Today is officially the last day of the Nights on the Bookstand Summer Book Bingo and I have failed to complete any more rows or columns. I tried!

For “Revolves around a holiday” I read Us by David Nicholls. For “With a happy ending” I read Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm by Kate Douglas Wiggin, which, as I mentioned yesterday, might not strictly count anyway. For “By any Booktopia author” I’ve started but not finished Quiet by Susan Cain. And I hadn’t even chosen a book for the last square I was aiming to fill, “A presidential biography”. I was thinking of reading one of Barack Obama’s books, but Tim suggested I look outside the USA and I got completely stuck. Also I ran out of time.

Continue reading “Here ends the summer book bingo”

Happy Bank Holiday Monday to those of you having one!

I’m cheerful having spent most of the weekend celebrating 13 years with Tim. Tim gave me a night in a fancy hotel, I gave him a behind-the-scenes tour of Temple Meads train station and the SS Great Britain. I clearly got the better end of that deal (though the tour was a lot of fun too).

I’ve also read some great books this month, my favourite being The Worst Journey in the World by Apsley Cherry-Garrard. What was your favourite recent read?

Continue reading “August reading round-up”

It might not be a full house but I’m pretty pleased that I’ve managed a double bingo in the Books on the Nightstand Summer Book Bingo.

Continue reading “Double bingo!”

Summer has continued to be fruitful for getting through books but less so for finding time to review them. I’ve been distracted by holiday and days out and family. I would normally write a bunch more about my month at this point, but I have a stinking cold and spent eight hours driving today so I’m just going to post a few photos.

Continue reading “July reading round-up”

I’ve got through a lot of books this year, but I haven’t had time to review them all properly. I may have to start looking at doing something a bit different on that front. Seeing as we’re enjoying a proper actual heatwave (by UK standards) I’m not going to promise to stay home more blogging, I’m going to get out there and enjoy it, but I want to keep the blog alive too. I’ll figure something out. Fellow bloggers: do you find it harder to keep up with it all in the summer months?

As this is the year’s halfway point, it’s a good time to take stock as regards my reading aims and challenges. I’ve read 21 books by men, 17 by women and 1 by both. Not too far off even. I’ve read a reasonable mix of genres and ages of books. However, the actual challenges I took on were the Classics Club – for which I have read four books – and more books in translation. I’ve read five books in translation and one about translation, which is reasonable, I think.

But right now I’m not trying too hard to meet challenges or read the right books. I just want to enjoy reading. Which seems a good summery aim to me.

Continue reading “Mid-year reading round-up”

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!

Continue reading “April reading round-up”

It’s been another genuinely good reading month. Oddly enough, my favourite title was one I didn’t review at the time – The Sleeper and the Spindle by Neil Gaiman, illustrated by Chris Riddell – so I thought I would write a little about it now. It’s a beautifully told and even more beautifully illustrated retelling of the Sleeping Beauty story, with some other fairy tales mixed in for good measure and some major deviations from what you might remember/expect. It stars a kickass queen who sets out sword in hand to save the neighbouring land. I really loved Gaiman’s language and the ways he mixes the familiar with brand new ideas but what really made this special was the artwork. It’s all drawn in black and gold, elaborate and, well, gorgeous. I highly recommend you seek it out.

This month my blog turned five years old. Five years already! To celebrate I held a giveaway of five of my favourite books of the last five years. If you’re reading this before midnight on 31 March you can still enter, but do it quickly!

Continue reading “March reading round-up”

I finally feel that I’m in the swing of reading this year. February was a good month. I discovered Bidisha thanks to an English PEN event on refugees, I had a very lovely Valentine’s weekend with Tim in London and I finally got to see Kate Tempest live. I also found plenty of time for reading.

I also started contributing to Redhead Reads, a micro newsletter published daily by Beulah Devaney, a fab feminist writer I first discovered through For Books’ Sake. So that’s pretty exciting.

However, while I went to lots of fun events and read lots of books, I didn’t read any great books. I miss that feeling, the feeling of a great read that pulls you in and won’t let you go. There must be plenty of them on my TBR, I just keep picking out the wrong ones!

Continue reading “February reading round-up”

As I cough and splutter my way through New Year’s Eve, I would like to come up with some pithy, wise things to say about the year that’s ending, but mostly I’m counting down the time until I can take more Sudafed, so apologies if this a bit rambly.

This year I read 71 books. I set myself three challenges, of which I completed two. Honestly, I am fine with that. I read some great books this year. My favourites have been:

The Invention of Wings by Sue Monk Kidd
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot
Sworn Virgin by Elvira Dones
Transmetropolitan, Vol. 5: Lonely City by Warren Ellis and Darick Robertson
An Amorous Discourse in the Suburbs of Hell by Deborah Levy

Looking at that list, I’m pleased with how varied it is. There’s lit fic, popular science, translated fiction, a graphic novel and poetry. Completely unplanned, I swear!

On the non-reading front, I’ve also had some fun new experiences this year. I went to Amsterdam (and instantly fell in love with it), saw Cirque du Soleil live (which was a total surprise planned by Tim – best surprise ever!), successfully grew chillis (in fairness a friend did the difficult first part and gave me the seedling, but I’m still happy I didn’t just kill it) and I knitted stuff (Tim’s mum taught me to knit at the end of 2013 but I didn’t knit any actual things until this year and I’m super proud of myself still every time). Oh, and we finally finished watching Battlestar Galactica, which may not sound like much of an achievement but we bought the box set five and a half years ago, so I’m totally counting it. It’s a great show, I don’t know why we took so long!

Right now, I think it’s time for another cup of tea and one of my new Christmas books (which I’ll post pictures of another time). Happy New Year everyone!