In Search of a Title

My final 90 Books for 2008 update!

( Can I count this as a book? )

I should have done the October update, not November.

So here is October!

( Read more... )

Eight books in 2 months. Not good.

By popular request: November's reading

( Cut for length, sort of. OK more for consistency with previous posts. )

Now you can see why I have 17 more books to read this year :(

17 books still to read

36 days left in the year

When we left our intrepid reader, at the end of July, she'd read 62 books and was well ahead of schedule (that being 8.33 books a month, which comes to 58.33 books by the end of July).

So what did August hold??

It got off to a good start with the first book just taking a couple of days to read.

( August )
( September )

So 13 books for the two months period, rather then the 16-17 I should have read, and 75 books to the end of the September.

One more quarter to go and 25 books to read. Not behind schedule, at least, but back sliding is frustrating, especially as I'm sitting there now with nothing I want to read.

(Pause while doing a quick proof read to remember a distant time when I was happy to have read half a dozen books a year. Now when was that? Oh yeah, last year. Now I'm grizzling because I haven't read 16 books in a few weeks? :)

(Followed by a second thought, that if someone handed me a pile of 16 boooks and told me I had two months to read them in, I'd be very tempted to tell them what they could do with their books.)

July was a slow month, although educational.

It started off with one of the usual suspects, although it took me 6 days to read it (grumble).

( Read more... )

June is a particularly important month in this 100 books in a year thing because the end of the month is halfway, so one needs to have read at least 50 books!

I didn't write many reviews this month, so I'll be lazy and just paste the titles & authors.

June was interesting. Firstly because I discovered the advantage of starting early in the month (3 books in the first three day). Secondly, well, have I ever mentioned I haven't read a SF novel in something like 20 years? :)
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April got off to a good start and by the time the middle of the month came around, I'd read... 1 book. Oh noes!

( Possible Spoilers )

In which our hero starts to wonder if this was really such a good idea

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16 Books read by 27th February, so I'm two days behind. Block comments are from Good Reads.

Thieves' World

I picked up (for meanings of "picked up" that mean spending a few hours searching for this on the web, before buying it from a UK bookseller who shipped books from the US) "Thieves’ World: First Blood" which is a recent (2003) reprinting of the first two of the shared world anthologies (from 1979 & 1980). As they were originally published as two different books, I am counting them as two (as per the rules I gave before I started).

Also, I didn't want to read it all at once as it took so long to get here

If Angels Burn: A Novel of the Darkyn, by Lynn Viehl

One thing I'm trying to do with the 100 Books things is read different books to usual.

It was easy to get into, and read.

Obviously, I don't get the whole vampire thing, but something else was bothering me. We have the modern, independent female main character, who gets pushed around/dominated/forced to have sex with big, strong (but very handsome) male main character. And this is considered sexy? Appealing? Fulfills the reader's inner fantasies?

Stalking Darkness, by Lyn Flewelling

Definitely better than the first one.

I think it's better written e.g. it doesn't stop in the middle while the MC spends a chapter riding around the city for no apparent purpose than to show the city to the reader. Also with familiar characters, less time is needed on their set-up & more time can be spent on developing them & their relationships.

The Far Side of the World, by Patrick O'Brian

This is a weird one.

Very slow at the beginning too.

I am David, by Anne Holm

This is one of the kids' books I've got sitting around waiting to be read, one day. It was worth waiting for though.

The Reverse of the Medal, by Patrick O'Brian

My review/comment for this has disappeared. The predominantly land-based Aubrey-Maturin novels aren't usually as interesting as the sea-based ones, but this one is an exception. But the end... It's one thing to finish immediately after the main action, but to finish just before something happens? Gah.

Tales from the Vulgar Unicorn

This is the second part of the Thieves' World book. When I started reading, it didn't grab me. So I skipped the first few stories. Later, I came back to them and found them more interesting. Overall, I preferred it to the first part.

If I want to buy the rest of the series though, I'll have to buy the originals, which apparently means paying $10 for a skinny, well-worn little paperback.

Blaze of Glory (The Laws of Magic-Volume 1), by Michael Pryor

This is very slow read, esp as it's a YA/mid-grade/whatever.

It picks up about halfway through, once things start happening. Still, the writing is loose in places, the characters don't really do much other than run around finding out things and just when it seems Something is going to happen, it turns out the action is over.

Certainly read less interesting books though, and I'll give the next one a try.

So January is over. After being behind in the first fortnight, I read 8 books in the first weeks, and then nothing else for the rest of the month. So I'm 0.5 books behind. Although, I have 5 books I'm partway through so I'm not too worried.

( Books and comments from Good Reads. )

100 books a year means 2 a week (allowing for busy times) or one every 3.5 days.

I seem to read books at the rate of 50-60 pages per hour. I keep going back to check maps or see if X really said Y, which slows it down.

The typical novel that I read is about 500 pages so that's 9 to 10 hours. Two a week means 18-20 hours a week. That's a big chunk of time. Too big?

It's workable in January, when I'm not doing much so I can curl up on the bed every afteroon, but that's not going to last much longer.

Finished:

1. The Curse on the Chosen, Ian Irvine

That should count as two books. It could easily be trimmed by a third and lose nothing, and probably gain a lot; and half again if the problems stuck in that don't seem to do anything but show that the protags are In Danger. Is he paid by the word or something?

2. Treason's Harbour, Patrick O'Brian

And a hold put on the next one.

This year I'm aiming to read 100 books.

RULES
--------
This includes the ones I'm currently reading.
Non-fiction counts if I read the whole book & it's not predominantly pictures.
Multiple books within one volume can be counted individually, if they'd be considered books if published separately.
If the book is in multiple volumes, each volume can be counted individually.
Kid's books can count within reason, because there are some I want to read.

Will have to find somewhere to keep a list