50 Book Challenge 2018 Part Nine

[southeastdweller]

Welcome to the eighth (and definitely final) thread of the 50 Book Challenge for this year.

The challenge was to read fifty books (or more!) in 2018, though reading fifty wasn't mandatory. The lurkers among you are also very welcome to come out of the woodwork and share with us what you've read!

The first thread of the year is here, the second one here, the third one here, the fourth one here, the fifth one here, the sixth one here, the seventh one here and the eighth one here.

How have you got on this year? Feel free to list your stats, full lists, favourites and disappointments!

Satsuki - I really enjoyed the film, but then again, I'd happily watch Eddie Redmayne doing his food shopping. Love him!

1: Quiet London
2: Walking in Berlin: A Flaneur in the Capital - Franz Hessel
3: Death at the Dolphin by Ngaio Marsh
4: Our Man in Havana – Graham Greene
5: Whatever Happened to Baby Jane – Henry Farrell
6: The Berlin Wall – My Part in its Downfall by Peter Millar
7: The Winter Queen – Boris Akunin
8:: The Thorn Birds – Colleen McCullough
9: The Nix – Nathan Hill
10: N or M – Agatha Christie
11: A Presumption of Death by Jill Paton Walsh
12: The Attenbury Emeralds – Jill Paton Walsh
13: An Almond for a Parrot – Wray Delaney
14: Strong Poison – Dorothy L Sayers
15: The Strange Last Voyage of Donald Crowhurst - Nicholas Tomalin and Ron Hall
16: Christine – Stephen King
17: From Here to Eternity – Caitlin Doughty
18: Miss Pym Disposes – Josephine Tey
19: Forever – Judy Blume
20: Munich – Robert Harris
21: Corpus – Rory Clements
22 Blood Brothers – Ernst Haffner
23: Have His Carcase – Dorothy L Sayers
24: Artists in Crime – Ngaio Marsh
25/26/27/28: Little Women series – Louisa May Alcott
29: The Masqueraders – Georgette Heyer
30: Enigma – Robert Harris
31: Venetia – Georgette Heyer
32: Gaudy Night – Dorothy LS
33: The Last Necromancer – CJ Archer
34: The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle – Stuart Turton
35: Larkinland by Jonathan Tulloch
36: The Silent Companions – Laura Purcell
37: Last Ditch – Ngaio Marsh
38, 39, 40 Jeeves Omnibus Volume 2
41: The Reluctant Widow – Georgette Heyer
42: Died in the Wool – Ngaio Marsh
43: The Guns of Navarone – Alistair Maclean
44: Berlin’s Third Sex - Magnus Hirschfeld
45: A Clutch of Constables – Ngaio Marsh
46: Swing, Brother, Swing – Ngaio Marsh
47: Off with his Head – Ngaio Marsh
48: Being Mortal – Atul Gawande
49: Grave Mistake – Ngaio Marsh
50: A Very English Scandal – John Preston
51: The Hollow – Agatha Christie
52 Gillespie and I – Jane Harris
53: Greeks Bearing Gifts – Philip Kerr
54: The Foundling – Georgette Heyer
55: The Mermaid and Mrs Hancock Imogen Hermes Gowar
56: Eat Me: A Natural and Unnatural History of Cannibalism – Bill Schutt
57: Giovanni’s Room – James Baldwin
58: Bath Tangle – Georgette Heyer
59: Reasons to Stay Alive – Matt Haig
60: The Forest Lake Mystery - Palle Rosenkrantz
61: Travels in the Third Reich – Julia Boyd
62: The ABC Murders – Agatha Christie
63: March Violets – Philip Kerr
64: The Pale Criminal – Philip Kerr
65: A German Requiem – Philip Kerr
66: The Outsider – Stephen King
67: The Terror – Dan Simmons
68: Life after God – Douglas Coupland
69: In Pursuit: The Men and Women Who Hunted the Nazis - Andrew Nagorski

70: The Colour of Bee Larkham’s Murder – Sarah Harris

71: Simon vs the Homosapiens Agenda – Becky Abertalli

72: The Devil in the White City – Eric Larson

73: The Alienist – Caleb Carr

74: Huntingtower – John Buchan

75: La Belle Sauvage – Philip Pullman

76: After the Funeral – Agatha Christie

77: The Toll Booth – Georgette Heyer

78: Death of a Red Heroine - Qiu Xiaolong

79: Force of Nature – Jane Harper

80: Dead Lagoon – Michael Dibdin

81: Heartburn – Nora Ephron

82: Mrs Harris Goes to Paris

83: Mrs Harris Goes to New York – Paul Gallico

84: Tom Brown’s Body – Gladys Mitchell

85: Lonesome Dove – Larry McMurty

86: Streets of Loredo – Larry McMurty

87: Iron Gold – Pierce Brown

88: Because of the Lockwoods – Dorothy Whipple

89: Sprig Muslin – Georgette Heyer

90: The Illumination of Ursula Flight - Anna-Marie Crowhurst
91: All Things Wise and Wonderful – James Herriot

92: Every Living Thing – James Herriot

93 Tombland – CJ Sansom

94: Adventures of a Young Naturalist - David Attenborough

95: Elevation – Stephen King

96: Icy Graves: Exploration and Death in the Antarctic - Stephen Haddelsey

97: The Monsters We Deserve – Marcus Sedgewick

98: Breathe – Dominick Donald

99: The Abominable – Dan Simmons

100: The Long Shadow – Celia Fremlin

101: The Butchering Art – Lindsey Fitzharris

102: The Mystery of the Blue Train – Agatha Chrisite

103: Uncle Paul - Celia Fremlin

104: The Happiness Project – Gretchen Rubin

105: I Feel Bad About My Neck – Nora Ephron

106: Oranges for Christmas - Margarita Morris

107: Curtain Call – Anthony Quinn

108: The Wolves of Willoughby Chase – Joan Aiken

109: The Rescue Man – Anthony Quinn

110: Emma Watson – Joan Aiken

111 – The Streets – Anthony Quinn

112 – The Smile of the Stranger – Joan Aiken

113 The Five Minute Marriage – Joan Aiken

114 And Then There Were None – Agatha Christie

115 The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club – Dorothy L Sayers

116 and 117 My Week With Marilyn – Colin Clark

Added the books up to now. There are some surprises in the list so far. I'll post the results on the 1st/late tomorrow.

And since we have this bonus round-up thread, my list for the year (assuming I don't finish anything else in the next 24 hours) is:

1. The Dark Flood Rises - Margaret Drabble
2. The Loved One - Evelyn Waugh
3. The Middlepause - Marina Benjamin
4. The Wall Jumper - Peter Schneider
5. The Gustav Sonata - Rose Tremain
6. First Love - Gwendoline Riley
7. The Furthest Station - Ben Aaronovitch
8. Quiet - Susan Cain
9. Death and the Penguin - Andrey Kurkov

10. The War on Women - Sue Lloyd Roberts 11. Harmless Like You - Rowan Hisayo Buchanan 12. Selfish People - Lucy English 13.How to Stop Time - Matt Haig 14. The Watchmaker of Filigree Street - Natasha Pulley 15. The House of Mirth - Edith Wharton 16. The Vanishing Box - Elly Griffiths 17. Rosalie Blum - Camille Jourdy 18. Addlands - Tom Bullough 19. Saplings - Noel Streatfeild 20. Butterflies in November - Audur Ava Olafsdottir 21. All Passion Spent - Vita Sackville-West 22. We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves - Karen Joy Fowler 23. The Cherry Blossom Murder - Fran Pickering 24. Venetia - Georgette Heyer 25. I Feel Bad About My Neck - Nora Ephron 26. The Keeper of Lost Things - Ruth Hogan 27. The Miniaturist - Jessie Burton 28. Wide Sargasso Sea - Jean Rhys 29. Black and British: A Forgotten History - David Olusoga 30. Shadow Dance - Angela Carter 31. The Descent of Man - Grayson Perry 32. The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon 33. Cousins - Salley Vickers 34. Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk - Kathleen Rooney 35. Flaneuse - Lauren Elkin 36. August is a Wicked Month - Edna O'Brien 37. Miss Mole - EH Young 38. I Contain Multitudes - Ed Yong 39. Starter for Ten - David Nicholls 40. You Don't Know Me - Imran Mahmood 41. In The Light Of What We Know - Zia Hayder Rahman 42. Mirror, Shoulder, Signal - Dorthe Nors 42.5 I Murdered My Library - Linda Grant 43. We Have Always Lived In The Castle - Shirley Jackson 44. The Hate U Give - Angie Thomas 45. Blaming - Elizabeth Taylor 46. Bonjour Tristesse - Francoise Sagan 47. Happy - Derren Brown 48. Travellers In The Third Reich - Julia Boyd 49. Night Letters - Robert Dessaix 50. Treasure Island - Robert Louis Stevenson 51. The Ginger Tree - Oswald Wynd 52. Under the Tump - Oliver Balch 53. The Reading Party - Fenella Gentleman 54. Lincoln in the Bardo - George Saunders 55. Why I Am No Longer Talking To White People About Race - Reni Eddo Lodge 56. The Awakening - Kate Chopin 57. The 7th Function of Language - Laurent Binet 58. The Sense of an Ending - Julian Barnes 59. Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine - Gail Honeyman 60. The Lonely City - Olivia Laing 61. In the Darkroom - Susan Faludi 62. Hotel Iris - Yoko Ogawa 63. The Librarian - Salley Vickers 64. The Devil's Mask - Christopher Wakling 65. Ghost Wall - Sarah Moss 66. Out of Time - Miranda Sawyer 67. Often I Am Happy - Jens Christian Grondahl 68. Mrs Dalloway - Virgina Woolf 69. My Cleaner - Maggie Gee 70 The Examined Life - Stephen Grosz 71 The Street Sweeper - Elliot Perlman 72 The London Train - Tessa Hadley 73 The Odd Women - George Gissing 74 Hag-Seed - Margaret Atwood 75 Ladder of Years - Anne Tyler 76 A Life of My Own - Claire Tomlin 77 Junk - Melvin Burgess 78 The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning - Margareta Magnusson 79 The Bean Trees - Barbara Kingsolver 80 Lolly Willowes - Sylvia Townsend Warner 81 The Overstory - Richard Powers 82 Gulliver's Travels - Jonathan Swift 83 The End of Days - Jenny Erpenbeck 84 Crusoe's Daughter - Jane Gardam 85 The Cost of Living - Deborah Levy 86 The Long Shadow - Celia Fremlin 87 Territory of Light - Yuko Tsushima 88 The Death of Truth - Michiko Kakutani 89 The Yellow Wall-Paper - Charlotte Perkins Gilman 90 A Gentleman in Moscow - Amor Towles

I've posted most of my stats already, but just to recap:
68% by women
21 % non-fiction
12% in translation
5.5% pre-1900
22% on Kindle (no audiobooks or library books).

It was a pretty good year of reading, looking back, and I think my only real stinker of the year was The Keeper of Lost Things ("sugar-coated cardboard" was my verdict at the time).

Now trying to work out what my top 5/top 10 could be - too many to choose from...

Not many stand-outs, unfortunately.

Top 5 -
Lonesome Dove
Giovanni's Room
An Almond for a Parrot
Huntingtower
The Guns of Navarone

1 A Life of My Own by Claire Tomalin
2 Exquisite by Sarah Stovell
3 The Marriage Pact by Michelle Richmond
4 Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders
5 One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Aleksander Solzhenitsyn
6 How to Read a Novel by John Sutherland
7 The Nix by Nathan Hill

1. On Writing by Stephen King
2. Hot Milk by Deborah Levy

10 The Vanity Fair Diaries by Tina Brown 11 A River in Darkness by Masaji Ishikawa 12 Just What Kind of Mother Are You? by Paula Daly 13 Commonwealth by Ann Patchett. 14 The Shining by Site King 15 The Heart of the Matter by Graham Greene 16 How to talk so teens listen and listen so teens talk by Adele Faber and Elaine Mazlisch 17 Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf 18 Mythos by Stephen Fry 19 Home Fire by Kamila Shamsie 20 Endurance by Alfred Lansing 21 Quantum Mechanics by Jim Al-Khalili 22 Night Waking by Sarah Moss 23 A Woman’s Work by Harriet Harman 24 Hiroshima by John Hersey 25 The Silent Companions by Laura Purcell 26 The Novel Cure by Ella Berthoud and Susan Elderkin 27 Behind Closed Doors by BA Paris 28 Eve Was Framed by Helena Kennedy 29 Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi 30 a very dull but quite useful work related book. 31 The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle by Stuart Turton 32 Mothering Sunday by Graham Swift 33 Women and Power by Mary Beard 34 Vital Conversations by Alec Grimsley 35 You Don't Know Me by Imran Mahmood 36 Wasp Factory by Iain Banks 37 Map Addict by Mike Parkes 38 The Weight of Numbers by Simon Ing 39 Educated by Tara Westover 40 How to Hang a Witch by Adriana Mather 41 Bookworm by Lucy Mangan 42 The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck 43 Fermat's Last Theorem by Simon Singh 44 Ready Player One by Ernest Cline 45 Eat Up by Ruby Tandoh 46 Little Fires Everywhere by Cecile Ng 47 The Mayor of Casterbridge by Thomas Hardy 48 Mindset by Carol Dweck 49 East of Eden by John Steinbeck 50 Happiness for Humans by PZ Reizin 51 Who by Geoff Smart 52 Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People about Race by Renni Eddo-Lodge 53 Strangers Drowning by Larissa Macfarquhar 54 The Private Lives of the Tudors by Tracy Borman 55 Gone by Min Kym 56 The Roanoke Girls by Amy Engel 57 I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou 58 Friend Request by Laura Marshall 59 Norse Mythology by Neil Gaiman 60 The Female Persuasion by Meg Wolitzer 61 Valley of the Dolls by Jacqueline Susann 62 A Constant Princess by Phillipa Gregory 63 The Only Story by Julian Barnes 64 Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad 65 Insomnia by Stephen King 66 Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jesmyn Ward 67 American Gods by Neil Gaiman 68 World War Z by Max Brooks 69 From Russia, With Love by Ian Fleming 70 In the Days of Rain by Rebecca Stott 71 The Secret Barrister by the Secret Barrister 72 Josser by Nell Stroud 73 Eyes of the Dragon by Stephen King 74 The End of Eddy by Édouard Louis 75 Palace Pier by Keith Waterhouse 76 The Chrysalids by John Wyndham 77 How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie 78 Behind her Eyes by Sarah Pinborough 79 The Order of Time by Carlo Rovelli 80 A Very English Scandal by John Preston 81 Circe by Madeleine Miller 82 House of Names by Colm Toibin 83 The Wild Other by Clover Stroud 84 The Anna Karenina Fix by Viv Groskop 85 This Is Going to Hurt by Adam Kay 86 Crazy Rich Asians by Kevin Kwan 87 Moondust by Andrew Smith 88 Hearts in Atlantis by Stephen King 89 All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque 90 Standard Deviation by Katherine Heiny 91 The Hours Before Dawn by Celia Fremlin 92 The Cows by Dawn Porter 93 The Lido by Libby Paige 94 Tell Me How It Ends by Valerie Luiselli 95 Interview with the Vampire by Anne Rice 96 The House Next Door by Anne Rivers Siddons 97 How to Build a Girl by Caitlin Moran 98 The Woman in the Window by AJ Finn 99 The Course of Love by Alain De Botton 100 The Dark Net by Jamie Bartlett 101 Longbourn by Jo Baker 102 Bird Box by Josh Malerman 103 One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez 104 From Source to Sea by Tom Chesshyre 105 Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy 106 Swan Song by Kelleigh Greenberg-Jephcott 107 The Idiot by Elif Batuman 108 The Four Tendencies by Gretchen Rubin 109 Reservoir 13 by Jon McGregor 110 Anatomy of a Scandal by Sarah Vaughan 111 Emperor of all Maladies by Siddharta Mukherjee 112 Meg by Steve Alten 113 A Simple Favor by Darcey Bell 114 Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis 115 Relic by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child 116 Diary of a Bookseller by Shaun Bythell 117 The Aspern Papers by Henry James 118 The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler 119 Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman 120 Milkman by Anna Burns 121 Goodbye To All That by Robert Graves 122 Good Omens by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett 123 The Association of Small Bombs by Karan Mahajan 124 Gut Symmetries by Jeanette Winterson 125 Swan Song by Robert McCammon 126 How Not To Be A Boy by Robert Webb 127 The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway 128 The Sparsholt Affair by Alan Hollinghurst 129 Seveneves by Neal Stephenson 130 Conversations with Friends by Sally Rooney 131 Snap by Belinda Bauer 132 The Odyssey by Homer 133 Beyond Infinity by Eugenia Cheng

And a few final ones from the last week or so...I'm sure this will be it for the year as I can't see myself getting much reading done tomorrow. A good way to end the reading year, all in all.

134 The Penelopiad by Margaret Atwood
This was terrific, coming straight after finishing The Odyssey. Penelope is way more interesting and nuanced than she appears in The Odyssey and the balancing of ancient myth and modern sensibilities is very well done. It was clever, arch and a fascinating coda to The Odyssey, as well as taking many aspects of the epic that are troubling to modern sensibilities and exploring them in detail.

135 Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng
This was a fairly dull account of a family falling apart then putting themselves together after their middle daughter drowns. It had some interesting themes (a mother pinning her own failed hopes on her daughter, racial prejudice in the 1970s) but never really grabbed me.

136 Asymmetry by Lisa Halliday
This was a clever and thoughtful novel which I loved - two seemingly unconnected stories (though I was delighted to spot the connection before the subtle clue in the third part) about a young woman's relationship with a much older writer and about a Muslim man detained at Heathrow in transit to Iraq. It was funny and human. Would highly recommend.

137 WTF by Robert Peston
I think you'll either love this if you buy Peston's view of the world (I do, for what it's worth) or hate it, so it will do little to persuade anyone who doesn't agree already that Brexit is bad but we need to make the best of it, social media has a lot to answer for, and all governments since Thatcher have a role to play in contributing to the mess we are currently in. There are some interesting suggestions at the end for increasing social cohesion and mobility in a post-Brexit high tech world, and he uses the word "obvs" which makes me love him just a little bit more.

Women: 64
In translation: 8
Non fiction: 43
Classics: (based on a fairly vague definition of such) 17
Books I wish I hadn't bothered with: 16 (not bad, considering the number r1 A Life of My Own by Claire Tomalin
2 Exquisite by Sarah Stovell
3 The Marriage Pact by Michelle Richmond
4 Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders
5 One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Aleksander Solzhenitsyn
6 How to Read a Novel by John Sutherland
7 The Nix by Nathan Hill

1. On Writing by Stephen King
2. Hot Milk by Deborah Levy

10 The Vanity Fair Diaries by Tina Brown 11 A River in Darkness by Masaji Ishikawa 12 Just What Kind of Mother Are You? by Paula Daly 13 Commonwealth by Ann Patchett. 14 The Shining by Site King 15 The Heart of the Matter by Graham Greene 16 How to talk so teens listen and listen so teens talk by Adele Faber and Elaine Mazlisch 17 Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf 18 Mythos by Stephen Fry 19 Home Fire by Kamila Shamsie 20 Endurance by Alfred Lansing 21 Quantum Mechanics by Jim Al-Khalili 22 Night Waking by Sarah Moss 23 A Woman’s Work by Harriet Harman 24 Hiroshima by John Hersey 25 The Silent Companions by Laura Purcell 26 The Novel Cure by Ella Berthoud and Susan Elderkin 27 Behind Closed Doors by BA Paris 28 Eve Was Framed by Helena Kennedy 29 Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi 30 a very dull but quite useful work related book. 31 The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle by Stuart Turton 32 Mothering Sunday by Graham Swift 33 Women and Power by Mary Beard 34 Vital Conversations by Alec Grimsley 35 You Don't Know Me by Imran Mahmood 36 Wasp Factory by Iain Banks 37 Map Addict by Mike Parkes 38 The Weight of Numbers by Simon Ing 39 Educated by Tara Westover 40 How to Hang a Witch by Adriana Mather 41 Bookworm by Lucy Mangan 42 The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck 43 Fermat's Last Theorem by Simon Singh 44 Ready Player One by Ernest Cline 45 Eat Up by Ruby Tandoh 46 Little Fires Everywhere by Cecile Ng 47 The Mayor of Casterbridge by Thomas Hardy 48 Mindset by Carol Dweck 49 East of Eden by John Steinbeck 50 Happiness for Humans by PZ Reizin 51 Who by Geoff Smart 52 Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People about Race by Renni Eddo-Lodge 53 Strangers Drowning by Larissa Macfarquhar 54 The Private Lives of the Tudors by Tracy Borman 55 Gone by Min Kym 56 The Roanoke Girls by Amy Engel 57 I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou 58 Friend Request by Laura Marshall 59 Norse Mythology by Neil Gaiman 60 The Female Persuasion by Meg Wolitzer 61 Valley of the Dolls by Jacqueline Susann 62 A Constant Princess by Phillipa Gregory 63 The Only Story by Julian Barnes 64 Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad 65 Insomnia by Stephen King 66 Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jesmyn Ward 67 American Gods by Neil Gaiman 68 World War Z by Max Brooks 69 From Russia, With Love by Ian Fleming 70 In the Days of Rain by Rebecca Stott 71 The Secret Barrister by the Secret Barrister 72 Josser by Nell Stroud 73 Eyes of the Dragon by Stephen King 74 The End of Eddy by Édouard Louis 75 Palace Pier by Keith Waterhouse 76 The Chrysalids by John Wyndham 77 How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie 78 Behind her Eyes by Sarah Pinborough 79 The Order of Time by Carlo Rovelli 80 A Very English Scandal by John Preston 81 Circe by Madeleine Miller 82 House of Names by Colm Toibin 83 The Wild Other by Clover Stroud 84 The Anna Karenina Fix by Viv Groskop 85 This Is Going to Hurt by Adam Kay 86 Crazy Rich Asians by Kevin Kwan 87 Moondust by Andrew Smith 88 Hearts in Atlantis by Stephen King 89 All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque 90 Standard Deviation by Katherine Heiny 91 The Hours Before Dawn by Celia Fremlin 92 The Cows by Dawn Porter 93 The Lido by Libby Paige 94 Tell Me How It Ends by Valerie Luiselli 95 Interview with the Vampire by Anne Rice 96 The House Next Door by Anne Rivers Siddons 97 How to Build a Girl by Caitlin Moran 98 The Woman in the Window by AJ Finn 99 The Course of Love by Alain De Botton 100 The Dark Net by Jamie Bartlett 101 Longbourn by Jo Baker 102 Bird Box by Josh Malerman 103 One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez 104 From Source to Sea by Tom Chesshyre 105 Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy 106 Swan Song by Kelleigh Greenberg-Jephcott 107 The Idiot by Elif Batuman 108 The Four Tendencies by Gretchen Rubin 109 Reservoir 13 by Jon McGregor 110 Anatomy of a Scandal by Sarah Vaughan 111 Emperor of all Maladies by Siddharta Mukherjee 112 Meg by Steve Alten 113 A Simple Favor by Darcey Bell 114 Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis 115 Relic by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child 116 Diary of a Bookseller by Shaun Bythell 117 The Aspern Papers by Henry James 118 The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler 119 Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman 120 Milkman by Anna Burns 121 Goodbye To All That by Robert Graves 122 Good Omens by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett 123 The Association of Small Bombs by Karan Mahajan 124 Gut Symmetries by Jeanette Winterson 125 Swan Song by Robert McCammon 126 How Not To Be A Boy by Robert Webb 127 The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway 128 The Sparsholt Affair by Alan Hollinghurst 129 Seveneves by Neal Stephenson 130 Conversations with Friends by Sally Rooney 131 Snap by Belinda Bauer 132 The Odyssey by Homer 133 Beyond Infinity by Eugenia Cheng

134 The Penelopiad by Margaret Atwood
This was terrific, coming straight after finishing The Odyssey. Penelope is way more interesting and nuanced than she appears in The Odyssey and the balancing of ancient myth and modern sensibilities is very well done. It was clever, arch and a fascinating coda to The Odyssey, as well as taking many aspects of the epic that are troubling to modern sensibilities and exploring them in detail.

135 Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng
A fairly dull account of a family falling apart then putting themselves together after their middle daughter drowns. It had interesting themes (a mother pinning her own failed hopes on her daughter, racial prejudice in the 1970s) but never really grabbed me.

136 Asymmetry by Lisa Halliday
This was a clever and thoughtful novel which I loved - two seemingly unconnected stories (though I was delighted to spot the connection before the subtle clue in the third part) about a young woman's relationship with a much older writer and about a Muslim man detained at Heathrow in transit to Iraq. Funny and human. Would highly recommend.

137 WTF by Robert Peston
You'll either love this if you buy Peston's view of the world (I do, for what it's worth) or hate it, so it will do little to persuade anyone who doesn't agree already that Brexit is bad but we need to make the best of it, social media has a lot to answer for, and all governments since Thatcher have a role to play in contributing to the mess we are currently in. There are some interesting suggestions at the end for increasing social cohesion and mobility in a post-Brexit high tech world, and he uses the word "obvs" which makes me love him just a little bit more.

OK, top ten novels of the year, in the order I read them rather than actually trying to work out a ranking:

The Dark Flood Rises - Margaret Drabble
Addlands - Tom Bullough
All Passion Spent - Vita Sackville-West
Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk - Kathleen Rooney
In the Light of What We Know - Zia Hayder Rahman
Night Letters - Robert Dessaix
The Ginger Tree - Oswald Wynd
The Awakening - Kate Chopin
The Odd Women - George Gissing
A Gentleman in Moscow - Amor Towles

And top three non-fiction:
In the Darkroom - Susan Faludi
Travellers in the Third Reich - Julia Boyd
I Contain Multitudes - Ed Yong

Oops - messed that up with copy and pasting on my phone. Trying again, with the standouts underlined.

1 A Life of My Own by Claire Tomalin
2 Exquisite by Sarah Stovell
3 The Marriage Pact by Michelle Richmond
4 Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders
5 One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Aleksander Solzhenitsyn
6 How to Read a Novel by John Sutherland
7 The Nix by Nathan Hill

1. On Writing by Stephen King
2. Hot Milk by Deborah Levy

10 The Vanity Fair Diaries by Tina Brown 11 A River in Darkness by Masaji Ishikawa 12 Just What Kind of Mother Are You? by Paula Daly 13 Commonwealth by Ann Patchett. 14 The Shining by Site King 15 The Heart of the Matter by Graham Greene 16 How to talk so teens listen and listen so teens talk by Adele Faber and Elaine Mazlisch 17 Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf 18 Mythos by Stephen Fry 19 Home Fire by Kamila Shamsie 20 Endurance by Alfred Lansing 21 Quantum Mechanics by Jim Al-Khalili 22 Night Waking by Sarah Moss 23 A Woman’s Work by Harriet Harman 24 Hiroshima by John Hersey 25 The Silent Companions by Laura Purcell 26 The Novel Cure by Ella Berthoud and Susan Elderkin 27 Behind Closed Doors by BA Paris 28 Eve Was Framed by Helena Kennedy 29 Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi 30 a very dull but quite useful work related book. 31 The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle by Stuart Turton 32 Mothering Sunday by Graham Swift 33 Women and Power by Mary Beard 34 Vital Conversations by Alec Grimsley 35 You Don't Know Me by Imran Mahmood 36 Wasp Factory by Iain Banks 37 Map Addict by Mike Parkes 38 The Weight of Numbers by Simon Ing 39 Educated by Tara Westover 40 How to Hang a Witch by Adriana Mather 41 Bookworm by Lucy Mangan 42 The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck 43 Fermat's Last Theorem by Simon Singh 44 Ready Player One by Ernest Cline 45 Eat Up by Ruby Tandoh 46 Little Fires Everywhere by Cecile Ng 47 The Mayor of Casterbridge by Thomas Hardy 48 Mindset by Carol Dweck 49 East of Eden by John Steinbeck 50 Happiness for Humans by PZ Reizin 51 Who by Geoff Smart 52 Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People about Race by Renni Eddo-Lodge 53 Strangers Drowning by Larissa Macfarquhar 54 The Private Lives of the Tudors by Tracy Borman 55 Gone by Min Kym 56 The Roanoke Girls by Amy Engel 57 I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou 58 Friend Request by Laura Marshall 59 Norse Mythology by Neil Gaiman 60 The Female Persuasion by Meg Wolitzer 61 Valley of the Dolls by Jacqueline Susann 62 A Constant Princess by Phillipa Gregory 63 The Only Story by Julian Barnes 64 Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad 65 Insomnia by Stephen King 66 Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jesmyn Ward 67 American Gods by Neil Gaiman 68 World War Z by Max Brooks 69 From Russia, With Love by Ian Fleming 70 In the Days of Rain by Rebecca Stott 71 The Secret Barrister by the Secret Barrister 72 Josser by Nell Stroud 73 Eyes of the Dragon by Stephen King 74 The End of Eddy by Édouard Louis 75 Palace Pier by Keith Waterhouse 76 The Chrysalids by John Wyndham 77 How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie 78 Behind her Eyes by Sarah Pinborough 79 The Order of Time by Carlo Rovelli 80 A Very English Scandal by John Preston 81 Circe by Madeleine Miller 82 House of Names by Colm Toibin 83 The Wild Other by Clover Stroud 84 The Anna Karenina Fix by Viv Groskop 85 This Is Going to Hurt by Adam Kay 86 Crazy Rich Asians by Kevin Kwan 87 Moondust by Andrew Smith 88 Hearts in Atlantis by Stephen King 89 All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque 90 Standard Deviation by Katherine Heiny 91 The Hours Before Dawn by Celia Fremlin 92 The Cows by Dawn Porter 93 The Lido by Libby Paige 94 Tell Me How It Ends by Valerie Luiselli 95 Interview with the Vampire by Anne Rice 96 The House Next Door by Anne Rivers Siddons 97 How to Build a Girl by Caitlin Moran 98 The Woman in the Window by AJ Finn 99 The Course of Love by Alain De Botton 100 The Dark Net by Jamie Bartlett 101 Longbourn by Jo Baker 102 Bird Box by Josh Malerman 103 One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez 104 From Source to Sea by Tom Chesshyre 105 Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy 106 Swan Song by Kelleigh Greenberg-Jephcott 107 The Idiot by Elif Batuman 108 The Four Tendencies by Gretchen Rubin 109 Reservoir 13 by Jon McGregor 110 Anatomy of a Scandal by Sarah Vaughan 111 Emperor of all Maladies by Siddharta Mukherjee 112 Meg by Steve Alten 113 A Simple Favor by Darcey Bell 114 Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis 115 Relic by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child 116 Diary of a Bookseller by Shaun Bythell 117 The Aspern Papers by Henry James 118 The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler 119 Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman 120 Milkman by Anna Burns 121 Goodbye To All That by Robert Graves 122 Good Omens by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett 123 The Association of Small Bombs by Karan Mahajan 124 Gut Symmetries by Jeanette Winterson 125 Swan Song by Robert McCammon 126 How Not To Be A Boy by Robert Webb 127 The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway 128 The Sparsholt Affair by Alan Hollinghurst 129 Seveneves by Neal Stephenson 130 Conversations with Friends by Sally Rooney 131 Snap by Belinda Bauer 132 The Odyssey by Homer 133 Beyond Infinity by Eugenia Cheng

And a few final ones from the last week or so...I'm sure this will be it for the year as I can't see myself getting much reading done tomorrow. A good way to end the reading year, all in all.

134 The Penelopiad by Margaret Atwood
This was terrific, coming straight after finishing The Odyssey. Penelope is way more interesting and nuanced than she appears in The Odyssey and the balancing of ancient myth and modern sensibilities is very well done. It was clever, arch and a fascinating coda to The Odyssey, as well as taking many aspects of the epic that are troubling to modern sensibilities and exploring them in detail.

135 Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng
This was a fairly dull account of a family falling apart then putting themselves together after their middle daughter drowns. It had some interesting themes (a mother pinning her own failed hopes on her daughter, racial prejudice in the 1970s) but never really grabbed me.

136 Asymmetry by Lisa Halliday
This was a clever and thoughtful novel which I loved - two seemingly unconnected stories (though I was delighted to spot the connection before the subtle clue in the third part) about a young woman's relationship with a much older writer and about a Muslim man detained at Heathrow in transit to Iraq. It was funny and human. Would highly recommend.

137 WTF by Robert Peston
I think you'll either love this if you buy Peston's view of the world (I do, for what it's worth) or hate it, so it will do little to persuade anyone who doesn't agree already that Brexit is bad but we need to make the best of it, social media has a lot to answer for, and all governments since Thatcher have a role to play in contributing to the mess we are currently in. There are some interesting suggestions at the end for increasing social cohesion and mobility in a post-Brexit high tech world, and he uses the word "obvs" which makes me love him just a little bit more.

And my statistics...

Women: 64
In translation: 8
Non fiction: 43
Classics: (based on a fairly vague definition of such) 17
Books I wish I hadn't bothered with: 16 (not bad, considering the number read - I'm sure that's better than my usual percentage)

Top novels
Circe
Swan Song (the one by Kelleigh Greenberg-Jephcott, not the Robert McCammon one which I also read this year)
The Grapes of Wrath
Seveneves
All Quiet on the Western Front

Top non fiction
Fermat's Last Theorem
Emperor of All Maladies
Moondust
The Secret Barrister
The Vanity Fair Diaries

Reading goals for next year
More good fiction and less rubbish (I'm really going to try and swerve the terrible psychological thrillers I am perpetually disappointed by)
Get at least some if not all of the way through the Dance To The Music of Time series
Read Infinite Jest (am sure someone else mentioned that earlier...)
More non fiction, particularly science
Some classical literature (maybe The Iliad or some plays) and some more novels in translation

I have absolutely loved these threads. It's been a horrible year in many ways and reading has been a welcome escape. And because of you all I've read more, and more widely, than I have done in years, and enjoyed the chat along the way. I've got a "use my phone less" resolution for 2019 but these threads are exempt from that for (I hope) obvious reasons. Thank you all so much!

I'd guess the Booker shortlist will rank pretty highly. Also Why I'm No Longer Talking ... (Another contender for most-read, I'd say), This Thing of Darkness, that Mary Beard one, Shardlake ...

DNF The Heart’s Invisible Furies - got off to a good start but then got fed up of all the unpleasant characters and got bored.
My guess is the Adam Kay.

Pepe I am the other optimist who thinks 2019 will finally be the year I read Infinite Jest. Probably not starting on January 1st, though.

I haven’t read Eleanor Oliphant as yet but did receive it for Christmas. Currently struggling to get into The Secret Barrister but think that is due to it being the holiday period and yet I still have to work some days trying to find time for everything

Not many people read the secret barrister from what I can tell.

Satsuki I had been looking at Alice and other books by Christina Henry on and off in Waterstones for ages, not being entirely sure whether to risk it. Bought this one with a Christmas gift card, and now I'm going to have to buy the sequel. There's a similarity with the innocent style of Lewis Carroll who had all sorts of fantasical things happening to his Alice, which is a nice touch although everything is much darker in this one.

I think a lot of us will have read Eleanor Oliphant but some will have been in 2017 (I read it last year) so don’t think it will be this year’s most read. Same with This Thing of Darkness- I know it’s been popular for a while (although I haven’t read it!). My guess would be the Adam Kay one.

This article from The Guardian has a rundown of 2018's bestseller list with some interesting comparisons with 2017 , particulalry re genre and gender:

www.theguardian.com/books/2018/dec/29/100-bestselling-books-of-the-year-from-eleanor-oliphant-to-michelle-obama

207. The Bookshop Book by Jen Campbell

This is a collection of stories and facts about different bookshops around the world. I loved the first third or so in the UK, as all the bookshops sound fabulous and I want to visit them all! However, as the book went on the stories seemed less personal with less detail about the shops and I did get a bit bored towards the end. Possibly one better read in bits rather than all in one go. However, I now have a long list of shops in the UK I want to visit, particularly the bookshop cum ice cream parlour!!

According to the writer of that Guardian article, Eleanor Oliphant is a 'probing psychological study'

I think it's Eleanor Oliphant.

70. This Mum Runs by Jo Pavey Decent quick read of an autobiography. What I knew / thought about Jo Pavey before this was: likeable, relatable, injury prone, determined, tenacious, just turned 40 with a young baby when she won medals at the Commonwealth Games and European Champs. What I knew after: the same but with more detail. She comments that in the weeks following the medal wins she seemed to acquire a double barrelled name Jo Pavey-Forty.

71. Private Peaceful by Michael Morpurgo Read because it is DS's current school book and he needed to talk about it because it was 'too sad'. This doesn't begin to cover it. Unrelenting, harrowing and full of injustice and the horrors of trench warfare. Sorry teachers on the thread, I'm going to be that parent and be having a word with the teacher about the suitability of this for a bunch of P7s (11 year olds) over the Christmas holidays, and reminding her that DS being autistic doesn't mean he doesn't feel emotions, just that he can't process them and they end up coming out in behaviour (as they will when this book is discussed in class, sigh).

72. 61 Hours by Lee Child A lovely dose of Jack Reacher to end the year. Snowed in in a small town when the bus he's hitched a lift on swerves off the road there, he's soon embroiled in the concerns of their police department. It was a good one.

Back soon with my list and stats.

Wow that article really loves Eleanor Oliphant! I struggle to see that as literary fiction. The who bestselling list is quite depressing really with a few notable exceptions. Can't believe that many people read The Keeper of Lost Things a novel that still makes me shudder over a year after reading it.

Yes I was quite late to getting round to TtoD on the thread and EO was last year. I haven’t read the Kay and this is the most I remember seeing it mentioned It’ll be interesting.

chillie I suspect I was bought it because I have always had an interest in Alice and Carrol, but didn’t think it seemed like my sort of read nevertheless - I’ve had it ages I’m going to bump it up to first after I finish my library books in the new year.

Re: the library, I love to support it too and get many from there, however I find it does slow down my reading a lot.

remus good point about Eddie. I feel the same about Ben Whishaw; I’d listen to him talk about insurance.

But you still read it toomuch It’s all in the marketing I guess. I liked Elinor Oliphant a lot when I read it but it wasn’t a five star read or anything and I don’t really get how much it is still pushed.

Satsuki very true. Though in my defence both Keeper and Eleanor were book club reads. Having looked at my list a lot of my stinkers and mediocre reads were book club reads. I still wonder whether I should quit book club all together. The low hit rate and the fact that hardly anyone else reads the book is depressing me. I have plenty of other stuff I actually want to read!

Yes good point about Book clubs, the same few probably do the rounds and it bumps up the numbers. I notice it a bit on social media that you rarely see anything obscure pop up on recommendations. I have resisted joining a book club for the reasons you state, pressure to read things I’m not into and at the same time it must be so annoying when people don’t read it.

And to add, this is why I love these threads - such a wide range of interesting reading goes on, and everyone is thoughtful and honest in their reviews. I’d be really lost without it