Books read in January

I'm having quite a quiet month this month and the weather isn't conducive to being out much so I got quite a lot of reading done. Ten books in all and these are they:


1. Spilling the Beans - Clarissa Dickson Wright

2. The Long Winter - Laura Ingalls Wilder

3. Space Plague - Zac Harrison. Book six in the 'Hyperspace High' series. I've been reading this six part (so far) series at my grand-daughter's (and her mum and dad's) recommendation. They're fun, undemanding reads about an Earth boy who mistakenly gets picked up to go to a new school and ends up in space in a space-ship high-school with kids from thousands of planets. This is science fiction for younger readers and anyone young at heart who wants a quick sci-fi read. Great too, I would think, for boys who're reluctant readers. I've enjoyed them all.

4. Consider Phlebas - Iain M. Banks

5. The Yellow Dog - Georges Simenon

6. Darke - Angie Sage

7. Strictly Ann - Ann Widdecombe

8. Shards of Honour - Lois McMaster Bujold

9. Tentacles - Roland Smith. Another series I've been reading with my eldest daughter's family. Twins at a private school find out their explorer parents have gone missing in Brazil and that they have to go and live with an uncle they didn't know they had, on an island. Turns out he's a scientist who searches for crytids - animals that have never been proved to exist or have gone extinct. In the first book, Jungle Hunters, they go searching for dinosaur eggs and in book two they're after a kraken - a giant squid. There are loads of complications and twists with family and so forth, and all in all these books are rather entertaining.

10. The Talisman Ring - Georgette Heyer. To be reviewed.


My plan this year is to try and read more books from own bookshelves. So how has that panned out this month? Well... of these ten, five were library books, one belongs to my grand-daughter and four were my own. Hmm. I'm doing Bev's Mount TBR challenge this year and have signed up for forty eight books. Which means reading four of my own books each month. So I'm on course for that, no problem, *but* part of me wants to do a bit better than that so I need to concentrate a bit harder and apply myself.

Of the ten books two were non-fiction, autobiographies in fact, again 'must try harder'. I did manage to read several books for various other challenges and am pleased with the start I've made on those. So, a swings and roundabouts month really but one thing I will say: I enjoyed all the books I read and that really is the most important thing. Favourite book? A difficult choice but I think it'll have to be a tie between:

And:

... which I will review over the next day or two hopefully. Strange that these two books were written within four years of each other, The Long Winter in 1940 and The Talisman Ring in 1936. Am I getting a taste for older books I ask myself...

Everyone seems to be suffering with the weather at the moment... snow and freezing temps in North America, rain and floods over here etc. I hope everyone is safe and dry and warm and has lots of good books to read.

~~~oOo~~~