Friday 29 December 2017

Books Read in 2017

January 2017
Julian Treuherz & Peter de Figueiredo – 111 Places in Liverpool not to be Missed (NF)
Lorena McCourtney – In Plain Sight (Ivy Malone mystery no 2)
Lorena McCourtney – On the Run (Ivy Malone mystery no 3)
Lorena McCourtney – Stranded (Ivy Malone mystery no 4)
Ken Pye – Liverpool Pubs (NF)
Claire Douiglas – Local Girl Missing
Daniel K Longman – Liverpool in the Headlines (NF)
Dave Joy – Liverpool Cowkeepers (NF) [A fascinating account of city dairies by a former colleague of mine]
Jed Rudenfeld – The Interpretation of Murder [Historical crime based on Freud’s visit to the USA IN 1909]
Cyril Hare – An English Murder (for the second time)
Cyril Hare – An Untimely Death (Inspector Mallett and Francis Pettigrew)
Philippa Gregory – The King’s Curse [Henry VII / Henry VIII from Margaret of York’s perspective]
Philippa Gregory – The White Queen

February 2017
Philippa Gregory – The Red Queen
Philippa Gregory – The Lady of the Rivers
Philippa Gregory –  The White Princess
Philippa Gregory –  The Constant Princess
Philippa Gregory –  The Other Boleyn Girl
Philippa Gregory –   The Boleyn Inheritance

March 2017
Philippa Gregory – The Taming of the Queen
Philippa Gregory –  The Queen’s Fool
Philippa Gregory –  Three Sisters, Three Queens
Philippa Gregory – The Kingmaker’s Daughter
Nicci French [A pseudonym used by Sean French and Nicci Gerrard] – Secret Smile       

April 2017
Mervyn Benford – Milestones (NF)
Rebecca Tope – The Troutbeck Testimony
Robert Low – The Whale Road (The Oathsworn Bk 1)
Robert Low – Wolf Sea  (The Oathsworn Bk 2)
Giles Kristian – Blood Eye (Raven 1)
Giles Kristian – Sons of Thunder (Raven 2)
Giles Kristian – Odin’s Wolves (Raven 3)
Robin Paige – Death at Bishop’s Keep (Victorian Mystery 1)
Robin Paige – Death at Gallows Green (Victorian Mystery 2)
Robin Paige – Death at Devil’s Bridge (Victorian Mystery 3)

May 2017
Robin Paige – Death at Rottingdean  (Victorian Mystery 4)
Robin Paige – Death at Whitechapel (Victorian Mystery 5)
Robin Paige – Death at Epsom (Victorian Mystery 6)
Catriona McPherson – Dandy Gilver and he Reek of Red Herrings
Catriona McPherson – After the Armistice Ball
Catriona McPherson – The Burry Man’s Day
Catriona McPherson – Bury her Deep
Catriona McPherson – The Winter Ground
Catriona McPherson – Dandy Gilver and a Deadly Measure of Brimstone
Catriona McPherson – Dandy Gilver and the Proper Treatment of Bloodstains
Catriona McPherson – Dandy Gilver and the Unpleasantness in the Ballroom
Ian Sansom – The Bad Book Affair (Hilarious story of Israel Armstrong, a mobile librarian in Ireland)
Ian Sansom – The Case of the Missing Books
Ian Sansom – Mr Dixon Disappears

June 2017
Ian Sansom – The Delegates’ Choice
Catriona McPherson – Dandy Gilver and an Unsuitable Day for a Murder
Catriona McPherson – Dandy Gilver and a Bothersome Number of Corpses
Catriona McPherson – Dandy Gilver and a Most Misleading Habit
Andrew Pepper – The Last Days of Newgate (First Pyke mystery)
Nina George – The Little Paris Bookshop  [An excellent, eminently quotable book]
Benedicte Newland & Pascale Smers – and God Created the Au Pair.
Sara George – The Journal of Mrs Pepys; Portrait of a Marriage
Sarah Waters – Fingersmith (Deservedly shortlisted for the Booker and Orange prizes)
David Lewis – The Illustrated History of Liverpool’s Suburbs (NF)
July 2017
Sarah Waters – Tupping the Velvet

August 2017
Geraldine McCaughrean – Where the World Ends (Exxcellent fact based fiction about a fowling party stranded on a St Kilda stac in 1727)
Charles Maclean – Island on the Edge of the World – the strory of St Kilda (NF)
Anita Brookner – Fraud
Veronica Henry – How to Find Love in a Bookshop
Sarah Waters – The Paying Guest
Sarah Waters – Affinity

September 2017
Sarah Waters – The Night Watch
Sarah Waters – The Little Stranger
Bernard Cornwell – Flame Bearer
Yrsa Sigurdardottir – The Legacy (Children's House no 1)
Yrsa Sigurdardottir – The Undesired
Yrsa Sigurdardottir – The Last Rituals (Thóra Gudmundsdóttir no 1)
Yrsa Sigurdardottir – My Soul to Take (Thóra Gudmundsdóttir no 2)
Yrsa Sigurdardottir – Ashes to Dust (Thóra Gudmundsdóttir no 3)
Yrsa Sigurdardottir – The Day is Dark {Thóra Gudmundsdóttir no 4)
Yrsa Sigurdardottir – Someone to Watch Over Me {Thóra Gudmundsdóttir no 5)
Yrsa Sigurdardottir – I remember You

October 2017
Anthony Rolls – Family Matters (British Library Crime Classics 1933)
Emma Healey – Elizabeth is Missing (Excellent look at senility through a mystery. In this darkly riveting debut novel - a sophisticated psychological mystery that is also an heartbreakingly honest examination of memory, identity, and aging - an elderly woman descending into dementia embarks on a desperate quest to find her best friend. Her search for the truth will go back decades and have shattering consequences. )
Susie Steiner – Missing Presumed (Manon Bradshaw bk 1)
John Burningham (Ed.) – When we were young (NF)
Kathryn Hughes – The Letter (One of my top books of 2017 - Tina Craig longs to escape her violent husband. She works all the hours God sends to save up enough money to leave him, also volunteering in a charity shop to avoid her unhappy home. Whilst going through the pockets of a second-hand suit, she comes across an old letter, the envelope firmly sealed and unfranked. Tina opens the letter and reads it - a decision that will alter the course of her life for ever...)
Charlie Croker – Lost in Translation (NF)
Arnaldur Indridason – Strange Shores
Arnaldur Indridason – Jar City
Barney Norris – Five Rivers Met on a Wooded Plain  (My Book of the Year.  One quiet evening in Salisbury, the peace is shattered by a serious car crash. At that moment, five lives collide - a flower seller, a schoolboy, an army wife, a security guard, a widower - all facing their own personal disasters.)
P.D. James – Death in Holy Orders (an Adam Dalgleish novel)

November 2017
P.D. James – Cover her Face (Adam Dalgleish bk 1)
Philip Hensher – King of the Badgers
Peter James – Denial
Susie Steiner – Persons Unknown (Manon Bradshaw bk 2)
Stella Duffy – The Room of Lost Things
Nikki French – The Memory Game (for the second time)
Amy Tan – Saving Fish from Drowning

December 2017
Carol Smith – Grandmother’s Footsteps
Val McDermid – The Distant Echo (for the second time)
Val McDermid – Out of Bounds

P.D. James – Death comes to Pemberley (Murder mystery as a follow-up to Pride and Prejudice – a must for Jane Austen fans)

11 comments:

  1. Thank you for posting the lists!
    It is so much nicer for me to find books to read on reading lists by other people than to make my own (that I often lose).
    Happy Almost New Year!

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  2. Oh wow, if I didn't know better from your posts, I would think you'd done nothing but read all year!
    Interesting to find some of the books I have reviewed on my blog on your list, too, such as the Ivy Malone mysteries and two by Sarah Waters which I have also read. How did you like them?
    Admittedly, I went through a Philippa Gregory phase when I was about 13-15 years old and was rather surprised to see her books on your reading list.

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    1. I like historical fiction, Meike, especially from the Tudor, Stuart and Victorian periods. Most of the Phillipa Gregory's were read second time round. I find one learns so much history from well-written and researched novels. I really enjoyed the Sarah Waters ones. Fingersmith being my favourite.

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  3. Well done you.

    I reckon I might have finished about three adult books this year! Read plenty of children's ones if they count?!!

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    1. All books count in my view - especially if you end up reading them a few dozen times as no doubt you have with some of them!

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  4. That’s quite a list. Happy New Year, and happy reading!

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  5. Thanks for this list. I'll try a few. I read at least one book a week. Mostly detective novels. With the occasional biography and political novel thrown in for variety. My favourite book of the year was The Ragged Trousered Philanthropist.

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    1. An excellent book. When we lived in Walton, Liverpool, Tresswl's pauper's grave was in the cemetery at the end of our road!

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  6. I've read 64 books during 2017... but none of these!

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  7. Just added thr list up - it totals 97. I should have made an effort to read three more!!!!
    I have just put 'Books' into this blog's search engine and found some posts I wrote years ago. Some of them quite fascinated me. It's amazing how one forgets having written things.

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    Replies
    1. Oh I know it! I'm amazed at some of the things I've written in the past that have slipped from my memory.

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