August 2014 Review

Ah well, the end of another month and the time to review my past month's reading.  For August I finished 11 books. It brings my total for the year to 70 out of my Goodread's challenge total of 90. That leaves me 20 books or 5 per month; a rate I should definitely be able to complete. Of my 11 books in August, these are my basic stats -

Gender
Male authors - 5
Female authors - 6

Genres
Science Fiction - 1
Horror (also short story) - 1
Mystery - 6
Classic (Non-Fiction) - 1
Biography - 2

Ratings
3 star - 5
4 star - 6

There were no really outstanding reads this past month. I do wonder if maybe I'm being too harsh with my ratings as the year goes on, but I don't think so. If I look over the whole year, this has been my ratings -

2 star - 1
3 star - 31
4 star - 32
5 star - 6

(seems pretty average)

Favourite Book

Overall, my favourite book of the month was my introduction to Lord Peter Wimsey, the first in the series by Dorothy L. Sayers. It took me a few minutes to get into it, but the story moved along very nicely and was quite thoughtful and well-written. This was my review -

"I was very pleasantly surprised by my introduction to the world of Lord Peter Wimsey. I was expecting a cozy-type mystery, but it was so much more than that. Peter Wimsey is a detective, works at it sort of in his spare time, although he has solved some important cases, from some of the comments made during this first of the Wimsey mysteries. But he is much more than that; he is an officer who fought in WWI and suffers from a sort of post - traumatic stress disorder, which crops up when he is physically and mentally tired from working cases. He has doubts about what he does, whether he should make this a past-time when there is the potential for affecting people's lives with his investigations. The story, itself, grew on me as I delved deeper into it. I liked many of the characters; his butler, ex-Sgt Bunter, his wonderful, common-sense mother and Scotland Yard inspector and friend, Parker. I enjoyed this very much and look forward to the next one, which is next on my list; Clouds of Witness. It's always a nice surprise when a book exceeds your expectations."

I am currently enjoying the second in the series very much. Excellent series so far.

So there you have my August summary. I'll do a more detailed review of the year at the end of September as it will be the 3/4 point. Enjoy September!