Bride of the Book God

Yes, astoundingly Bride of the Book God is 8 years old today. I having been trying hard to remember what I might have been doing when I was actually 8 way back in 1970 but it made my brain ache so I’ll postpone that sort of thing to my actual birthday in a couple of weeks’ time.

But 8 years of blogging, still at it, still enjoying it and still reading up a storm though currently (due to illness and work and life and stuff) I’m currently behind with my reviews. I have still to tell you all about:

• the one that’s a timey-wimey-metaphysical-thriller
• the one that’s a weird-horror-short-story-anthology
• the one that’s an academic-investigating-the-life-of-a-long-dead-poet-novel
• the one that’s paranormal-civil-servanty-espionage
• the one that’s Japanese military sci-fi

Anything there pique your interest? I’m off to have some virtual birthday cake. Thank you for reading. 😀

I don’t normally pay a huge amount of attention to book awards (well, I keep a bit of a weather eye on the Booker, who doesn’t?) but I was interested to see that for once we actually had a couple of the Costa category winners already chez Bride:

• the first novel winner, Elizabeth is Missing, which I bought ages ago based on a  recommendation in a blog somewhere (I’m sure) and which will now be hoiked to (near) the top of Mount TBR; and
• the children’s book winner, Five Children on the Western Front, which the Book God finished and enjoyed over the holidays (he’s a bit of an E Nesbit fan, I’ve only ever read The Railway Children)

I quite like the sound of the Ali Smith novel, The Ghosts of Heaven is already on my wish list (I’m not buying books at the moment) but none of the others are grabbing me at the moment. Wonder what will win.

Well this has been a bumper reading year for me. As always I aim for 52 books in 52 weeks, a challenge that got me into book blogging in the first place way back in 2007. This year I actually read 73 books, both a surprise and a delight. I think the reason I did so well is down to talking more about books with friends both online and in the real world (good thing) and several bouts of illness which meant I was sofa-bound and couldn’t do much other than read (bad thing). And taking part in the the 24 hour readathon in April also helped as I read 8 books in one night (and raised money for charity at the same time).

But what of these books you ask?

Well, I don’t really like best of lists,  and definitely not Top10s because it seems so arbitrary and I just don’t want to have to choose. So what I thought I’d do highlight the things that jump out to me from what I’ve read this year.

• I’ve been good at keeping on top of or catching up with my favourite series – big stand-outs here were in August where I read four each of Charles Finch and Jacqueline Winspear which took me up to and including their latest published novels (though Finch cheated by bringing out a new volume later in the year, but I’ve read that too now);
• I’ve rediscovered my love of (mostly genre) short stories;
• zombies are a thing – if you’d asked me a year or so ago I would have pulled a face about zombie novels but I’ve read and enjoyed several this year;
• the end of the world (as we know it) is also a thing, often combined with zombies of course but also viruses and such like, and I find them difficult to resist;
• I still love classic crime – AA Milne’s one and only crime novel being a particular delight, but the British Library classic reprints also look excellent;
• I read much more quickly on the Kindle app on my iPad;
• lots of new authors but the two that struck me the most were James Smythe (I read four of his with another waiting to be picked up) and Jeff VanderMeer who’s been around for a while but whose Southern Reach trilogy was just brilliant.

So that was 2014. Wonder what delights 2015 has in store 🙂