4 x 10 Reading Challenge: Update 5

Finished book titles are blue, with those completed since my last post in bold; books in my current reading pile are green. I tweaked my categories again. Historical fiction and history have been squeezed together, to make room to add a Serendipity section back in. I am exactly on target to complete the challenge in a year, with twenty books read in six months.

Autobiography

• Nella Last's War: the Second World War Diaries of Housewife, 49 (ed. Richard Broad)
• Nella Last's Peace: the Post-War Diaries of Houseife, 49
• A Vicarage Family: a Biography of Myself (Noel Streatfeild)
  

Biography

• Flora Thompson: the Story of the Lark Rise Writer (Gillian Lindsay)
• Noel Streatfeild: a Biography (Angela Bull)
  

Crafts

• A History of Hand Knitting (Richard Rutt)
• Sensational Knitted Socks (Charlene Schurch)
  

Education

• Teach Me To Do It Myself (Maja Pitamic)
  

Faith

• My Life With the Saints (James Martin, S.J.) - I liked this. The author, a Jesuit priest, writes a very personal take on saints he has learned to love over the years. Some are well known, well-established saints; others are men and women of faith whose lives have taught him much, but who have not (yet?) been formally canonised or beatified (the stage before official sainthood in the Catholic Church). Very readable.
  
• The Rosary: Keeping Company With Jesus and Mary (Karen Edmisten) - reviewed here
  

Fiction

• The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society (Mary Ann Shaffer)
  
• The Uncommon Reader (Alan Bennett)
• The Autobiography of the Queen (Emma Tennant)
• The Friday Night Knitting Club (Kate Jacobs)
  

Geography and Travel

• A Street Without a Name: Childhood and Other Misadventures in Bulgaria (Kapka Kassabova)
  

History and Historical Fiction

• Helena (Evelyn Waugh)
  
• The Road to Wigan Pier (George Orwell)

Science and Nature

• Electric Universe (David Bodanis)
• The Planets (Dava Sobel)
• Buried Treasure: Travels Through the Jewel Box (Victoria Finlay)
  
• The Secret Life of Trees (Colin Tudge)
  

Serendipity

• The Morville Hours (Katherine Swift) - this book is a mix of history, gardening and biography, with a dash of almanac thrown in, and defies categorisation.
  
• The Catholic Revival in English Literature 1845-1961 (Ian Ker)
  

Unfinished Business
Alison Uttley, the Life of a Country Child (Denis Judd) - print too small!
Beatrix Potter At Home in the Lake District (Susan Denyer)
Yiddish Civilisatiuon: The Rise and Fall of a Forgotten Nation (Paul Kriwaczek)
A Year in the Country (Alison Uttley)
The Shrines of Our Lady in England (Anne Vail)