Bookworm 2012 - Selfish Christmas present!

Anyone who reads this blog regularly will know my deep obsession with books. It has been that way my entire life but storage in a tiny London flat has caused me to reassess. Having worked for many moons in publishing, I SWORE I would never ever get an e-reader. How horrid not have the feel and smell of a book, you couldn't have an e-reader in the bath or on the beach with you, where was the emotional attachment to a Kindle? On the flip side, on any holiday I went on, at least 50% of my luggage allowance was spent on books and what with a two and half week American road trip coming up next year..I began to ponder. I recently got a mini pay rise (YEAH!) and thought I deserved a treat. Whilst I desperately wanted Charlotte Olympia Kitty flats at over £400 they were still over my budget so I put my tiny velvet thinking cap on for an alternative. Realising we had run out of shelf space in the flat, taking into account the mountains of books I still have at my parents' house in the Shire and mulling over the amount of excess baggage I'd have to take to keep in books for my forthcoming roadtrip - I decided on the Kindle Paperwhite.

I had done a few test runs with friends' Kindles but the beauty of the Paperwhite is that, whilst the screen is always matte (like a page in a book), you can alter the brightness. This is perfect for sharing a bed with someone who doesn't read late into the night, long haul flights..anything! I'm on day three of it now and I LOVE IT. It won't stop me buying beautiful books (hello signed Grace Coddington memoir) but it is perfect for travelling and gets me instant access to all the classics for pennies as many are out of copyright and hence free to download digitally! It also means I can do a clear-out of books that need to go to the charity shop, a very painful process described extremely well by Liberty London Girl here.

For the past few years, I have kept a log of all the books I've read and films I've seen, month by month. I scrawl it into the back of my red Moleskin diary and it is a lovely record to have and to look at..especially when people ask you for recommendations! I share mine with you now. You'll be able to see when I get obsessed with an author (the Inspector Grant series by Josephine Tey springs to mind), probably work out when I was away on holiday and when I'm in need of a little bit of comfort reading..or want to stretch myself!

JANUARY

• Major Pettigrew's Last Stand, Helen Simonson

• The Best of Everything, Rona Jaffe

• A Visit From The Goon Squad, Jennifer Egan

• Crippen, John Boyne

• Greenery Street, Denis Makail

FEBRUARY

• Slammerkin, Emma Donoghue

• Kavalier and Klay, Michael Chabon

MARCH

• still reading Kavalier and Klay

APRIL

• finish Kavalier and Klay!!

• The Paris Wife, Paula McLain

• Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, Jonathan Safran Foer

MAY

• The Enchanted April, Elizabeth Von Arnim

• The Kingdom of the Golden Dragon, Isabel Allende

• Cloud Atlas, David Mitchell

JUNE

• The Sealed Letter, Emma Donoghue

• The Leopard, Giuseppe di Lampedusa

JULY

• Decline and Fall ( re-read), Evelyn Waugh

• The Daughter of Time, Josephine Tey

AUGUST

• The Singing Sands, Josephine Tey

• Curtain: Poirot's Last Case, Agatha Christie

• When We Were Orphans, Kazuo Ishiguro

SEPTEMBER

• The Man in the Queue, Josephine Tey

• The Many Lives and Secret Sorrows of Josephine B, Sandra Gulland

• Tigers in Red Weather, Liza Klaussmann

• A Shilling for Candles, Josephine Tey

• The Song of Achilles, Madeline Miller

• Nights at the Circus, Angela Carter

OCTOBER

• The Friday Night Knitting Club, Kate Jacobs

• The Lost Art of Keeping Secrets, Eva Rice

• Come Tell Me How You Live, Agatha Christie

NOVEMBER

• Carrie, Stephen King

• Brother of the More Famous Jack, Barbara Trapido

• Animal Farm, George Orwell (re-read)

• Star of the Sea, Joseph O'Conner

DECEMBER - So far..I also have my Grace Coddington memoir by my bed which I keep dipping into!

• Beautiful Creatures, Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl

• Beautiful Darkness, Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl

• and starting Bring Up the Bodies, Hilary Mantel