Chris Cleave

Every year for oh about the past five years (I think this year is five anyway). I've done the same end of year meme at some point in December. More towards the end of December than it is now but not necessarily right at the end.

One of the questions on it is about your favourite book of the year. I pretty much always end up listing two or three and being unable to decide.

I absolutely love to read and just finished my 91st book of the year this evening. Hopefully I should finally manage to reach my 100 book goal this year after trying and failing for the previous two (72 in 2008 and 93 in 2007 I believe, I need to move all three lists to this blog). So narrowing it down to just one "best book" of the year is all but impossible for me most of the time.

I've not thought about that meme really yet for this year. But I can tell you about my answer to the favourite book questions. Both of Chris Cleave's books.

I read The Other Hand (which I've just seen was published in some countries under the title "Little Bee") back in the summer. It really blew me away. My mum and my sister both read it as well. Can't remember what Sophie said about it but she did like it a lot I think. My mum read it much more recently and I know that she too had that "this book is amazing" reaction that I did. Astounding, really clever.

When I met up with an old friend from uni the other week books were on buy one, get one half price in Borders in Birmingham. We split the two books and the cost. She picked up The Other Hand (I was like "you have to read that!!") and I got Incendiary.

I finished Incendiary this evening. That's quite a different book. Different in comparison to The Other Hand and also different in terms of different to a lot of the other stuff I read. Heavy subject matter but subtly infused with humour that at times made me smile and laugh. I read the last page and it really left me thinking "wow". It's also a book where you finish it and realise you never knew the main characters name or that of her "chaps" (husband and son). Both books left me wanting to know more and to know what happened next but I think Incendiary did that the most. Of course I did just finish that so it might be why.