What have you read this year? And what will you read next year?

WHat's depressing about it, Silkstockings?

I didn't keep a list, but I've recently re-read Fragrant Harbour by John Lanchester and loved it.

Was up until 2.30 this morning galloping through Zoe Heller's The Believers, which is my book of the year (assuming I finish it in the the remaining 11.5 hours of 2008).

For Christmas got:

If you liked school, you'll love work by Irvine Welsh
The Ghost by Robert Harris
Belching out the devil by Mark Thomas

Don't know what one to start first, I get so excited

Have read a lot this year, probably my favourite was Roma by Steven Saylor and I read Pompeii by Robert Harris for about the tenth time, love it!

This is very depressing.

Totalchaos: yes, love Phil Rickman. THere appears to be a new one out that I hve not read yet .

I liked Incendiary as well though I thought it got a bit mental towards the end.

Not sure if I deliberately missed the lowlight of 2008 from my list, or if I read it in December last year - but worst book of the year has to be "Sepulchre" by Kate Mosse.

Right, I said I'd come back and post my edited highlights... very pleased that my 'worst' list is shorter than I thought it might be at one point in the year. I've read a lot of books that were just OK, but thankfully very few that I thought were actually bad.

Worst:
Then We Came to The End - Joshua Ferris. Honestly, someone writes a novel in the first-person plural and everyone hails him as a genius. bleurgh.

Master Georgie - Beryl Bainbridge. Shortlisted for the Booker. WHY??

Arlington Park - Rachel Cusk. Grow up, woman. Motherhood is not life imprisonment and the suburbs are not actually hell. Also you are not James Joyce.

The Emperor's Children - Claire Messud. "Look at these people. Do we really want to be like this? All smarmy and self-congratulatory?" My thoughts exactly.

Best:

This Book Will Save Your Life - A.M. Homes. Really and truly life-affirming.

What Are You Like? - Anne Enright. Astonishing styling, audacious plot.

Paris to the Moon - Adam Gopnik. Perfectly observed, very witty.

The Landscape of Love - Sally Beauman. Got to love those unreliable narrators.

The Secret Scripture - Sebastian Barry. It's not really about a mad old woman, it's about the nature of truth and history. A pity about the ending, but I forgive him.

Falling Man - Don deLillo. Best 9/11 book I've read so far.

The Earth Hums in B Flat - Mari Strachan. So glad this got bought before the financial crisis hit. It deserves to do really well in 2009 (this was an ARC).

Incendiary - Chris Cleave. The film is meant to be rubbish. Never mind, the book was great. Very impressive female voice from male writer.

When Will There Be Good News? - Kate Atkinson. Most outlandish Brodie plot, most skilfully handled.

Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont - Elizabeth Taylor. Another lovely, lovely book. I want to read lots more Elizabeth Taylor.

yes, #18 is hard to justify for a hardbook you're only going to read the once!

I've used my library a lot more this year than I ever have before, mainly because I've read more newly-published fiction than usual and I just couldn't afford all those hardbacks.

Most of my books come from charity shops or from the regular remainders bookshop warehouse sale dangerously located about 5 minutes' walk from my house, which usually has a fair selection from Faber, Bloomsbury, Canongate and lots of others. There's a great buzz to picking up a lovely new book that I've wanted to read for ages for less than the cost of the Saturday paper .

This year (well, next year I mean) I'm going to try to limit the number of books I buy as my shelves are getting silly and I'm not yet ready to accept the concept of stacks of books piled on the floor (plus I don't have floorspace to spare either...)

at a guess - library for a quarter - usually popular new releases, borrow/get given a quarter, buy a half. some of the translated fiction is too obscure even for the library to get in

does everyone buy a copy of what they read - or use libraries?
Anyone a fan of e-books?

For you bookmonsters, I really do have to plug the 75 Book Challenge on LibraryThing. Lots of lovely people that also read tonnes (one woman has read nearly 500 books this year). The one slight downside is the list of books you want to read gets longer very much more quickly....

Flossie - unusual - very intelligently written action thriller - dry caustic wit - I felt a queasy complicity in rooting for the ?anti hero. so if you have a reasonably strong stomach and dry NI sense of humour is your cup of erm tea...

solidgold - high fives back. I'm also a library fan - at one point I achieved library infamy due to the number of books I was reserving . oh and a belated high five - as you are another Phil Rickman fan I believe!

wow you lot are incredible, i can't believe you can read that much! And you mumsnet!

I finally started reading again about six weeks ago - first time since dd was born. i'm LOVING it.

So far i've read:

An interpretation of Murder (bit disappointing)
The Road Home (lovely - am big rose tremain fan)
The Suspicions of Mr Whicher (brilliant)

now reading
The Human Stain by Philip Roth.

Wow! I am totally blown away by the number of books some have managed to get through.

I've noticed a few coming up several times and this will be a great place to look for inspiration.

Totalchaos, can I just give you a big hi-five as it is so rare to see someone who reads about as much as I do? . I am a book monster and would be in even more debt if not for the library. Haven't got a list as my average is 4/5 books a week.
And i do have the library to thank for letting me discover my discovery of the year: Gwyneth Jones' Bold As Love books (there's 5 of them and they are mindblowingly wonderful).

PS TotalChaos, what did you reckon to the Bloomsday Dead? That's another one I've seriously considered but not got round to picking up.

SuperBunny, what did you make of Three Cups of Tea? I'm thinking I'd quite like to read that this year... having a bit of an Afghanistan patch.

I've kept a list this year (possibly for the first time, actually) but it's a bit on the long side... will come back and post my edited highlights though when I've figured them out though, as there have been a few real gems in there this year.

Bloody hell, a list.

Hmm, can't remember half the books I read this year so perhaps I should make a list for this coming year.

Whenever these kind of things appear I look to see what books are there that I might like to read. So maybe you could start putting little stars to grade them and therefore making my lazy self just a little more lazy!

Actually my to-be-read list is quite long. Not that I've written it down, it is just the pile of books beside my bed is now taller than the beside table.

This year's list. July and Aug seem a bit fallow! BG = my book group selection

January
Purple Hibiscus - Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (BG)
Stalingrad - Antony Beevor
Digging to America - Anne Tyler

Feb
The Electric Michelangelo - Sarah Hall
Astonishing Splashes of Colour - Clare Morrall
Aberdeen Curiosities - Robert Smith
News From No Mans's Land - John Simpson
Perfume - Patrick Suskind
In Siberia - Colin Thubron

March
The Thirty Nine Steps - John Buchan (and on tv tonight!)
India, a History - John Keay

April
Two Lives - Vikram Seth
The Reading Group - Elizabeth Noble (BG)
The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas - John Boyne
Blood River - Tim Butcher
The Reader - Bernard Schlink

May
Drowning Ruth - Christine Schwarz
The Family Orchard - Nomi Eve
Notes From An Exhibition - Patrick Gale
Growing up in the Gorbals - Ralph Glasser
A Prayer for Owen Meany - John Irving
Call The Midwife - Jennifer Worth
The Road to Nab End - William Woodruff
The Surgeon of Crowthrone - Simon Winchester

June
The Soldier's Return - Melvyn Bragg
An Introduction To Judaism - Nicholas de Lange
A Thousand Splendid Suns - Khaled Hosseini (BG)
The Book Thief - Markus Zusak

July Aug Sept
A Son of War - Melvyn Bragg
Empire - Niall Ferguson
The Tenderness of Wolves - Stef Penney (BG)
Shadows of the Workhouse - Jennifer Worth

Oct
I, Coriander - Sally Gardner (children's book)
Leonard Woolf, a life - Victoria Glendinning
The Outcast - Sadie Jones
The Memory Stones - Kate O'Riordan
The Map That Changed the World - Simon Winchester

Nov
Things Fall Apart - Chinua Achebe (BG)
The Gathering - Anne Enright (not sure if I should include this as I hate dit so much I didn't even finish it)
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genuis - Dave Eggars (meh)
The English - Jeremy Paxman
The Island - Victoria Hislop
The Bookseller of Kabul - Asne Seierstad

Dec
The Five People You Meet in Heaven - Mitch Albom

I'm currently reading William Hague's biog of William Wilberforce.

wow totalchaos that's quite some list.

I've read the following (marks out of ten in brackets)

We need to talk about Kevin - Lionel Shriver (9/10)

The Fifth Child - Dorris Lessing (4/10)

A Quiet Belief in Angels - RJ Ellory (9/10)

Mister Pip - Lloyd Jones (5/10)

The Bean Trees - Barbara Kingsolver (6/10)

The Post-birthday World - Lionel Shriver (7/10)

I am Legend - Richard Matheson (6/10)

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - JK Rowling (8/10)

The Welsh Girl - Peter Ho Davies (7/10)

Notes from an Exhibition - Patrick Gale (8/10)

The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox - Maggie O'Farrell (9/10)

Life of Pi - Yann Martel (9/10)

The Other Boleyn Girl - Philippa Gregory (7/10)

My Sister's Keeper - Jodi Picoult (8/10)

The Crimson Petal and the White - Michael Faber (7/10)

The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini (8/10)

The Book Thief - Markus Zusak (9/10)

Twilight - Stephanie Meyer (9/10)

New Moon - Stephenie Meyer (8/10)

Monster Love - Carol Topolski (7/10)

The Notebook - Nicholas Sparks (5/10)

Before I Die - Jenny Downham (6/10)

I'm currently reading To Kill a Mocking Bird and plan to read the following shortly

• The Boy in the Stripped Pyjamas
• Rest of the Twilight series
• A Spot of Bother

killing of the tinkers by Ken Bruen
the mcdead by Ken Bruen
pies and prejudice by Stuart Maconacie (sp)
blitz by Ken Bruen
the state counsellor by Boris Akunin
the coroners lunch by Colin Cotterill
friend of the devil by Peter Robinson
chinatown beat by Henry Chang
bad traffic by Simon Lewis
one man, one murder by Jakob Arjouni
saladin murders by Matt Rees
left hand of darkness by Ursula Leguin
the spoke by Friedrich Glauser
summer of the big bachi
eye of jade by Diane Lei Wang
chourmo by Jean Claud Izzo
lorraine connection by Dominique Manotti
ashes to ashes by Kathy Reichs
the one from the other by Philip Kerr
chatelet apprentice by Parot
red mandarin dress by Xialong
song as it is sung by Justin Cartwright
pretty dead things by Barbara Nadel
diamond dove by Adrian Hyland
dragon tattoo by Stieg Larsson.
taming the alien by Ken Bruen
silesian station by David Downing
prince of fire by Daniel Silva
man with the lead stomach by Jean Louis Parot
undercover economist by Roger Harford
wicked whispers by Jessica Callan
solea by Jean Claude Izzo
tamar by Mal Peet
a night's foul work by fred vargas
the night watch by Sergei Lukyanenko
death in breslau
the pere lachaise mystery by Claude Izner
child 44 by Tom Rob Smith
the murder farm by Andrea Schenkel
african psycho
my sisters keeper by Jodie Piccoult
vienna woods killer by John Leake
waterloo sunset by Martin Edwards
i know why the caged bird sings by Maya Angelou
cure of all diseases by Reginald Hill
last rites by Yrsa Sigurdardottir
water blue eyes by Domingo Villars
road home by Rose Tremain
art thief by Noah Charney
super cannes by JG Ballard
ashes to ashes by Barbara Nadel
bloomsday dead by Adrian McKinty
istanbul variations by Olen Steinhauer
shifting skin. by Chris Simms
priest by Ken bruen
sanctuary by Ken bruen
snow blind by PJ Tracy
Let's Get Criminal by Lev Raphael
a not so perfect murder by Teresa Solana
dog eat dog by Iain Levision
therapy by Sebastian Fitzsek
Barefoot Gen
The Day Watch by Sergei Lukyanenko
Dog Day by Alicia Gimenez Bartlett
Die a Little by Megan Abbott
Regeneration by Pat Barker
Costa Del Crime
Real World. by Natsuo Kirino
Secret River by Kate Grenville
The Likeness by Tana French
Devil Bones by Kathy Reichs
Angels Unaware by Mike Ripley
Bangkok Haunts by Mike Burdett
The Closers by Michael Connelly
Snapshot by Gary Disher
The Private Patient by PD James
The First Fingerprint by Bonnot
To Dream of the Dead by Phil Rickman
The Final Bet by Hamdouchi
Sweetness of Life by Paulus Hochgatterer
The Twilight Watch by Sergei Lukyanenko
Twilight by Stephanie Meyer
The Phantom of Rue Royale by Jean Louis Parot
boy in the striped pyjamas

I have read over 60 books this year

I have kept a list but in a notebook.

I have read a lot of travel type books and not much chic lit, also the Mitford sisters feature heavily.