Medieval Bookworm

Or so it feels!  But first, a couple of quick notes.  If you haven’t seen the book drive Amy and Lenore are having for Nothing But Ghosts by Beth Kephart, go check it out.  This is a fantastic way to show our support for authors while having a chance to win some prizes.  The book is only $12.23 on Amazon!

Secondly, I wanted to show off my progress in my new quest to read my oldest books while also getting through my library books and review copies.  I started two weeks ago, and here’s how the pile looked then:

Today, this is how it looks:

I’m a little absurdly pleased with myself!  I’m still trying to read my older review copies as well.  I’m going home in 2 weeks and will have an avalanche of them to read very quickly, so I have to get these out of the way first.  Stone’s Fall has been on the top for a while now because I’m still trying to read 30 books in June.  So I’ve pretty much abandoned the pile this week because I actually fell behind and had to try to read 4 books in 2 days.  I managed it, but only because I got an order of mainly YA books that I could race through.  I have 2 1/2 books to go, but after that I’m going to go right for all of these chunksters.

Right now I’m reading Possession by A.S. Byatt.  Jennifer at The Literate Housewife and I are reading and reviewing this together, about which I’m very excited, so I’m attempting to go a little more slowly and actually think more about what I’m reading.  It’s not hard with this book, though, because I feel like it was written just for me.  Obviously, it wasn’t, as I was probably not even born when Byatt came up with the idea and I was four years old when it won the Booker Prize.  I’ve only read 100 pages but already it’s tapping deep into so many things I love.  I don’t talk about it much on this blog, but if I’d chosen literature rather than history I’d have gone straight for 19th century British authors.  There is something about this century in England that entrances me.  To make it even better, the book in the modern day is about two academics researching the lives of two (fictional) 19th century British poets and their possession of their biographical subjects.  I’m writing my own essentially biographical study and could completely see myself remaining in this vein in academics should I choose to continue.  It’s amazing how you form a bond with people long dead, becoming fond of them despite their faults and feeling that you know them, only to discover someone else probably feels exactly the same way as you with a slightly different opinion that makes you angry.  It’s so fascinating.  Of course the book is a romance as well, and although I haven’t gotten to that part yet, I can already see who the players are.  As I said, it’s like the book was written with me in mind!  I adore it already and I can’t wait to read more later on.

Have you ever felt like a book was written just for you?

Well, it’s Sunday afternoon now and I think the Bloggiesta is officially over.  On Friday I decided not to officially participate.  I had a blog tour review up, so I didn’t want to knock it off the top by posting again, and to be honest I didn’t really feel like catching up on my reviews, which is the task I really need to get on top of. I wrote one and that was about it.  Regardless, in the proper spirit, I have been making some improvements this weekend.  I added a few widgets to my sidebar, updated my meta tags, finally switched to feedburner, and signed up for sitemeter, which is looking pretty pathetic right now given that I only put it on a couple of hours ago.

So, I don’t actually know if all of my normal subscribers will be seeing this, I will be publishing a sticky post to remind anyone who hasn’t seen a post from me lately, but please click here to switch to my new feed!

I haven’t been doing much reading this weekend.  This week I did manage to keep to my new reading schedule of library book, review copy, and then oldest book in my current possession.  I’ve been reading Land of Marvels by Barry Unsworth, which has proven to be much better than expected.  Perhaps it’s because I like archaeology, but I’m also finding the character interactions to be very engaging.  I’ll be finishing it tomorrow and starting Crossed by Nicole Galland.  I’m hoping for a number of books in the mail this week so I’m likely to break my pattern then, but since I’m expecting among others The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins, I don’t think I will find myself regretting the change!

What are you planning on reading this week?

As some of you are probably aware, I joined the Summer Reading Blitz challenge hosted by Shauna at Reading and Ruminations.  Our goal is to read 30 books in the 30 days of June.  I’m very pleased with my progress; I’ve already completed 15 books and it’s only the 14th.  Some of these were even slow, somewhat painful chunksters.  How am I doing this, you ask?  Well, my classes are over and I’m just writing and researching my dissertation.  I haven’t found a part-time job and since I’m getting married and moving away at the end of September/beginning of October, it’s getting to the point where it would be pointless to keep searching for 2-3 months of work just to search again when I get there.  I’ve already done most of my research, so at this point I am just writing 500-1000 words a day and then getting on with my reading!

I’m trying not to read short books just for the sake of the challenge.  Instead, I have been following through on last week’s mission of reading an ARC or review copy, a library book, and then the oldest TBR that I have.  I did have to cheat a little.  I knew I needed to get My Lord John by Georgette Heyer read for next week and Into the Beautiful North by Luis Alberto Urrea read for online book club today, plus I got a Harlequin survey that I needed to answer so I snuck in Married by Mistake by Abby Gaines.  That’s too many ARCs!  I’m going to stick with the plan this time, though.  I have found a great satisfaction in going way back through my LT catalogue and finding the oldest book that I have on my shelves and reading it.  I’ve had so much fun figuring out what I’m going to read next according to my new system that I arranged all the books for the next couple of weeks in a pile:

While putting together that pile and thinking about my new goal to read my oldest books, I have realized that the reason many of them are the oldest is because they are chunksters.  In the interests of speed and number counts, I have been passing over chunksters in favor of shorter, quicker books for the past couple of years.  I think it’s been mostly subconscious.  I will look at my shelves and think about what I really want to read, books like Possession and Crossed which you can see in the pile, but when it comes down to it I will pick up the smaller book.  I no longer want to do this.  My projected total for this year is almost 300 books.  I don’t need to read that many.  After June, I am going to read all those chunksters that I have been putting off.

Let’s take the two books I have read from the past this week, The Lieutenant’s Lover by Harry Bingham and Shadows and Strongholds by Elizabeth Chadwick.  The first is 500 pages, the second is 564.  I loved the first and I read half of the second last night instead of sleeping.  These books are fabulous and I shouldn’t shy away from the just because they are long.  Reading books I love should be more important than seeking the fastest read that will knock one off my TBR pile and add one on to my yearly total.

What about you?  Do you find yourself putting off longer books in favor of shorter ones?  Why?  Is it for your yearly count and TBR pile like me or do you have other reasons?