Still reading #Noirville entries this week and less of everything else. Still a nice week of reading though, even if I do have way too many books on the go at once as I try and finish off my #ReadHarder challenge. I suspect this week won’t be much better – because it’s Christmas party week.
Read:
Maybe This Christmas by Sarah Morgan
Paris for One by Jojo Moyes
Suddenly Last Summer by Sarah Morgan
Christmas in New York by Holly Greene
Romancing the Werewolf by Gail Carriger
Started:
Mr Penumbra’s 24 Hour Bookshop by Robin Sloan
Meridian by Alice Walker
Still reading:
The Golden House by Salman Rushdie
Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders
Sweetbitter by Stephanie Danler
The Square and the Tower by Niall Ferguson
Runout Groove by Andrew Cartmel
French Poems of the Great War translated by Ian Higgins
A couple of Christmas ebooks bought or preordered, but really quite restrained.
So I may have slipped up a bit in the book buying stakes this week – but it’s nearly Christmas and there are offers. My main task in the next few weeks has got to be finishing off #ReadHarder2017 – I’ve really got to pull my finger out now…
Read:
The One that Got Away by Melissa Pimentel
Need You Now by Emma Douglas
China Court by Rumer Godden
The Finch that Stole Christmas by Donna Andrews
The Christmas Surprise by Jenny Colgan
Marling Hall by Angela Thirkell
Started:
Runout Groove by Andrew Cartmel
Paris for One by Jojo Moyes
French Poems of the Great War translated by Ian Higgins
Maybe This Christmas by Sarah Morgan
Still reading:
The Golden House by Salman Rushdie
Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders
Sweetbitter by Stephanie Danler
The Square and the Tower by Niall Ferguson
1 book and 3 ebooks bought – and 4 collectable Girl’s Own books, which count but sort of don’t!
In case you missed it over the weekend – here are my first two Christmas book suggestion posts: Books for Him and Books for Her. The post with books that I want for Christmas is coming this week. Meanwhile it’s been a murderous week of reading!
Read:
Gone Gull by Donna Andrews
And Death Goes To… by Laura Bradford
The Word is Murder by Anthony Horowitz
Hollywood Hang Ten by Eve Goldberg
Rivers of London: Cry Fox 1 by Ben Aaronovitch et al
New Romancer 3 by Peter Milligan and Brett Parson
Historically Dead by Greta McKennan
Started:
The Square and the Tower by Niall Ferguson
The One that Got Away by Melissa Pimentel
Still reading:
The Golden House by Salman Rushdie
Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders
China Court by Rumer Godden
Marling Hall by Angela Thirkell
Sweetbitter by Stephanie Danler
I bought quite a few books this week – but they were all presents, so they don’t count!
Still too many on the still-reading list, but I’m working on it. I’m also still working on my #Noirville entries. And regular readers may already have an idea as to what tomorrow’s BotW might be…
Read:
Clouds in my Coffee by Julie Mulhern
Imprudence by Gail Carriger
My Name is Markham by Jodi Taylor
The Perfect Storm by Jodi Taylor
Mystery in White by J Jefferson Farjeon
A Murder for the Books by Victoria Gilber
A Gentleman of Fortune by Anna Dean
Started:
Gone Gull by Donna Andrews
Still reading:
The Word is Murder by Anthony Horowitz
The Golden House by Salman Rushdie
Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders
China Court by Rumer Godden
Marling Hall by Angela Thirkell
Sweetbitter by Stephanie Danler
Still no books bought. But I’m not getting ahead of myself and getting smug, no indeed, because that way lies complacency and book buying!
I officially have too many books on the go at once. Admittedly some of them are hardbacks and I’ve been staying away from home a lot, but some of them are books I’ve started and not got into and ended up leaving in favour of something else. So this week I’m going to try and do something about that – either finish some of them or give up and cull them. And I’ve still got more #Noirville entries to read too…
Read:
Holiday Wishes by Jill Shalvis
Altered to Death by Christina Freeburn
A Spy in the House by Y S Lee
The Deep End by Julie Mulhern
Paper Girls Vol 3 by Brian K Vaughan et al
The Very First Damned Thing by Jodi Taylor
The Great St Mary’s Day out by Jodi Taylor
Started:
Imprudence by Gail Carriger
Clouds in my Coffee by Julie Mulhern
Still reading:
The Word is Murder by Anthony Horowitz
The Golden House by Salman Rushdie
Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders
China Court by Rumer Godden
Mystery in White by J Jefferson Farjeon
Marling Hall by Angela Thirkell
Sweetbitter by Stephanie Danler
No books bought at all – although 2 pre-orders did arrive on my Kindle.
Plenty of late night train journeys for reading this week and some progress down the pile. Some excellent books, some… not, but it was all enjoyable on some level.
Read:
First Grave on the Right by Darynda Jones
Kidnappers at Elmhurst School by Betty Laws
Second Chance Summer by Jill Shalvis
To Bed With Grand Music by Marghanita Laski (writing as Sarah Russell)
My house has furniture again! More importantly my books are back – as you’ll know if you’ve read my new State of the Pile post. But all the unpacking means that I haven’t read as many books as I was hoping for this week – although I have started making inroads into the newly returned backlog!
Read:
Moonlight over Manhattan by Sarah Morgan
Fireworks in Paradise by Kathi Daley
Margaret finds a Future by Mabel Esther Allen
Takedown Twenty by Janet Evanovich
Blue Ridge Sunrise by Denise Hunter
Started:
The Case of the Gilded Fly by Edmund Crispin
China Court by Rumer Godden
Murder is Binding by Lorna Barrett
Still reading:
The Word is Murder by Anthony Horowitz
The Golden House by Salman Rushdie
Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders
The Days of Anna Madrigal by Armistead Maupin
And given the state of the aforementioned pile, I’m redoubling my efforts not to buy books and so I have been newly virtuous and haven’t bought anything this week. Lets see how long that lasts…
So. My books have returned home. So has my sofa and the rest of my furniture so life is looking up. However, unpacking meant that it was time to face up to things and take stock of the pile. It’s been a while since we did a state of the Pile post – nearly year in fact, which is when I first started packing up things up for the initial bits of the house renovation work. Some of it has been in those boxes ever since, while we saved the money to do the next bits, some of it (the stuff in the top box mostly) got read while we we saving and of course more was added to the pile too. Most of the time I like to ignore the size of the pile and it being in mostly boxes in a corner for 8 months and then out of the house in storage for another two made that very easy. But you can’t ignore something and pretend it isn’t a problem when you have to unpack it and fit it back into your house.
Two boxes are the downstairs keeper shelf. Another two and a half are the backlog
We’ve done a bit of a reorganisation too, so that I’m no longer keeping my to-read pile in a little bookshelf by my side of the sofa with the overspill on an increasing number of piles hidden behind my sofa arm. Instead, I’ve got the formerly-DVD bookcase for them. And it’s pretty full…
One very full bookshelf containing the pile
Yeah. That’s an Ikea half-Billy bookcase double-shelved with unread books. Well except for the top section, which s going to have some CDs in it when we unpack that box. It’s a little scary how many unread books I’ve got, but I think it’s going to be helpful or them actually to be out in the open. Why? Well because I now have a finite amount of space for the unread stuff. I’ve promised myself – and Him Indoors – that I won’t let the pile get so it won’t fit in this bookcase. And being on shelves means that I can organise it and get at stuff more easily, which I’m hoping will help stop me from getting in one of my “I have nothing to read” moods and going out and buying more books because I’ve forgotten about some of the really good stuff that’s hidden at the bottom of the furthest pile behind the sofa arm.
So now the nonfiction books are together, the romance books are together, the crime books are together, the literary fiction is together. Nothing is harder to get to than the back row of a shelf. If I’ve got more than one book by an author waiting to be read, the first one in the series is on the front shelf so I read it first.
And in unpacking and sorting I’ve found some books that I’d forgotten I had (not a surpise) and realised that I have books waiting to be read that fit some of the #ReadHarder squares that I’m missing – which is *amazing* because we’re in October and I still have a fair few to go (see September Stats for current progress) and only two and a half months to finish it in!
So, now I’ve been reminded of all the good books that I’ve got waiting to be read, lets see if it helps restrain my book buying urge. It’s going to have to for a few weeks at least – because there’s no space for anything else yet!
I want to hear from you if you’ve got any tips for managing a book backlog and for restraining your bookbuying urges as I’m fairly sure I haven’t seen the last of the restless feeling of not being able to settle down to a book and having nothing to read!
