My Book Year 2025 - Gifted Reads and More!

It's year FIFTEEN of my reading challenge blog, and this year I'm focusing on reading all those books that people have gifted to me that have always gone to the bottom of the pile of unread tomes. No longer will they languish in the gathering dust, but instead, they'll be given the priority they deserve! Oh, and I'm going to try and read more in general after a couple of years of struggling to muster up more than 5-10 minutes at the end of a day. Let's go!

Sunday, 15 January 2012

First Dickens book is on the go ... (Sunday 15 January 2012)

After some prevarication and hesitation, I have now started my first Charles Dickens novel, It's a Tale of Two Cities and after a bit of a slow start, I have now been well and truly sucked in. The language took a bit of getting used to, but I am "in the zone" with it now. The descriptions are so rich and luscious that you feel like you could almost reach out and touch the grime, and smell the foetid streets of Pairs. I'm not yet a fifth of the way through but am already at the point where I am wanting to find excuses to carry on reading ... just five more minutes before I turn the light off, just two more minutes before I get out of bed ... will keep you posted.

1 comment:

CCC19 January 2012 at 10:07
How's it going Munchkin? Have to say I am now also reading 'A Tale of Two Cities', but for the second time and I am a confirmed Dickens fan.Glad you got sucked in and have got over the languauge difference as it's the plots and the descriptions (in many varied and surprising forms) that are Dickens' super-strengths. Ignore the weak young females and you are away.
Enjoy!
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2 STARS:
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Star Ratings 2022

5 STARS: Songbirds (a); The Handmaid's Tale (a); On Animals (p); The Garden of Angels (a); The Fishermen (a); The Dutch House (a); The Humans (a); Mortimer and Whitehouse: Gone Fishing (a)
4 STARS: Everything Under (a); The Time Travel Diaries (a); Resurrection Men (p); Girl, Woman, Other (a); The Anatomy of Ghosts (a); The Ladder of Years (p); Waterland (p); The White Tiger (a); A Tale for the Time Being (a); The Secrets of Gaslight Lane (a); The Captain and the Enemy (a); The Dead Fathers Club (a); Autumn (a); A Single Thread (p)
3 STARS: Prague Spring (p); A Most Wanted Man (p); Curious (p); Oh William! (a)
2 STARS: C (p)
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Star Ratings 2021

5 STARS: Neverwhere (a); The Word Is Murder (a); My Name is Leon (a)
4 STARS: The Hoarder (a); The Pillars of the Earth (p); The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle (a); Capital (p); Paris Echo (p); The Blackwater Lightship (a); The Rose Code (a); The Three Musketeers (p); Death Descends on Saturn Villa (a); 61 Hours (p); The Hellion (a); The Mermaid of Black Conch (a); Alias Grace (a); Half Blood Blues (p)
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1 STAR: Single & Single (p)

Star Ratings 2020

5 STARS: To Kill A Mockingbird (p); The Mirror and the Light (a); Sweet Sorrow (a)
4 STARS: War of the Wolf (e); Nicholas Nickleby (a); A Rare Book of Cunning Device (a); Things in Jars (a); Boy Meets Boy (e); The Beekeeper of Aleppo (a); A Grown-Up Guide to Dinosaurs (a); Lies Sleeping (a); Sword of Kings (e); Breathing Lessons (p); Pax (e); Any Human Heart (p); The Odyssey (a)
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3 STARS: The Tidal Zone (a); Vinegar Girl (p); Mister Johnson (p); The House At Riverton (p)
2 STARS:
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The STARS list 2018

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3 stars: The Lies of Locke Lamora (a); A Christmas Carol (a); Small Wars (p); The Soulkeepers (e); My Brilliant Friend (e); The Girl With The Cat Tattoo (e); Tales of Nibiru Volume One Z.I.R.M. (e); Found Wanting (p)
2 stars: Allegiant (e)
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2 STARS: Gone Girl (e); Child of the Mist (e); The Dark Side of the Sun (p)
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3 STARS: The Last Hundred Days (a); The Half-Life of Hannah (e); Echo Burning (e); Me Before You (a); The Girl Who Fell From the Sky (a); Thursdays in the Park (e); The Act of Roger Murgatroyd (p); The Forgotten Garden (e); The Buried Giant (e); Treasure Island (a); Insurgent (e)
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2. The Life of Pi, by Yann Martel (print).
3. Unseen Academicals, by Terry Pratchett (print)
4. Death of Kings, by Bernard Cornwell (print)
5. Sharpe's Company, by Bernard Cornwell (print).
6. Life on Air, by David Attenborough (audio)
7. How to save an hour every day, by Michael Heppell (audio)
8. The key to Rebecca, by Ken Follett (ebook)
9. Stonemouth, by Iain Banks (audio)
10. My Sister Lives on the Mantelpiece, by Annabel Pitcher (audio)

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The STARS list 2011

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*** (and a half!) Airman (Audio); Devil May Care (Print); Labyrinth (Print); Switched (Ebook)
*** Painless (Ebook); Cranford (Ebook); Revelations of Divine Love (Ebook); The Secret Holocaust Diaries (Ebook); Moon Dance (Ebook); Chickens, Mules and Two Old Fools (Ebook); Greenmantle (Audio); Ex Machina (Ebook); Little Women (Ebook); The Things We Cherished (Print); Agent Zigzag (Print); Life ... With No Breaks (Ebook)
** The Lady in the Tower (Print); Path of Daggers (Print); Beauty and the Beast (Ebook)
* She's never coming back (Print)