This time last year Jo from The Book Jotter came up with a fun way for us to look back at the books we read over the first six months of the year. I was hoping she would bring the meme back again for 2013 – and she has!

The idea of the meme is to choose six categories and within each category list six books or authors that you’ve read so far this year. Here are my six sixes:

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Six books from my Classics Club list:

1. The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner by James Hogg
2. The Small House at Allington by Anthony Trollope
3. Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak
4. Far from the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy
5. The Painted Veil by W. Somerset Maugham
6. The Ladies’ Paradise by Emile Zola

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Six books with King or Queen in the title:

1. The Forgotten Queen by D.L. Bogdan
2. The King’s General by Daphne du Maurier
3. King Hereafter by Dorothy Dunnett
4. Queen’s Gambit by Elizabeth Fremantle
5. The Forbidden Queen by Anne O’Brien
6. The Iron King by Maurice Druon

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Six authors new to me this year:

1. Guy Gavriel Kay
2. Barbara Pym
3. Kate Atkinson
4. E.M. Forster
5. Robert Goolrick
6. Bee Ridgway

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Six books set in six different centuries:

1. The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas (17th)
2. The Poisoned Island by Lloyd Shepherd (19th)
3. The Memory of Lost Senses by Judith Kinghorn (20th)
4. Lady of the English by Elizabeth Chadwick (12th)
5. The Agincourt Bride by Joanna Hickson (15th)
6. She Rises by Kate Worsley (18th)

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Six series I’ve started, continued or finished:

1. Anne Zouroudi’s Greek Detective series (continued)
2. Patrick O’Brian’s Aubrey/Maturin series (started)
3. Anthony Trollope’s Chronicles of Barsetshire (finished)
4. Maurice Druon’s Accursed Kings series (started)
5. Philippa Carr’s Daughters of England series (started)
6. Baroness Orczy’s Scarlet Pimpernel series (continued)

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Six books filled with mystery or suspense:

1. The Moonspinners by Mary Stewart
2. The Chalice by Nancy Bilyeau
3. The White Cottage Mystery by Margery Allingham
4. Like This, For Ever by S.J. Bolton
5. The Scent of Death by Andrew Taylor
6. Aurora Floyd by Mary Elizabeth Braddon

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Those are my choices! How has the first half of 2013 been for you?