book lists

Eighth Anniversary! Top Ten Books of the Year!

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It’s that time of year again, my blog anniversary and the post in which I pick the ten best books I’ve reviewed this year. As always, it’s a difficult choice. Basically, it usually comes down to the ten books that are most memorable to me.

This year, most of the books were historical novels. There are lots of good ones around lately, but also I think maybe I’ve been reading more of them. No nonfiction, I’m afraid, although I have read some good ones.

So, with no further ado, here they are, in order of my reviews:

  1. Crow Lake by Mary Lawson
  2. Golden Hill by Francis Spufford
  3. Minds of Winter by Ed O’Loughlin
  4. Transcription by Kate Atkinson
  5. The Greenlanders by Jane Smiley
  6. The Miniaturist by Jessie Burton
  7. Mothering Sunday by Graham Swift
  8. Washington Black by Esi Edugyan
  9. The People in the Trees by Hanya Yanigihara
  10. Milkman by Anna Burns

Another Classics Club Spin

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The Classics Club is having another spin. For that, we post a list of twenty of the books from our Classics Club lists, and then Classics Club picks a number, and that’s the book we read next. The goal is to read the book by October 31st.

So, here is my list for Spin #21:

  1. I Go by Land, I Go by Sea by P. L. Travers
  2. The Old Man’s Birthday by Richmal Crompton
  3. The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Brontë
  4. Oroonoko by Aphra Behn
  5. The Wise Virgins by Leonard Woolf
  6. The Duchess of Malfi by John Webster
  7. Mansfield Park by Jane Austen
  8. The Last of the Wine by Mary Renault
  9. Edward II by Christopher Marlowe
  10. The Viscounte de Bragelonne by Alexandre Dumas
  11. The Winged Horse by Pamela Frankau
  12. August Folly by Angela Thirkell
  13. Kenilworth by Sir Walter Scott
  14. Evelina by Frances Burney
  15. The Prince by Machievelli
  16. The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky
  17. This Side of Paradise by F. Scott Fitzgerald
  18. Challenge by Vita Sackville-West
  19. The Sea Hawk by Rafael Sabatini
  20. My Brilliant Career by Miles Franklin