13 Books in 2013 Reading challenge

When Rach posted a reading challenge at the start of the year (here is the link to her blog, with links to everyone who participated) I jumped straight on board. The idea was to read 13 books of the non-small-person-variety and share the reviews of them on our blogs.
I started well with my first book read and reviewed early in January.

After that I fell of the bandwagon. I read a lot, and reviewed a lot in my head, and even joined the Goodreads website but didn't get around to writing anything. I haven't kept a list of everything I read during the year but here are the highlights - the ones I enjoyed and would recommend searching out. I might still do some reviews of the best ones.

1. The Casual Vacancy - JK Rowling
2. The Complete Mary Poppins - PL Travers (6 books in one)
3. Instructions for a Heatwave - Maggie O'Farrell
4. Patron Saint of Eels - Gregory Day
5. The Railway Man's Wife - Ashley Hay
6. The Rosie Project - Graeme Simsion
7. Gone Girl - Gillian Flynn
8. The Signature of All Things - Elizabeth Gilbert
9. Virgin Earth - Phillipa Gregory
10. Gone Tomorrow - Lee Child
11. The Story of Before - Susan Stairs
12. One Little White Lie - Loretta Hill

The not so great ones, but I read then to the end:
1. The Rose of Sebastopol - Katherine McMahon (disappointing because I had read the Alchemists Daughter by the same author and really enjoyed it. This one was just long winded and I didn't care what happened to the characters. Should have been a short story then it would have been okay).
2. Jilted - Rachel Johns (Rural romance, it was okay for the genre but felt clumsy and it bugged me for a week after I finished because I couldn't work out what was wrong with it. I finally decided that the author had a story in her characters but she told the wrong one).
3. The Goddess Test - Aimee Carters (Harlequin romance for teens. It was not a bad read but the way the teen female lead willingly gave up her entire life for a strange guy she just met...irked me. Left me disappointed)
4. The Age of Miracles - Karen Thompson Walker (Another teen book about what happens when the Earth suddenly slows down. Started out promisingly but dragged and didn't really have an ending).
5. Second Sight - Meg Henderson (Too many characters, too many pages, bored).

So there we go - 17 that I can remember, 12 of them really good that I would happily re-read. There are certainly a few authors I will seek out to try out some more of their work, particularly Gillian Flynn.

Thanks for the Challenge Rachel. I look forward to another this year.