A Contest and a Puppy Update

Let me start with the puppy. Remember him? I thought I'd post a few updated pictures in case you were wondering how he's doing. Much bigger, as you can see, but still incredibly cute:


I was inspired by some of you to try to take a picture of him wearing a Santa hat, but he was quick to let me know what he thought of the idea:


And now a contest: like many of you, this past few days I started looking back and thinking about what my favourite reads of the year were. I had a great reading year, so coming up with a list of favourites will actually be hard. I'm thinking of doing a top 20 or something. But even though there were a lot of books I loved, there are 5 in particular that really stand out. They were instant additions to my list of all-time favourites.

So I had an idea (I'm actually borrowing it from Literary Feline - I hope she won't mind!) I'm going to ask you, dear readers, to guess what those five books are. Then I'll draw a name from those who get it right, and the winner will get a book of their choice up to $20. If nobody guesses the five, I'll draw a name from those who guessed four, then three, etc. I suspect that many of you will be able to guess, though. But please do try even if you aren't sure at all. You never know!

Order doesn't matter, even because I don't think I could order them myself. I don't think this list is actually set in stone, and so it's quite possible that some of you will remind me of books that really ought to be included. But for the sake of fairness, I'm writing down the five I have in mind right now and sticking to those. Also, I'm not counting re-reads. And another hint: all five are fiction.

Here's a list of what I read this year. I realize that the fact that I don't use ratings makes this harder, so to make your lives easier I added a * before my favourite reads of each month. That narrows down the possibilities considerably. The giveaway will be open until I post my year's best list, which should be in a little over a week. Good luck!