2016: a year in books

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Anna Hope, Fabio Volo, Jodi Picoult, Joe Hill, Kate Atkinson, Kazuo Ishiguro

So another year has passed and it’s time to review my bookish statistics – I love to do this every year!

In 2016 I read 65 books, just enough to finish my GoodReads challenge! Of those 65 books:

• 31 were written by women and 34 were written by men.
• 12 were “my own damn books”, meaning books I owned before 2016 started.
• 12 books were written by Spanish authors.
• I read 14 books in English.
• I listened to 16 audiobooks (all of them in English too).
• 5 were ebooks.
• I read 24 books borrowed from the library, thanks to the book club, but also because I’ve been browsing the library in search for short books to complete the challenge – I’ve discovered a handful of authors I want to read more of!

I will include more categories this year, such as author’s nationality, year of publication and fiction/non-fiction books, to make it more complete.

I’m really pleased with the amount of books I’ve read, and with the quality too: I think that we, as readers, know ourselves better every year so we chose reads we know we’ll enjoy. I have only read three books that I didn’t like or did not finished: one was a gift, another was a book club pick, and the other was my own choice.

Among the best of the year, I want to share with you the following:

I have read the two novels of Anna Hope this year, and I enjoyed both, but I fell deeply for the characters in The ballroom.

Never let me go was an unexpected favorite in my list: a sad story of love and friendship with a premise so hard to assume.

Jodi Picoult is an author that always brings up ethical and moral issues, and in The storyteller she asks if a sweet old man should be forgiven from the crimes he comitted in the past.

Daybreak is a book written as a diary in which a woman has an affair with a man, and it’s so well narrated that one just can’t believe it hasn’t been written by the protagonist, but by a man!

Life after life made me think that what we call “right” or “the best for us” sometimes brings unhappiness.

And finally, The fireman was a thriller that made me realize that I should read more books of this genre, because I have such a good time with them!

*****

Hope this new year 2017 brings you wonderful reads.

Happy New Year!

The tenderest scenes in “Orphan Train”

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Christina Baker Kline

One of the books this year for my book club was Orphan train and, thanks to Allison, who sent me a copy two years ago, I have read the original version.

The book was very popular when it was published and I have very little to add to the wonderful reviews I’ve read (here you can read Allison’s), so I have decided to write about the scenes I liked the most in this story and the feelings arisen while reading:

1) The comfort Vivian found in the school she attended to when living with a poor and miserable family in the country. I liked the character of the teacher, a young woman who represents all those teachers in rural areas who knew that the children were expected to little more than learning to read and write, so then they can help in the farms, escaping from the very thing that could made them live a better life: education. Despite the circumstances, they welcomed the children every day with a smile, trying to make the school a place for them to enjoy, a refuge to act as the children they still were.

2) The feeling of finding someone who knows the real “you”; someone with whom you don’t have to pretend. Vivian has lived in different places, with different families, her name changed a couple of times… But after some time she reunites with a boy from her childhood, and the bond they have makes her feel like she has finally found a place to call home. It’s very romantic!

3) These peculiar beliefs we experience regarding objects: we rely on objects that make us feel safe, when in fact we are the ones responsible for our own safety and happiness. In the book, Vivian and Molly, in the past and the present, have amulets they don’t want to get rid of because they think that otherwise they will forget their roots. It’s not possible to forget certain people or memories, but still, we hang on things which represent them.

This is a book written to be loved by the readers – a story based on true but not well known events of the past, and a lovely child as main character to touch our hearts. Highly recommended.

Orphan train
Cristina Baker Kline
Published by William Morrow Papaerbacks
276 pages

The picture book (The undertow), by Jo Baker

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Jo Baker

I was really excited about this book due to my love for family sagas, but it didn’t turn out as I expected.

The story follows the family history of the Hastings since the Great War, when Will joins the army and leaves Amelia pregnant and living with her in-laws. They have a correspondence during the war and Will sends postcards of the places where he is stationed, postcards that will be kept in an album for the generations of Hastings to discover.

All the descendents of the generations to come are, somehow, miserable: Amelia will have a hard time raising her child alone, and her son, Will, is going to be a great athlete, but never to the point of winning important competitions due to his poor upbringing. Will’s son (also called Will) is born with a physical disability, which is more shameful taking into account his father’s love for physical activities; the boy is good at studying and will become a professor in Oxford, but he will never get rid of the feeling that he isn’t good enough. And finally my favourite part: set in the present age and about Billie, a young woman who doesn’t know if she should continue pursuing her dream of becoming a painter.

My copy of the book

The album appears in the story here and there, but it’s not the guide along the narration. We get to know certain scenes of the life of the Hastings, and I felt like some parts needed further development: in one chapter a scene is described in detail and, in the next, several years have passed and we are talking about different things (or people!), so I would like to have explanations in between in order to truly understand the characters.

In summary, I liked the book – the story of several generations of a British family, their differences and the weight they carry from the past – but I couldn’t help feeling something important was missing.

The picture book
Jo Baker
450 pages, Portobello Books (British edition)
Read My Own Damn Books: 7th book

#ReadMyOwnDamnBooks – March 2016 Update

Hello fellow readers!

This is the first update I post for this challenge, and I do it now because I have achieved my first mini-goal.

I remind you “my own rules” about the challenge:

• The goal is to read 20-30 books from the list.
• I can only buy/request/borrow from the library once I’ve read 5 books from the list. Then I’ll read another 5 and so on.
• The rule above doesn’t count for book-club books 😛 (you know, because I have to read them for the book club!).
• I’ll choose the books either by asking my boyfriend to pick a number from 1 to 222 or by using random.org.

Last week I finished my fifth book from the list. Here they are:

1. Misión Olvido, by María Dueñas (in Spanish).
2. La librería a la vuelta de la esquina (short stories by different authors, also in Spanish).
3. The picture book, by Jo Baker.
4. Orphan Train, by Christina Baker Kline.
5. Life after life, by Kate Atkinson.

Take into account that the total amount of books I’ve read so far this year is ten books, so the fact that half of them were already on my shelves (the rest were book club picks) is a great accomplishment, believe me.

I also started another one but I couldn’t finished it (boring), so we can say that there are six books crossed out on the list right now. The method I’ve been using to choose the books has been my boyfriend picking up numbers randomly, without looking at the titles on the list. That way the next read is always a surprise for me!

However, I have already broken my own rules! I said I would request one book after finishing groups of five, and I actually requested three last week on a whim! I can’t promise it won’t happen again but, on my behalf, I’ll say I’m currently reading another “own-damn-book”.

I’ll write again an update post when I finish the next five.

Good luck!