March 2014......

 Well it has been rather a dark month for my reading, I've had a few great crime novels to dip into, the brilliant new James Smythe, the start of what looks like an amazing new SciFi series in Red Rising, as well as the return of Adolf Hitler in the much anticipated (by me at least) Look Who's Back. I can't say which of these lovely things has been my highlight for the month, although I am thinking that I maybe need to have a lighter month in April. I can tell you now that my reading is likely to be sporadic for the first couple of weeks, sadly real life is going to interfere with my literary one for a short while. But I will do my best to get back on track as soon as I can. Thanks to my contacts and my inability to stop buying books, I have a good supply to entice me back to the the delights of reading once other distractions are out of the way.
Anyway, as a recap for my challenges, a quick count tells me that I have read my way through 30 books this month, which is a respectable figure I think. It puts my grand total for the year so far at 83, so I am well on my way to smashing my target of 200. I am still considering upping this one, but we shall have to see how April and May pan out. My aim to read at least 25 new authors has long been broken despite the number of books I have read this month by authors I was already familiar with. I'm not sure if next year I should aim for reading authors from unusual countries instead as maybe that would be more of a challenge. The only aim that I am not doing too well towards is my SF classics one, I'm afraid I still have a nice little heap of these building up but I will get around to them with any luck over the next couple of months.

During March I have been sent or purchased a mere 72 books, not that many for me I'm afraid. I have read twelve of these this month, the rest of what I have read this month arrived in either January or February, so I am getting there. Now roll on April.....

books aquired in March....

Steppenwolf	Hermann Hesse	The Whitehall Manderin	Edward Wilson
Different Seasons	Stephen King	Chineasy	Shaolan
Just as Well I'm Leaving	Michael Booth	The Accident	Anonymous
The Abominable	Dan Simmons	Vanishing	Gerard Woodward
Pleasure	Gabrielle D'Annunzio	The View on the Way Down	Rebecca Wait
The Slap	Christos Tsiolkas	Nagasaki	Eric Faye
Unholy Night	Seth Grahame Smith	The Dark Box	John Cornwell
Making History	Stephen Fry	The Strange and Beautiful Life of Ava Lavender	Leslye Walton
Precious Bane	Mary Webb	The Walk Home	Rachel Seiffert
The Machine	James Smythe	The Extraordinary Journey of the Fakir Who Got Trapped in an Ikea Wardrobe	Romain Puertolas
The Casual Vacancy	J K Rowling	The Copper Promise	Jen Williams
The Creation of Anne Boleyn	Susan Bordo	The Troop	Nick Cutter
A Darker Shade	John-Henry Holmberg	Don't Look Back	Jennifer Armentrout
The Boy That Never Was	Karren Perry	Little Failure	Gary Sheteyngart
If I Knew You Were Going to be this Beautiful	Judy Chicurel	Strange Bodies	Marcel Theroux
The Beggar and the Hare	Tuomas Kyro	One Step Too Far	Tina Seskis
The Broken	Tamar Cohen	Adventures in the Anthropocene	Gaia Vince
Death on Blackheath	Anne Perry	No Harm Can Come to a Good Man	James Smythe
The Good Children	Roopa Farooki	The First World War in 100 Objects	Peter Doyle
The Wrong Knickers	Bryony Gordon	The Long Shadow	Mark Mills
The Third Tower	Antal Szerb	The Crimson Ribbon	Katherine Clements
Oliver VII	Antal Szerb	Heart Bent Out of Shape	Emylia Hall
The Pendragon Legend	Antal Szerb	Creation	Adam Rutherford
Lying Under the Apple Tree	Alice Munro	Death of the Poet	N Quentin Woolf
Let the Games Begin	Niccolo Ammaniti	The Miniaturist	Jessie Brown
After I'm Gone	Laura Lipman	Ostland	David Thomas
The Holy Fox	Andrew Roberts	The Society of Crossed Keys	Stefan Zweig
Counting Sheep	Philip Walling	Letters from Skye	Jessica Brockmole
The Carriage House	Louisa Hall	Decoded	Mai Jia
Appetite	Philip Kazan	Look Who's Back	Timur Vermes
I am Pilgrim	Terry Hayes	Black Lake	Johanna Lane
Reasons She Goes Into The Woods	Deborah Kay Davies	Son of the Morning	Mark Alder
Night Heron	Adam Brookes	The Awakening of Miss Prim	Natalia Sanmartin Fenollera
Someone Else's Skin	Sarah Hilary	The Poets' Wives	David Park
The Fortune Hunter	Daisy Goodwin	The Suicide Shop	Jean Teule
Kindred	Octavia E Butler	The Road to Middlemarch	Rebecca Mead