Adventures With Reading in Back entries: 2013 - 2015

Just thought I’d do a brief entry on my reading. I reside with two book cases practically full of books. Some aren’t mine, and I wouldn’t be interested in reading them. However, I’ve split mine into two lots. Those that I have read stand upright. They’re also generally in alphabetical order, by author’s last name first. Then by title. The only exceptions are book series.

I have the majority of the Discworld series by Terry Pratchett, GRR Martin’s Songs of Fire and Ice series, Arthur C. Clarke’s Space Odyssey series and the Harry Potter series. I am currently reading Dissolution by C.J. Sanson, having already read Revelation by the same author. I also have some of the Flashman series, and a couple of books by Ian Mortimer that for some reason I don’t class as a series as there’s only two of them (The Time Travellers Guide to… books. One on Medieval England, and one on Elizabethan England. I’ve put these two in date order - the Medieval one before the Elizabethan one).

The books I have yet to read are lying on their sides, in piles and in no particular order. I really do need to start going through and reading a few of these books, I have heaps on my “to be read” pile.

My mother knows how much I love reading, and will occasionally offer up a book that she’s read. She will sometimes send me a book, telling me that I would “love it - it’s brilliant”. The last book she sent me that I really enjoyed was The Brief, Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, my last book review. That I did enjoy. I don’t mean to sound horrible here, and I do get round to reading everything she suggests or sends me. But there are titles that she suggests that I read and think “ugh”. Case in point was Cloud Atlas. Good idea behind the book, and I did enjoy some of the book. Just not all of it. Some of the characters and their stories, for example Cavandish, I really struggled to get into. Whereas Frobisher’s story was actually quite good. Having said that, the book was still better than the film. I tried watching the film recently on the TV and got bored pretty quickly.

The problem seems to be that when I suggest or send her books, I get the impression she doesn’t read them. Citing “oh, I’m just too busy” a lot of the time. One year I sent her a couple for Christmas, and she said that if I didn’t want them back she’d donate them to charity. I sent her a book by Rohinton Mistry and another by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. I can’t remember the titles now, but I did read both. I enjoyed them and had gone out and bought new copies for her. I had genuinely thought she would enjoy them.

At my last two places of employment, at least one workmate recommended me books to read. One was a series by Sarah Douglass, called The Troy Game. Another good idea, but turned out to be pretty dodgy reading. I couldn’t get into the last book at all. The bad guy became a wimp, and started a relationship with another character who’d been his offspring in a previous incarnation in a previous book or something.

The other series recommended to me was the Twilight series. My colleague even loaned me her copy of the first book. In a “have you read this yet? No? You MUST READ IT”. It lived in my locker at work for ages until I gave it back, I tried reading it and got bored. I did end up reading the first two, and got so bored with it that I stopped caring and gave them to a book exchange. But it took me two attempts to read both all the way through, and I figure that life’s too short to struggle through a book that people rave about. If I don’t care about a book, and I have tried to read it, I give up and it goes to a book exchange or charity shop.

A rule I have with book exchanges is that when I peruse the shelves I have to find something interesting, by an author I have not read before. It’s a similar rule to my going into libraries, not that I go to either all that often. Too much to read on my bookshelves as it is. The idea is that if I don’t like it, then I haven’t spent too much money on it. It can always be returned to the store or library, and I can use the credit on something else.

One of my favourite stores is a book exchange that recently started a “blind date” sort of thing. A small selection of brown paper wrapped books, with a few phrases on the front on the book. And then a plain tag with the price is attached via brown string. If you, having bought the book and unwrapped it at home, already have a copy/read it before, then you can return it with the receipt. No questions asked. I love this idea. I’ve picked up books by Miriam Keyes and Monica Ali, and they’re in my “to read pile”. Haven’t got round to either yet, but I’d like to get round to reading them at some point. Just to take a break from what I normally read. I wouldn’t normally read Keyes, as I’ve never really been interested in what she writes, and I hadn’t heard of Ali before I picked up her book through the “blind date” thing. But I have promised myself I’ll read both.

At the beginning of the year, I picked up my book journal again. I filled it in a little last year and the year before. I decided that this year I would at least try and complete a few more entries on what I’d read. Actually take the time to pick it up and write an entry on the book I’d just finished. We’ll see how we go. I do have a blank book journal for when that’s finished. So there’s no reason why I can’t try and keep this habit up.

So much for a brief entry! :)

Last updated January 01, 2015