Sunday Summary – 10 September 2017

Good afternoon!! Here’s wishing you a great weekend here from our not-so-sunny little Island today.
Without any further preamble, here is how I have been getting on so far this week:-

Books I Have Read


I haven’t gotten as far as I would have liked on the reading front this week. I finished Men at Arms by Terry Pratchett on Tuesday night, which I thoroughly enjoyed. This was the first book on my TBR for September. I then started American Gods by Neil Gaiman on Wednesday. In order for me to keep on track with my reading goal I need to finish a book, on average, every six days. Today is day five of reading American Gods and so far I’m only at 57%.
When I started this book I was advised that it is the kind of book you probably need to read again to be able to understand/appreciate it a bit more. If anyone ever tries to tell you this book isn’t peculiar and easy to follow.. they are lying to you. It’s perfectly readable, don’t get me wrong. I personally find it’s one of those books where you read a bit, then make yourself a cup of tea. Read a bit, sort out some washing. Read a bit more. You get the picture. I need to take breaks to digest what is going on in order to continue, and that’s taking time. I’m actually a couple of books ahead of schedule at the moment so no need to panic about taking a bit more time, but it’s a little frustrating.
Up until the beginning of this month I was under the impression I was about four books ahead of schedule – it was only when I was going through the books I have read this year I found GoodReads had chucked in a couple of duplicates for good measure. Oops. Better to find out now than on the 31st December I suppose!!
 

Discovered Books


I was reasonably well behaved again this week and only bought one book, on offer for £1.99! I subscribe to daily emails to notify me of discounted books and I came across Killing Floor by Lee Child, the first of the Jack Reacher novels. Lee Child is one of those authors for whom I have seen loads of books around but never really known much about him or his work. My mum, being one of the fonts of all knowledge in my life mentioned that her dad, my grandad used to read the Jack Reacher novels. At the time I thought about adding this first one to the list but I’ll admit I forgot. When I read the email telling me it was discounted, I figured even if I didn’t like it I may as well find out and get to know what my grandad used to like reading.
I also added a couple of books to the TBR without actually buying them yet, being After the Fire, by Will Hill, The Bone Collector by Jeffery Deaver, Carrie by Stephen King and Sleeping Beauties, a collaboration between Stephen King and his son Owen.
Also, following on from my post on Friday, Down the TBR Hole #4, I have added the books I decided to keep to my list. The five books I featured this time were mostly books I was interested in keeping – in fact I only discarded one.

One of the simple facts of life is that a reader is always going to have a stack of books they want to read. There is no such thing as the “end of the pile” unless you are physically picking it up to put another book on the bottom. There is no end of the tunnel – that light you can really see is just for maintenance purposes. As much as this is the case, that is exactly how we want things. Much like that tub of ice cream hidden from everybody else in the freezer, you continue to eat it but really you don’t want to have to be scraping out the sides at the end of the tub.
One of my favourite things about blogging is getting to see what everybody else is reading. At least fifty percent of the books I add to my list are as a result of looking at other people’s reading lists or reviews, so thank you to everybody for sharing. I am proud to be a part of this community and I hope I can inspire other people to read the books I am too.
 

Coming Up…

As I mentioned above I finished reading Men at Arms by Terry Pratchett on Tuesday and I will be publishing my review of the book on Tuesday next week. My next post will be on Friday and I am doing something a little different. You may have noticed that I am beginning to post on a regular basis now. Equally, you probably haven’t. That’s fine – you’ll just have to take my assurance that I am. My post on Friday will be explaining how I am managing my reading and my blog, as well as any other reading/writing projects I am doing. On Sunday (it will creep around again far too quickly) I will be giving you another summary of my week.
Just one final note from me before I sign off – whilst I haven’t had an overly productive reading week, yesterday I managed to finish my first draft of a short story I am looking to enter into a competition! That’s one little victory for me. I’m exploring a re-write with a different (and I think better ending), so that’s my next little project. I have until the 15th October to submit the story, but I’m not sure if the re-write will be ready in time. I have some time off work this month, so I can only try.
Signature