This year I asked Santa kindly for a few novels that are either on my Classics Club challenge or my Booker prize winners challenge. Santa must have decided I already had plenty of Classics to get on with reading so he ignored the appeal for Trollope’s Palliser novels (I can always hint again when my birthday comes around) but I did end up with a few surprises in the shape of the Barnes and Mullan collections of essays.
These are some of the books in the package:
Since I also love giving books as well as receiving, almost everyone in my immediate family was a recipient. This is what I gave away:
- Richard Burton’s diaries
- The Slap – Christos Tsiolkas
- Pure by Andrew Miller (I loved this when I read it earlier this year)
- A Year of Wonders by Geraldine Brooks
- Moonstone by Wilkie Collins
- Prague Cemetery – Umberto Eco
- Restless – William Boyd
- David Copperfield – Dickens
- The Land of Painted Caves – Jean Auel
- Sarah’s Key – Tatiana de Rosnay
- The 100 year old man who fell out of a window – Jonas Jonasson
- Hangover Square – Patrick Hamilton
Other News
Finally got to finish Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie (only taken me 2 months or more). And managed to get the review done Also read one from my Classics Club list – Muriel Spark’s Girls of Slender Means – still means I’ve only read 3 classics this year so will need to get my skates on to complete the 50 in 5 years challenge. The Spark review is here. I’m ending the year by reading C. J Sansom’s Dissolution for my book club meeting in early Jan. First time I’ve read anything by him and so far its a pleasure.