|
|
 July was a busy month, and in the most delightful of ways; I spent a lot of it travelling! Just over a week in Europe with a couple friends from home and another weekend camping a bit further up north in County Durham. We also spent last weekend with my husband’s family, which meant that I didn’t have a single quiet weekend all month. (I’m making up for it today).
As always happens, the reading and blogging have suffered somewhat for all this fun. I read just 9 books in July, which is only slightly over two a week, and not really enough to sustain the pace that I was hoping for in terms of reviews – not that I’ve had huge amounts of time to write those reviews, in actuality. I was also incredibly good about buying books and didn’t purchase a single print book in all of July. I’m making up for that now:
Atop this pile is the new second Kindle in our household; that’s right, my husband decided to purchase a Kindle. He has preferred mine to actual books for a while and I was personally hoping that Waterstone’s would get their own e-reader and supply a viable alternative to Amazon. Instead, they partnered with Amazon, and when a discount arrived in my email on Friday, the time had clearly arrived. I, on the other hand, made up for the purchase from the evil giant by buying four new books from my local bookstore, on the bottom there. I’ve been longing for three of those books for a long time and The Popes called out to me from the table as well.
Anyway! What did I read in July?
- Red Mars, Kim Stanley Robinson
- The Way to a Duke’s Heart, Caroline Linden
- A Lady by Midnight, Tessa Dare
- The Making of Modern Britain, Andrew Marr
- The Wicked Ways of a Duke, Laura Lee Guhrke
- How to Survive the Titanic, Frances Wilson
- The Iron King, Julie Kagawa
- Unholy Ghosts, Stacia Kane
- Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day, Winifred Watson
Favourites of the Month
 
Yes – unsurprisingly, the two books I actually managed to review, I appreciated the most. I had a lot to say about these two lovely books, completely different but appreciated all the same, and I am very happy that I read both of them.
How was your July?
One side of beautiful 14th century Charles Bridge in Prague, Czech Republic.
Good evening Sunday Saloners! I’m a bit late today; we’ve had a busy weekend, as we went camping up in the Yorkshire Dales on Friday, and then came home and decided to be gardeners just today.
First, camping. This promised to be the first really nice weekend in a very long time, so we thought we’d take advantage of it. It’s been raining on and off in the UK this summer more than any other I’ve experienced here, with temperatures remaining disappointingly cool the whole time. I’m sure some of you in the United States would love relief from the heat, but I’d give almost anything just for a little bit of it one of these days.
Saturday morning, we woke up to clear skies, reasonable warmth, and went out to spend the day at Barnard Castle, which is both a castle and a delightful little town that grew up around it. Lovely visit to the castle, a reasonable walk in the sunshine, an abbey, and an amazing curry for dinner rounded out a really nice day.
Today wasn’t as nice to start out with, as we returned to clouds in the morning. But by the time we headed home, the weather had cleared up, and I was inspired to start some gardening with a lot of sales in our local garden centre – somewhere we hardly ever go, but felt compelled to this afternoon. As a result, we ended up taking home a standalone greenhouse, four vegetable plants (tomatoes, cucumbers, aubergines, and bell peppers) and three herbs (sage, oregano, and mint).
None of this has been particularly good for reading. I haven’t even finished a book since returning from my trip to Europe last Sunday, let alone found time to blog. I’m reading an excellent non-fiction book, How to Survive the Titanic: The Sinking of J. Bruce Ismay by Frances Wilson, but I’ve just been doing too much else around the house and catching up to really devote enough time to it. I have an hour or so now and am going to aim to get some posts up this week and breathe a little life back into this blog. I hope to find some time to come visit you, too – let me know what I’ve missed in the last couple of weeks and I’d love to come say hi.
Have a great week!
Perspective: Things can almost always get worse.
We are now officially halfway through 2012 and well on our way to 2013. I’m already not 100% sure where the first half of the year has gone, but it’s been a busy one for me. Lots of work, lots of travelling for work (or so it felt to me), and even a trip to the United States to see my parents and their array of parrots. In 2012 I gave up my second, self-employed job, to give myself more free time, I got a computer that I can call my own again, and I got promoted at work. I’ve got my provisional driver’s license, and I’m planning to achieve my full UK driver’s license before 2012 is up. I’m about to go on what I hope is the first of two trips exploring a little bit more of the world this year, as well, which I cannot wait to do. Next weekend I’ll be heading to Munich to meet two of my friends from home, and we’ll be going through Munich, Berlin, and Prague before I have to return to the UK.
All this going on means I’ve not read nearly as much as I have in years previous. I’m up to 67 books for the year. This is, interestingly enough, about how many books I thought I’d be reading when I started working over 2 years ago. So I slowed down to my expectations eventually. Unfortunately, I’m still terrible at keeping up with reviews. Since I stopped reviewing urban fantasy except in large series reviews (expect one for the Elemental Assassin books shortly), there haven’t been as many to review, regardless.
This month, I read 11 books:
Fiction
- Fifty Shades of Grey, E. L. James
- The Sense of an Ending, Julian Barnes
- Venom, Jennifer Estep
- The Sister Queens, Sophie Perinot
- Deadline, Mira Grant
- Tangled Threads, Jennifer Estep
- Proven Guilty, Jim Butcher
- The Ugly Duchess, Eloisa James
- Spider’s Revenge, Jennifer Estep
- Wonder Girls, Catherine Jones
Non-fiction
Favorite of the Month
 
Much as I had my gripes with Deadline, I still had a fantastic time with it, and The Sister Queens was a terrific historical fiction read that reminded me just why I love the genre.
I also posted reviews for:
Right now, I’m reading 3 books. The first, which I’ve been reading the longest, is The War on Heresy: Faith and Power in Medieval Europe, by Professor R.I. Moore, which is very interesting but slow going on my fragmented brain. I also started Red Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson, my very first venture in “hard” science fiction as opposed to the space opera types I normally love. I’m close to halfway through this and I’m surprising myself by intensely enjoying it, to the degree of marking out passages of surprising beauty and meaning, something I hardly ever do. I made it a condition that I like the Mars trilogy before I purchased Robinson’s newest, 2312, but I think I’ll be getting that too. Finally, when I can’t really process either of those, I’m reading The Way to a Duke’s Heart by Caroline Linden. In short, a microcosm of my incredibly eclectic taste in books.
I’m also continuing with Babylon 5 and Battlestar Galactica, so I’m seriously indulging my science fiction obsession. We’ve just finished the first season of Babylon 5 and we’re very close to saying the same for BG, and I’m still loving both of them.
Have a fantastic July, all!
Good morning Saloners! It feels like a very long time since I last wrote a Sunday Salon post, and that’s because I last wrote one over a month ago. I’m at one of those points in life where time seems to simultaneously fly by and slow down, depending on where I am or what I’m doing. I haven’t been travelling too much recently, which has been a nice break, although my wanderlust has become overwhelming at times now that I’m used to being out and about.
Fortunately, I’m not going to stay bound at home for too long; next month I’ll be travelling with a couple of friends from college through Munich, Berlin, and Prague over the course of a week. I’m looking forward to adding on more cities to my ever-growing list of places I’ve visited, and I hope that I’m not finished for the year yet. I’d love to go to either Scotland, camping around various parts with my husband, or Istanbul later this year. But we’ll see how our financial situation pans out over the next couple of months first.
At home, I’ve applied for my provisional driving license; I can drive in the US, but I’ve never been licensed to drive in the UK, mainly because I don’t know how to drive a manual car. I’m about to change that, I just need the provisional license to come back to me first. I’m apprehensive about it, but at the same time driving myself will give me a lot more freedom and save my husband the tedium of taking me everywhere that’s not within walking distance.
I’m also catching up on my science fiction TV shows. Ever since I discovered that I actually enjoy science fiction, I’ve been addicted to it. Right now, we’re just starting both Battlestar Galactica and Babylon 5, and I’m really looking forward to watching both of them. I haven’t seen enough of either to comment just yet, but I will soon.
I’ve even been reading a considerable amount – some of which actually won’t get reviewed here. But I’ve been addicted to Jennifer Estep’s Elemental Assassin books in particular. I’ve read four of them and while I don’t think I can give each an individual review, they are perfect after I’ve spent a long, stressful day at work. I also just finished the eighth Dresden Files book and am already clamoring for more. Hopefully, things at work should calm down in the next few weeks, and I’ll be able to devote more brain power to non-fiction. I’m obviously trying; I’ve got what looks to be a fascinating book on heresy in the Middle Ages ready for me to read it, but I’m a bit wary of how long it will take given the current mood. We’ll see!
What’s new with all of you? Have fantastic weeks!
Last week, I talked a little bit about the history I have with re-reading, and the fact that I’m trying to start again based on the fun I’ve had re-reading Harry Potter. So, this week, I thought I’d share with you my new to-be-re-read bookcase.
As it stands, I have two normal size bookcases, one for books I’ve already read and want to keep and another for books I haven’t read yet. Both are ridiculously full and double-layered, which means it’s hard to find specific books sometimes. When I bought a new desk for my computer, Ikea had a set with both a simple desk and a bookcase, on sale for less than the cost of a similar desk by itself, so the choice was really really obvious. I’ve designated this smaller bookcase for re-reads (I have another for hardcovers that are personal favourites) and I’ve started putting a few books on it already!
On this top shelf, I have my two favourite urban fantasy series (plus Discount Armageddon, which won’t be due for a re-read for a while, but fit well with McGuire’s other books). I will almost guaranteed re-read the Kate Daniels series when the next book comes out, as I actually managed to do before Magic Slays was released, and I’d really like to read all of the October Daye series again before the next book in that series comes out later this year. So, that choice was easy, and I also love to see those matching books lined up without hiding behind other reads. I also put The Name of the Wind here. I still haven’t read The Wise Man’s Fear although I own it because I genuinely remember very little about the first book except that I loved it, so I really need to read them in order.
This is a mix of books for me and my husband to read. 1984 was recently removed because he’s actually reading it. Chime earned a place immediately after I’d finished it. The Lions of al-Rassan is my favourite Guy Gavriel Kay, but I haven’t read it more than once, so I brought it back to the UK with me this time and am really looking forward to it. Foreigner and Dune are sci-fi classics – I actually enjoyed the former, but not the latter because I was much younger when I read it (or so I think), and thus I’d like to give it another try. And on the right, we have the first three books in A Song of Ice and Fire. I also have the next two, but on the hardcover shelf.
More series I’d like to re-read – the Tiffany Aching series, of which I also have the next two books, but one is with a friend and the other is on the hardcover shelf. I adored these books to bits and I definitely want to read them again. Same, really, with the next set of books by Megan Whalen Turner, except I don’t even own the fourth one because I need to read these three again first. And then, The Hunger Games trilogy, which I hope I’ll read before they release the second film. I know Mockingjay had issues, but I still very much want to read these three again. I’ve got Girl Reading on the side there, another book I absolutely adored but which I read recently, so I’m going to wait a while until I re-read that.
And finally – The Wheel of Time. I attempted to start a re-read of these chunksters last year and failed miserably. They are incredibly dense and time-consuming, which is a difficult to justify when I have so many other series to read (and there are 11 of these that I own and two more to come). I do, however, want to finish the series when it’s completed, so I will at some point start once again. Fortunately, I think I remember the first now, so at least I won’t be starting from scratch.
What books do you want to re-read most?
When I was young, I was a frequent re-reader. I read my favourite books on a regular basis. This isn’t to say my parents didn’t buy me new books, because they did, especially when the Scholastic book orders arrived, but certainly they couldn’t afford to at the amount of books I actually read. I read nearly every day after I’d finished my homework, and so I needed to return to my old favourites over and over again. I re-read books so often that my dad used to boast I didn’t have a single book I hadn’t read twice.
I had a number of books that I read over and over again; the Little House on the Prairie books, for instance, I regularly read over again, as I did the two books I had that Julie Andrews wrote, especially The Last of the Really Great Whangdoodles. One of my favourites was Princess Nevermore by Dian Curtis Regan, as was, of course, Anne of Green Gables. I adored the Dear America series and I’m confident I read the first few more than five times – history creeping up on me without me truly realising it.
But as I got older, and had a bit of my own money, I started to get more and more books. I started to have an unread pile all the time, instead of just shortly after the Scholastic book orders came in. I discovered longer, more complex books, that took me more than couple of hours to read, especially the fantasy doorstoppers with which I immediately fell in love. I still remember the vivid excitement that overtook me when Robert Jordan’s ninth Wheel of Time book graced the top of my then-single TBR pile, which I used to structure in order to give myself variety.
And now, I’ve reached a stage where I very rarely re-read anything. I have an entire bookcase of unread books staring at me every time I go downstairs. Re-reading makes me feel a bit guilty, especially if I have review copies lingering. But recently, as most of you probably know, all of the Harry Potter books became released in ebook format. Harry Potter is the one series that always calls to me for re-reading. It’s just that type of story, where settling down in the world each time makes the entire experience richer.
The other series that has been calling out recently is A Song of Ice and Fire by George R.R. Martin. I have, at long last, started watching Game of Thrones, and am surprisingly completely caught up. The first book is the only one of the entire series I’ve ever read twice, and I found that, correspondingly, I knew what was going to happen. Now that we’re halfway through the second season, I honestly can’t remember what’s coming next or what really happens in the rest of the series, besides some vague feelings about various characters.
That, combined with actually re-reading Harry Potter now, makes me long to re-read everything else that I know I loved, so much so that I’ve actually designated a new bookcase (my fourth here in the UK) the shelves where the books I want to re-read the most will sit.
But even so, I think the piles of unread books will call to me more than the ones I’d like to read over again will; I simply hope that now and again I will made an exception, and allow myself to delve into another world.
How do you feel about re-reading? Do you do it often, wish you did it more, or think that there are too many books left in the world for you to read those you’d already experienced over again?
Good morning Saloners! I’ve had a computer-filled weekend which, after some stress on Friday and Saturday, has ended very well. I have been without a proper computer of my very own for a while now. My old laptop, which I used in college and graduate school, still actually functions, but it crashes too often for me to use it reliably, and we’ve never actually been able to figure out what is wrong with it. In lieu of my own computer, my husband and I have generally been sharing his top-spec desktop PC, which has led to some frustration. Recently I discovered that one of my friends had a cast-off older computer, which he was kind enough to give to me. I bought some new parts for it over the past week, and was all excited to have it working on Friday night at long last, exactly the way I wanted it.
Unfortunately, it turns out that the new processor I’d purchased was dead before it ever made it into the PC. At one point we didn’t know what was wrong and I’d potentially have to wait even longer, spend more money, and have an uncertain result even at that stage. So after a ton of testing, we put the old processor back in and the computer finally worked; it’s not up to the spec I’d planned, but it’s now running smoothly and happily and I am independently on my own PC once again. The dead processor has been sent off for a return, and I will probably end up with a better one in a couple of months when I can afford it. I’m very excited about this, as you can imagine; I’m hoping to do all sorts of things now that I don’t have to share, and blogging definitely has a place amongst them.
In reading news, I’m deep into a reread of all the Harry Potter books, thanks to their launch in ebook form last month. I’ve been alternating one of them in between review books and it has been fantastic getting re-acquainted with this world. I’m on Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix at the moment and, while I recall this being the most annoying of all of them, I’m thoroughly enjoying it. It’s appropriate to spend this weekend reading as we’re currently drowning in the UK. The river nearby – the Ouse in York – and many of the fields are flooded and it’s still raining. To give you some perspective, here’s the river – those are submerged benches on the right. The river is usually a good six feet below the grass, if not more, and yesterday it was right at the edge and ready to spill over.
It’s also very chilly, which makes us reluctant to go outside and do much, truly the perfect day for holing up with Harry, Ron, and Hermione.
I have a couple of reviews already scheduled this week and I’m hoping to update with a third at some point too. I have only been reading a couple of books a week, and I look forward to actually getting caught up now that I have a computer and the time to do it. My last client visit for a while is tomorrow, and I’m blissfully not scheduled for anything else throughout the month of May.
Wishing you all a very lovely week and some good reads for your free time!
Good morning Saloners! I hope you’re all doing well, and that those of you who have been participating in this weekend’s Readathon have had a lot of success and amazing reading.
I intended to participate myself, as I have in all of the Readathons since 2009, and it was kind of strange not to do so, but there was simply no way I’d have been able to. I came back from the US on an overnight flight on Monday, got home Tuesday around when I’d get home from work, worked for 2 days, and went to Brussels for work on Friday, which was a day lasting from 4:30 in the morning until 9:30 at night, and I simply needed this weekend to have a break. NOT stay up for 24 hours tied to the computer. I’m still disappointed that I missed it, but I hope it was wonderful for everyone who did participate.
I did manage to read, though. I read quite a bit while I was at home, and yesterday I sat down with Chime by Franny Billingsley and completed it in a single sitting. What an amazing book – I am so glad I paid attention to Ana’s excellent review. I have also been re-reading the Harry Potter series since I purchased all of the ebooks, and have really delighted in spending more time in that world. It’s been too long – and I suspect that I’ll have forgotten much of what happened in the sixth and seventh books as I read them quite a while ago.
As always, I brought some books back from the US – the 15 I took with me this time is dwarfed by some older numbers, but I’ve virtually stopped accepting physical review copies from US publishers unless I am incredibly eager to read the book. Here’s what snuck into my suitcase – let me know how you’ve felt about these books!:
 I’m really looking forward to a lot of these reads; you’ll probably see I, Iago on the blog first, as I’ve enjoyed Nicole Galland’s previous books a lot, and the publication date for this is coming up very soon. Several of them came from The Strand in New York City, which has to be one of my favourite bookstores, and where I could happily spend far more time than the half hour to hour I get to browse on our visits.
Today, I’m hoping to spend some time catching up on reviews, as usual, and also finishing Discount Armageddon by Seanan McGuire. Since I’ve become involved in the Newsflesh trilogy, and the next October Daye comes out in September, I decided I didn’t need to save it (am I the only one who sometimes puts books off to avoid a long wait for the next in the series?). I’m really enjoying it so far; Verity still has the attitude of McGuire’s other main female characters, but she’s refreshingly different at the same time, and the world is stunning.
Wishing you all fantastic Sundays and a great week ahead!
|
|
Recent Comments