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I set myself a challenge of 160 books this year and sketched out a list of possibles back in January. Typically the list has grown into something that probably needs to be a five year plan but I am pleased to find I have read a good number of the originals.

Like others I really want to get through some of the books that have been sitting on my shelves for several years now but new priorities always arise.

That's the delightful thing about reading... Going on the journey...one thing leads to another and you never know what you will discover next.

I like Leslie's coding idea. So here's mine

BS Book Shelf
KS Kindle Shelf
RA Recent Acquisition
OT Old Timer
WR Work Related
CO Chilling Out
FMM Feed My Mind
IP in Progress
NS Not Started
FF Finally Finished

History

A subject I gave up in school in favour of science and in open rejection of the history teacher and that my husband has spent years trying to relight my enthusiasm for. He finally succeeded or perhaps he just wore me down. Either way history is now my bag too.

This year, inspired by last year's bicentennial crop of books about Waterloo, I am getting to grips with the Napoleonic era.

So first up
The News From Waterloo: The race to tell Britain of Wellington's Victory (BS, FMM, FF. )
Brian Cathcart has created a page turner of the disparate elements of this "race". What a great story.

On the same theme : Wellington's Smallest Victory: The Duke, the Model Maker and the Secret of Waterloo by Peter Hofschröer (BS RA FMM IP)

In an era before TV and radio, and where most of the population were illiterate, people enjoyed finding out about events through re-creations of one sort or another. Thus a model of the battle of Waterloo was commissioned but fell foul of the Duke's displeasure when the model maker uncovered some half truths.

WW1 is another particular interest as i continue to delve into some personal history. My paternal grandfather walked every step of the Great Retreat, collecting a medal for gallantry along the way. Sadly he never lived long enough to tell his story to his son, my dad.

The Great Retreat of 1914: From Mons to the Marne (KS FMM FF )

Silent Night: The Remarkable Christmas Truce of 1914 by Stanley Weintraub (BS FMM FF )

Shepard's War: E. H. Shepard, the Man Who Drew Winnie-the-Pooh (BS RA FMM FF )

One of the great What ifs....
What if EH Shepard, illustrator of Winnie the Pooh had been killed at the Somme?
Here we glimpse the compassionate and courageous family man and artist behind the images we know so well.

Then there is the Georgian period which, largely thanks to Lucy Worsley has had a big makeover and beginning to rival the Tudors in public interest.

The Gorgeous Georgians (BS FMM FF )
you don't have to be a tween or teen to appreciate the Horrible History series.

It was the Georgians who, trying to create a world of form and beauty decided that the best thing to do with those who disgusted them was to send them as far away as possible :
The Floating Brothel: The Extraordinary True Story of an Eighteenth-Century Ship and Its Cargo of Female Convicts (KS FMM FF) .
My daughter suggested I read this book, which she was also reading as part of preparation for a remarkable opera based on the women on this ship... Banished by Stephen McNeff.

Having read the above I find I really want to read this too :
The Fatal Shore: The Epic of Australia's Founding (BS RA IP )

Meanwhile husband has been collecting the Penguin Monarchs series. These seem like a lightweight intro to our kings and queens so so far I have read

Stephen - The Reign of Anarchy (BS FMM FF )
And
Athelstan (Penguin Monarchs): The Making of England ( BS FMM FF)

Biography, Autobiography, Diaries, Memoirs.

Charles and Diana married shortly after my own wedding, William and Harry paralleled my own son's births. Diana's life and tragic death are a subtext to all my generation in Britain. So much publicity, so much anger, so many accusations. I steered clear of much of this news. Time reveals all things. But earlier this year I decided to read just one book.
Diana - A Closely Guarded Secret by Ken Wharfe . (KS FMM FF )
Ken was Diana's personal bodyguard assigned by the Met for many years. His personal grief and anger at what happened to her is palpable. Ken is clear... If he had been there she would have been wearing a seatbelt and would have survived. A lot of other things would have been different too. Nothing can change that terrible day but attempting to blame others for something you are responsible for is not the answer.
The circumstances of her death aside Ken paints a picture of a generous hearted, compassionate and fun loving if impulsive women who greatly enriched the lives of those she met however briefly.

Galileo's Daughter: A Historical Memoir of Science, Faith and Love by Dava Sobel
(BS FMM FF )
From high profile woman to invisible woman.. Galileo's daughter,confined to a nunnery from a young age, was the woman he turned to again and again to confide in and try out some ideas. Or so it seems. Since all his letters to her were deliberately destroyed, perhaps for fear of what the inquisition might uncover, we shall never know for sure but through her letters, lovingly preserved Dava Sobel has been able to retell the story of the great man in part through his daughter's eyes. It seems that she matched him in intelligence and was the person he turned to instinctively when the Pope began to apply pressure to recant.

And here's another invisible woman... One who was literally spirited away :
The Prisoner of St. Kilda: The True Story of the Mysterious Disappearance of Lady Grange (BS FMM FF)
Here was an intelligent, well connected and articulate woman who, on requesting a separation from her husband was secretly spirited away and imprisoned FOR YEARS in the most remote place he could then find... The island of St Kilda. Why? Well whatever Lord Grange, who claimed his wife was dead, and whose burial was reported 3 times, may have said about her... The reason was probably a political one. He was probably afraid of her spilling the beans about his Jacobite connections. Lady Grange never gave up hope of being found and eventually managed to get two letters smuggled out to a powerful friend. However Lord Grange, getting wind of the attempt to rescue her from St Kilda had her moved again and she died still a secret prisoner.

Ended the year with Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? Jeanette Winterson's moving reflection on her life so far.... So much food for thought and wisdom too in this in which Jeanette steps lightly back through some of her toughest experiences describing with a clear eye but never wallowing.

Natural History / Science

Oxygen: The Molecule That Made the World by Nick Lane (KS FF)
Think you know about Oxygen? Think again! We all take oxygen in the air we breathe for granted and few of us realise or appreciate the extraordinary adaptations that life has had to make to be able to co-exist with oxygen at all. A mind boggling journey into the intricacies of life on Earth.

Krakatoa: The Day the World Exploded by Simon Winchester
Another fascinating read.. Thinking about geological time scales puts our human history into perspective. Simon Winchester makes light work of a complex story.

Where Do Camels Belong by Ken Thompson
Why can't I remember a single thing about this book? That is so annoying... I know I found it informative and thought provoking .... But memory.... All gone! Where do camels belong? I think the answer was NOT in Arabia... But no idea why... Wait... Is something coming back? Methinks the author was arguing against the notion that each animal and plant only belongs in a particular place and that therefore any plant or animal deemed to not be a native must inevitably be rooted out... (Perhaps it should be styled : The Dalek approach to ecology..) he gave lots of examples where well intentioned extermination campaigns had backfired for one reason or another.


Meadowland: The Private Life of an English Field by John Lewis-Stempel
Now this is an absolute gem. A book in which almost every single sentence can be savoured and which conjures up images of such joy in nature. Thank God there is a corner somewhere in England where all is still right with the world.

Crime Fiction

Whoa there's been a lot of this this year starting with the books of the series Broadchurch, moving through a revisiting of Cadfael and Poirot to an deepening appreciation of Vish Puri, Inspector Chopra (retired) with his elephant, and Yashim the Eunuch ( please don't let him be dead!)

I also discovered children's author Caroline Lawrence's Roman mysteries, a great series of romps through Roman history c AD 80 through the eyes of 4 children and a couple of dogs.... Now. What does that remind you of? So far this year I have read the first 6 which include the destruction of Pompeii. There is so much packed into these stories yet they are fun fun reads.

However the crime novels that have been most compelling for me this year have been Nicci French's psychological thrillers Blue Monday etc with her impulsive counsellor turned detective, a woman whose life gets turned more and more inside out and upside down as the series progresses.

Children's Books
After meeting author Benji Bennett at the Ideal Homes Christmas show I bought several of his stories and have already shared the first Before You Sleep with a family and looking forward to hearing if it was helpful to them. After losing a son to a brain tumour Benji wanted to create a book that helped parents share the all important bedtime message of love with their child every night no matter what had gone on in the day. This idea grew into a series of beautifully illustrated stories.

Meanwhile Julia Donaldson continues to create the most delightful rhyming books. A retired friend kindly read The Highway Rat to a group of us who were enjoying an overnight sleepover and I was pleased to discover Superworm at a car boot and rescue it from oblivion. I often do feel an urge to rescue a particularly special book.

Poetry
One of the things I love about GR is the way it can bring authors and readers together. When poet Caroline Davies contacted me recently asking me to be a GR friend I thought I should take a look at her poetry. Voices from Stone and Bronze proved to be a very moving tribute to those who served in WW1 but the way in which Caroline approached this seemed quite unique to me using statues created as memorials at the time to speak for those they represented and also imagining the sculpter's voice, having first researched their lives. I would have been highly unlikely to have discovered Caroline or her inspired and moving poetry if it had not been for GR and if I had I certainly would not have found myself writing to her.

Finally :
I set myself a rather ambitious goal of reading 160 books this year and with a bit of help from Audible and the inclusion of several very short children's stories have just managed to make up the number. I am most proud of completing The Brothers Karamazov this year which I surely would have not gone the distance with if not for the encouragement of GR friends.

Jeanette Winterson talks about how reading and writing stories enables one to experience time in a very flexible way travelling with ease to the past and the future and revisiting and re-ordering or evaluating what has gone before. I love this idea. The gift of reading, given to me so many years ago, has in truth enabled me to become a time traveller travelling in the safe hands of the myriads of wonderful authors who have dared to commit their ideas to print.

Yesterday (31st December 2016) I watched the new film about the Bronte sisters. To Walk Invisible. Back in April or May I chanced to be in Haworth in time to visit the set that had been built for this film up on the moors above Haworth and it was extra-ordinary to see this brought to life on the screen. It is one thing to know, on an academic level, that the sisters used their life experiences to create their powerful stories. But somehow to see Charlotte, Emily and Ann on screen wrestling with the daily horrors of Branwell's self destruction and the reality of their precarious existence threw all the novels into a new and powerful light for me. Just the day before I had read in Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? how Mrs Winterson once read Jane Eyre to Jeanette but changed the ending so that Jane marries the would be missionary StJohn Rivers , while maintaining in her story-telling Charlotte's style of writing and turning the pages to the end so that Jeanette had no idea of this deception until years later! Leaving aside the thoughts this throws up the unexpected reference proved to be a serendipitous link reminding me to search for the Bronte film on catch up TV....

I feel that 2016 has been a year in which I have deepened my understanding and appreciation of many authors encouraging me to take a slower and more reflective approach to literature, savouring the words and phrases, not needing to race ahead so much to what happens next. "Further up and deeper in" CS Lewis exhorts us in The Last Battle. There is always more to discover from a great author. Always more.

Great wrap up post Tweedledum!

Thank you Leslie! Wishing you a joyful year of biblicious discoveries.

Tweedledum , great year end thoughts. Thanks for sharing.

Thank you Angela. Wishing you a great reading journey for 2017.

Thanks , Tweedledum ! The very same wishes for you .