It’s been a good year for reading. I’ve read almost twice as many books as last year (60 compared to 31). I’m not entirely sure why this is but I know I have not felt as enthusiastic about reading for an awful long time. There are a number of reasons for this.

The biggest reason is probably the kindle. I’ve got used to using it now and I have found that you can get some excellent books at a very low price. As well as some free classics. It has made it so much easier for me to read on the go.

I made a decision quite early on with the kindle that I wasn’t ever going to pay full price for a book on it. There were two reasons for this: one, I felt that if I was paying 6.99 for a book, I wanted to have the flesh and blood thing in my hands and two, it was pointless to pay full price when you could get very good books for 2.99 or less. This has changed the way I buy books for the kindle and it may seem a little odd. (Certainly, it is not the way I would think in an actual book shop.) But it has meant that I have experimented more and found some excellent authors into the bargain. (Josh Lanyon, Simon Lelic and Patrick McCabe spring to mind.)

The other main reason is I started to use the recommendations on Goodreads to help me choose. This has led me to many new authors – in fact more than 50% of the authors i have read this year have been new to me. I feel like I have climbed out of a reading rut and am very excited by the thought of what I will read next year.

I’d also like to thank the Eclectic Reader Challenge for helping to fire my enthusiasm. This led me to read genres I wouldn’t normally think of and helped me to broaden my reading horizons. I managed to do the challenge twice which was pleasing and I am already thinking about what I might read for next year’s challenge.

As for the best books I’ve read this year, I’d have to say The Road by Cormac McCarthy was a favourite. A devastatingly bleak version of the future that seemed all too possible. The bleakly sarcastic world view of Charlie Brooker was another excellent read – I can Make You Hate is a collection of his columns and articles from over the last few years. And very entertaining it was too. Food for thought, definitely.

I’ve included a list of all the books that I’ve read this year along with their ratings from Goodreads. I’ve included links to the ones that I’ve reviewed.

Adventure

• The Lost World – Arthur Conan Doyle 3/5
• Stardust – Neil Gaiman 3/5

Detective Fiction

• Tell No One – Harlen Coben 2/5
• The Moonstone – Wilkie Collins 4/5
• Blood List – Patrick Frievald 3/5
• The Glass Key – Dashiell Hammett – 4/5
•  Rupture – Simon Lelic 4/5
• The Black House – Peter May 3/5
• The Cold Cold Ground – Adrian McKinty 3/5
• Standing in Another man’s Grave – Ian Rankin 4/5
• The Zombie Room – R. D. Ronald 2/5
• A Test of Wills – Charles Todd 3/5

Dystopia (By which I mean, a story set in a world of the future which is similar to ours but with certain details changed or exaggerated.)

• The Hunger Games – Suzanne Collins 4/5
• Lord of the Flies – William Golding 4/5
• Awaken – Katie Kacvinsky 3/5
• The Road – Cormac McCarthy 5/5
• The Testament of Jessie Lamb – Jane Rogers 3/5

Erotica

• Beautiful Losers – Leonard Cohen – currently reading
• Venus in Furs – Leopold Von Sacher-Masoch 3/5

Family Drama

• Empty Mansion Empty Heart – Everett Beich 1/5
• Where Angels Fear to Tread – E. M. Forster 3/5
• The Weight of Silence – Heather Gudenkauf 3/5
• I’m the King of the Castle – Susan Hill 3/5

Historical Fiction

• The Painted Girls – Cathy Marie Buchanan 3/5
• The Prague Cemetery – Umberto Eco 3/5
• Day – A L Kennedy 3/5
• An Instance of the Fingerpost – Iain Pears 4/5
• I, Fatty – Jerry Stahl 2/5
• The Daylight Gate – Jeanette Winterson 4/5

Horror

• Something Wicked This Way Comes – Ray Bradbury 4/5
• Glamorama – Bret Easton Ellis 4/5
• Under the Skin – Michael Faber 3/5
• Rosemary’s Baby – Ira Levin 4/5
• The Butcher Boy – Patrick McCabe 4/5
• The Island of Doctor Moreau – H G Wells 3/5

LGBT

• Call Me By My Name – Andre Aciman 3/5
• Rent Boy – Gary Indiana 4/5
• Come Unto These Yellow Sands – Josh Lanyon 4/5
• Snowball in Hell – Josh Lanyon 5/5
• The Dreyfuss Affair – Peter Lefcourt 4/5
• Bad Company – K. A. Mitchell 3/5
• Luna – Julie Ann Peters – currently reading
• The City and the Pillar – Gore Vidal 5/5

Literary Criticism

• Margaret Atwood – In Other Worlds: SF and the Human Imagination -currently reading

Memoir

• Levels of Life – Julian Barnes 5/5
• Girl Interrupted – Susanna Kaysen 4/5
• It’s Only a Movie – Mark Kermode 5/5

Satire

• I Can Make You Hate – Charlie Brooker 5/5
• White Noise – Don Delillo 3/5
• Election – Tom Perrotta 2/5

Science

• Delusions of Gender – Cordelia Fine 4/5
• Bad Science – Ben Goldacre 5/5
• The Science of Discworld III: Darwin’s Watch – Terry Pratchett 4/5
• The Female Malady – Elaine Showalter 4/5

Science Fiction (By which I mean a story set on a different planet or universe with great advances in technology.)

• The Player of Games – Iain M. Banks 3/5
• An Alien Heat – Michael Moorcock 4/5
• Slaughterhouse Five – Kurt Vonnegut – 4/5

Short Stories

• How it Ended – Jay McInerney 4/5

Supernatural

• A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens 4/5
• The Haunting of Hill House – Shirley Jackson 3/5

Travel

• A Walk in the Woods – Bill Bryson 4/5

Young Adult

• Massive – Julia Bell 3/5
• The Perks of Being a wallflower – Stephen Chbosky 4/5
• The Virgin Suicides – Jeffrey Eugenides 4/5