I met up with my book group tonight for our end of year book exchange and discussion. I hadn’t been able to go to book group the last couple of months because of my artsy class and conflicts in schedule so it was really nice to join in again on the discussion.

This month we discussed The Janus Stone by Elly Griffiths which seemed to be a crowd pleaser even if the mystery may not have been as complex as we would like. I read this book last year so my memory of it was not the best but I’ve been following this series because I just really like the characters. They seem real. I’m hoping we’ll have a new book in the Ruth Galloway series next year.

Next up we are reading Don’t Ever Get Old by Daniel Friedman and in February it is I Will Have Vengeance by Maurizio de Giovanni (a World Noir book – yay).

We didn’t get a chance to vote on books for March but that’s good for me as maybe I can think a bit more on books to nominate. Anyway, a very fun evening.

What else is going on this week? I have been seeing a lot of posts lately on reading challenges and yes, I’m going to be joining a few. I’ll try to do a post on that soon. What about you, which reading challenges are you joining?

I love joining in on this meme hosted by The Broke and the Bookish but usually I just don’t plan ahead. As this one is about year favorites and I’ve sort of started thinking about those I thought I couldn’t pass it up.

This week is write about the Top Ten New-to-Me authors I read in 2013. Some of these authors you may see on my year end list, and some may not make it, but nevertheless these are authors I’m glad I discovered this year. I look forward to visiting with them again as I follow their sequels, go back to their debut books or see what their sophomore books will bring.

• Jonathan Evison – Who made me laugh and tear up with The Revised Fundamentals of Caregiving.
• Rebecca Cantrell – Who transported me to 1930s Berlin with her mystery A Trace of Smoke.
• Peter May – Who’s atmospheric detective novel The Black House is another series to follow.
• Lynne Raimondo – Who developed an interesting protagonist in her debut novel Dante’s Wood.
• Jean-Claude Izzo – Whose novel Total Chaos is a perfect example of noir fiction.
• Simon Beckett – Who also introduced me to a forensic anthropologist in The Chemistry of Death.
• Rachel Abbott – Who captured a small village caught up in a tangled web of lies so well in The Back Road.
• Susan Nussbaum – Who wrote the excellent novel Good Kings Bad Kings.
• Susan Elia Macneal – Who introduced me to the wonderful Maggie Hope in Mr. Churchill’s Secretary.
• Adam Langer – Who wrote The Salinger Contract a novel about literary crimes and misdemeanors.

Who are some of your top ten? Isn’t it exciting to think about the year end lists of favorites? I’ll have mine but it’ll be much closer to the end of the year. A great book could just be waiting for me right now!