Tag: sharing

Sunday Summary – 9th April 2023

Happy Easter everyone and welcome to today’s Sunday Summary, regardless of whether you are religious or not! I hope you’re having a lovely weekend, however you are spending it.

In an ideal world, I’d have loved to have spent my whole weekend plonked on my backside and reading a book. However, household jobs get in the way, as always. I had to make the most of good weather on Friday to get out and tidy the garden. Thankfully I managed to get it all finished before the rain has come in. It wouldn’t be a British bank holiday without a bit of rain now, would it?

Onwards and upwards. This week I’ve had a busy one as I had to flit back to a four post schedule. Not only did I need to catch up and share my monthly wrap-up post for March, but I also had an obligation to review a book for a blog tour (Thanks For Sharing), and keep you up-to-date with my April TBR.

As always, I’ll provide a link to each of those posts above, if you want to go back and take a look at them.

 

Books Read

 

Thanks for Sharing

Due to the rapidly upcoming blog tour, in last week’s Sunday Summary post I shared that I was temporarily setting aside The Mad Ship in order to progress with Thanks For Sharing. As of that last Sunday Summary post, I had read the first chapter of the book, which was about 15% progress.

As my review was going live on the blog on Thursday, I had to get a shift on with this book. This was a really easy book to pick up. I was interested in the subject matter as I have recently been appointed a sustainability champion at work. I’ve also recently started recycling at home. I wanted to pick up Thanks For Sharing as a way of exploring other ways we can live a more sustainable lifestyle. Some of those are discussed in my review post on Thursday. If you want to check out more detail, I suggest you go back to that review.

Even though this book had an informative tilt, the narrative was really well written. Eleanor Tucker, embeds humour and plenty of real life anecdotes to bring us in to the family fold and her experiences of a sharing economy. I laughed out loud throughout reading this book. So, if you have any reservations about the subject matter being on the dry side, I can assure you, that is not the case!

 

The Mad Ship

With Thanks For Sharing now complete, I moved back to continuing progress with The Mad Ship by Robin Hobb.

I haven’t made any showstopping progress with this book – I read around 170 pages in the latter half of this week. I’ve had a busier blogging schedule this week, as well as jobs around the house and garden to do. It’s not surprising that my reading progress is less than I have enjoyed in the last couple of weeks. But, I’m still happy with the progress I’ve made and I’m looking forward to continuing this epic fantasy to see where we end up next.

 

Books Discovered

Recently, I started listening to a careers based podcast. I can’t exactly remember how I stumbled upon it. I must have been looking for a specific topic or episode, and from there, I started listening on a weekly basis. If you’re interested, the podcast is called the squiggly careers podcast.

After listening and enjoying more episodes featuring various topics that Sarah and Helen discuss, I discovered that they published a book in 2020 with a similar name to the podcast. That’s not the book I’ve added to my reading list. When looking into that first book, I discovered You Coach You, which they published in 2022.

Although a slightly different medium, I expect the same kind of narrative voice and feedback to come through from the book. As I’m trying to read more non-fiction this year, and I’ve already established a connection with these two authors, I imagine I will enjoy and find this book useful!

 

Coming Up…

I’m stepping back to a three post schedule next week. It is definitely a lot more manageable and sustainable in terms of my time, and also allows me to get more reading done. And let’s face it, that’s what I’m here for!

On Tuesday, I plan to share a discussion post with you. If you have been reading my blog in the last few months, you’ll know that I have started reading books as part of an online book club. In that post, I’m going to talk about the benefits I think there are to joining a book club and reading books out of your comfort zone.

On Friday, I’ll be back with a First Lines Friday feature post. As always, I’ll be taking a look for a book with an exciting introduction, and I’m telling you all about it!

My last post of the week will of course be my usual Sunday Summary update.

Now that you are all caught up, I am going to cosy in on this rainy Sunday evening and make more reading progress with The Mad Ship… and maybe tucking into Easter egg. Who am I kidding, there’s no maybe about it!

 

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Sunday Summary – 2nd April 2023

Good evening and welcome to today’s weekly catch up post – aka my Sunday Summary! I hope you’ve had a good week? I’ve had a good one as I took the latter half of the week off work. I did a couple of small jobs around the house. Otherwise, I dedicated my time to reading, gaming and some cross stitch!

Naturally, I’ve also been posting bookish content for you. On Wednesday, I shared my last review of my re-read of the Harry Potter series! I really enjoyed reading these books again as an adult. If you want to read all my thoughts on the books and the wider series, there is a link above to that last post. That also contains links to the previous reviews if you want to catch up from the beginning.

On Friday, I shared a Shelf Control post. In this series, I feature books coming up on my TBR and share them with you. I also talk about why I’m interested to pick these books up. I confess that behind the scenes, I’ve even whittled down my reading list by doing this series. This week’s featured book is a work of classical fiction by a Russian author and philosopher. No, not Leo Tolstoy. I was inspired to pick this up based on my experience of War and Peace though!

 

Books Read

 

Soul Identity

I picked up from last week’s Sunday Summary post by finishing Soul Identity by Dennis Batchelder. As of that post, I was 71% through the book. My plan was to finish the book on Sunday after my Sunday Summary post went live, which I did.

Two small comments I would make is that I don’t feel the relationship between the protagonist Scott, and Val, was necessary. Also, I didn’t like how the majority of female characters were introduced by their appearance. They’re not deal-breaking things, but it did bring my review down to 4 stars.

Otherwise, I enjoyed the book overall. It explores some interesting spirituality and religious concepts of reincarnation from a scientific perspective. I knew that was the premise of the book, but had no idea how the story would go about it. It was perfectly enjoyable and quite an easy read.

 

Death of Kings

Another easy read I picked up this week was Death of Kings by Bernard Cornwell. This is the sixth book in his Saxon Stories series, also known as The Last Kingdom.  At around 350 pages, this book is a good length to progress the story without getting bogged down in too much detail.

There is still plenty of action that takes place in these 350 pages. As ever, we see the conflict Uhtred has between his Saxon birth but Norse upbringing. Needless to say, it gives a unique perspective to this historical fiction narrative… and he gets up to a lot of mischief!

It was good to finally go back to this series. I read the previous book, The Burning Land, back in 2020. Now I’m back into the series, and actively looking to read sequels this year, you can expect I’ll be picking more of these books up soon!

 

The Mad Ship

So, with the last of the books on my ‘set’ TBR read, I achieved my stretch goal this month by starting The Mad Ship by Robin Hobb. Before the end of the month, I read the first 120 pages of this 906 page epic! As of this post, I am now 174 pages in – a healthy start!

In what I’ve read so far, we are only really just getting caught up with all the plot-driving characters in their various locations. Robin Hobb isn’t exactly known for short chapters. It’s taken that time to pick up where we left off in the last book. I can’t wait to see where the narrative takes us from here!

 

Thanks for Sharing

In addition to the above, I’ve also started a book on my April TBR. That’s because I’m taking part in a blog tour for the book next week. I signed up for it just a couple of weeks ago, so I need to get a shift on with it!

Thanks for Sharing is a short non-fiction book about sharing rather than purchasing new. The author spent about a year experimenting with different ways to share various goods and reduce consumerism/waste. I’ll admit I was inspired to take up the offer of this blog tour as I’ve recently taken up the mantle of sustainability champion at work.

I picked this book up just this morning and I’ve already progressed through the first chapter. That’s about 15% progress. Given the deadline, I’ll be prioritising this read in the short term and then going back to The Mad Ship once I’ve finished this one. Given that it’s only 250 odd pages, I should have this finished in a day or two.

 

Books Discovered

I’m back to a week of no news this week. Since I added four books last week, I haven’t been out or particularly looking for anything new.

So, no news is good news!

 

Coming Up…

I’ve enjoyed a three post per week schedule for the last fortnight, but out of necessity, I will be sharing four posts next week.

Since we are already into the beginning of April, my first post of the week will be my monthly wrap-up post for March. I’ve had a great reading month, so I have plenty to share with you in that post. I hope you can log on to check that out in the next couple of days.

Next, I have my blog tour post for Thanks for Sharing going live on Thursday next week. As I mentioned above, I’ve only just started the book today. However, I’m looking forward to sharing my thoughts on the book and whether I’ll be trying anything featured in the book for myself. 

I also have my monthly TBR for April to publish. I’ve already christened the list, so I know what I’m picking up this month. You can expect that list later this week. I’ll be aiming to publish the list on Friday, but I won’t kick myself if it gets pushed out to Saturday.

I’ll round up the week with my usual Sunday Summary update, with all my reading progress in the usual format.

For now though, that’s all from me in today’s Sunday Summary.

What are you reading?

 

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