Thursday, April 09, 2009

4 x 10 Reading Challenge: Update 3

Finished book titles are blue, with those completed since my last post in bold; books in my current reading pile are green. I cheated slightly, and split biography and autobiography into separate categories. I'm not sure yet whether to the abandon the children's historical fiction or serendipity categories from my original list - I will see where the reading muse takes me.

Autobiography

  • Nella Last's War: the Second World War Diaries of Housewife, 49 (ed. Richard Broad)
  • Nella Last's Peace: the Post-War Diaries of Houseife, 49
  • A Vicarage Family: a Biography of Myself (Noel Streatfeild) - a partly fictionalised story of her own childhood as the second of four vicarage children. She was also the most difficult child, and the least happy. Stubborn at home and uncooperative at school, she felt unloved, particularly by her mother. Now I want to read an objective biography of the author to find out how much of the book is accurate, and how much is fiction. I found this for 99 pence in a charity shop, which is just as well as the book met a sad end when I dropped it in the bath.
Biography
  • Flora Thompson: the Story of the Lark Rise Writer (Gillian Lindsay)
Crafts
  • A History of Hand Knitting (Richard Rutt)
  • Sensational Knitted Socks (Charlene Schurch) - the sock knitters Bible. Teaches you to knit socks any size, in any yarn, in dozens of different patterns. If you like knitting socks - or have aspirations to knit them - you need this book!
Education
  • Teach Me To Do It Myself (Maja Pitamic) - reviewed here.
Faith
  • The Shrines of Our Lady in England (Anne Vail) - still reading as this is an easy book to pick up, read a snippet, and put down.
  • My Life With the Saints (James Martin, S.J.) - three chapters in so far.
  • A Pocket Guide to St. Paul (Scott Hahn) - arriving from Amazon any day, thanks to Alicia's review.
Fiction
  • The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society (Mary Ann Shaffer)
  • The Uncommon Reader (Alan Bennett)
Geography and Travel
  • A Street Without a Name: Childhood and Other Misadventures in Bulgaria (Kapka Kassabova) - I picked this up from the new books display in the library because I knew next to nothing about Bulgaria. The author grew up in the capital Sofia during the last years of the Communist regime, before emigrating to New Zealand. In the book she explores both the memories of her childhood and the "new" Bulgaria. The echoes of teenage angst and the author's feelings of rootlessness make for some negativity. I thought at the outset that this was going to bug me, but as I got into the book it was outweighed by her vivid writing and the way she brought her Bulgaria alive.
History
  • The Road to Wigan Pier (George Orwell)
Science and Nature
  • Electric Universe (David Bodanis)
  • A Year in the Country (Alison Uttley) - part of that Little Grey Rabbit / Alison Uttley rabbit trail.
Unfinished Business
Alison Uttley, the Life of a Country Child (Denis Judd) - print too small!
Beatrix Potter At Home in the Lake District (Susan Denyer) - started but didn't get far, so returned it to the library as I needed to free up space on my ticket.

1 comment:

Romany said...

YOU READ IN THE BATH??? For a book lover, that sounds highly dodgy. {g}