I lost my blogging mojo in the middle of last year. I’m not sure why. I was a little busy but no more than usual. I could have done it but I just couldn’t bring myself to write them. In the end, I wrote the blogs for TBR Challenge 2022 (hosted by Roof Beam Reader) but even then I only just managed to finish by the end of the year. I read the last book – The Princess Bride – by the start of December but didn’t manage to write the review until the end of the month. I’ve been meaning to write this round up for days. I had to make myself sit down and do it.

It isn’t general apathy. I’m reading and writing as much as I can. I haven’t read as many books as previously (33) because I am commuting less and I don’t have a lunch break where I can just sit and read anymore but I’m still enthusiastic about reading. I’m hoping that I’ll get back into it this year as it is something I do enjoy. I’m not going to try to review every book I read – although it is my intention to do the TBR Challenge again because it is enjoyable and helps me read books that have been hanging around on my shelves for ages.

As for reading. it was generally quite a good year. Quite a few of the books I read for the TBR Challenge were very good – Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell, The Lost Language of Cranes by David Leavitt and Ananci Boys by Neil Gaiman were all excellent and I would thoroughly recommend. Other favourites of the year were Shuggie Bain by Douglas Stuart and The Underground Railway by Colson Whitehead. I didn’t manage to finish Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky which was disappointing but I made a decision a few years ago that I wasn’t going to struggle on with a book that was annoying me and I found I had little care about the narrator and his plans. Life’s too short to read a book that isn’t pleasing.

List of what I hope to read this year:

1. The Thing Around Your Neck – Chimananda Ngozi Adiche
2. Lucky Jim – Kingsley Amis
3. The Man in the Red Coat – Julian Barnes – Finished 28/1/23
4. The Tennant of Wildfell Hall – Anne Bronte
5. Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte – 10/3/23
6. The City and the Stars – Arthur C. CLarke – Finished 8/1/23
7. Invisible Women – Caroline Craido-Perez
8. The Feminine Mystique – Betty Friedan
9. I, Claudius – Robert Graves
10. Munich – Robert Harris – Finished 7/3/23
11. The Moon is a Harsh Mistress – Robert A Heinlein 17/4/23
12. A Widow for One Year – John Irving
13. The Children of Men – P. D. James -Finished 20/1/23
14. Fludd – Hilary Mantel
15. No One Writes to the Colonel – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
16. All the Pretty Horses – Cormac McCarthy
17. Big Little Lies – Lianne Moriaty
18. Me Before You – Jojo Moyes
19. Hamnet – Maggie O’Farrell – Currently reading
20. Dr Zhivago – Boris Pasternak
21. Tales of Mystery and Imagination – Edgar Allen Poe – Currently reading
22. The Ministry of the Future – Kim Stanley Robinson
23. Touching the Void – Joe Simpson
24. The Accidental – Ali Smith
25. N-W – Zadie Smith
26. No one Here Gets Out Alive – Danny Sugarman and Jerry Hopkins
27. The Magician – Colm Toibin – Finished 17/3/23
28. The Return of the King – J R R Tolkien
29. Black Mischief – Evelyn Waugh
30. The Golem and the Djinn – Helene Wecker
31. Harlem Shuffle – Colson Whitehead