Sunday Summary – 22nd December 2019
Good evening everyone and welcome to today’s Sunday Summary – I hope you have all had a really good week? Mine has been really busy in the run-up to Christmas and I imagine a lot of folks are in the same boat! I can’t believe it’s next week… Before we jump into the excitement of next week, let’s take a look and re-cap the week just gone!
Considering the number of things I have had on outside of blogging, I’ve managed to fit in quite a few blog posts. My blogging week began with a Top Ten Tuesday post. It’s the first I have drafted for about two months now and I really enjoyed a more casual post. I also took the opportunity to look back at my blogging journey by discussing the Top Ten Bookish Changes in my Life since my blog began in 2017.
After looking at my backlog of reviews, I found an outstanding audiobook review for Scythe by Neal Shusterman, which has been outstanding since April. Yes, friends, April – you read that right! I have just finished listening to the sequel, Thunderhead, so it was the opportune time to revisit my thoughts on the first book of the series.
Friday’s Shelf Control post explored an unusual classic feminist fiction novel on my To Be Read list. It’s not generally the sort of material I am in the habit of picking up, however as it explores the history of the Feminist movement I would like to read it!
Books Read
I feel like I have taken a bit of a break from reading this week. With appointments, Christmas lunches, family coming home for Christmas and other festive plans, as well as the blogging, I’ve been a busy bee! That’s not to say I haven’t had time, because I have. I think with cramming in a lot of reading last week, I just wanted to do some other things. I don’t even feel guilty about it either. I’ve enjoyed adopting a more relaxed pace with it.
In terms of physical reading, I have only read about 20% of Tony Salter’s Sixty Minutes this week. Mostly today, in fact. I do plan to read more of this before going to bed tonight, now I am back in a reading mood. It’s not a very long book and very easy to read, so I’ll have it finished nice and quickly I imagine.
I have made more progress on Cilka’s Journey by Heather Morris, though. More than usual. I had some extra commute time on Monday with an impromptu appointment, and my car share buddy was off work on Friday. It may not seem like much, but it equates to an extra hour and a half of the audiobook listened to. That means I am over halfway through the audiobook now and it feels like I have only just started it. I am really enjoying it. I loved The Tattooist of Auschwitz and Cilka’s Journey is living up to the standard of that book!
Books Discovered
So, I have a confession to make.
I got very lucky this week. For Christmas, my company donated 6 x £25 vouchers to a prize draw in which all employees were put into. I won one of those vouchers on Thursday. It never happens to me, but yes, I won! Well, it’s not that I never win anything… I won our Christmas Jumper competition on Wednesday as well! It’s just rare!
I had that voucher spent in about three hours, no word of a lie. That lunchtime I went to my local Waterstones and had a field day! A lot of books I liked the sound off were on offer too, so in all I put about £4 towards this lot!
There are a couple of books by authors I love in here. Stephen King’s Outsider is a reasonably new addition to the TBR, but the premise of the novel sounds great. Some of you may recall that Brandon Sanderson’s novel Starsight has not long been published with Gollancz. I really liked the sound of it, so I picked up its predecessor Skyward to start the series for myself.
There are a couple of new authors here too, because I do like to try new things. I picked up The Silence of the Girls as I enjoyed reading a similar book, Circe, earlier this year. To this day I don’t understand the hype of Circe, but it was still a reasonably good read.
I have never heard of The Ember Blade or its author, Chris Wooding. The synopsis sounds interesting though, and you can’t go far wrong with fantasy novels in my book! I didn’t look at the time, but this book has good reviews on Goodreads. A couple of authors I love, Ed McDonald and Edward Cox have rated it 5* as well, so I have every confidence I’ll enjoy it! It will be nice to try something new.
Coming Up…
I don’t think I need to tell you, but it’s Christmas next week! I have a lot of time planned with family, so I have taken the decision to take a brief blogging break for the festive season.
I’ll still be reading and publishing my weekly Sunday Summary next Sunday. I’m going to take the time to chill with the family, recharge my batteries and have a think about some of my plans ahead of the New Year.
That’s all from me in today’s post. I hope you have enjoyed this week’s Sunday Summary post!
What have you been reading this week?
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