No individual review this week but a
retrospective on the completion of the “Along the Library Shelf” reading
journey.
It took about four years to move
alphabetically through the local library stock, choosing a book from an author
new to me. It has been a worthwhile exercise and I have read and enjoyed books that
otherwise I would probably not have considered, with only two or three where I
wished I had chosen better.
The objective of increasing variety, getting
out of any reading rut, has been achieved. My partiality for male authors was
less pronounced with a 15:11 ratio (compared with 75:6 for the three years 2008
to 2010); and though a majority of books were set in the UK (15) and USA (5),
there were six located around the world (Argentina, Iceland, Japan, China,
Mongolia and Greece) with others making excursions to Hawaii, Malaysia,
Nigeria, Arabia and France.
In terms of genre, the main fare was 20th
and 21st century fiction (10) and crime/thrillers (5) but historic
fiction, humour, ghost/horror, short stories and biography were all
represented. Two gaps were science fiction (surprisingly as I used to read a
lot) and westerns (less surprisingly as I’ve only ever read one, two if you
count The Sisters Brothers).
Two of the ‘new to me’ authors (Chris Cleave
and David Mitchell) impressed me sufficiently to read further works; and I
would happily read more by at least ten of the others.
So overall it was a successful and enjoyable
journey that I will consider doing all over again.
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