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My 5 Favourite December Reads

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My 5 Favourite December Reads

December was a quieter reading month for me as I only finished 11 books (down on the record 19 of the previous month). Here are my five favourite, in no particular order.  Click on the book title to read my review.

TheLastTrain1The Last Train by Michael Pronko

The author has been patiently waiting for my review of his book for several months and now I have read it, I’m sorry it took me so long to get around to it.  Set in Tokyo, it had a great plot, authentic locations and an interesting central character, Detective Hiroshi.  Recommended for crime thriller fans.

CorpusCorpus (Tom Wilde #1) by Rory Clements

I’ve loved Rory Clements’ John Shakespeare series of historical mysteries set in Elizabethan England.  His new series is set in the 1930s but there are echoes of the Tudor period with plenty of plots, intrigue and competing political factions.  Corpus was a great, action-packed read and a promising start to a new series.  I’ll be reading the next book, Nucleus, shortly.

FortunesWheelFortune’s Wheel (Meonbridge Chronicles #1) by Carolyn Hughes

Another author who’s been waiting a while for a review of her book and, once again, a book I wished I’d got to earlier.  Set in a small Hampshire village in the aftermath of the Black Death, it had a great cast of characters, an interesting mystery at its heart and a wealth of very believable detail about everyday life in that period.

The Twelve-Mile StraightThe Twelve-Mile Straight by Eleanor Henderson

With echoes of To Kill A Mockingbird in its depiction of racial prejudice, this was a powerful story about poverty, family secrets and the misuse of power in a small rural community.

The Good EarthThe Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck

This was another powerful story, this time about the struggles of a Chinese family to eke out a living from the land.  Written in 1931, the author was the daughter of American missionaries and spent the first half of her life in China.   The book was my Classics Club spin for December.

 

What were your favourite reads last month?

My Week in Books – 31st December ’17

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MyWeekinBooks 

New arrivals

Someone has been tempted by Amazon’s 12 Days of Kindle sale….

The Heart's Invisible FuriesThe Heart’s Invisible Furies by John Boyne (ebook)

Cyril Avery is not a real Avery or at least that’s what his adoptive parents tell him. And he never will be. But if he isn’t a real Avery, then who is he?

Born out of wedlock to a teenage girl cast out from her rural Irish community and adopted by a well-to-do if eccentric Dublin couple via the intervention of a hunchbacked Redemptorist nun, Cyril is adrift in the world, anchored only tenuously by his heartfelt friendship with the infinitely more glamorous and dangerous Julian Woodbead. At the mercy of fortune and coincidence, he will spend a lifetime coming to know himself and where he came from – and over his three score years and ten, will struggle to discover an identity, a home, a country and much more.

Any Human HeartAny Human Heart by William Boyd (ebook)

ANY HUMAN HEART is an ambitious, all-encompassing novel. Through the intimate journals of Logan Mounstuart we travel from Uruguay to Oxford, on to Paris, the Bahamas, New York and West Africa, and meet his three wives, his family, his friends and colleagues, his rivals, enemies and lovers, including notables such as the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, Ernest Hemingway and Virginia Wool

Dangerous CrossingDangerous Crossing by Rachel Rhys (ebook)

England, September 1939. Lily Shepherd boards a cruise liner for a new life in Australia and is plunged into a world of cocktails, jazz and glamorous friends. But as the sun beats down, poisonous secrets begin to surface. Suddenly Lily finds herself trapped with nowhere to go…

Australia, six-weeks later. The world is at war, the cruise liner docks, and a beautiful young woman is escorted onto dry land in handcuffs. What has she done?

Rules of CivilityRules of Civility by Amor Towles (ebook)

In a jazz bar on the last night of 1937, watching a quartet because she couldn’t afford to see the whole ensemble, there were certain things Katey Kontent knew.

By the end of the year she’d learned – how to launch a paper airplane high over Park Avenue, how to live like a redhead, and how to insist upon the very best.

On What Cathy Read Next last week

Blog posts

Tuesday – I shared my Top Ten Books I’m Looking Forward To In 2018 which includes many new books from authors whose books I loved in 2017.

Wednesday – WWW Wednesday is the opportunity to share what I’ve just finished reading, what I’m reading now and what I’ll be reading next.

Thursday –I shared my review of The Twelve-Mile Straight by Eleanor Henderson, a powerful drama about secrets, prejudice and the abuse of power. I also published my selections for the When Are You Reading? Challenge 2018.  Still time to sign-up if you fancy joining me…

Friday – Another day, another challenge sign-up for 2018! This time it was the What’s In A Name Reading Challenge with six books chosen to fit some interesting categories.

Saturday – I shared my review of The Biographies of Ordinary People, Vol. 1 by Nicole Dieker, a fascinating book following the everyday life of the fictional Gruber family. I’m really looking forward to the second volume, due to be published in 2018. I also put together my annual round-up post – My Year in Books. It included bookish statistics from my reading year as well as some hidden gems and books I read that were outside my normal genres.

Sunday – I published my review of The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck, the book from my much-neglected Classics Club list that was drawn for me for the Classics Club spin.

Challenge updates

  • Goodreads 2017 Reading Challenge – 160 out of 156 books read, 4 more than last week.  Achieved!
  • Classics Club Challenge – 6 out of 50 books reviewed, 1 more than last week.  Hmm, some way to go in 2018.
  • NetGalley/Edelweiss Reading Challenge 2017 (Gold) – 46 ARCs reviewed out of 50, 1 more than last week.  I originally targeted Silver level (25 books) which I achieved.
  • From Page to Screen– 9 book/film comparisons out of 15, same as last week.  More work needed on this one as well.

On What Cathy Read Next this week

Currently reading

Planned posts

  • My Five Favourite December Reads
  • Extract: 355 – The Women of Washington’s Spy Ring by Kit Sergeant
  • Top Ten Tuesday: New-To-Me Authors I Read in 2017
  • Review: Death Comes For The Archbishop by Willa Cather
  • Throwback Thursday/Review: 1066 – What Fates Impose by G. K. Holloway
  • Review: Three Things About Elsie by Joanna Cannon
  • Buchan of the Month: Introducing The Power House