Now that the madness of Novellas in November is over, I’m planning to slow things down a little on the blog during December.

The response to #NovNov was amazing – 208 posts in total – but keeping on top of that volume of posts as well as keeping up with my own reviews has meant that it was a much busier month than I anticipated.

So, during December, I plan to read some of the books that I’ve been meaning to get to all year.

Here are a few options:

I’m most keen to read Mayflies by Andrew O’Hagan as I have heard great things and he is coming to HomePlace next March. I started Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doerr last month and stalled after 100 pages or so as there was just too much going on, but I’d liked what I’d read so I’m keen to finish with it. The Willy Vlautin was one of my most anticipated reads of the year but I’ve yet to get to it while Station Eleven is high on the list given how much I loved The Glass Hotel. American Wife has been languishing on my shelves for far too long, and given how much I love a fictionalised account of a real life, I think it will be a winner for me.

I also have a couple of books on my e-reader that are tempting me:

I bought The Performance on the back of Susan’s great review and as an avid Beckett fan I think it will be right up my street. Following all my novella reading, I quite like the idea of sinking into a sprawling family epic, so Crossroads by Jonathan Franzen might just fit the bill. Build Your House Around My Body sounds wonderfully strange and dark, centered on the disappearance of a young woman in Vietnam.

Finally I have a trio of proofs from three amazing writers from Northern Ireland: Jan Carson, Lucy Caldwell and Wendy Erskine, and I doubt any of them will disappoint.

Finally, December wouldn’t be December without reading December Stories by Ian Sansom, the second volume of which has just been published by No Alibis Press.

In other plans, my blog turns 8 this month – 8? I can’t quite believe it – so I’ll be marking that and I’ll also be posting my top reads of the year before the New Year. My Brian Moore Readalong comes to an end this month with the final book The Magician’s Wife.

I’m hoping to read Black Narcissus by Rumer Godden for the Rumer Godden Reading Week hosted by Brona at This Reading Life next week and in January I plan to take part in Nordic FINDS which is being hosted by Annabookbel and I have a couple of books lined up for that.

For someone who started this post by saying she was going to slow down a little, this does seem like a lot but obviously I won’t be reading all of these books – they are just options.  I’m not putting any pressure on myself this month to read a certain number of books or keep up to date with reviews.

Are there any here that I should prioritise, or that you would recommend?

Uncategorized reading plans