50 Books challenge - 2024 roundup

• Politics On The Edge – Rory Stewart
• Getting Better- Michael Rosen
• Careless People- Sarah Churchwell
• The Drift – CJ Tudor
• The Great Gatsby- F Scott Fitzgerald
• When the Dust Settles – Lucy Easthope
• Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow – Gabrielle Zevin
• How They Broke Britain – James O’Brien
• Pandora’s Jar – Natalie Haynes
• The Wager – David Grann
• In Memoriam – Alice Winn
• The House of Doors – Tan Twan Eng
• Wandering Souls – Cecile Pin
• Demon Copperhead – Barbara Kingsolver
• Four Chancellors and a Funeral – Russell Jones
• Ruth – Elizabeth Gaskell
• The Goodbye Cat – Hiro Arikawa
• The World’s War – David Olusoga
• The Turnglass – Gareth Rubin
• The List of Suspicious Things – Jennie Godfrey
• The Ghost Theatre- Mat Osman
• Close To Death – Anthony Horowitz
• An Equal Music – Vikram Seth
• Paper Cup- Karen Campbell
• Broken Light- Joanne Harris
• Nicholas Nickleby – Charles Dickens
• Reykjavik – Ragnar Jonasson and Katrin Jakobsdottir
• Good Chaps – Simon Kuper
• Eve – Cat Bohannon
• Yellowface – Rebecca F Kuang
• Clytemnestra – Costanza Casati
• Great Uncle Harry – Michael Palin
• The Secrets of Hartwood Hall- Katie Lumsden
• The Unseen – Roy Jacobsen
• Fake Heroes – Otto English
• Doppelganger –Naomi Klein
• Killers of the Flower Moon – David Grann
• Guilty by Definition – Susie Dent
• Death at the Sign of the Rook – Kate Atkinson
• The Assistant – Kjell Ola Dahl
• The Voyage Home – Pat Barker
• The Rest Is History – Tom Holland and Dominic Sandbrook
• 1795 – Niklas Natt Og Dag DNF
• The Lazarus Solution – Kjell Ola Dahl
• Rites of Spring – Anders de la Motte
• The Gathering – CJ Tudor
• Night Climbing – Sarah Day
• Stuffed – Pen Vogler
• The Bird Tribunal – Agnes Ravatn
• The Prophet and the Idiot – Jonas Jonasson
• Moral Injuries- Christie Watson
• The Winter Spirits – Various
• The 12 Days of Murder – Andreina Cordani
• The Christmas Jigsaw Murders – Alexandra Benedict
• Murder on the Christmas Express – Alexandra Benedict
• Murder at Holly House – Denzil Meyrick
• A Place of Greater Safety – Hilary Mantel

I am normally fairly chilled but quite a lot of absolute duffers this year!

I've made it to 250 but think I'll get in a few more by the end of the year.

I'm going to be a complete bore and post my full list as I'm too lazy to extract the good stuff out. I need to learn to do it in Excel so I can colour code and manipulate it more easily.

I don't really keep track of DNFs any more, but there are 2 where I was halfway through 30 odd hour narrations and I lost the will to live. I therefore have no guilt about a sprinkling of shorter books towards the end.

I haven't done my full stats yet to include percentages of female vs male authors, but Storygraph reliably tells me I've read 75% fiction. 95% audiobooks, only 9 print books and 4 ebooks.

Someone recently asked me why I don't actually read anymore and I gave a horrified response of, "What, you mean hold it in my own hands and read it with my own eyes? Preposterous!"

Alas my arms are no longer long enough and I have reluctantly acquired some specs. This may make a difference to my habits in the new year.

The List! (Sorry, not sorry)

1. The Iliad – Homer (new translation Emily Wilson)
2. A Room of One’s Own - Virginia Woolf
3. When the Dust Settles – Lucy Easthope
4. For Thy Great Pain Have Mercy on My Little Pain - Victoria MacKenzie
5. Nottingham - Nathan Makaryk
6. The River at Night - Erica Ferencik
7. Cuddy - Benjamin Myers
8. Chrysalis - Anna Metcalfe
9. Soldier Sailor - Claire Kilroy

10. Enter Ghost - Isabella Hammad 11. In Memoriam - Alice Winn 12. Penance - Eliza Clark 13. Rouge - Mona Awad 14. Loot - Tania James 15. Falling Animals - Sheila Armstrong 16. The Glutton - A.K. Blakemore 17. A History of Burning - Janika Oza 18. The Shortest History of Israel and Palestine: From Zionism to Intifadas and the Struggle for Peace - Michael Scott-Baumann 19. The Fraud - Zadie Smith 20. Evil Eye - Etaf Rum 21. Act of Murder - Alan Wright 22. Chlorine - Jade Song 23. The Guest - Emma Cline 24. Land of Milk and Honey - C Pam Zhang 25. Sunburn - Chloe Michelle Howarth 26. Year of Wonders - Geraldine Brooks 27. The Future - Naomi Alderman 28. The Narrow Road to the Deep North - Richard Flanagan 29. Tunnel 29: The True Story of an Extraordinary Escape Beneath the Berlin Wall - Helena Merriman 30. When I Hit You, Or, A Portrait of the Writer as a Young Wife - Meena Kandasamy 31. Athelstan: The Making of England - Tom Holland 32. What You Are Looking For is in the Library - Michiko Aoyama 33. Tomorrow Someone Will Arrest You - Meena Kandasamy 34. Politics on the Edge - Rory Stewart 35. Ordinary Human Failings - Megan Nolan 36. The Collected Regrets of Clover - Mikki Brammer 37. Orbital - Samantha Harvey 38. The Centre - Ayesha Manazir Siddiqi 39. Talking At Night - Claire Delaney 40. The Museum of Failures - Thrity Umrigar 41. The Vulnerables - Sigrid Nunez 42. Hangman - Maya Bingham 43. Reproduction - Louisa Hall 44. Piglet - Lottie Hazel 45. River East, River West - Aube Rey Lescure 46. Black Narcissus - Rumer Godden 47. Nightbloom - Peace Adzo Medie 48. The Story of the Forest - Linda Grant 49. Brotherless Night - V.V. Ganeshananthan 50. And Then She Fell - Alicia Elliott 51. In Defence of the Act - Effie Black 52. 8 Lives of a Century-Old Trickster - Mirinae Lee 53. Doppelganger - Naomi Klein 54. The Dictionary People - Sarah Ogilvie 55. The Secret Book of Flora Lee - Patti Callhgan Henry 56. Clear - Carys Davies 57. So Late in the Day - Claire Keegan 58. Code Dependent: Living in the Shadow of A.I. - Madhumita Murgia 59. How to Say Babylon - Safiya Sinclair 60. The Other Side Mrs Wood - Lucy Barker 61. The Maiden - Kate Foster 62. A Flat Place - Noreen Masud 63. Hidden Fires - Sairish Hussain 64. The Night Hawks (Ruth Galloway 13) - Elly Griffiths 65. Three Fires - Denise Mina 66. Diva - Daisy Goodwin 67. Dominoes - Phoebe McIntosh 68. Nobody Wants Your Shit: The Art of Decluttering Before You Die – Messie Condo 69. Dirty Linen: The Troubles in My Home Place – Martin Doyle 70. Death on the Tiber (Flavia Albia #12) – Lyndsey Davis 71. Wayfarer: Love, Loss and Life on Britain’s Ancient Paths – Phoebe Smith 72. Age of Revolutions: Progress and Backlash from 1600 to the Present – Fareed Zakaria 73. One Little Mistake - Emma Curtis 74. Vox - Christina Dalcher 75. A Short Walk Through A Wide World - Douglas Westerbeke 76. Cwen - Alice Albinia 77. The Swan's Nest - Laura MacNeal 78. Water - John Boyne 79. Coleman Hill - Kim Coleman Foote 80. Absolutely and Forever - Rose Tremain 81. Lies, Damned Lies, and History - Jodi Taylor 82. The Brain Fog Fix: Reclaim Your Focus, Memory, and Joy in Just 3 Weeks - Mike Dow 83. Oscar and Lucinda - Peter Carey 84. The Books of Jacob - Olga Tokarczuk 85. ADHD for Smart Ass Women - Tracy Otsuka 86. Shakespeare: The Man Who Pays the Rent - Judi Dench 87. Grown Women Talk: Your Guide to Getting and Staying Healthy - Sharon Malone M.D. 88. Instructions for Traveling West: Poems - Joy Sullivan 89. Caledonian Road - Andrew O'Hagan 90. A Change of Circumstances - Susan Hill 91. The Scarlet Letter - Nathaniel Hawthorne 92. The List of Suspicious Things - Jennie Godfrey 93. Flight of the Wild Swan - Melissa Pritchard 94. The Sleepwalkers - Scarlett Thomas 95. Decline and Fall - Evelyn Waugh 96. Wifedom: Mrs Orwell's Invisible Life 97. Choice - Neel Mukherjee 98. Restless Dolly Maunder - Kate Grenville 99. Long Island Colm Tóibín 100. Crooked Seeds - Karen Jennings 101. Easy Way to Quit Emotional Eating - Alan Carr 102. Young Queens: Three Renaissance Women and the Price of Power - Leah Redmond Chang 103. Uncomfortable Conversations with a Jew - Emmanuel Acho & Noah Tishby 104. Funny Story - Emily Henry 105. She-Wolves: The Women Who Ruled England Before Elizabeth - Helen Castor 106. Mary Barton - Elizabeth Gaskell 107. With Love, Grief and Fury - Salena Godden 108. Nights of Plague - Orphan Pamuk 109. The Safekeep - Yael van Der Wouden 110. 90s Bitch: Media, Culture, and the Failed Promise of Gender Equality - Allison Yarrow 111. Committed: On Meaning and Madwomen - Suzanne Scanlon 112. Steeple Chasing: Around Britain by Church - Peter Ross 113. Borderline: The Biography of a Personality Disorder - Alexander Kriss 114. Cloistered: My Years as a Nun - Catherine Coldstream 115. Femina - Janina Ramirez 116. My Own Story - Emmeline Pankhurst 117. Who Cooked the Last Supper: The Women's History of the World - Rosalind Miles 118. Days of Wonder - Caroline Leavitt 119. The End of Woman: How Smashing the Patriarchy has Destroyed Us - Carrie Gress 120. Snap - Belinda Bauer 121. The Sleeping Car Porter - Suzette Mayr 122. Jaded - Ela Lee 123. The Glassmaker - Tracy Chevalier 124. Same As It Ever Was - Claire Lombardo 125. Ask A Historian: 50 Surprising Answers to Things You Always Wanted to Know - Greg Jenner 126. Our Spoons Came From Woolworths - Barbara Comyns 127. Milk: On Motherhood and Madness - Alice Kinsella 128. Sparrow - James Hynes 129. The Black Prince - Iris Murdoch 130. The Course of Love - Alain de Botton 131. This Book may Save Your Life - Karan Rajan 132. The Spoiled Heart - Sunjeev Sahota 133. Thérèse Raquin - Émile Zola 134. Day - Michael Cunningham 135. Hagstone - Sinéad Gleeson 136. My Friends - Hisham Matar 137. James - Percival Everett 138. Blackouts - Justin Torres 139. The Road to the Country - Chigozie Obioma 140. Tremor Teju Cole 141. Wellness - Nathan Hill 142. Parade - Rachel Cusk 143. The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store - James McBride 144. Wild Houses - Colin Barrett 145. Absolution - Alice McDermott 146. This Plague of Souls - Mike McCormack 147. Dadland - Keggie Carew 148. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest - Ken Kesey 149. Whalefall - Elizabeth O'Connor 150. Wandering Stars - Tommy Orange 151. You Are Here - David Nichols 152. The Extinction of Irina Rey - Jennifer Croft 153. Blue Ruin - Hari Kunzru 154. Real Americans - Rachel Khong 155. Martyr! - Kaveh Akbar 156. The Pedant in the Kitchen - Julian Barnes 157. Hard By A Great Forest - Leo Vardiashvili 158. Memory Piece - Lisa Ko 159. Kairos - Jenny Erpenbeck 160. Sandwich - Catherine Newman 161. The Women - Kristin Hannah 162. My Name is Markham - Jodi Taylor 163. The Scottish Boy - Alex de Campi 164. *Birnam Wood - Eleanor Catton 165. The Fall of Roe: The Rise of a New America - Elizabeth Dias & Lisa Lerer 166. What They Forgot to Teach you at School - The School of Life 167. The Berlin Letters - Katherine Reay 168. Tidy the Fuck Up: The American Art of Organizing Your Shit - Messie Condo 169. Held - Anne Michaels 170. Enlightenment - Sarah Perry 171. Stone Yard Devotional - Charlotte Wood 172. Headshot - Rita Bullwinkel 173. The Hypocrite - Jo Hamya 174. Time's Convert - Deborah Harkness 175. A Trace of Sun - Pam Williams 176. A Bird in Winter - Louise Doughty 177. I Who Have Never Known Men - Jacqueline Harpman 178. Three Rooms - Jo Hamya 179. The Dictionary of Lost Words - Pip Williams 180. Creation Lake - Rachel Kushner 181. Consent: A Memoir - Jill Clement 182. Tell Me Everything - Elizabeth Strout 183. Gratitude - Delphine de Vigan 184. Playground - Richard Powers 185. Passiontide - Monique Roffey 186. Learning to Swim - Clare Chambers 187. Back Trouble - Clare Chambers 188. Midnight and Blue - Ian Rankin 189. Mayflies - Andrew O'Hagan 190. I Cheerfully Refuse - Leif Enger 191. Light Perpetual - Francis Spufford 192. The Last Murder at the End of the World - Stuart Turton 193. Unruly: The Ridiculous History of England - David Mitchell 194. The Drowned - John Banville 195. Number One Chinese Restaurant - Lillian Li 196. The The Bone -Alena Bruzas 197. Pet - Catherine Chidgey 198. Feel Better in 5: Your Daily Plan to Feel Great for Life - Rangan Chatterjee 199. Madonna in a Fur Coat - Sabahattin Ali 200. The Island of Mists and Miracles - Victoria Mas 201. The Reluctant Carer: Dispatches From the Edge of Life - Anon 202. The Secret Lives of Booksellers and Librarians - James Patterson & Matt Eversmann 203. Mongrel - Hanako Footman 204. Butter - Asako Yuzuki 205. The Examiner - Janice Hallett 206. The Black Bird Oracle - Deborah Harkness 207. Unless - Carol Shields 208. Scaffolding - Lauren Elkin 209. The Water: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder - David Grann 210. The Night Ship - Jess Kidd 211. A Better Second Half: Dial Back You Age - Liz Earle 212. Just One Thing - Dr Michael Mosley 213. Ivy and Abe - Elizabeth Enfield 214. Entitlement - Rumaan Alam 215. A Severed Head - Iris Murdoch 216. Killers of the Flower Moon - David Grann 217. *Shy Creatures - Clare Chambers 218. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight - Simon Armitage 219. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams 220. Cain - José Saramago 221. My Good Brighton Wolf: A Memoir - Sarah Moss 222. Once Upon a Time: The Misadventures of a Rare Bookseller - Oliver Darkshire 223. Strange Sally Diamond - Liz Nugent 224. Women Who Think Too Much - Susan Nolen-Hoeksema 225. Slaughterhouse-Five - Kurt Vonnegut 226. Lucky Jim - Kingsley Amis 227. The Game of Kings - Dorothy Dunnett 228. Epidemics of Modern Life - Oliver Burkeman 229. The Provincial Lady Goes Further - E.M. Delafield 230. The Lover - Marguerite Duras 231. The Book About Getting Older (for people who don't want to talk about it) - Dr Lucy Pollock 232. The Voyage Home - Pat Barker 233. Season of the Raven - Denise Domning 234. The Scold's Bridle - Minette Walters 235. Poor Deer - Claire Oshetsky 236. The Undertaking - Audrey Magee 237. Death at the Sign of the Rook (Jackson Brodie #6) - Kate Atkinson 238. Fire - John Boyne 239. Fraud - Anita Brookner 240. Toxic: Women, Fame, and the Tabloid 2000s - Sarah Ditum 241. The Night Alphabet - Joelle Taylor 242. The Mermaid and Mrs Hancock - Imogen Hermes Gowar 243. The Stone Diaries - Carol Shields 244. How to Let Things Go: 99 tips from a Zen Buddhist Monk - Shunmyō Masuno 245. Lost Heirs of the Medieval Crown - J.F. Andrews 246. Happy AF - Beth Romero 247. Private Rites - Julia Armfield 248. The Amendments - Niamh Mulvey 249. A Brief History of the Countryside in 100 Objects - Sally Coulthard 250. Everything Fat Loss - Ben Carpenter

Cue screams over formatting fails I've inevitably missed...

My list of bolds:
The Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
The House of Mirrors - Erin Kelly
Greengates - R C Sheriff
Death At The Sign Of The Rook - Kate Atkinson
What’s Eating Gilbert Grape - Peter Hedges
Small Bomb At Dimperley - Lissa Evans
The Common Years - Jilly Cooper
Trustee From The Toolroom - Nevil Shute
Homegoing - Yaa Gyasi
The Maeve Kerrigan series by Jane Casey

Plus others that are bolds but were rereads (the above were all new):
The Cazalet Chronicles - Elizabeth Jane Howard
The Poison Tree - Erin Kelly
Rachel’s Holiday - Marian Keyes
New Patches For Old - Christobel Mattingley
My Family And Other Animals - Gerald Durrell
Back Home - Michelle Magorian
Rivals - Jilly Cooper
The Man Who Made Husbands Jealous - Jilly Cooper
One Day - David Nicholls

Rubbish books (excluding those I DNF)
Murder On The Dancefloor - Shirley Ballas
The Second Life of Amy Archer - R S Pateman
With Nails: The Film Diaries of Richard E Grant
A Certain Age - Rebbecca Ray
Death Valley - Melissa Broder
The Haunting of Hill House - Shirley Jackson
Hotel Lucky Seven - Kotaro Isaka

DNF - can’t remember them all but those I do remember:
The Bee Sting - Paul Murray
The Ministry of Time - Kaliane Murphy
Friends of Dorothy - Sandi Toksvig

Unless it confuses things RomanMum, please could I add Orbital to my bold list?

We're back up and running!

www.mumsnet.com/talk/what_were_reading/5238056-50-books-challenge-2024-part-nine?reply=140829619

Top Fiction

Six Stories by Stefan Zweig
A Place of Greater Safety by Hilary Mantel
My Friends by Hisham Matar

Top Non-Fiction

Ways of Life by Laura Freeman
Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl
Sylvia Pankhurst by Rachel Holmes

DNF

Ultraprocessed People by Chris van Tulleken

I can’t see a thread either……how weird if you’ve started one, @Southeastdweller

Still not showing up as an active thread in What We Are Reading @Southeastdweller how very strange indeed!

I’m currently on 211 books for this year but am not going to list them all or I’d be here all week! I reckon I will hit around 215 by the end (currently have 3 underway and might squeeze in a fourth)
I’m giving my top 24 in 24 below (one is a current read but unless it goes horribly wrong it should make the list)

1. The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox- Maggie O’Farrell
2. The Moonstone- Wilkie Collins
3. Glorious Exploits- Ferdia Lennon
4. Wellness- Nathan Hill
5. Brotherless Night- VV Ganeshanathan
6. Stasiland- Anna Funder
7. Great Exectations- Charles Dickens
8. All the Little Bird-Hearts- Viktoria Lloyd-Barlow
9. Spring- Ali Smith
10. The Seven Moons of Ali Meida- Shehan Karunatilaka
11. Drive your Plow over the Bones of the Dead- Olga Tokarczuk
12. Clear- Cary’s Davis
13. If Beale Street Could Talk- James Baldwin
14. Pet- Catherine Chidgey
15. My Name is Lucy Barton- Elizabeth Strout
16. The History of Sound- Benjamin Shattuck
17. The Pull of the Stars- Emma Donaghue
18. The House of Mirth- Edith Wharton
19. Enter Ghost- Isabella Hammad
20. The Blackwater Lightship- Colm Toibin
21. Falling Animals- Sheila Armstrong
22. My Brilliant Friend- Elena Ferrante
23. Anna Karenina- Leo Tolstoy
24. Our Evenings- Alan Hollinghurst (current read)

Of these, my top 3 are Falling Animals, Drive your Plow… and my favourite of all Glorious Exploits

But I did do one…how strange! I’ll do one again now.

I genuinely felt slightly panicky when I saw the old thread had filled up and there wasn’t a new live one yet….that says a lot about my neediness, doesn’t it?! 😂 (note: I am aware that southeast is allowed to have a life)

There was but it's gone!

@Southeastdweller can we have a new thread

Don't think there is one yet

Please can someone link the new main thread I can't find it

I've read 48 books so far, should finish at least one more, hopefully two. Top ten below in no particular order.

The Short End of the Sonnenallee by Thomas Brussig, translated by Jonathan Franzen and Jenny Watson
Kristin Lavrandatter III: The Cross by Sigrid Undset. Translated by Tiina Nunnally
Sophia, Princess, Suffragette, Revolutionary by Anita Anand
The Door by Magda Szabó. Translated by Len Rix
Poor Things by Alasdair Gray
Pereira Maintains by Antonio Tabucchi. Translated by Patrick Creagh
King Hereafter by Dorothy Dunnett
O Caledonia by Elspeth Barker
In the Ditch by Buchi Emecheta
The Observations by Jane Harris

Forgot the stats:
Male: 29%, Female: 71%
Translation: 31%
Non-fiction: 10%
Childrens: 20%
Rereads: 2%
Graphic: 23%
Short Stories: 4%
Poetry: 2%

Just realised I failed to say my lists above are the bolds & missed my chance to edit. Can't face trying to format the full list!

Not posting full list as no where near 50 books but I will march into 2025 and try again 😁 My bolds for 2024 are as follows

1. The Extraordinary Hope of Dawn Brightside by Jessica Ryn

1. All The Lonely people by mike Gayle

5.Paper Cup by Karen Campbell

1. The Maiden by Kate Foster

1. Angel Meadow:Victorian Britains most savage slum by Dean Kirby

Please ignore the numbers I think my best bold of the bolds has been All the Lonely people by Mike Gayle

I reckon I've finished my last couple of books for 2024 - pleasingly both good ones - so here's my final round-up

Fiction:
The Vanishing Half - Brit Bennett
For Thy Great Pain Have Mercy on my Little Pain - Victoria McKenzie
A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
Julia - Sandra Newman
Doors of Eden - Adrian Tchaikovsky
Eleanor Rigby - Douglas Coupland
Sophia - Anita Anand
Prophet Song - Paul Lynch
Ordinary Human Failings - Megan Nolan
The Mountain in the Sea - Ray Nayler
A Restless Truth - Freya Marske
A Little Luck - Claudia Piñeiro
Network Effect - Martha Wells
Service Model - Adrian Tchaikovsky
Elena Knows - Claudia Piñeiro

Non-fiction:
Before We Were Trans - Kit Heyam
Doppelganger - Naomi Klein
Natives - Akala
Shadows at Noon - Joya Chatterji
Tubes - Andrew Blum
Living With Robots: What Every Anxious Human Needs to Know - Patricia Vargas & Ruth Aylett
Tir - Carwyn Graves
Private Revolutions - Yuan Yang
Thirty Two Words for Field - Manchan Magan
The Creativity Code - Marcus du Sautoy
Failed State - Sam Freedman
A Woman Like Me - Diane Abbot
The Christmas Chronicles - Nigel Slater

A Suitable Boy was definitely my top fiction read of the year. Harder to pick a single title from a great selection of non-fiction but probably Before We Were Trans if I had to name one.

In total I've read 110 books, 72 fiction, 38 non-fiction.

I'm a ruthless DNF-er so no italics.
Format: 41% kindle, 21% audible/spotify, 17% e-library, 14% physical library & 7% my/borrowed paper books.

Posted too early!
My highlights have been the Mick Herron Slough House series:
Slow Horses
Dead Lions
Real Tigers
Spook Street
London Rules
Joe Country

Also enjoyed
Small Things Like These
And
Foster
By Clare Chambers

You Are Here by David Nicholls

Hitler, Stalin, Mum & Dad by Daniel Finkelstein

This was a good reading year for me, with lots of bolds, and more fiction than in recent years:

Conquest Of The Useless - Werner Herzog
Chernobyl: A Stalkers’ Guide - Darmon Richter
The Sandman - Neil Gaiman (counting as one entry here although read in several volumes)
Toast - Nigel Slater
Re:Sisters - Cosey Fanni Tutti
Echoes - Will Sergeant
Lucifer - Mike Carey (again one entry covering the series)
East West Street - Philippe Sands
The Places In Between - Rory Stewart
The Marches - Rory Stewart
The Day Of The Jackal - Frederick Forsyth
Savage Messiah - Laura Grace Ford
Challenger - Adam Higginbotham
The Damned Utd - David Peace
Street-Level Superstar: A Year With Lawrence - Will Hodgkinson
Munichs - David Peace
Great-Uncle Harry - Michael Palin
A Place Of Greater Safety - Hilary Mantel
The Pigeon Tunnel - John Le Carre
The Zone Of Interest - Martin Amis

And just one italic worthy of mentioning:

A Thousand Feasts - Nigel Slater (sorry Nige, but this was lazy and boring)

I d

I didn't mark books as bolds at the time of reading so, looking back over my year's list, these are the ones that have stuck in my memory as really enjoyable/interesting/original.

Katheryn Howard, the Tainted Queen Alison Weir
The Whalebone Theatre Joanna Quinn
Paper Cup Karen Campbell
This Is Where I Am Karen Campbell
Trustee from the Toolroom Nevil Shute
The Stranding Kate Sawyer
Saplings Noel Streatfeild
Someone From a Distance Dorothy Whipple
High Wages Dorothy Whipple
The Daughters of Mars Thomas Keneally
In Memoriam Alice Winn
Sunset Song Lewis Grassic Gibbon
A Fine Balance Rohinton Mistry
The Dutch House Ann Patchett
Black Butterflies Priscilla Morris
Foster Claire Keegan

Out of 70 books, only 2 non-fiction (Travellers in the Third Reich and Airhead). I sometimes think I must be missing out but I do like getting absorbed in a good novel and non-fiction still feels a bit like homework to me.

49 by women and 21 by men.

14 crime books; none in my top 16. Mostly Marion Todd and Karen Campbell.

7 rereads. I am planning to reread more frequently next year as I tend to read quickly for plot initially and get much more out of a novel second or third time round.

Thank you for volunteering to do this RomanMum

Adding Madensky Square by Eva Ibbotson and Madonna in a Fur Coat by Sabahattin Ali (trans. M. Freely and D. Selim Sayers).

Just here to add Brooklyn by Colm Toibin to my bolds