Sunday 6 September 2015

AUGUST 2015 - READING LIST AND PICK OF THE MONTH

Probably my best reading months of the year so far, plenty read numbers-wise and all of them enjoyed. Nothing below a 4 star read and 4 - achieving the 5 star score!

Pick of the month is difficult, I usually go on which I would choose if I had to read one of them again, but I'd still be hard-pressed to select a favourite, though I wouldn't necessarily be in a hurry to re-visit Valin's The Lime Pit.


Unlucky runner-up again!

Max Allan Collins has been knocking on the door the past month or two with his thief Nolan - Hard Cash was really enjoyable.

Mark SaFranko's The Favor was pretty amazing, as was Mick Herron's Slow Horses - so I'll call it a tie then

Joint pick of the month!

Joint pick of the month!





















Andy Straka - A Witness Above (2001) (4)

Max Allan Collins - Hard Cash (1981) (5)

Spencer Leigh - Best of the Beatles: The Sacking of Pete Best (2015) (4)

Pascal Garnier - Boxes (2015) (4)

Bill Pronzini - Hoodwink (1981) (4)

Carolyn Weston - Poor, Poor Ophelia (1972) (4)

Nick Triplow - The Debt (2013) (4)

Duncan Whitehead - Home For the Weekend (2015) (4)

Jonathan Valin - The Lime Pit (1980) (5)

Mark SaFranko - The Favor (1988) (5)

B. R. Stateham - A Killing Kiss (2015) (4)

Bill Pronzini - Booktaker (1982/2011) (4)

Mick Herron - Slow Horses (2010) (5)

Daniel Pembrey - The Harbour Master III: Ransom (2014) (4)



A bit of useless data..........

14 reads from 14 different authors.

7 of the 14 were new-to-me authors.

4 of the 14 were 5 star reads and 10 were 4's – with nothing below.



13 of the 14 authors read were male. 1 was female. Oops - radical gender imbalance alert!

Cover of the month! Boxes by Pascal Garnier.

7 of the 14 authors hail from the US. 5 from England, 1 from France, 1 undetermined

One book from the 70s, four from the 80s, one from the 2000s and nine from this decade.

14 were fiction - 1 was non-fiction - a book on The Beatles.

6 books were sent to me by the authors (or publicists/publishers on their behalf) – cheers!.

2 were accessed Net Galley review site (both Brash Books),

1 was an Audible book, "bought" from Amazon though it was ZERO cost!

6 were pre-owned/bought!

6 were paperbacks, 1 was a hardback and 6 were Kindle reads.

Total page count - 2146

8 comments:

  1. Good on you for a good month. I like considering your statistic.

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    1. Still running 4 or 5 behind on my reviews. Hopefully more females this month, but then again looking at the pencilled in reads, maybe not!

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  2. Loved Slow Horses. Looking forward to the next one Dead Lions

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    1. Me too! I don't know if you have a Net Galley account, but there's a 3rd due out later in the year or early next from Soho Press - Real Tigers. It was available there a couple of weeks ago.

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  3. Nice month. I hope to get to Dead Lions before the end of 2015... but who knows? and you are going to catch up to me on Pronzini.

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    1. I've got some way to go on the Pronzini front to do that, but hey you never know. I'm hoping to read Dead Lions this month!

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  4. Good numbers, Col! While Net Galley has been generous with its books, I haven't done justice to them. They have some good looking books, I'll say.

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    1. Prashant cheers. I've certainly read a lot more contemporary stuff because of Net Galley than would otherwise have happened, though at the detriment of now ignoring my existing books. I'm still struggling to get the right balance.

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