2015 Reading Challenges - A Review

Boxing Day today and after yesterday's lovely, fresh, bright Christmas Day, today has been gloomy, windy and rainy. So today I spent the morning reading and watching Boxing Day footie, then the rest of the day relaxing with the missus and puppies. At the moment, it's 7 p.m. and we've had our supper, finishing off left-overs and are watching the last Harry Potter movie. I also watched three or four episodes of Season 1 of The Librarians on Space. It's very entertaining. Tomorrow is a Season 2 stack.

For the past 10 days, I've gone through my Top Ten lists for 2015, books, songs, movies, TV shows and actors/ actresses. Before I spend time writing a BLog on what I plan for my 2016 Reading Group Challenges, I'm going to write this entry, summarising the results of my 2015 Reading Group Challenges. So here we go  -

12 + 4 Reading Group Challenge

I did two of these challenges this year. I chose to read the first book in a series, which means that I had at least 32 series on my bookshelves (scary, I know) that I hadn't started yet, but have now. I finished both of these challenges.

In my first 12 + 4, I read the following books -

1. Simon Brett - The Body on the Beach (Fethering)
2. Ann Cleeves - Raven Black (Shetland)
3. Cara Black - Murder in the Marais (Cara Black)
4. David Downing - Zoo Station (John Russell)
5. Kate Ellis - The Merchant's House (Wesley Peterson)
6. Jasper Fforde - The Eyre Affair (Thursday Next)
7. Charles Finch - A Beautiful Blue Death (Charles Lenox)
8. Malla Nunn - A Beautiful Place to Die (Emmanuel Cooper)
9. Craig Johnson - The Cold Dish (Longmire)
10. Henning Mankell - Faceless Killers (Wallander)
11. D.A. Mishani - The Missing File (Avraham Avraham)
12. Robin Paige - Death at Bishop's Keep (Kathryn Ardleigh)
Alt 1 - Louise Penny - Still Life (Inspector Gamache)
Alt 2 - C.C. Humphreys - The French Executioner (French Executioner)
Alt 3 - Peter Robinson - Gallows View (Inspector Banks)
Alt 4 - Maj Sjowall - Roseanna (Martin Beck)

My favourites of this group were Mall Nunn, David Downing, Jasper Fforde and Peter Robinson. Least favourite were Cara Black and Charles Finch.

I started my second 12 + 4 grouping in Jun. They included the following books:

1. Jacqueline Winspear - Maisie Dobbs (Maisie Dobbs)
2. Ruth Rendell - From Doon with Death (Inspector Wexford)
3. Thomas Perry - The Butcher's Boy (Butcher Boy)
4. Adrian McKinty - The Cold, Cold Ground (Sean Duffy)
5. P.D. James - Cover Her Face (Inspector Dalgleish)
6. John Harvey - Lonely Hearts (Charles Resnick)
7. Tony Hillerman - The Blessing Way (Navaho mysteries)
8. David Baldacci - Split Second (King & Maxwell)
9. Lillian Jackson Braun - The Cat Who Could Read Backwards (Cat Who)
10. Jeffery Deaver - The Sleeping Doll (Kathryn Dance)
11. James Ellroy - The Black Dahlia (LA Quartet)
12. Peter O'Connell - Modesty Blaise (Modesty Blaise)
Alt 1 - Kyril Bonfiglioli - Don't Point That Thing at Me (Charlie Mortdecai)
Alt 2 - Camilla Lackberg - The Ice Princess (Patrick Hedstrom)
Alt 3 - Agatha Christie - The Murder at the Vicarage (Miss Marple)
Alt 4 - Meg Gardiner - The Dirty Secret's Club (Jo Beckett)

My favourites in this group were PD James, Agatha Chrisie and Ruth Rendell. My least favourite was James Ellroy.

Individual Challenges

 To fill out my overall challenge of 95 books, I also had a variety of individual challenges. My first was to try and read 4 Classics, Books written before 1900. I finished this challenge and enjoyed every book I read. Two of my top five books were from this particular challenge.

The Classics
1. Wilkie Collins - The Moonstone (1868) (4 stars)
2. George Eliot - The Mill on the Floss (1860) (5 stars)
3. Thomas Hardy - Far from the Madding Crowd (1874) (5 stars)
4. William Thackeray - Vanity Fair (1848) (4 stars)

I also planned to read 4 Non-Fiction books, either History, Biography or Travel, etc). I succeeded with this challenge as well. Overall I enjoyed this challenge. There were no duff books, but no favourites either, just enjoyable reads.

Non-Fiction
1. Lynne Olson - Citizens of London (4 stars)
2. Mark Logue - The King's Speech (4 stars)
3. Miranda Hart - Is It Just Me? (3.5 stars)
4. Bill Bryson - Neither Here nor There (4 stars)

I actually exceeded my planned quota for my next challenge. I had planned to read 6 Science Fiction novels and I read 7. Well, to be specific, I started 7 but only finished 6. This category contained the one book I just could not get into or finish, that being Mark Helprin's Winter Tale.

Science Fiction
1. J.G. Ballard - Crash (3.5 stars)
2. Iain M. Banks - Excession (5 stars)
3. Jim Butcher - Grave Peril (4 stars)
4. Jose Saramago - Blindness (3.5 stars)
5. John Brunner - Manshape (3.5 stars)
6. Mark Helprin - Winter's Tale (1 star)
7. Suzanne Collins - The Hunger Games (3.5 stars)

I also managed to finish my next category, Fiction (books written after 1900). Some more of my favourites were in this category. I finished 10 books.

Fiction
1. Grace Metallious - Peyton Place (5 stars)
2. Bernard Cornwell - Sharpe's Fury (3.5 stars)
3. C.S. Forester - Lord Hornblower (3.5 stars)
4. W. Somerset Maugham - The Moon and Sixpence (5 stars)
5. Nevil Shute - So Disdained (4 stars)
6. Jean Rhys - After Leaving Mr. MacKenzie (3.5 stars)
7. Daphne du Maurier - Rebecca (5 stars)
8. Evelyn Waugh - Brideshead Revisited (4 stars)
9. P.G. Wodehouse - Joy in the Morning (4 stars)
10. Valentine Davies - Miracle on 34th street (3.5 stars)

My next challenge was to focus on mystery series that I had already started. I didn't succeed with this challenge, mainly because of my second 12 + 4 challenge. I had planned to try and read 25 books in this category, but I completed only 16. When I finish the one that I am currently reading, it will make 17 of 25. It was nice to try and focus on series that I've neglected for awhile.

Mystery Series
1. Jussi Adler-Olsen - (Dept Q #2) The Absent One (4 stars)
2. Rennie Airth - (John Madden #3) The Dead of Winter (4 stars)
3. Kate Atkinson - (Jackson Brodie #2) One Good Turn (4 stars)
4. Nevada Barr - (Anna Pigeon #7) Liberty Falls (3.5 stars)
5. Jefferson Bass - (The Body Farm #3) The Devil's Bones (3 stars)
6. M.C. Beaton - (Agatha Raisin #2) The Vicious Vet (3 stars)
7. Mark Billingham - (Tom Thorne #2) Scaredy Cat (4 stars)
8. John Buchan - (John Hannay #3) Mr. Standfast (4 stars)
9. Lee Child - (Jack Reacher #3) Tripwire (3.5 stars)
10. Barbara Cleverly - (Joe Sandilands #4) The Palace Tiger (3.5 stars)
11. Colin Cotterill - (Siri Paiboun #2) - Thirty-Three Teeth (4 stars)
12. Jeffery Deaver - (Lincoln Rhyme #7) The Cold Moon (4 stars)
13. Janet Evanovich - (Stephanie Plum #8) Hard Eight (3 stars)
14. Ian Fleming - (James Bond) - Diamonds are Forever (3.5 stars)
15. Alan Furst - (Night Soldiers #3) - The Polish Officer (4 stars)
16. Sue Grafton - (Kinsey Milhone) R is for Ricochet (3.5 stars)
17. Caroline Graham - (Midsomers #3) Death in Disguise (not yet finished)

I had quite a few mystery specific challenges as that is my favourite genre at the moment. My next challenge was to read 10 Stand-alone mysteries and I completed this challenge.

Mysteries (Stand-alones)
1. Karin Alvtegen - Shame (4 stars)
2. John le Carre - A Small Town in Germany (3.5 stars)
3. Len Deighton - Funeral in Berlin (3 stars)
4. James Kennaway - Mind Benders (3 stars)
5. Margaret Millar - The Soft Talkers (5 stars)
6. Wilbur Smith - The Dark of the Sun (3.5 stars)
7. Hillary Waugh - A Death in a Town (5 stars)
8. Michelle Spring - The Night Lawyer (3 stars)
9. Patricia Highsmith - This Sweet Sickness (3.5 stars)
10. Alistair MacLean - The Last Frontier (3 stars)

My penultimate challenge was to reread some old favourites. They were all Science Fiction. I hoped to read 5, but only managed to read 3 of these books. It was definitely nice to refresh my memories of these books.

Rereads
1. John Wyndham - The Chrysalids (5 stars)
2. Michael de Larrabeiti - The Borribles (3 stars)
3. Robert Heinlein - Friday (4 stars)

My final category was to read books that I had actually purchased in 2015. I managed to finish 10 of 15 in this challenge and currently have one more on the go, which I will finish before year end

Freebies
1. Kelley Armstrong - (Fantasy) Bitten (3.5 stars)
2. Paul J. Bartusiak - (Spy/ Thriller) Cool Jazz Spy ( 3.5 stars)
3. Ann Cleeves - (Mystery) White Nights (4 stars)
4. T.S. Eliot - (Poetry) Selected Poems (4 stars)
5. Graham Greene - (Memoir) Journey without Maps (3.5 stars)
6. Harper Lee - (Fiction) Go Set a Watchman (3.5 stars)
7. George Revelli - (Erotica) Amanda in Spain (3 stars)
8. Shirley Jackson - (Hor) We Have Always Lived in the Castle (4 stars)
9. Nick Cutter - (Hor) The Troop (4 stars)
10. Leif GW Persson - (Mys) Backstrom; He Who Kills the Dragon (3 stars)
11. Vince Flynn - (Thriller) Transfer of Power (not yet finished)

So there you have it, my year in review. I finished my 95+ books for my Goodreads challenge of 95 books. I'm looking forward to next year. Now I must dash as the puppies are demanding a walk.. Have a great Sunday!