This month I’ve read a lot of books (nine! it’s usually four or five!) and not reviewed many. Is that good or bad? Yay for reading more, I suppose. Then again, a lot of these books were really short, so there’s a chance it adds up to a completely average number of pages read. I can’t decide if I mind that. And I will get to those reviews soon.

Out of interest, I looked at how I’m doing as regards reading widely. There’s a good mix of genres this month – literary fiction, poetry, essays, science fiction and I guess superhero comics are fantasy? There’s a decent range of author nationalities too if you base it on their place of birth – India (actually part of what’s now Bangladesh but when Godden was born it was India), UK, US, Nigeria, Afghanistan – but strictly Godden was British and spent more of her life here. One book is a translation and one is from my Classics Club list, so I’m just about keeping up with my aims there.

My main concern though is that the TBR stands at 146 books. That’s 146 books that I own and have not yet read. The trip to Hay-on-Wye didn’t help, I’ll concede! But I’d really feel happier if that number was under 100, so I think I need to impose a book-buying ban and I need to keep up this reading speed. Less TV, more books; that’s the lesson here. Am I worrying too much? How big is your TBR? Go on, make me feel better/worse and tell me in the comments!

Books read

The Lady and the Unicorn by Rumer Godden (review here)

Very Good Lives by J K Rowling (review here)

Ms Marvel vol 1: No Normal by G Willow Wilson and Adrian Alphona (review here)

Transmetropolitan vol 6: Gouge Away by Warren Ellis, Darick Robertson and Rodney Ramos

We Should All Be Feminists by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (review here)

I Am the Beggar of the World: Landays from Contemporary Afghanistan edited by Eliza Grimwald

The River by Rumer Godden

Slouching Towards Bethlehem: Essays by Joan Didion

The Book That Saved My Life compiled by English PEN

Short stories read

“Alan Bean plus four” by Tom Hanks (New Yorker Oct 27, 2014)