Book Loving Kiwis discussion

Not sure what I'll use it for, but looking forward to the novelty of a spacious new thread of my own :-)

I might steal Angie's idea, and list the books I hope to read in Dec/Jan. Firstly, I'm trying to reach my reading challenge goal, and being 6 books behind at the moment I'm avoiding anything too long or difficult until January. I'll be setting a lower target next year without a doubt!

Under the Mountain Done!
La's Orchestra Saves the World Done!
Wrapped Done!
The Plymouth Cloak (have rolled this over to January)
The Dig Done!
A Guide to the Birds of East Africa Done!
Crown Duel (hmm. took this back to the library without reading it. I'm just not in the mood.)
The Case of the Missing Marquess Done!
Artisan Pizza and Flatbread in Five Minutes a Day (still flicking through this. not due back to the library for a couple of seeks yet)
Lily of the Nile Done!
Cybele's Secret Done!
Skipping Christmas Done!
And I'd like to make a start on Devil's Brood in January.

Thanks for being so involved in this group, Darkpool. I hope you find plenty of time to read through this list over the summer.

OOoh, just came across this: which looks like a bit of festive amusement. I think that'll fit in quite nicely as a December read, just as soon as I can get it from the library.

Pulled it in to only 3 books behind, on account of having finished a couple plus knocking off Under the Mountain. 8 to go.

Woot!! I'm now 2 books ahead, and only 2 to go! I'm just starting Wesley the Owl: The Remarkable Love Story of an Owl and His Girl as a buddy read in another group. I've read one chapter so far and I'm utterly charmed by it. Hope the rest is as good.

Here's my go at the Whitcoulls top 100 list. Interested to see that the Millennium trilogy and 4 books of the twilight saga are bundled together, but harry potter books are all listed individually. Consistency much? There were quite a few books I'd never heard of, and may be forced to look them up. Anyhow, bold is for the books I've read. The key to my other symbols is at the end of the post.

1. The Millenium Trilogy (The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo etc)
2. The Twilight Saga
3. The Time Traveler's Wife
4. My Sister's Keeper
5. Cross Stitch (Outlander) * I got ¾ of the way through this 14 years ago, and never finished it.
6. The Lord of the Rings
7. Pride and Prejudice
8. Life of Pi
9. To Kill a Mockingbird
10. The Lovely Bones
11. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
12. The Bronze Horseman
13. Jamie Does... (Jamie Oliver)
14. The Da Vinci Code
15. The Passage
16. 61 Hours
17. Genesis Plague
18. Open: An Autobiography
19. The Hobbit
20. The Power of One
21. The Kite Runner †
22. The Pillars of the Earth *
23. The Bible
24. The Book Thief †
25. Memoirs of a Geisha
26. The Magician
27. Ordinary Thunderstorms
28. The Clan of the Cave Bear
29. Angels and Demons ‽
30. Little Vampire Women
31. Brethren
32. The Notebook ‽
33. Into the Wilderness
34. Mao's Last Dancer
35. No Logo
36. A Thousand Splendid Suns
37. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time †
38. The Other Boleyn Girl
39. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
40. Nineteen Minutes
41. Her Fearful Symmetry
42. As the Earth Turns Silver
43. A Short History of Nearly Everything
44. The Poisonwood Bible
45. Moonfleet
46. Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone
47. Gone with the Wind
48. The Lost Symbol ‽
49. Shantaram
50. The Memory Keeper's Daughter
51. Tour de Lance: The Extraordinary Story of Lance Armstrong
52. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
53. Wuthering Heights
54. The 9th Judgement
55. River God
56. Angela's Ashes
57. Jessica
58. Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China
59. The Catcher in the Rye
60. Collaborator
61. Dune
62. Recipe for Life
63. The Tea Rose
64. Tomorrow, When the War Began †
65. The Alchemist
66. Rachel's Holiday
67. The Girl in Times Square
68. Birdsong †
69. Chocolat †
70. The Search
71. A Fine Balance *
72. Jane Eyre †
73. Mister Pip †
74. World Without End ‽
75. Kane and Abel
76. Vampire Academy
77. The Pact
78. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
79. The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy
80. The Host ‽
81. I Know This Much is True
82. Killing Floor †
83. April Fool's Day
84. Bridget Jones Diary
85. Northern Lights
86. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
87. Bohemian Girl
88. Eragon
89. A Love Story Starring My Dead Best Friend
90. Eat, Pray, Love ‽
91. Atonement
92. The Flying Carpet To Baghdad: One Woman's Fight for Two Orphans of War
93. The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society
94. Stand
95. Tully
96. This Charming Man
97. We Need to Talk about Kevin
98. Captain Corelli's Mandolin †
99. Perfume: The Story of a Murderer †
100. House Rules

* These books I started, but abandoned before I was half way though.
† These books may well be on my to-read list. If not, they should be.
‽ These… I’d probably rather gouge my eyes out with a blunt spoon.

I love your coding system! I have a lot of the books you have marked with to-read, so you are welcome to borrow them (postage is way cheaper than buying them!)

I also thought it was strange that they clumped some series together and not others.

What is 'Life of Pi' like? The premise sounds brilliant.

Perfume is amazing. Ditto Bird Song. I can recommend those two for your 'to read' list.

Eat Pray Love - completely agree with your special code for that one. The title is enough to make you want to throw up, so I dread to think what the rest is like.

I loved Life of Pi, right up until the last couple of chapters, where the magic was undermined by rational explanation. In the end I only gave it 3 stars, although it's certainly worth more than that. I always was too fond of fantasy!

Birdsong has been on my to-read list since long before goodreads. I really must get onto it!

I loved Life of Pi too. Though I must have interpreted the ending in a completely different way. I had questions swirling around inside my head for days after reading it.

Back from the Xmas visiting of family, and another couple of books ticked off the December read list. Of the 5 I've not read yet, 3 are current reads. Don't think I'll nail the remaining 2 in the few days left this year tho. Especially not with my unfortunate habit of ordering new books from the library all the time!

Welcome back. I hope you had a wonderful Christmas. I have the same unfortunate habit. Three more books sitting at the library waiting for me.

I enjoyed crossing books off my December list so much I thought I'd try to do one for January.

Books to try and read this month:
My Lord John (more than half way through this already) done!
Wolf of the Plains (nearly finished)
Corsets & Clockwork: 13 Steampunk Romances (anthology. not sure how many stories I'll read from it)(update: 9 out of 13 read, but it's due back at the library tomorrow)
The Plymouth Cloak done!
Tea With the Black Dragon (started)
Robbery Under Arms
Magic Gifts (a short story)
King Matt the First
Going Bovine
Devil's Brood

Clearly I'm not going to get to all of them!
(updated Jan 20th)

OK, well Tea with the Black Dragon is done, the anthology is back at the library with 9/13 stories read. I've started Magic Gifts (mmmmm... so good!) but I've had a spanner in the works with a library request turning up earlier than anticipated, so next I'll be going on to The Midwife of Venice. Looks like Robbery Under Arms might slide to February, and King Matt might get bumped altogether.

Ok... a tentative February list...

Devil's Brood (yes, really this time)
Dragon Actually
As the Earth Turns Silver (audio)
A Red Herring Without Mustard (audio)
Robbery Under Arms

...which should be sufficient. There are a couple of maybes as well, if I decide to dive into various challenges from other groups.

ETA...
The Shadow Prince which has just arrived in the library, and I'm at the top of the request list. Happy, happy

Dragon Actually is done. Wonder why I bothered. Meh.

Currently on Red Herring and The Shadow Prince. Robbery under arms is still sitting on my phone (thank you project Gutenberg), waiting for me to get back to it... I've read less than 2% of it so far.
Ahead are some group reads:
As the Earth Turns Silver and
Isolde, Queen of the Western Isle, which is a themed read for the History of Royals group. This month we're reading around the topic of Arthurian Legends.
And then I'll start Devil's Brood. Unless I'm waylaid by a library book.

So, because I'm a follower, I thought I'd add my list of the oldest books in my TBR list. Not sure that I still want to read all of these, but I do have the first two on my (highly aspirational) "2012 to read" shelf. So, here are my top 9:

Napoleon's Buttons: How 17 Molecules Changed History (added July 2007)
The Knife Man: Blood, Body Snatching, and the Birth of Modern Surgery (added July 2007)*
The Last Templar (added Aug 2007)
Birdsong: A Novel of Love and War (added Aug 2007)
The Piano Tuner (added Nov 2007)
Precious Bane (added Aug 2008)
Apollo : An Eyewitness Account By Astronaut/Explorer Artist/Moonwalker (added Sept 2008)
America In Space: NASA's First Fifty Years (added sept 2008)
Light This Candle: The Life & Times of Alan Shepard--America's First Spaceman (added October 2008)

... there follows 4 more books on manned space exploration. I made myself the rule (only sporadically broken) that I'm not allowed to read any more space books until I finish A Man on the Moon, which I've been chugging through for several years now. So that's why there's a big glut on them in one spot on the list.

* this book I actually managed to read 2/3 of Before Goodreads, and was really enjoying (as much as you can enjoy a book about cutting up dead bodies), when the library insisted I give it back. I've been meaning to finish it ever since.

Mmm.... I suspect the reason I've not read the piano tuner yet is that I've changed my mind. It was recommended by an acquaintance, and I've decided since that we don't have very similar taste.

Here we are, 1/3 of the way through March... reading plan for the month
1. Finish 2 current reads: as the earth turns silver, and Isolde, queen of the western Isles.
2. put off Devil's Brood again.
3. start Temeraire, which has been recommended to my by 3 people (including one of my year 10 students) in the last couple of weeks, one of whom has loaned me to first 2 in the series (and who is wondering why I've not read them both yet already; after all, it's been 5 days...)
4. An Audiobook, which is most likely to be The Concrete Blonde unless something else comes in at the library that I want more between now and the end of my current audiobook.
5. Likely to turn up soon are a couple of next-book-in-the-series, which will demand immediate attention; namely Nice Girls Don't Bite Their Neighbors and Timeless; and both very silly.
And that should see me well into April!

Temeraire has been on my TBR list for a while now - can't remember where I first heard of them, but it seems that the stars are now aligned and I hope to start the first one tomorrow or Saturday.

...and I must be close to 1/3 of the way through Temeraire now, and loving it. I hear it calling me to read more of it even now...

I hear you on that, Kathleen!

Woohoo! Concrete Blonde: done. Casting around for the next audiobook - I have Remarkable Creatures on request at the library, but it's still in transit from some other branch of the megalith that is Auckland Libraries. Hmm. I'm also nearly finished The Price of Bacon, which I'm enjoying so much. I'm not sure If I'll knock off the last 60 pages today, or if I might save some for tomorrow.
Apart from Remarkable Creatures, on the agenda for April I have:

Ripple
Throne of Jade
Timeless
Wedding of the Season
Lavinia
Nice Girls Don't Bite Their Neighbors
The Invention of Hugo Cabret

Hopefully, this won't be all...

Given that April is almost over, this month's achievements include... not all of the above. No Lavinia or Jade throne yet - I guess they roll into May - and still a couple of hours to go in Remarkable Creatures. But in addition to the above I also completed The Affair of the Bloodstained Egg Cosy and some other dodgy bit of trash that I can't remember the name of that I read on my phone while on holiday. And I've started Heat Rises, so I'm pretty content with April overall.

Reading plan for May...

Currently reading:
Heat Rises, with Simon the Coldheart on Audiobook. I had the rather silly idea a couple of years ago that I'd read all Heyer's historicals and romances in chronological order of setting. So this is #3. The first was a bit tedious, and the second was the book she was writing when she died, so ends abruptly in the middle of a sentence. "Simon" was a book she wrote early in her career, and apparently one she tried to prevent begin reprinted later in her life after she'd got famous for other stuff. It's stuffed full of "thee" and "thou", so I'm glad I'm just listening, not actually having to read it.

To read:
Throne of Jade as I didn't get to in in the hols
Lavinia ditto
The Oracle of Stamboul

Deadlocked may well be a May read, depending how fast the people ahead of me in the library queue read.
And I'll probably need another audiobook before the month is up. Not sure what I'll go for at this point. Perhaps The Crossing Places. Or something else.

I'm very pleased to have Simon the Coldheart ticked off the list. The next will be Beauvallet, when I get around to it.
Thinking about Georgette Heyer books really makes me appreciate the internet. I remember getting her books out from the library as a teen, and compiling a list of the other books she'd written from the front of each book. It seemed no book had a complete catalogue of her works, and each time I got a new one from the library I had to compare my list with the on in the front of that book, adding any that I'd not previously recorded.

I've not done very well this month. In addition to Heat Rises and Simon, I've managed to get 2/3 of the way thought Deadlocked, and have listened to half of The Salmon of Doubt: Hitchhiking the Galaxy One Last Time, which is full of terribly clever and funny stuff, and I am enjoying it very much.

Ok, June is arrived. This month we have..
Guardian of the Jewel (started this morning)
The Oracle of Stamboul (collected from the library)
and once I've finished The Salmon of Doubt we may be onto
Beauvallet (downloadable from the digital library) if nothing further up my wishlist is returned between now and tomorrow morning.
Two for Sorrow is likely to follow - the audio book is newly arrived in the library, yay!
Throne of Jade needs to be read and returned to it's owner, and there's still
Nowhere Girl.
The Golden Lily is due out on the 12th, I'm 18th in the library queue, so may get it before the end of the month.

And then there's still all those books that have been bumped from earlier months.

grrrr. Two for sorrow is still listed as "Newly Arrived". I think that means one of the librarians is listening to it before it goes out to the public (i.e. me.)I decided to listen to some Doctor Who audiobooks while I was waiting, and made the mistake of requesting one to pick up from my most local branch when it was on the shelf at a branch near where I work. Well, it's been 4 days now, and it's still "in transit". The distance between the branches in question is less than 3km. Seriously, the book could have walked between the two branches in the intervening time... (Ok, rant over...)

Another bunch of school holidays is just around the corner. Hopefully this means I can get a bit more reading done than 10 pages a night, which has been my limit recently!
On the horizon we have...

Audiobooks:
Doctor Who: Logopolis and Doctor Who: Castrovalva , which have both finally arrived. Followed hopefully by....
Two for Sorrow (grr. looks like my audio edition is not yet on Goodreads. Another job to do...)
And after that? not sure. Fool Moon perhaps, or maybe The Secret Garden. There are at least 2 unabridged audio versions of the secret garden in the Auckland Library for me to choose from.

Dead Tree books:
1.The Golden Lily (currently "in transit" so I should have it by the end of the week. Hopefully)
2.Throne of Jade
Then maybe at last I can make a start on Devil's Brood or Katherine


On the phone... I must finish Guardian of the Jewel, which is starting to get very interesting indeed, and on a number of levels ;-) Once that's done, who knows. I mostly have kindle freebies of dubious quality on the phone.

And of course there's still Nowhere Girl and Dinner at Rose's when they eventually become available at the library...

I've got Nowhere Girl out at the mo. It's next on the list once I finish

I've just bought Dinner at Rose's. I couldn't bear it any longer (waiting-wise) so its sitting snugly on my kindle. Just got to find some time to read now! :)

Up to #60 for Dinner at Rose's. And I'll be next up for Nowhere Girl just as soon as it gets back to the library!

Just wanted to pop in and say THANK YOU for reading my first book and giving it a great rating. I really appreciate your time.

How are you going at getting hold of a copy of Dinner at Rose's ? I hope you get your hands on one soon. I'm with Angie, and am thoroughly enjoying it - with some laugh-out-loud moments already!

Kathleen wrote: "I tried to do that with my Anne McCaffrey books once, and had the same difficulties. Isn't the internet great?..."
For a while in my teens/early 20's I thought I was going to buy every book Anne McCaffrey ever wrote. Luckily I snapped out of that; I'd be broke! Love her stuff, but I must say the later of the Pern books did all seem to blend into one another. Looking at the synopses I can't work out which ones I've read and which I haven't!

La Verne, It was a pleasure to read your book. I must write a proper review for it. I wish I'd read it at a time where I could have just sat down and read the whole thing at once instead of spreading it out over 3 weeks tho!
Up to #54 for Dinner at Rose's - the queue is out to 183 now!! Obviously the word is out that it's a great read.

August...
I finally have Two for Sorrow which I will start as soon as I'm done with The Secret Garden. I'm on the last disc of that so it won't be long now.
Gunmetal Magic is on it's way, so that's next in the dead tree book list.
I'm up to 11th in the Dinner at Rose's queue, so that will definitely be an August read, finally!

I'm currently browsing through The Astronaut's Cookbook: Tales, Recipes, and More, tho I must say few of the recipes appeal to me. Kiwi tastes must be quite different to American. I don't know... hot crab dip just sounds horrible.

And I don't know what else. I'll have to see what I feel like.

Well duh. "What else" must include our current read "Ghosts of Young Nick's Head"The Ghosts of Young Nick's Head. And another "Can't Wait!!!" book that is finally available is The Care and Feeding of Stray Vampires. I love Molly Harper - she is so funny!
There. August feels a bit busier now!

Oh, I find her hilarious! She's done one 'normal' romance: And One Last Thing ..., which is every bit as funny as the vamps and weres. I hope she keeps writing for a long, long time.

Ok, So here's the plan.

1. Finish current reads
Deception Point and Dinner at Rose's

2. Waiting at the library is...Elfhome, 3rd book in a series that I thought was over after the 2nd. Book #1 rocked like anything, and #2 was kind of "meh" by comparison, so I'll be interested to see how this one comes out. and sitting on my phone is a short story that apparently falls between, so I need to read that first: Blue Sky.

3. Book Loving Kiwis group reads. Arrggh!!! I'm so far behind!!! So, I need to read The Ghosts of Young Nick's Head and Green Dolphin Country

4. Books I own. I had the goal to read 12 books I already owned this year. I've managed about 3 so far. So I don't think I'll get to 12, but I want to knock a few more off. First, I want to read Devil's Brood. Next I need to finish A Man on the Moon because it's about time I put this one to bed so I can move onto some more astronaut books (see rule mentioned in message 19...). After that there is Katherine, This Time, Sky Walking: An Astronaut's Memoir, The Time It Takes to Fall and Richard III: Maligned King.

5. Others... (from the library eventually)... Fool Moon (audiobook), Hex Appeal (anthology, which I want mostly for the story by Ilona Andrews... interesting to see that it's only been out 5 min and already 2 of the library copies are listed as 'damaged". Is this an anti-witchcraft conspiricy, or are there such smexy sex scenes that readers want to keep them?), One of Our Thursdays Is Missing, Heads You Lose...

6. More audiobooks. Argh. I've got more than a dozen books there, but only one audio! Actually, that's not quite true - the audio version of Katherine is in the library, so I may listen to that rather than reading even tho I own a paper version. What other audiobooks I end up with really depends on availability and what I'm feeling like. I'm hoping for Unnatural Death: A Lord Peter Wimsey Mystery. Fingers crossed the library cooperates on that one.

Good luck, Darkpool! You'll get there.

Kathleen wrote: "I love this title, so I followed it and discovered all the preceding ones in the series. I've heard of fforde but never read him, so now ..."

They are a bit mad. One of my friends who used to be an English teacher hated the first one because it really was the wrong sense of humour for her. I've probably left too big a gap between this and the previous - I'm sure I'll have no idea what is going on.

And thanks for the encouragement, Angie. I have a stack more on hold at the library too, but some of them can wait for next year.

"First, I want to read Devil's Brood"

I will be SO interested to hear what you think of this one. I love all your lists btw :) Some interesting sounding books

Progress, last 1/3 of the year...


Finished
Dinner at Rose's
Deception Point (audiobook)
Blue Sky
Elfhome
The Ghosts of Young Nick's Head
Unnatural Death (audiobook)
Devil's Brood
Fool Moon (audiobook)
Death of Kings (audiobook)
The Undead In My Bed
Beauvallet (audiobook)
The Time It Takes to Fall
Love Bites (audiobook)
The Sweet Second Life of Darrell Kincaid
One of Our Thursdays Is Missing

Current
Katherine: A Novel (audiobook and paperback. might try and do both together.)
Super Finn (bought this for my great-nephew's Xmas pressie, and can't resist reading it first)
The Color of Tea: A Novel

Next



And cos I like the pictures...

Finished Devil's Brood this morning, Sweetp-1, and was totally engrossed the whole way through. It's a fresh piece of history for me, so I was astonished at how quickly everything went downhill. And I don't know how SKP manages to do it - a cast of thousands, but I never had trouble trying to work out who was who.
I'm wondering if I should tackle the Justin de Quincey series before I read Lionheart. Not that I'm planning on reading Lionheart before next year, you understand!

Argh, a combination of school holidays and the extended summer loan period has led me to order a bunch of books from the library, even when I have a bunch that I own sitting on my bookshelf just waiting for my attention. Duh!!!

Sounds to me like you need a 'Patient Bookcase Dwellers' list for 2013 too. I have 12 on my list. One per month can't be too hard, can it?

Perhaps I should set it up as a challenge for the group?
I did sign up to a group this year that was reading books owned before Jan 1st 2012, and I was on track with one per month for the first quarter, but the wheels fell off after that! Still, one can but try...

Yeah, I'm fluffing around a bit with next year's challenges. Think I'll have the head for sorting them out once school is finished. Still six more school days to go!
Do go ahead and set up some challenges though. You always have great ideas.

That is a great challenge. I have a very large pile of books owned but not yet read so would be keen to join in on that one!