November Wrap-Up & P.O.M. Award

I'm enjoying another year of tracking reading progress and statistics for all things bookish on the Block. I will also be contributing to Kerrie's Crime Fiction Pick of the Month. Here's what happened here on the Block in November....
 
Total Books Read: 15 (Up a bit, but still gotta read more if I'm gonna finish those challenges)
Total Pages:  3,496 (also up a bit--but I'm not sure I'm going to make my goal of 40,000)
Average Rating: 3.5 stars
Top Rating: 5 stars 
Percentage by Female Authors: 40%
Percentage by US Authors: 60%
Percentage by non-US/non-British Authors:  0%
Percentage Mystery:  85%
Percentage Fiction: 100%
Percentage written 2000+: 20%
Percentage of Rereads: 7%
Percentage Read for Challenges: 100% {It's easy to have every book count for a challenge when you sign up for as many as I do.}  
Number of Challenges fulfilled so far: 28 (64%)

There are still way too many books that need reading for challenges and the only way I'm going to meet my 40,000 page goal is if I take the month of December off and do nothing but read.  And now for the P.O.M. Award in Mysteries.


As mentioned above, Kerrie had us all set up for another year of Crime Fiction Favorites. What she was looking for is our Top Mystery Read for each month. Of the fifteen books read in November, eleven were mysteries. Here are the mystery-related books read:


Murder in the Hellfire Club by Donald Zochert (2.5 stars) 
In Spite of Thunder by John Dickson Carr (2 stars) 
Murder with a Twist by Tracy Kiely (4 stars) 
The Bobbsey Twins' Search in the Great City by Laura Lee Hope (3 stars) 
The Red Redmaynes by Eden Phillpotts (3 stars) 
Call for the Dead by John le Carré (5 stars) 
Perpetual Check by Conrad Haynes (3 stars) 
Murder at the ABA by Isaac Asimov (2 stars) 
Chef Maurice & a Spot of Truffle by J. A. Lang (4 stars) 
A Question of Identity by June Thomson (3.5 stars) 
The Two Tickets Puzzle by J. J. Connington (3.5 stars)
 
Just looking at the star count, it's no surprise that November's POM Award winner is

Call for the Dead by John le Carré with 5 stars. After a beginning that had me wondering if I wanted to finish the book, le Carré reeled me in with his descriptive story-telling. A "toad"-like man may not have been my ideal spy when I began, but I was completely convinced of his abilities and his reality by the end. The picture of post-war Britain that le Carré paints is brilliantly rendered--I looked up from my book in the final chapters fully expecting to see the fog swirling round me and to hear the river traffic below the bridge. The story itself reads less like a spy-thriller to me than a more traditional mystery. Smiley is following up clues in the best Scotland Yard fashion. I absolutely will be on the look-out for copies of the other Smiley books.