2010 Summary - Highs and Lows

I always find it difficult to look back over the year's reading and remember exactly how I felt about each book.  I seem to be so wrapped up in each book as I read it that all previous books fade into the background (for good and bad).  Of course, that's where a well-maintained blog would really help out, but as I have not managed to do that this year, I will instead have to rely mainly on memory...(could be interesting!)

Top 5 Books read this year
follow the link to read either my review or to see the Amazon page for these titles
Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
We Have Always Lived in the Castle - Shirley Jackson
The Go-Between - LP Hartley
Middlesex - Jeffrey Eugenides
Good Behaviour  - Molly Keane

Favourite Non-Fiction read this year
Bess of Hardwick - Mary S Lovell
(although Stephen Fry's The Fry Chronicles comes a very close second!)

What I have found interesting looking back over the books I read in 2010 is how many of them were in some way or another a surprise.  There were books I had eagerly awaited that didn't quite match up to my (admittedly very high) expectations (The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters and The Children's Book by AS Byatt), books I read that I didn't expect to enjoy at all (Rabbit Run by John Updike and Sum: 40 Tales from the Afterlives by David Eagleman) and books that I read under recommendation and didn't enjoy (The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson and The Present and the Past by Ivy Compton-Burnett).

I'm glad that my reading experiences over the past twelve months have been so varied.  In 2011 I hope to keep this going - mixing fiction with non-fiction and reading books that I know I will enjoy, as well as taking the odd risk.

I will also endeavour to keep up to date with blogging - both writing and reading.  I really do enjoy reading others' opinions on books - finding common ground with other book fanatics as well as discovering new books and authors and exploring the new worlds these open up.

Thanks to all those bloggers whose blogs have inspired me to go out and read something different, and for sharing your thoughts and opinions in such interesting and varied ways; and also to those who have commented on my blogs.

Here's to a bookish 2011!