Oh, what a bad book blogger I am. After a good first six months of reading and reviewing, my 4 x 10 reading challenge fizzled out. I can't remember everything I have read since, but I have patched together an end of year list using my daybook notes. I make it a total of 33 books, spread rather erratically across my 10 categories, together with a fair sized list of books I started but didn't finished. Book titles added since my last post are in blue. Some were reviewed in this holiday reading post.
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)
- The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (John-Dominique Bauby)
- Reading Lolita in Tehran (Azar Nafisi)
- Flora Thompson: the Story of the Lark Rise Writer (Gillian Lindsay)
- Noel Streatfeild: a Biography (Angela Bull)
- A History of Hand Knitting (Richard Rutt)
- Sensational Knitted Socks (Charlene Schurch)
- Custom Knits (Wendy Bernard)
- Teach Me To Do It Myself (Maja Pitamic)
- My Life With the Saints (James Martin, S.J.)
- The Rosary: Keeping Company With Jesus and Mary (Karen Edmisten)
- 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)
- The Independence of Miss Mary Bennett (Colleen McCullough)
- Baking Cakes in Kigali (Gaile Parkin)
- Salmon Fishing in the Yemen (Paul Torday)
- The Amulet of Samarkand (Jonathan Stroud)
- A Street Without a Name: Childhood and Other Misadventures in Bulgaria (Kapka Kassabova)
- Helena (Evelyn Waugh)
- The Road to Wigan Pier (George Orwell)
- The Road to Sebastopol (Katherine MacMahon)
- Singled Out (Virginia Nicholson)
- Electric Universe (David Bodanis)
- The Planets (Dava Sobel)
- About the Size of It: the Common Sense Approach to Measuring Things (Warwick Cairns)
- The Morville Hours (Katherine Swift)
- Confessions of an Eco-Shopper (Kate Lock)
- Julie and Julia (Julie Powell)
- Spotted Pigs and Green Tomatoes (Rosie Boycott)
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)
Buried Treasure: Travels Through the Jewel Box (Victoria Finlay)
The Secret Life of Trees (Colin Tudge)
The Catholic Revival in English Literature 1845-1961 (Ian Ker)
Longitude (Davina Sobel)
Knit Two (Kate Jacobs)
Ripping Things To Do: the Best Games and Ideas from Children's Books (Jane Brocket)
Now I can move on to the next challenge. Watch this space.
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4 comments:
I'm almost finished with the Friday Night Knitting Club. GREAT book!
What a happy coincidence! I am currently reading the second volume of David Kynaston's book on post-war Britain (I'm up to page 568) and the name Nella Last has appeared frequently as a source. I thought he was quoting her only as a contributor to Mass-Observation (an incredible undertaking I had never come across before). Now that I know she wrote the two books you read, I must read them myself. I sat right down at my computer and ordered "Nella Last's War" from a distant library here in Michigan and I can pick it up half a mile away next week.
I was born in North London a couple of months after the war began. Of course, I don't remember any of it, but everything I read gives me a new understanding of my parents' courage. And as we move into the postwar years, the litany of names of politicians and entertainers and writers helps me weave together memories of my childhood.
Thanks for opening up another path.
Quite a list! It looks all very interesting. x
Looks like you picked up an interest in Noel Streatfeild. Now that's a name I haven't heard in a very long time, but I suddenly remember reading so many of those "Shoes" books!
You're very well-rounded in your reading choices. For science, may I recommend one I just finished? It's called The Telephone Gambit (about Alexander Graham Bell and the controversy over whether he actually invented the telephone.) I'm NOT a science-y person, but I still enjoyed it.
For fiction, you might enjoy Love Walked In, by Marisa de los Santos.
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