Olga Godim came up with this creative way of summing up her reading year and challenged everyone to do their own.  Well, while I'm back here ... I'm in!

Olga writes: "Creatively, I decided to interview myself about my reading in 2015. The answers could only be book titles I read during the year. In the year 2015, what was your..."

Most Memorable Encounter

The Hobbit (J.R.R. Tolkien)

An old and treasured acquaintance, who still easily managed to outshine any and every other bookish encounter of the year.  Thanks again to Troy for making me seek him out again!

Best Vacation Spot

The Luminaries (Eleanor Catton)

New Zealand!

Most Exciting Adventure

Tie: The Secret Life of Winnie Cox and The Small Fortune of Dorothea Q (both by Sharon Maas)

Favorite Place

Shire (Ali Smith)

Least Favorite Place

Cloud Howe (Lewis Grassic Gibbon)

Worst Person You Met

Tie: Joseph Fouché (Stefan Zweig -- biography) and The Sticklepath Strangler (Michael Jecks, Knights Templar series)

Most Embarrassing Memory

Fifty Sheds of Grey  (C.T. Grey)

Worst Weather of the Year

Tie between the two extremes: Burmese Days (George Orwell) and Grey Granite (Lewis Grassic Gibbon)

Scariest Event

The Skeleton Road  (Val McDermid)

Funniest Moment

Hogfather (Terry Pratchett, Discworld)

Saddest Moment

Tie: Post Mortem  (Kate London) and The Gods of Guilt (Michael Connelly, The Lincoln Lawyer series)

Worst Food You Ate

The Five Orange Pips (Arthur Conan Doyle, Sherlock Holmes)

Best Food You Ate

The Christmas Pudding (Agatha Christie, Hercule Poirot)

... and a few additions of my own:

The Understatement of the Year

A Place of Greater Safety (Hilary Mantel)

The French Revolution, from Robespierre's, Danton's and Desmoulins's point of view.

Most Precious Acquisition

The Blue Carbuncle (Arthur Conan Doyle, Sherlock Holmes)

Favorite Garment

The Chinese Shawl (Patricia Wentworth, Miss Silver series)

No fancy graphics and no astounding numbers – in fact, rather average numbers for me, these days – but anyway, here we go:

Total Number of Books Read:

68

– including rereads
– but excluding my current read, Susanna Clarke's Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norell (which is bound to take me all the way to the end of the year).

Rereads:

21

                         Including my annual Christmas revisitings:

                         Charles Dickens: A Christmas Carol

                         Dorothy L. Sayers: The Nine Tailors

                         Arthur Conan Doyle: The Blue Carbuncle

                         Agatha Christie: Hercule Poirot's Christmas

                                                 The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding

The Year's Top Reads

                    Sharon Maas: The Small Fortune of Dorothea Q.

                                         The Secret Life of Winnie Cox

                     J.R.R. Tolkien: The Hobbit (reread)

                     Val McDermid: The Skeleton Road

                     Hilary Mantel: A Place of Greater Safety

                     Stefan Zweig: Joseph Fouché

                     Andrew Nicoll: The Secret Life and Curious Death of Miss Jean Milne

                     Anaïs Nin: Henry and June

                     Michael Connelly: The Gods of Guilt

                     David Baldacci (ed.), Various Authors: Face-Off

                     Anthony Horowitz: Moriarty

                     Terry Pratchett: Hogfather (begun Dec. 2014)

Breakdown of Ratings:

  10

   10

   18

   23

   6

   1

Average Rating

Including Christmas rereads: 3,94

Excluding Christmas rereads: 3,87

Books Shelved as Favorites:

25 

Of these, new reads: 14

Rereads: 11 – including 5 Christmas rereads

Breakdown of Shelves:

(Note: Virtually all of my books are shelved in multiple ways)

Nobel Prize Winners: 1

1001 Books: 6

Classics: 46

Short Fiction: 37

Theatre: 3

Poetry: 2

Mysteries and Crime Fiction: 44

– American: 3

– British: 41

Fantasy: 2

Romance: 4

20th Century & Contemporary BritLlit: 16

20th Century & Contemporary America: 1

Canada & Canadian Literature: 1

Germany & German Literature: 1

France & French Literature: 5

Italy & Italian Literature: 1

Scotland: 6

Eastern Europe: 1

Russia: 2

California & Southwestern USA: 1

Down Under (= Oz & NZ): 1

Orient & Asia: 2

– India & Indian Subcontinent: 1

– Southeast Asia: 1

Africa: 1

Historical Fiction: 8

Key Historic / Period Elements or Setting (in contemporaneous fiction): 5

Nonfiction: 7

– History: 4

– Politics: 1

– Memoirs - Biographies - Letters - Diaries: 4

– Essays - Addresses - Lectures: 3

– Art & Architecture: 3

– Travel: 1

– Reference: 1

Humor - Comedy - Satire: 6

Children's & YA Literature: 1

Cats: 1

Anthologies: 1

So, not one of my most diverse and international reading years, it would appear – lots of classics, lots of mysteries and crime fiction, and predominantly British literature.  But on the plus side, in their vast majority good or even great reads, which ultimately is what's most important!

I am slowly learning about the importance of choosing the right circumstances under which to read a book. This one I read while traveling with family, and I found its brand of lively melodrama perfect for semi-distracted, oft-interrupted reading. Judging from Of Marriageable Age, which I read years ago, had this book received my full attention, it likely would have irritated me; as is, I enjoyed it. That said, it is quite similar to Of Marriageable Age, and if you loved that one to pieces you should go ahead and read this.

The Small Fortune of Dorothea Q follows three generations of Guyanese women: there’s Dorothea, a tough and outspoken crusader; her daughter Rika, a sensitive and socially awkward artist; and Rika’s daughter Inky, a modern teen who grows up in London. The story begins when the elderly Dorothea comes to live with Rika and Inky, opening old wounds and bearing a precious antique stamp. While it begins with Inky’s first-person narrative, the bulk of the novel uses the third person to trace Dorothea’s and Rika’s pasts in Guyana.

The novel is entertaining and well-paced, though predictable and cliché. It has all the elements you’d expect from a good soap: love triangles, secret parentage, accidents followed by tearful epiphanies at hospital bedsides, amnesia, characters presumed dead only to reappear, Big Misunderstandings that could be cleared up in under 5 seconds if the characters actually spoke to each other, important letters that aren’t read… you get the idea. That said, this novel is an above-average version of that; Maas develops the story well, and Dorothea and Rika are well-drawn and sympathetic characters. (I can’t say the same for Inky, who is a stereotypically self-centered modern teen without any interesting qualities. Inky’s interpretation of the ending also seemed to me dead wrong. 

Perhaps it was Maas’s intent that Inky doesn’t understand people nearly as well as she thinks she does; it’s hard to tell.) The setting is also interesting and we learn a bit about Guyanese history and culture.

This isn’t great literature, but it is an entertaining family saga. It would make great airplane, beach, or doctor’s office reading. Don’t assume from the page count that it will last, though; it goes by quickly.

The Reader who Lives a Thousand Lives recently created this tag in celebration of a friend's wedding and invited all those who want to join in.  Alright, I'll play:

The Wedding Dress:

A book that was either simple and elegant
or breathtakingly over the top.

Harriet Scott Chessman: Lydia Cassatt Reading the Morning Paper

"Simple and elegant" is actually a pretty good description for this lovely novella about the relationship between impressionist painter Mary Cassatt and her sister Lydia, set in late 19th century Paris; told from Lydia's point of view and based on five beautiful portraits of Lydia painted by Mary, images of all of which are included in the book.

The Wedding Cake:

A book that was so scrumptious you just ate it up.

Sharon Maas: The Small Fortune of Dorothea Q.

Set partly in Guayana and partly in London, a beautifully written multi-generational tale of love, forgiveness, and three women coming of age and fighting to define their place in life.  Oh, and a valuable stamp.

My review.

The Wedding Party:

A book with amazing characters that you fell in love with.

Hilary Mantel: Wolf Hall

Damn that woman -- Ms. Mantel -- for turning one of those people whom I'd always happily pigeonholed as one of history's great villains into one of my new favorite characters.  The whole vast canvas of Tudor London and the Tudor court really comes alive in her writing, but Cromwell himself is the unquestionable standout. 

Love sequel, Bring up the Bodies, as well ... and I can see the as-yet unpublished third book of the trilogy, The Mirror and the Light, as a hot contender for the First Dance category even now.

The Wedding Reception:

A book that left you with a major hangover.

C.J. Sansom: Lamentation

That ending!! How dare you leave me hanging in the air like that over the fate of my favorite character, Mr. Sansom?

Runner-up:

Tana French: In the Woods

All those books about other Dublin Murder Squad detectives are fine and good, but c'mon, Ms. French --

?

The First Dance:

A book that was so beautiful you cried.

Louis de Bernières: Birds Without Wings

Major lump-in-throat time.  Two friends, one Greek and one Turkish, coming of age in a mixed-ethnic village in early 20th century Turkey, and ripped apart by the world events that are sweeping through their village and tearing it to shreds.  Not an easy book, but absolutely gorgeous writing.

Also a hot contender for the Best Man category.

The Maid of Honor or The Best Man:

A book with two amazing friends.

Arthur Conan Doyle: Sherlock Holmes (complete canon).

The iconic literary friendship to end all literary friendships.

The Bride and Groom:

A couple that you can't get enough of.

Elizabeth Bennet and Fitzwilliam Darcy forever.

Runners-up:

Harriet Vane and Lord Peter Wimsey

When Sharon Maas first made it known to her then-agent and then-editor that she was thinking about writing a book set in her native Guyana, she met with blank incomprehension and utter rejection: "Guyana? Whyever would anyone write about that little backwater country; a place nobody knows anything about and which probably at least half her projected readership wouldn't even be able to correctly point out on a map? No no no," she was told, "stick with what is safe and what people know. And if you want to write a book set in an exotic location, write something set in India. You know India, right? You've lived there – so you can just as credibly write about that. And there are plenty of people out there who do want to read books set in India. It's even a sort of literary trend these days. You'll fit right in."

Sharon's response, after actually having published three books in which Indian settings played a crucial role, was to refuse to work with anybody who was not open to her own ideas about the construction and settings of her books; even if that meant not having any literary agent at all, nor a publisher, for the foreseeable future. The one thing she did not do, however, was stop writing. And looking for a new publisher, who would accept her without any preconceived notions about which niche to fit her in. Over a decade after the publication of her third novel, The Speech of Angels, she finally struck gold – so now here it is, the book (or first of several books, hopefully) that might never have gone to print if its author had not finally found a publisher willing to take her on solely on the strength of her writing, and accept the chosen setting as an asset rather than a burden.

Read the full review on my own website (ThemisAthena.info) or on Leafmarks.