What's with today, today?

It's been a good year in reading, even though I haven't been doing so much blogging. As always, this is the list of books I've read all the way through for the first time this year. I don't include rereads, but then again I don't think there have been many... Links to books I've mentioned on the blog, * for my top picks, and a summary post coming later for those of you who don't like reading through lists. There are a lot I haven't mentioned on the blog, but for many of those I've added some short notes. Some themes from the year's reading: War - from WWI ( A Very Long Engagement ) to child soldiers in Nigeria ( Song for Night ) and the experience of everyday life in war-torn Iran ( Persepolis ), war dogged my reading this year. While it was diverse, reading this year (and planning for next year's reading) has really brought home how big the influence of the world wars has been on Western literature. Oh, and I dislike war more than...

Another end of year post as promised! Albeit a little late. I am officially declaring my reading round the world challenge done! Although I did end up cheating a bit... Reviews of earlier books here . Here's what I read (with brief reviews of books I haven't mentioned earlier): Africa :  Song for Night  by Chris Abani (Nigeria). I thought this was cheating, so added The Map of Love by Ahdaf Soueif (Egypt) (also kind of cheating, since it is set in Egypt but written in English). I'm counting The Map of Love  because I felt like I ended up learning a lot about Egypt by the end. The book is split between the turn of the century and the present day (when the book was written in the late 90's), following two parallel love stories which bridge the East/West divide and are linked by family history. It also deals with Egyptian politics and identity, and the relationship between Egypt and the West. The first love story was a bit idealised, but I still found it compelling...

Ah, December. The month of end-of-year lists, wrap ups and frantic Christmas shopping. And of course looking forward to next year. So in the end-of-year spirit I am looking to post several year wrap-ups, including a final post on my reading round the world challenge and my yearly booklist post. But to start off, plans for next year! Which is perhaps a back-to-front way of doing things... This year my blog has been sorely languishing, and while I can't guarantee that I will be more diligent in posting next year, I do have some plans to pep it up a bit. Over the holidays I am hoping to do a bit of a template re-jig, weed out some of my older posts and just generally make things a bit more presentable. So changes ahoy! My other plan for next year is to take part in Simon at Stuck-in-a-Books A Century of Books  challenge.                                    The original challenge calls for ...