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Had a bit of a break just after four o’clock to stretch my legs, rest my eyes and do some chores, but back in the saddle. The current stats:
- Currently reading: Just about to start Death Walks in Eastrepps by Francis Beeding
- Books finished: 3
- Pages read: 106
- Running total of pages read: 399
- Amount of time spent reading: 1 hour 5 minutes
- Running total of time spent reading: 3 hours 35 minutes
- Mini-challenges completed: 0
- Other participants I’ve visited: 1
The book about Angela Carter was fascinating and made me want to revisit her stuff. My next book is a Golden Age police procedural so I’m pleased that the Book God has made me a nice mug of tea
First of all, the stats:
- Currently reading: I haven’t selected my next book yet but it’s likely to be A Card from Angela Carter
- Books finished: 2
- Pages read: 113
- Running total of pages read: 293
- Amount of time spent reading: 45 minutes
- Running total of time spent reading: 2 hours 30 minutes
- Mini-challenges completed: 0
- Other participants I’ve visited: 1
Baskerville not quite what I expected, though come to think of it I’m not actually sure what I did expect but very good all the same. So far my reading has taken me to an English convent in the 1970s and Dartmoor in 1902; where next?
First of all, the stats:
- Currently reading: The Baskerville Legacy by John O’Connell
- Books finished: 1
- Pages read: 103
- Running total of pages read: 180
- Amount of time spent reading: 55 minutes
- Running total of time spent reading: 1 hour 45 minutes
- Mini-challenges completed: 0
- Other participants I’ve visited: 1
The Abbess of Crewe was a re-read and extremely enjoyable. Am well into Baskerville, all very mysterious so far, I like first person narratives like this! Very quiet, all I can hear is birdsong.
First of all, the stats:
- Currently reading: The Abbess of Crewe by Muriel Spark
- Books finished: 0
- Pages read: 77
- Running total of pages read: 77
- Amount of time spent reading: 50 minutes
- Running total of time spent reading: 50 minutes
- Mini-challenges completed: 0
- Other participants I’ve visited: 0
Going well so far, had a very nice lunch of lemon and coriander hummus and oatcakes.
I’m really pleased that I don’t have any commitments to stop me taking part in this month’s 24 Hour Readathon (details are here for those that don’t know about it) which kicks off at lunchtime (for me) on 21 April.
I haven’t participated for a couple of years so I thought it would be interesting to go back and see what I achieved last time:
- I read 4.5 books;
- which involved 1025 pages;
- representing 10 hours 15 minutes reading time and
- raised £150 for charity
This year I am determined to do better and stay up for the whole 24 hours and I have also set up a proper fundraising page for my chosen charity which is Alzheimer’s Research. I’m hoping to double the amount raised to £300. And I’m already working hard on the tbr pile for the challenge.
Going to be fun!
I meant to post about Carl’s Once Upon a Time VI challenge earlier in the week but to be totally honest the delay is because of my dithering over whether to have a book list for the challenge or not. After quite a lot of thinking I’ve decided to revisit an unfinished reading list from the year before last, none of which I have read in the intervening months. So the list is:
- The Dragon Waiting by John M Ford
- Tithe by Holly Black
- The Iron Dragon’s Daughter by Michael Swanwick
- The Boy with the Cuckoo Clock Heart by Mathias Malzieu
- White Apples by Jonathan Carroll
- The Forgotten Beasts of Eld by Patricia A. McKillip
- Songs of Earth and Power by Greg Bear
I’m also going to add a re-read of The Hobbit; as I mentioned here I read the first chapter and intended to stop there but was drawn in once again so am going to have to finish it (and it’s good preparation for the movie later this year).
I’m trying to avoid challenges this year given that I seem so prone to reading slumps and any kind of pressure which implies that I must read this thing at this time plunges me back into paralysis, but this was too much to resist. It is being partly hosted by Harriet Devine, and takes place between 23 and 29th April.
I had already planned to re-read a Muriel as part of my Big Re-Read project so it all fits in quite neatly.
And who knows, I might even get around to finishing this at last.
So, I got into a really deep conversation with my friend Silvery Dude before Christmas about how I might mark my turning 50. This has turned into two distinct projects: Films to Watch Before I’m 51 over on Bride of the Screen God, and now the The Big Re-Read, which is about re-visiting books that have been important to me for whatever reason over the years.
It won’t come as any great surprise that it took a great deal of consideration before I settled on my final what was supposed to be 12 books (one a month until 31 January 2013) and which is now what I’m calling a Baker’s Dozen plus Two. And I’m also starting a month later than intended which also tells you how much pondering I have done, adding books right up until yesterday. Some quite important titles haven’t made the cut for various reasons which I will explain when I get there.
I will write about these books once I’ve re-read them but they won’t be reviews as such, more an explanation of why they are important to me and a little bit of metadata (when I first read it, how many times since and so on). This is meant to be a fun thing, looking back over a reading life, which sounds a bit serious but really, really isn’t intended to be so.
Finally the list (in abasolutely no order whatsoever):
- Nemesis by Agatha Christie
- Katherine by Anya Seton
- The Abbess of Crewe by Muriel Spark
- The Great Gatsby by F Scott Fitzgerald
- Jacob’s Room by Virginia Woolf
- Kristin Lavransdatter by Sigrid Undset
- Salem’s Lot by Stephen King
- The Glass Bead Game by Hermann Hesse
- Lady Oracle by Margaret Atwood
- Life: A User’s Manual by Georges Perec
- Gilles et Jeanne by Michel Tournier
- The Telling of Lies by Timothy Findley
- Goodbye Without Leaving by Laurie Colwin
- Catch 22 by Joseph Heller
- Bride of the Rat God by Barbara Hambly
The honourable non-inclusions are:
- Lord of the Rings – well , I’ve read this so many times and it had a huge impact on me but it is so magnificent that it really needs to stand on its own; and a re-read will happen at sometime I’m sure
- The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark – her masterpiece but already dealt with here
- Family Happiness by Laurie Colwin – covered here
- Duplicate Keys by Jane Smiley – a marvelous thriller/crime novel which I talked about here
- Espedair Street by Iain Banks – Scottish rock novel extraordinaire
You know a new year has started when Carl’s Science Fiction Experience is announced! As carl himself says this isn’t a challenege, more of a window in which we all get to share our experiences of science fiction in books, TV, films and so on.
As always I’m going to try to read as much sci-fi as I can between 1 January and 29 February, but also thought I would do something a little different this year. I asked the Book God, an afficionado of sci-fi since the year dot, to pick two books from his collection that he thought I should read and he came up with the following:
- A Fire Upon the Deep by Vernor Vinge – “a space saga of awesome conception, and a rivetting novel of conflict, love, loss and survival“
- The Demolished Man by Alfred Bester – “in a world in which the police have telepathic powers, how do you get away with murder?”
That looks like a pretty good start to me.
Well, as suspected I am not only behind on posting about progress in reading Wolf Hall, I’m behind on reading as well. I’ve completed Part One and I am about 40 pages away from the end of Part Two. I have no real excuses for this except:
- it’s very absorbing so I feel the need to set aside a decent period of reading time to really get into it, and this weekend was all about Christmas preparations (especially putting up the tree)
- it is not the sort of book that is an easy read when you have a mild bout of insomnia as I did on Friday/Saturday, which is why
- I got distracted by Mister Creecher instead (more of that in another post)
But so far I really like what I am reading. There’s lots of interesting background info on Cromwell himself, a lot of which I didn’t know. Luckily the fact that I studied this period at university meant that I already know who most of the characters were which is always an advantage. So far I am very much liking Cardinal Wolsey, a thing I thought I would never say.
Nothing I’ve read in the novel to date suggests that I will be changing my opinion of Henry VIII though.
A quieter weekend coming up so hopefully will get back on schedule. But so glad I decided to pick this up at last.
Bride of the Book God 