Okay, I’ve been wondering how to go about doing this, and I think I’m going to start off with a month-by-month review, based on notes made in my trusty reading spreadsheet. 

January

Highlights for me were Patricia Briggs’ “Iron Kissed” (urban fantasy), Eileen Wilks’ “Night Season” (urban fantasy) and Catherine Asaro’s “The Ruby Dice” (science fiction).  Now the first probably has had the most air-time (or is that blog-time), but I have much love for the other two as well. 

“Night Season” is the fourth book in Ms Wilks’ Lupi series – yes, werewolves as well, but so not Mercy Thompson.  Instead you have an equally kickass heroine in Lily Yu, a homicide detective, and a very alpha hero in Rule, the werewolf prince with a rather complicated family.

“The Ruby Dice” is the latest in Ms Asaro’s Skolian Empire series, and one that had me holding my breath up to the very end.  A very satisfying read.  If you’re a SF/Romance fan, you have to try this series.

I read 11 books in January, which was around average for me.  This included three Elizabeth Peters’ books (mystery, all standalone), so I was polishing off the rest of her backlist.

February 

Moving on to February, standouts for me were Julie Hyzy’s “State of the Onion” (cosy mystery), Nalini Singh’s “Mine to Possess” (paranormal romance), and Barbara Michaels’ “Stitches in Time” (mystery).

Ms Hyzy’s book was an impulse buy in a bookstore, and one that paid off in spades.  I really really liked – and moaned about the fact that not only was it the first in her White House Chef series, it was also her first cosy mystery.  Sigh.  I did note at that time that she had written a few suspense novels, which I still haven’t tracked down *checks The Book Depository and finds out that “Deadly Interest” is retailing for £20* umm… maybe not.

“Mine to Possess” was Clay and Tally’s story in Ms Singh’s Psy/Changeling series – one of the things I like most about this series is the worldbuilding and how the overall story arc is developing.

I continued reading Barbara Michaels a.k.a Elizabeth Peters backlist and “Stitches in Time” was a very spooky read.  This is loosely-linked to “Ammie, Come Home” and “Shattered Silk” – I think I preferred “Shattered Silk” best out of the three.

10 books read in total during February, but not a fantastic reading month.  I read Maria Snyder’s “Magic Study”, which *whispers* reinforced the fact that her books aren’t for me despite the overwhelmingly positive reviews elsewhere, Alexandra Potter’s “Me and Mr Darcy” my I-know-I-don’t-care-for-chicklit-so-why-do-I actually-buy-them purchase, and “My Big Fat Supernatural Honeymoon” anthology, where I only really liked three or so of the short stories (Kelley Armstrong, Jim Butcher, and PN Elrod’s).

March

And then March – Keishon kicked off the TBR Day challenge and I started with Lois McMaster Bujold’s “Legacy”, which I loved.  This was the first blogland challenge I’ve participated in, mainly because I’m rather lazy and anything requiring me being organised normally ends in dismal failure.  But having viewed my TBR pile with horror at the beginning of the year, I decided anything that would make me read from my TBR pile would be a good thing.  And it was – it not only made me read books I already had, it made me post about them.  I daresay without this challenge, I would have been pretty rubbish at actually writing any reviews.

I also loved Deanna Raybourn’s “Silent in the Grave” (historical mystery), which I finally picked up after reading numerous recs.  This book totally wins my best opening line award for 2008: “To say that I met Nicholas Brisbane over my husband’s dead body is not entirely accurate. Edward, it should be noted, was still twitching upon the floor.”

I read Elizabeth Moon’s fifth and final book in her Vatta’s War series “Victory Conditions” (military SF) and thought it was easily the best in the series.  I also very much liked Jo Beverley’s “A Lady’s Secret” (historical romance) and JD Robb a.k.a Nora Roberts’ “Innocent in Death” (futuristic mystery), both part of long-running series, with the latter probably longer than most.

I read 15 books in total during March, and re-reading the list of books I read makes me smile, so it was a good month.

Much longer than I thought this would be – and nine months left to go!

Here’s what I picked up today:

• “The Mirror Prince” by Violette Malan (fantasy).  The power of cover quotes!  I wouldn’t have given this book a second glance, if the front cover hadn’t had a quote by Charlaine Harris.  So I picked it up, glanced at the back – and hey, a Tanya Huff quote (“… given a complex, high fantasy world a very readable contemporary voice” if you’re interested).  So I actually started reading the first few pages and thought it intriguing enough to toss into my basket.
   
• “The Master of Blacktower” and “Ammie, Come Home” by Barbara Michaels (mystery) – Am starting to build up my collection of Barbara Michaels now.  “Ammie, Come Home” was strongly rec’d by Rosario (if I remember correctly), while ”The Master of Blacktower” has a scarred and tortured hero according to the back cover blurb – so hey, why not.  I’d have bought more, but I’ve a few coming from Amazon, and I’m incredibly bad at remembering what I’ve ordered online.  Oh damn, I’ve just checked and what I really wanted was “Stitches in Time”, which is related to “Shattered Silk” and ”Ammie, Come Home”.  Sigh – next time.
   
• “Driven” by Eve Kenin (fantasy) - After all the uproar about the Shomi line (all publicity being good publicity, or something like?), I was on the lookout for their books.  This one appears to be the most popular among reviewers, and the concept (truck-driving in a post-apocalyptic world?) fascinated me, so am giving it a go.