Q4 FAVOURITE READS

It's almost the end of Q4, so before getting caught up in year end, let your fellow readers know what stood out for you from October 1st until now. This question is a bit earlier this year, as it sometimes gets lost in the aforementioned year end activity.

Then come over here: https://www.librarything.com/topic/327264 and comment on your year.

I think you meant https://www.librarything.com/topic/327264
:-)

>2 thorold: You're absolutely right. I was trying to do too many things at once and at first created it in Club Read 2019, which threw me off completely when I realized it!

Thanks and corrected.

>1 SassyLassy:
Okay, first to list, just because I've had the best quarter of reading in years and years . . . (do consider that I will read fewer than 50 books this year. . . almost all the books I read this quarter were very, very good)

I had 5 star reads (almost unheard of for me)

Your House Is On Fire, Your Children All Gone, Stefan Kiesbye
The Little Ghost Who Was A Quilt, Riel Nason (picture book)

So many 4.5 star reads:

Ghost Wall, Sarah Moss
Ghost in the House, Sarah O'Leary
Tinder, Sally Gardner
Enya: a Treatise on Unguilty Pleasures, Chilly Gonzales
Turn of the Key, Ruth Ware

4 stars (still worth reading)

Devil's Picnic, Taras Grescoe
Such a Fun Age, Kiley Reid
French Women Don't Get Fat, Mirelle Guilano

On the terrible reads list:

Book of Imaginary Beings, Jogre Luis Borges (probably good in its time; now Google is way better)

I've probably still got a few books to go in Q4, but I'll make a start as well — may add more later.

I've enjoyed very much completing my read-through of Friedrich Schiller's drama (plus a few related operas), and almost completing my A S Byatt read-through, although neither of those things was unexpected. A whistling woman and The Children's Book were the real highlights. (Still one Byatt to go, probably for after Christmas.)

Re-reading Ali Smith's Seasonal Quartet now that it's complete was also predictably enjoyable.

The Russian Revolution theme took me to Isaiah Berlin's Russian thinkers, and Turgenev's A sportsman's notebook, both wonderful, as well as a much-needed refresher course of Chekhov.

Good things I didn't know about before I read them: Hangsaman by Shirley Jackson and The book of eels by Patrik Svensson, the second of which I've been recommending to all and sundry ad nauseam...

Things I wish I hadn't read: Crudo by Olivia Laing.

>4 Nickelini: Congrats on your best quarter! Like you, my quantity of books read has decreased, but after a rocky start at the beginning of the year, I'm happy with the quality.

>5 thorold: I've probably still got a few books to go in Q4 I'm expecting more books to go that most of us have already read!

Favorite reads of the fourth quarter, 2020.

The Good Parents by Joan London (fiction, 2008, Australian)
Often I am Happy by Jens Christian Grøndahl (2017, Danish)

Yellow Blue Tibia by Adam Roberts (fiction/SF, 2009, UK)

Whiteout by Ragnar Jonasson (2017, Icelandic, "Dark Iceland" series)

I don't think I can single out a favorite nonfiction, apples and oranges, you know?

>4 Nickelini: That did seem a good quarter for you! May it continue through 2021 and beyond!

My favorites for this quarter include

Dreamsnake by Vonda McIntyre
science fiction with two interesting characters

The night watchman by Louise Erdrich
Historical fiction, puzzling out themes

The black sun by Rebecca Roanhorse
world-building & character development

When the tiger came down the mountain by Nghi Vo story about storytelling

>7 avaland: Yellow blue tibia sounds intriguing. May have to buy it

>10 markon: It was amusing when I needed amusing, if you know what I mean?

Drat, I've read three more books, I make have to make some edits...(or will I?) I somehow thought my reading would continue to be sluggish, but has improved greatly over the last week.

Three stood out for me this quarter (my current read isn't going to be a favourite):

- The Bird Artist by Howard Norman
- The Book of Ebenezer Le Page by G. B. Edwards
- Bad Dirt by Annie Proulx

All three were extremely well written and pulled me in. Proulx I definitely need to read much more of in 2021 - she's such a talented writer, and her genre is right up my street.

It's great when everyone is still reading up to the last day of the quarter. Looking forward to more to come.

My top five for the quarter in reading order are:
The Memory Police by Yoko Ogawa
This Is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone
Paper Towns by John Green
We by Yevgeny Zamyatin
The Pursuit of William Abbey by Claire North

I’ve already posted my great reads at >4 Nickelini: but I have to update as the last 2 books of this year need mention. I have 50 pages of Starve Acre to go but it will either be a 4.5 or 5 star read unless the author completely loses it. And I also enjoyed the short story collection by Swiss author Fleur Jaeggy titled Last Vanities

Barring an unexpected development I will have read all of two books in the fourth quarter, only one of which I finished: Apeirogon by Colum McCann, which was very good.

As usual, I'm listing the books I read this quarter that I gave 4.5 or 5 stars to:

The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2018 edited by N. K. Jemisin
Star Trek: 50 Artists, 50 Years, published by Titan Books
The Library Book by Susan Orlean

Hmm. That seems like a slightly anti-climactic list to end the year on, really.

I had a pretty good reading quarter. The highlights:

The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration by Isabel Wilkerson
A Fairly Honourable Defeat by Iris Murdoch
Likes by Sarah Shun-lien Bynum
A Registry of My Passage upon the Earth: Stories by Daniel Mason
Inheritors by Asako Serizawa
The Office of Historical Corrections: A Novella and Stories by Danielle Evans
Golem Girl: A Memoir by Riva Lehrer
To Be a Man: Stories by Nicole Krauss
The Girls of Slender Means by Muriel Spark