July 2012 Wrap-Up

If you ever hear me whinging about how I don't get all these review copies people are constantly talking about, give me a big slap.  July laid that bogey to rest with the month seeing me get through seven (!) books received from various publishers.  What was even better is that they were all good - making for some very tricky decisions this time around...

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Total Books Read: 12

Year-to-Date: 71

New: 11

Rereads: 1


From the Shelves: 3
Review Copies: 6

From the Library: 2

On the Kindle: 1 (1 Review Copy)

Novels: 7

Novellas: 2

Short Stories: 2
Non-Fiction: 1

Non-English Language: 10 (2 Spanish, 2 Icelandic, 2 Russian, German, French, Japanese, Finnish)

In Original Language: 2 (1 German, 1 French)

Murakami Challenge: 0 (0/3)

Aussie Author Challenge: 0 (5/12)

Australian Women Writers Challenge: 0 (5/10)

Japanese Literature Challenge 6: 1 (3/1) 

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Books read in July were:

1) Petersburg by Andrei Bely

2) Bord de Mer (Beside the Sea) by Véronique Olmi

3) Dublinesque by Enrique Vila-Matas

4) Twice in a Lifetime by Ágúst Borgþór Sverrisson

5) Necropolis by Santiago Gamboa

6) Dubliners by James Joyce (the link is to my 2009 review)

7) Flowers of Grass by Takehiko Fukunaga

8) Faithful Ruslan by Georgi Vladimov

9) The Year of the Hare by Arto Paasilinna

10) The Blue Fox by Sjón

11) The Ghost of Neil Diamond by David Milnes

12) Die Ringe des Saturn (The Rings of Saturn) by W.G. Sebald

Tony's Turkey for July is: nothing

No turkeys for Christmas in July, I'm afraid.  This was a formidable reading month, and while a couple of the dozen were weaker than the others, that had everything to do with the competition and not the quality of the books themselves :)

Tony's Recommendations for July are: Andrei Bely's Petersburg
and Enrique Vila-Matas' Dublinesque

Petersburg was the first book I read in July, and I immediately assumed that the top spot had already been secured. This feeling lasted about two days, that is until I started Dublinesque...  While many of the other books I read in July were fabulous, and may well have taken out the honours in a weaker month (take a bow Flowers of Grass, The Year of the Hare and, especially, The Blue Fox), it was a two-horse race from the start - and regular readers should know by now that we don't like using technology to separate close finishes round these parts ;)

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I still have a few more review copies to read in August, but I am hoping to fit in a few more of my own books this month.  Of course, I may not be able to match July's reading total - I seem to recall that there's some big sporting thing happening that may well take up a bit of my time...