by Leo62 » Tue February 17th, 2009, 9:21 pm

Re-reading Fires of Eden by Dan Simmons. It's oop but got a cheap copy of Amazon.

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Post by Leo62 » Wed February 25th, 2009, 3:45 pm

Just started my 20p ex-library copy of Daughter of Fire by Barbara Erskine.

My first Erskine in a while. For me, she was starting to get a bit repetitive, but the historical subject-matter sounds interesting and at that price I couldn't resist ;)

Today I ordered Company of Liars by Karen Maitland and Drood by Dan Simmons from Amazon, so they'll be up next.

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