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!

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Hope this new year 2017 brings you wonderful reads.

Happy New Year!

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2015: A year in books

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What a pleasure, to look back at everything you have read during the last year! Here is my summary, regarding literature, of this year.

Numbers:

In 2015 I have read a total of 65 books. Alright, I’m reading the 65th right now, but I’m confident I’ll finish it by Thursday.

I read 16 books in English and 33 in Spanish.

29 books were written by women and 36 by men.

I read 24 non-fiction books.

I read 11 ebooks on my kindle.

I listened to 16 audiobooks, all of them in English.

 

Best books of the year:

It’s easy to know them if you read my blog, because I don’t review all the books I read; only the ones I like the most. So, in no particular order, the best are:

◊ As you wish, by Cary Elwes: well, this one is in order

◊ The unicorn road, by Martin Davies.

◊ September, by Rosamunde Pilcher.

◊ A short history of nearly everything, by Bill Bryson.

◊ Sparrow: the story of a songbird, by Giovanni Verga.

◊ The martian, by Andy Weir.

◊ The bookseller, by Cynthia Swanson.

Worst books of the year:

Fortunately for you, most of them are only in Spanish, but there were a couple of them in English you should know about:

◊ With every letter, by Sarah Sundin: I didn’t even review it here. The characters were dull and they were praying almost all of the time, so this was not my book.

◊ Go set a watchman, by Harper Lee: yes, I do think To kill a mockingbird and Go set a watchman can’t coexist. They are two different stories with the same characters, and that’s why it was not published in the 60s: because it’s not a second part.

Challenges:

Oh my! This is embarrassing, but I didn’t finished any challenge. Only the Non-fiction reading challenge can be considered accomplished, but I didn’t review ten books, so I can’t say I did it.

I didn’t even finished my own challenge about reading 20 books in English, you know 😥

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Well, it’s not that bad for this busy girl.

I don’t think I can read a larger amount of books in 2016, but I hope every one of them deserves to be reviewed, because that would mean I had a good time reading them.

May your reads for this new year be enjoyable!

May in books, a monthly overview

Here you can see, once again, the books I finished last month.

I should have posted here all the text books about Law I have studied this month (Roman law, constitutional law, civil law, etc.), but somehow I thought you wouldn’t be that interested in these ones 😉

Audiobooks in English:

• The now habit (Neil Fiore): I started listening to audiobooks about habits and organization, and now I can’t stop.
• Making it all work (David Allen): a kind of second part of Getting things done that is not worth your time.

Books in English:

• Dancing backward in Paradise (Vera Jane Cook).
• The princess bride (William Goldman): a re-read I thoroughly enjoyed again. It’s my favourie book.

Books in Spanish:

• The fault in our stars (John Green): a good young adult novel.
• Intemperie (Jesús Carrasco): this time I add this book, which is not available in English for the moment, because I know it is being translated into several languages, so I suppose that sooner or later it will be in English too. A great story, but leaves you quite depressed.

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And that’s all.

They are a lot if we consider that all those books I mentioned above about law have been also deeply read this month. I’m finishing the exams at university this week, so I think that in a few days I will be reviewing as always here on the blog.

Meanwhile, enjoy your reads!

A month in books: April

April has been a great month: I have read all these books you see in the picture and three more that are only available in Spanish, which is the reason why I don’t show them here.

Two audiobooks that I listened to in English:

• The power of habit, by Charles Duhigg (review)
• Willpower, by Roy F. Baumeister (review)

Two books of short stories, again in English:

• Xingu, by Edith Wharton: it is a short story
• Children on their birthdays, by Truman Capote, which includes three short stories

A novel in Spanish:

• The postman, by Antonio Skármeta

I also want to show you that, for the first time this year, I’m ahead of schedule at GoodReads. Will this last? 😉

Hope you also had a great April, and now let’s go for May!

March in books

You might think I read eight books, according to the picture, but they were actually ten – the other two are only available in Spanish and I didn’t include them here. ¡¡Ten books!!

The power of habit (review) and The honest truth about dishonesty were audiobooks.

I read Clash of kings in Spanish as part of a joint reading, and Comfort of fences as part of a book tour.

I recieved Tea and primroses (review) from the publishers, and I couldn’t be happier because I love romance.

The returned is everywhere since the TV series is also on air in Spain, but the book disappointed me a little.

There is a collection of short stories, Flowers in the rain, by one of my favourite authors.

And finally, my favourite book of the month, chosen for my book club, was The kite runner.

Hope you had a good month as well. Now let’s start April!

February in books

I have thought about  writing a monthly overview of the books I have read; at least about the ones that I have read or which are available in English, and today it’s a good day to start, don’t you think?

There weren’t so many books on February, as you can see, but among them we have one of the novels that I will include in the Best of the year list, The horse whisperer (review); another non-fiction, Hidden in plain sight (review), thanks to which I have discovered Norman Rockwell’s work; and a romantic novel by one of the authors I began to read last year and now I know I will look for every book by her, Caramel and Magnolias (review). The fourth book wasn’t as good as I expected: The Korean word for butterfly (review).

Besides, I also spent one afternoon making some bookmarks full of love 😀

Regarding my academic life, I had my exams at the beginning of the month, so I didn’t have so much time to read for pleasure, as you can imagine; but fortunately enough I did it well and passed all of them! It seems that I have found something I’m good at from the beginning, and it gives me the energy I need to keep on studying these subjects that are so different from everything I knew before.

It has been a great month. Now I’m ready for March!

Summary of readings, 2013

Like every year, I would like to show you what I’ve read during the last twelve months.

Last year was the first one I participated in the 2013 Reading Challenge on Goodreads: I pledged to read 85 books, but in the end I didn’t get the challenge because I read a lot of them in English, as you’ll see in a moment, and I’m a very slow reader in this language (very-very slow).

I’ve finally read 76 books in 2013 and I’m planning to read a lot of them in English in 2014 too, so this year the challenge will be for 75 books. Fingers crossed!

Of those 76 books:

• 36 were written by women and 40 by men.
• 25 were written by authors whose mother language is Spanish.
• 27 were in English; 3 of them were actually audiobooks, my first audiobooks in English!
• 18 were on my To-Be-Read Pile since 2012.
• I read 6 non-fiction books.
• 3 of them were compilations of short stories.
• I’ve re-read 6 books; the three audiobooks I mentioned above are among them.
• I read 23 books on my kindle.

Now a book for each category:

• The author I read most books by was Arturo Pérez-Reverte: 3 books.
• A book I read twice in the same year: Lord of the flies; I read it in Spanish and English for the exam, and I didn’t like it that much!
• The shortest book: Territorio Comanche, by Pérez-Reverte (110 pages).
• The longest book: Under the dome, by Stephen King (1,130 pages).
• A book that made me cry: The snow girl, by Eowyn Ivey.
• The tenderest book: The incredible story of Henry N. Brown, by Anne Helene Bubenzer (it will be published in English in 2014).
• The scariest book: The passage, by Justin Cronin.
• The funniest book: Miss Pettigrew lives for a day, by Winifred Watson.

The worst books of 2013

One hundred years of solitude (Gabriel García Márquez): the world is divided into two kinds of people; the ones who think that García Márquez should have written a novel after the draft, instead of publishing directly the draft itself, and the ones who, for an unknown reason, like this novel.

The end of the summer (Alex Smith): I read it because it was for free on Amazon. I obviously made a mistake.

The best books of 2013

This is the list of the books I liked most, but not all of them have been published this year:

All creatures great and small (James Herriot): what a lovely book! These are the real anecdotes of the author’s first years as a rural vet, and it has been the second time I read it.

English Creek (Ivan Doig): this author is one of my favourites, and his stories are always special. Don’t miss how life in Montana was like at the beginning of the last century.

The life list (Lori Nelson Spielman): my first Netgalley read was awesome and I enjoyed every page.

The snow child (Eowyn Ivey): the atmosphere of this book is what made it unforgettable; the author describes very well the tough life of the first settles in Alaska, mixed with a magical story.

The passage (Justin Cronin): another re-read which has been one of the best of the year. This is not my genre, but it got me gripped from the beginning to the end.

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I hope you discover lots of wonderful books in 2014; I will try to do the same 😉

The last page of April

Bookish activities I have participated in in April:

Weekday Readathon: I told you all about it here.

La corte de Carlos IV joint reading: this is the second of the National Episodes by Spanish classical author Benito Pérez Galdós. I organized the joint reading of the first episode and one of my blogger friends has organized this one. We are enjoying very much reading these novels!

Giveaways:

On April 21st, 22nd and 23rd I won 3 giveaways in 3 Spanish book blogs – one per day – and I just couldn’t believe my eyes and my luck! I have received two of the books and I’m waiting for the third.

Meeting friends:

Last weekend I had a chat through google hangout with Allison and Rebecca and I was able to speak (more or less) to them and understand (more or less) them. I had never done this before and I have to say I spent a great time talking about everything with them plus they didn’t complain about my English!

List of readings:

I will summarize the books I have read this month and I will talk a little bit more about the ones I won’t review in this blog:

• The summer before the storm (Gabriele Wills): a book that I loved. My review here.
• A modest proposal (Jonathan Swift): this was a funny text in which the author exposes his solution to the poverty problem in Ireland: eat the poor children. Then, there won’t be more poor children. Easy! I haven’t reviewed it in this blog, but I recommend this short text.
• Gone Girl (Gillian Flynn): I liked it very much; you will read my review at the end of this week.
• House Rules (Jodi Picoult): this book and author have been a wonderful discovering for me. My review here.
• 3rd generation and beyond (Danna Pycher): it will be reviewed soon.
• Brújulas que buscan sonrisas perdidas (Albert Espinosa): Espinosa is a Spanish author and this is the third book of him I have read. I have found it repetitive; once you read one of his books, the rest are more or less the same.
• La corte de Carlos IV (Benito Pérez Galdós): this book is on my Classics club’s list. Last year I started to read the National Episodes – the first episode was Trafalgar, and you can read the review here – and this is the second one. The National Episodes are a enjoyable way to learn about Spanish history; I’m very glad to read them little by little.
• Fantasía (Emila Pardo Bazán): Pardo Bazán was Galdós’ partner and this is the first time I read one of her short stories. She talks about the idea of heaven, hell and purgatory; a journey through God’s domains in Christmas Eve.

 Hope May brings wonderful stories to talk about!

The last page of March

As some bloggers do, I’m also writing a summary of readings and bookish activities I have been doing every month, so that I can show you what’s going on in the Spanish blogosphere as well.

First of all, the activities I have participated in in March:

My first Readathon: this year I created a challenge about reading in English and I organized my first Readahon in English too! We had a lot of fun commenting on the books we were reading in a Facebook group, and not only did we read British and North American books, but we also ate British and North American food: one of the requirements to join the Readathon was to have a “typical” English breakfast (bacon and eggs) or an American breakfast (pancakes with cream or jam) and, of course, to drink some tea during the day.

Captain Alatriste joint reading: I was looking forward to re-reading this book and I loved commenting on it with Leander and Timothy. I think we will continue reading Purity of blood in April.

The “Erotic fortnight”: after Fifty shades of Grey, Spanish publishers won’t stop translating erotic books, so a lot of bloggers have so many of these novels to read. A lot of people have participated, and we have concluded that all these books are more or less the same, so I think nobody is going to read more erotic books in a long time.

Things I have received:

Some days ago a postcard from Allison appeared in my letter box, with a picture of the Stanley Hotel, the hotel where the movie The Shining was shot. Horror films are not my favourites, but someday I will dare to watch the film and read some of King’s books

Rebecca also sent me a postcard in February, but I didn’t show it in the blog at the time, so I’m showing the picture now. Some of her blog business cards were included in the letter: they are cute!

Thank you both very much!

Other issues:

I have updated my online life: I have a twitter account! @IsiOrejas

I have also created a Facebook Fan Page for my Spanish blog, and I’m planning to create another for this blog soon.

Activities that are coming:

I joined in “Landscape novels month”: it will take place in May and you have to read and review some books of this genre during the month. I will try to read Sarah Lark’s New Zealand trilogy for this activity.

I’m planning an activity in which some of the Spanish and English blogs will be involved. Surprise!

List of March readings:

Books:

• The house of impossible loves (Cristina López Barrio): I will review this book soon.
• The perfect play (Jaci Burton): a reading for the erotic fortnight. My review.
• Room (Emma Donoghue): thrilling. My review.
• Captain Alatriste (Arturo Pérez-Reverte): my favourite book of the month, indeed. My review.
• Arroz de Palma (Francisco Azevedo): I won’t review this book in English because is only available in Portuguese and Spanish. My review in Spanish.

Short stories:

• Wakefield (Nathaniel Hawthorne): I will review it soon.
• Valentine from a soldier (Makenna Jameison) and Male nanny (Jennifer Thomas): for the “Erotic fortnight” too. My review.

And my favourite book of the month was Captain Alatriste!

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Summary of readings, 2012

This is a fast overview of the last year.

In 2012 I read 80 books and 13 English graded readers (original stories with limited vocabulary and no more than 80 pages). This is more or less the same number I read every year, so I keep my own average. However, for this new year I added five books in my Goodreads challenge, so I will try to read 85 – a little bit of pressure.

Of those 80 that I’ve read:

• 36 of them were written by women and 44 by men.
• 28 were written by authors whose mother language is Spanish.
• 17 were books that were on my To-Be-Read pile since 2011.
• I read 20 books on my kindle (I have had my kindle since December 2011)
• 12 of them were actually audiobooks
• The author I read most books by was Ken Follett: six novels!
• I read five books in English
• I read three books of short stories.
• I couldn’t review one of the Spanish books: it was awful – mediocre plot, mediocre language – and I had nothing good to say about it.
• I organized two joint readings, and I participated in other six.
• I gave up one reading.
• I read nine novels by self-published authors; in Spain we call them “the kindle generation”.
• The shortest book had 77 pages: Cuando se vacían las playas (Eduardo Iglesias)
• The largest book had 1,178 pages: A world without end (Ken Follett). But A dance with dragons (George R. R. Martin) was very close.
• The most juvenile book was Hush, hush (Becca Fitzpatrick)
• The book that made me cry was The notebook (Nicholas Sparks)
• The funniest book was The princess bride (William Goldman).

The worst books were two:

Bécquer eterno (Carmen Ferreiro Esteban): one of the self-published novels. It is about one of our best poets ever, Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer, who is still alive and lives in the States because he is a vampire. I have no words to describe how bad this book was.

The vampire diaries I: The awakening (L. J. Smith): this is the first book I read in English and it couldn’t be a worse beginning.

But fortunately, there were a lot of great reads. The best of the best were:

The princess bride (William Goldman): I don’t know how I could live all these years without reading this book. The best book ever.

The secret keeper (Kate Morton): I loved the way Morton showed the story, the characters and the romance. Just perfect.

After River (Donna Milner): this is not a well-known novel here in Spain but people who have read it, loved it. A boy, who is running away from the States because he doesn’t want to join in the Vietnam War, arrives to Canada and finds a job on the Wards’ farm. And then, the life of the family changes forever. You should give it a chance.

There have been more, but this is only a summary. I have enjoyed a lot of novels of different genres and authors and I’m very happy because I started reading in English so, in terms of books, 2012 has been a great year.