Throwback Thursday: March 2013

 

Throwback Thursday

#ThrowbackThursday

Revisiting what I posted 10 years ago
(my blog was born on September 29, 2010)
following the idea I found at The Chocolate Lady’s Book Review Blog
(click on this link or the logo to see where the idea started from,
and to post the link to your own post).

  📚 📚 📚 

Today, I’m revisiting March 2013.
I published 22 posts, 12 of which being book reviews!

Of these books, here is the one that received most views then:

Click on the cover to access my review

Leaving Everything Most Loved

 

That book didn’t work for me.
Instead, my favorite of March 2013 was:

Plainsong

 

 

  📚 📚 📚 

HAVE YOU READ THESE BOOKS?
How do you like these two authors?
PLEASE SHARE YOUR THROWBACK THURSDAY POST
My next post on this meme will be on July 6

Advertisement

2022: September wrap-up

SEPTEMBER 2022 WRAP-UP

I have only read 6 books this month, but I also listened to 6 audiobooks, so that’s a decent result.
And I just finished book 101 of the year!
I’m currently 12 books ahead of schedule (84% done) to read 120 books this year.
This past month, I also started a 4th list of Classics for The Classics Club.
And yesterday, I celebrated my 12th blogiversary!

📚 Here is what I read in September:

12 books:
6 in print 
with 1,459 pages, a daily average of 48 pages/day
6 in audio
= 39H51
, a daily average of 1H19/ day

6 in children’s fiction:

  1. The Sword in the Stone (The Once and Future King #1), by T. H. White
  2. The Witch in the Wood (The Once and Future King #2), by T. H. White
  3. The Ill-Made Knight (The Once and Future King #3), by T. H. White
  4. The Candle in the Wind (The Once and Future King #4), by T. H. White
  5. The Book of Merlyn (The Once and Future King #5), by T. H. White – these 5 books were audiobooks, and counted for The Classics Club
  6. All From a Walnut, by Ammi-Joan Paquette & Harry N.Abrams

3 in  literary fiction:

  1. Eventide, by Kent Haruf
  2. Le Chant du monde, by Jean Giono – read with a French student, counts for The Classics Club
  3. Un Chien à ma table, by Claudie Hunzinger

2 in mystery:

  1. Epitaph for a Spy, by Eric Ambler – counts for The Classics Club
  2. Malice (Detective Kaga #1), by Keigo Higashino – read with the Virtual Crime Book Club

1 in science-fiction:

  1. Autour de la Lune, by Jules Verne – read with a French student, counts for The Classics Club

This month, it was again very hard to pick 2 winners.

MY FAVORITE BOOKS THIS PAST MONTH

The Ill-Made Knight   Eventide

READING CHALLENGES & RECAP

Classics Club: 7/150 (from September 2022-until September 2027)
Japanese Literature Challenge: 9/12 books – During the year: 13
2022 TBR Pile Reading Challenge: 9/12 books
2022 books in translation reading challenge
: 22/10+

Total of books read in 2022 = 101/120 (84%)
Number of books added to my TBR this past month = 24

 OTHER BOOK  REVIEWED THIS PAST MONTH

Ensemble, c'est tout

BOOK RECEIVED FOR REVIEW

Un Chien à ma table

through Netgalley.fr

MOST POPULAR BOOK REVIEW THIS PAST MONTH

Talk to me

click on the cover to access my review

MOST POPULAR POST THIS PAST MONTH
– NON BOOK REVIEW –

Sunday Post #67

BOOK BLOG THAT BROUGHT ME MOST TRAFFIC THIS PAST MONTH

Caffeinated Reviewer
please go visit, there are a lot of good things there!

TOP COMMENTERS 

Karen at Booker Talk
Marianne at Let’s Read

Tammy at Books, Bones & Buffy
please go and visit them,
they have great blogs

BLOG MILESTONES 

2,600 posts
over 5,195 followers
over 260,730 hits

📚 📚 📚

Come back on Sunday to see the titles I’ll be reading in October
How was YOUR month of September?

2022-Monthly-Wrap-Up-Round-Up400

Nicole at Feed Your Fiction Addiction
has created a Month In Review meme
where you can link your monthly recap posts
Thanks Nicole!

2022 TBR Pile Reading Challenge: September checkpoint

tbr 2022 rbrbutton

#TBR2022RBR

Adam is asking us how we are doing so far with this challenge.
Since the August checkpoint, I have finished two books:

Eventide

📚 Eventide, by Kent Haruf
Literary fiction
Published in 2004

I so enjoyed this book!
It was great meeting again the McPheron brothers, and Victoria. The brothers are two old farmers, living and working together on this isolated farm  near the very small village of Holt, Colorado.
Victoria is a young woman they sheltered in the previous book (Plainsong), when she was in trouble. She now has a young child, and she is going back to school.
I really enjoyed the slow pace, the description of the landscape, of the daily chores on the farm. And obviously the study of the relationships between people in this city. The focus is really on relationships, within different families, in different social milieus.
And Haruf is so good at dialogs, especially at evoking the accent and speech characteristics of these two old guys. I read the book, I didn’t listen to the audiobook, but still, their voice was so alive to me through Haruf’s writing!
He wrote a 3rd book in this trilogy (Benediction), but it’s not about the same characters. I’m disappointed, as Raymond is kind of turning a new page in his life (you are never too old for that), and I wanted to know more about that. I also wanted more on the young boy DJ. But alas the author has passed away, so no more adventures coming on these characters I feel like I met in real life.

📚 Ensemble, c’est tout,Ensemble, c'est tout
by Anna Gavalda
Literary fiction

574 pages
Published in 2004

I read French Leave by Anna Gavalda in 2011. I liked it, but was not super impressed. But something (or someone??) told me to try another book, and I must have found Ensemble, c’est tout at a second-hand book sale – not easy to find these in French around Chicago!

VERDICT: Very enjoyable character-focused novel, with flowing dialogues.

Click on the cover to read my full review.

📚 📚 📚

Here is my full list for this challenge:

  1. Thomas Jefferson’s Crème brûlée: How a Founding father and his slave James Hemings introduced French cuisine to America, by Thomas J. Craughwell 6/12/22
  2. Le Voyage d’Octavio, by Miguel Bonnefoy 5/22/22
  3. A Raisin in the Sun, by Lorraine Hansberry 5/21/22
  4. Stuart Little, by E.B. White 5/18
  5. The First Men in the Moon by H.G. Wells 7/22/22
  6. Eventide, by Kent Haruf 9/10/22
  7. The Daughter of Time, by Josephine Tey 8/21/22
  8. Ensemble, c’est tout, by Anna Gavalda 8/26/22
  9. Wanderlust: A History of Walking, by Rebecca Solnit
  10. Absolutely on Music: Conversations with Seiji Ozawa, by Haruki Murakami (currently reading)
  11. Arvo Pärt: Out of Silence, by Peter C. Bouteneff
  12. A is For Alibi, by Sue Grafton 7/13/22

Alternates:
11. Joie de Vivre: Secrets of Wining, Dining, and Romancing Like the French, by Harriett Welty Rochefort
12. The Discovery of France: A Historical Geography, by Graham Robb

TBR 2022

HOW ARE YOU DOING SO FAR WITH YOUR CHALLENGES?