Christmas

My lemon possett went down well on Boxing Day - everyone loved it,and apparently it was a great accompaniment to berry cheesecake, which was one of the other desserts on offer.

My present to Niece1 was a success too. I gave her a paint your own piggy-bank kit, and she started painting it on December 27th rather than waiting until she got home to London.

Books Read in 2008

I read exactly 100 books in 2008. Oddly enough, I read 100 books in 2007 too.

Top 10 fiction:
Hawkfall - George Mackay Brown
Blind Faith - Ben Elton
Drinking Midnight Wine - Simon R. Green
The Feast of the Goat - Mario Vargas Llosa
Dark Covenant - Peter Luther
Explorers of the New Century - Magnus Mills
Kafka on the Shore - Haruki Murakami
What Was Lost - Catherine O'Flynn
Roman Blood - Steven Saylor
Losing Nelson - Barry Unsworth

Top 3 non-fiction:
The Revenge of Gaia - James Lovelock
Underground: The Tokyo Gas Attack and the Japanese Psyche - Haruki Murakami
The Good Women of China - Xinran

Here is the full list:
1 - "Kafka on the Shore" by Haruki Murakami
2 - "The New York Trilogy" by Paul Auster
3 - "Sourcery" by Terry Pratchett
4 - "The Road to Wellville" by T.C. Boyle
5 - "Chart Throb" by Ben Elton
6 - "The Airs of Earth" by Brian W. Aldiss
7 - "Baal" by Robert M. McCammon
8 - "Little, Big" by John Crowley
9 - "Three Letters from the Andes" by Patrick Leigh Fermor
10 - "Small g - a Summer Idyll" by Patricia Highsmith
11 - "The Courtesan's Revenge" by Frances Wilson
12 - "Uncle Mort's South Country" by Peter Tinniswood
13 - "The Man Who Was Thursday - A Nightmare" by G.K. Chesterton
14 - "Cue the Easter Bunny" by Liz Evans
15 - "Heroes and Villains" by Angela Carter
16 - "Earth" by David Brin
17 - "The Fifth Child" by Doris Lessing
18 - "The Alchemist's Apprentice" by Jeremy Dronfield
19 - "The Black Dahlia" by James Ellroy
20 - "Underground - The Tokyo Gas Attack and the Japanese Psyche" by Haruki Murakami
21 - "After Me, the Deluge" by David Forrest
22-24 - "The Changes Trilogy" by Peter Dickinson
25 - "Collected Ghost Stories" by M.R. James
26 - "JPod" by Douglas Coupland
27 - "Lucifer's Dragon" by Jon Courtnay Grimwood
28 - "The Boats of the Glen Carrig" by WIlliam Hope Hodgson
29 - "After Many a Summer" by Aldous Huxley
30 - "The Playroom" by Gloria Murphy
31 - "The Caves of Steel" by Isaac Asimov
32 - "War Crimes for the Home" by Liz Jensen
33 - "The Road to Mars (A Post-Modem Novel)" by Eric Idle
34 - "Renaissance" by A.E. Van Vogt
35 - "A Metropolitan Murder" by Lee Jackson
36 - "Turtle Diary" by Russell Hoban
37 - "The Naked Sun" by Isaac Asimov
38 - "Death and the Penguin" by Andrey Kurkov
39 - "Black Juice" by Margo Lanagan
40 - "Explorers of the New Century" by Magnus Mills
41 - "The Lost Perception" by Daniel Galouye
42 - "The Reluctant Devil" by Miranda Seymour
43 - "The Northern Lights" by Howard Norman
44 - "A Book of Fairies" by Katharine Briggs
45 - "Don’t Cry for Me Aberystwyth" by Malcolm Pryce
46 - "The Day of Creation" by J.G. Ballard
47 - "The Right Attitude to Rain" by Alexander McCall Smith
48 - "What Was Lost" by Catherine O'Flynn
49 - "The Clay Machine-Gun" by Victor Pelevin
50 - "The Revenge of Gaia" by James Lovelock
51 - "Red Mandarin Dress" by Qiu Xiaolong
52 - "The Interpretation of Murder" by Jed Rubenfeld
53 - "The X-Files - Ground Zero" by Kevin J. Anderson
54 - "The Minotaur Takes a Cigarette Break" by Steven Sherrill
55 - "Sir Phoebus' Ma" by Zoe Teale
56 - "Losing Nelson" by Barry Unsworth
57 - "Borges and the Eternal Orang-Utans" by Luis Fernando Verissimo
58 - "Downs-Lord Dawn" by John Whitbourn
59 - "Blind Faith" by Ben Elton
60 - "The Good Woman of China" by Xinran
61 - "Grave Matters" by Margaret Yorke
62 - "Dark Covenant" by Peter Luther
63 - "The Devil in Amber" by Mark Gatiss
64 - "Leaden Wings" by Zhang Jie
65 - "Making Money" by Terry Pratchett
66 - "The Warlock in Spite of Himself" by Christopher Stasheff
67 - "The Complete Short Stories" by Saki
68 - "Blue Shoes and Happiness" by Alexander McCall Smith
69 - "The Weapon Shops of Isher" by A.E. Van Vogt
70 - "The Weapon Makers" by A.E. Van Vogt
71 - "Ripley Under Ground" by Patricia Highsmith
72 - "The Compleat Traveller in Black" by John Brunner
73 - "A Dead Man in Deptford" by Anthony Burgess
74 - "The Return" by Hakan Nesser
75 - "A Humument - A Treated Victorian Novel" by Tom Phillips
76 - "The Servants" by Michael Marshall Smith
77 - "The Ballad of Peckham Rye" by Muriel Spark
78 - "The Robots of Dawn" by Isaac Asimov
79 - "Don't Mess With Mrs In-Between" by Liz Evans
80 - "The Oxford of English Ghost Stories" ed. Michael Cox & R.A. Gilbert
81 - "First Among Sequels" by Jasper Fforde
82 - "The Feast of The Goat" by Mario Vargas Llosa
83 - "Foucault's Pendulum" by Umberto Eco
84 - "The Cat Who Walks Through Walls" by Robert A. Heinlein
85 - "Shyness - What It Is and What to Do About It" by Philip G. Zimbardo
86 - "The Spy Wore Red" by Aline, Countess of Romanones
87 - "Drinking Midnight Wine" by Simon R. Green
88 - "Roman Blood" by Steven Saylor
89 - "Wrong About Japan" by Peter Carey
90 " Ladies of Letters.com" by Carole Hayman & Lou Wakefield
91 - "The Voynich Manuscript" by Gerry Kennedy & Rob Churchill
DNF - "Gerald's Party" by Robert Coover
92 - "Eighty Million Eyes" by Ed McBain
93 - "On Chesil Beach" by Ian McEwan
94 - "The Scheme for Full Employment" by Magnus Mills
95 - "The Da-Da-De-Da-Da Code" by Robert Rankin
96 - "Gods Behaving Badly" by Marie Phillips
97 - "Once Upon a Time in the North" by Philip Pullman
98 - "Messiah" by Boris Starling
99 - "Hawkfall" by George Mackay Brown
100 - "Montaillou - Cathars and Catholics in a French Village 1294-1324"