Historical Fiction Reading Challenge: September Statistics

 

Every month I share some of the statistics related to the Historical Fiction Reading Challenge. I try very hard to visit every post which has been linked (time permitting) and I find it interesting to see what are the books that people are reading and reviewing! I often end up adding a couple of books to my never ending TBR list.

September was a very good month. There were 60 reviews linked up for the challenge, shared by 19 participants. There were 51 individual titles reviewed, written by 50 different authors. There were 5 reviewers who reviewed 5 or more books each. Thank you to everyone who shared their links whether it be 13 or just 1.

You may not recall but in May and June this year we had months where there was no book that was reviewed more than once for the challenge! That is NOT the case this month! This is most I have seen for a long time.

There was one book that was reviewed 3 times during the month, which was The Heiress of Northanger Abbey, by challenge favourite Nancy Bilyeau, and it is a sequel of sorts to Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen. This book was reviewed by Helen at She Reads Novels, Laura at Reading Books Again and Laura at Laura's Reviews

In addition, there were 5 other books that were reviewed twice.  They were

Cold Sunset by William Boyd - Third book in the William Dax series, reviewed by Helen at She Reads Novels and Cathy from What Cathy Read Next

The Housekeeper by Rose Tremain - An imagining of Daphne du Maurier's life which was read by Helen at She Reads Novels and Cathy at What Cathy Read Next

The Lost Perfumes of Paris by Australian author Christine Wells - This was read and reviewed by Davida at The Chocolate Lady's Book Review Blog and Laura from Laura's Reviews

The Newer World by Sebastian Barry - Reviewed by Helen at She Reads Novels and Cathy at What Cathy Read Next

The Pirate Queen by Ariel Lawhon - Reviewed by Shelleyrae at Book'd Out and myself

The Witches of Cambridge by Alice Hoffman - review by Laura at Laura's Reviews and by Kim on Goodreads

In addition, there were two different books reviewed by Elizabeth Goudge. Both were reviewed by Barbara at Stray Thoughts reviewed both The Scent of Water and The Bird in the Tree which you can read here and here respectively.

If you enjoy reading Historical Fiction why not join us? You can find all the details here.

I am sharing this with Sunday Salon hosted at Readerbuzz and A Good Book and a Cup of Tea hosted at Hopewell's Library.

Six Degrees: Theory & Practice to Sisters of the Resistance

Welcome to this month's edition of Six Degrees of Separation, which is a monthly meme hosted by Kate from Books Are My Favourite and Best. The idea is to start with a specific book and make a series of links from one book to the next using whatever link you can find and see where you end up after six links. I am also linking this post up with The Sunday Salon, hosted by Deb at Readerbuzz.

This month's starting point is Theory & Practice by Michelle DeKretser, winner of the 2025 Stella Prize.

I have only ever read one book by Michelle DeKretser and that was The Lost Dog which I read back in 2008. 

I could have picked one of many books with the word lost in the title. However, I decided to stick  with the dog theme so my next link is to To Say Nothing of the Dog by Connie Willis. This is a book that I did a buddy read/joint review with Aarti from Booklust many, many years ago and it was a 5/5 read for me. (Part 1 post and then final post)

The most recent book that I did a joint review of was The Island of Missing Trees by Elif Shafak which was with Bree from All the Books I Can Read but I have already used that book a couple of times, which is my limit, and so I am going to go even further back and use another joint review that we did as my next connection. We read and discussed The Dressmaker of Yarrandarah Prison by Meredith Jaffe.  I gave this book a 5/5 rating back when I read it  in 2021 and still think that the cover of this one is stunning! Here is the first part of our conversation and here is the second.

When I checked my spreadsheet where I record all my reads, I noticed that right before I read that book I had another 5/5 read and that was The Warsaw Orphan by Kelly Rimmer. 

Kelly Rimmer has a new book coming out soon which is called The Midnight Estate. I am therefore going to use this as my link to The Tolstoy Estate by Steven Conte which is a book I gave a 5/5 rating to back in 2020.

I saw Steven Conte at the Williamstown Literary Festival back in 2022. In the same post where I talked briefly about that, I mentioned that I was reading Sisters of the Resistance by Christine Wells. This week I won a mug from Christine in a Facebook group I am in!

So there we have it. A couple of joint reviews, some 5/5 reads, and some WWII novels.

Next month, the starting point is 2025 Women’s Prize winner, The Safekeep by Yael Van Der Wouden.

Will you be joining us?

 

Top Ten Tuesday: Authors attending the Rachael Johns Reader Retreat 2025

Welcome to this week's edition of Top Ten Tuesday which is hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl. This week's theme is Authors (or books by authors) Who Live In My State/Country (submitted by Jennifer @ Funk-N-Fiction)

I love it when I am able to focus on Australian authors, and I think I could write a post just on authors who live in Melbourne but I am going to narrow it down a little bit. In a couple of weeks I am heading over to Perth for the weekend to see some family and to attend the 3rd Rachael Johns Reader Retreat. There will be about 100 readers and 20 featured authors attending and I am looking forward to it! 

Today, I am sharing ten authors who are attending the retreat! A lot of these authors live in Perth so it is good for them not to have to travel to the retreat this year. I have met some of the other authors at previous retreats so I am going to start with the ones I have not yet met.

I posted about the previous retreats. This is the post for 2024 and this is the one for 2023.

Some of these might be a bit hard to track down for anyone living outside Australia, but I hope that this list is still of interest

Barbara Hannay - I have read Barbara Hannay before when she was part of the quartet of writers who wrote the Outback Brides of Wirralong (reviewed here) and the Outback Babies series. She has quite an extensive backlist!

Kylie Kaden - I am not familiar with this author's books so it will be interesting to learn more about her!

Alexandra Almond - A debut author who comes from Melbourne!

Nadia Mahjouri - I have heard such good things about this author's debut novel.

Deb Jordan - The third of the debut authors who will be attending the retreat

Nicole Flockton - I am not really that familiar with this author although she has written a lot and is a USA Today best selling author! I had to pick this title as soon as I saw it although this particular book doesn't come out until June!

Christine Wells - I have been meaning to read Christine Wells for the longest time as I should love her books! I did start this one once but didn't get very far before I got distracted!

Sara Foster - Technically I did meet Sara Foster years ago, but it was a very, very long time ago!

Natasha Lester - I actually did meet Natasha Lester a couple of weeks ago, but her book The Madamoiselle Alliance is one of the book club books we will be discussing over the weekend.

Stella Quinn - This is the other book club book that we will be discussing over the weekend. Stella was at the inaugural retreat a couple of years ago.

There are lots of other authors going that I have met before! I will most likely post something about the retreat once I get back!

This week..

I have missed a few weeks because i am super busy and I am not really reading or watching anything in particular! I've only finished one book in six weeks!

I'm reading...

I did read A Wedding in Tuscany by Sandy Barker, which I reviewed on Saturday, and I have started reading Sisters of the Resistance by Christine Wells in anticipation of book club next week. The theme for this month is family, so that is the family relationship that I have chosen.

Sisters of the Resistance is set in Paris during and just after WWII, so not only does it fit my bookclub theme, it is also a perfect read for the upcoming Paris in July event! I am so excited that it is back for this year, co-hosted by Tamara at Thyme for Tea and Deb from Readerbuzz! 

I'm watching...

The other day I wass channel flicking and I happened to see Notting Hill was on, which is probably one of my favourite movies of all time. It was followed by Wimbledon so that was a very pleasant Saturday afternoon.

That same day we went to see Top Gun: Maverick for date night. I am not the biggest Tom Cruise fan but I did enjoy this movie, both from a nostalgic point of view and for the modern story.

We have also started watching Obi Wan Kenobi as my husband is a bit Star Wars fan. We also started watching Miss Marvel because we like all things Marvel. We will continue with that in due course I think.

Finally, we were supposed to be going out on Saturday night but we ended up staying home. We wanted somethig

Life

I did spend a little bit of time at the Williamstown Literary Festival yesterday. I got to listen to Steven Conte (author of one of my favourite reads from last year, The Tolstoy Estate) and Jock Serong talk Epic Fiction. The other session I went to was called Vivd Fiction and featured authors Suzanne McCourt and Caroline Petit.

Other than that, I don't think I need to say much other than this....

Well, maybe I do need say more. This means that we are constantly cleaning, saying do you know where this or that is, moving stuff into the garage, cleaning some more. You get the picture.

Posts from the last week

Weekend Cooking: Millefoglie from A Wedding in Tuscany

Historical Fiction Reading Challenge: May stats

I've linked this post to It's Monday, what are you reading? as hosted by Book Date

Top Ten Tuesday: Most reviewed books in the 2021 Historical Fiction Reading Challenge

 

Welcome to this week's edition of Top Ten Tuesday which is hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl. This week is a free choice so I have decided to share the Top Ten Books That Were Reviewed for the 2021 Historical Fiction Reading Challenge!! I should add a disclaimer to say that I have only done the statistics up to the end of October, so there is still time for the final top ten to be shaped!

As at the end of October we had 570 different titles, 653 different reviews which featured 458 reviews. I will be sharing more statistics once we get to the end of the year.

In the mean time, here are the Top Ten titles reviewed as part  of the challenge so  far:

Band of Sisters by Lauren Willig

The Rose Code by Kate Quinn

The Four Winds by Kristin Hannah

Isabelle and Alexander by Rebecca Anderson

Sisters of the Resistance by Christine Wells

The Children's Blizzard by Melanie Benjamin

The Henna Artist by Alka Joshi

The Merchant and the Rogue by Sarah M Eden

The Paris Library by Janet Skeslien Charles

The Shape of Darkness by Laura Purcell

If you love historical fiction and love reading challenges, why not join us for the 2022 Historical Fiction Reading Challenge! The sign up post is here.

Have you read any of these books?  What was your favourite historical fiction read this year?