Nightshifts start today (Monday) so I spent this week concentrating on reading a couple of books that I have ahead of their release so that I can write reviews on them. I’m not good at reading anything complex on Nightshifts (see my post about Nightshift reading matter here) and they run right up until the books come out, so I couldn’t guarantee that I’d manage to read them during the nights. Plus I really wanted to read them!
Read:
The Mysterious Affair at Castaway House by Stephanie Lam
The Fortune Hunter by Daisy Goodwin
Pastors’ Wives by LisaTakeuchi Cullen
Beyond Seduction by Stephanie Laurens
August Folly by Angela Thirkell
Started:
Not Quite a Wife by Mary Jo Putney
Death and the Dancing Footman by Ngaio Marsh
Still reading:
The Signature of All Things by Elizabeth Gilbert
I bought three books and a cook book this week. Managed to resist the lure of a second-hand book stall at a fair today – and am still valiantly resisting the urge to buy myself the next Meg Langslow book – perhaps I’ll treat myself at the end of nightshifts!
As you’ll have seen from Friday’s post, I’ve given up on Titus Groan so that has gone from the list. And I feel relieved. Considering Flappers is 500 pages (and worth it) I don’t think I’ve done too badly this week.
Read:
Deception by M C Beaton
Flappers by Judith Mackrell
Mrs Sinclair’s Suitcase by Louise Walters
A Surfeit of Lampreys by Ngaio Marsh
Murder Underground by Mavis Doriel Hay
Started:
The Signature of All Things by Elizabeth Gilbert
Beyond Seduction by Stephanie Laurens
Still reading:
n/a
Only one free Kindle book acquired this week – and the rest of my last orders all turned up too. I’m trying not to buy books because I know that I’ve got nightshifts coming up and they make me susceptible to buying stuff and I already have way too many books – even my sister told me the pile is out of control today!
Well. Three months ago I posted a picture of the to-read pile as part of my efforts to get myself to shrink my stockpile of books waiting to be read. Here’s how it looked:
The to-read pile back in May
So here we are, in August and I thought it was time to report back on my progress in my quest to reduce the backlog. Brace yourself:
The current state of the to-read pile
So I think it looks a little better. Of course this is partly because I’ve had a rationalisation of the library book stock pile and taken a lot back. But even taking that into account I don’t think that the pile has got any bigger – and if you compare the photos you’ll see that although some of the same books are still there there’s also a fair few that have changed. So I’m not too discouraged – but there is still a lot of work to do.
A much more productive week than I was expecting – and some really good books in there – check out the reviews of American Blonde and The Storms of War. It’s also been a very early Twentieth Century week – Flambards in the pre-Great War period, The Storms of War covering 1914-18, Laura Lamont starting in the 1920s and going through to the 1970s and American Blonde set in the 1940s! And that’s before you get to the fact that I’ve started Flappers I also really enjoyed the Donna Andrews, the Meg Langslow series continues to provide me with a lot of laughs and it was great to fill in a gap in my Christina Jones back catalogue with Tickled Pink.
Read:
American Blonde by Jennifer Niven
Tickled Pink by Christina Jones
The Penguin Who Knew Too Much by Donna Andrews
Laura Lamont’s Life in Pictures by Emma Straub
The Storms of War by Kate Williams
Flambards by K M Peyton
Started:
Deception by M C Beaton
Flappers by Judith Mackrell
A Surfeit of Lampreys by Ngaio Marsh
Still reading:
The Beach Hut Next Door by Veronica Henry
Titus Groan by Mervyn Peake
No books bought this week – so that’s progress of a sort. Still, not all of last week’s splurge have arrived yet…
Not a good week. I don’t know what went wrong. I was so excited about #Sunathon but somewhere in the week it all went off the rails. I had Monday and Tuesday off – and The Boy was off too so we had two lovely days together – but I didn’t do much reading. Then I was away for work for a couple of days – and couldn’t take the Kate Williams with me because it’s a hard back and just takes up too much space. Wednesday went really well though – as I read all of What Would Mary Berry do but on Thursday I was out at the theatre after work and didn’t read anything much at all. Then on Friday afternoon I got rained on in my lunchbreak and on my way to the station after work and ended up reading bits of several different things on the way home from work and not really making any progress much on anything. Then on top of that a busy weekend where I didn’t really read anything and this is where we’re at…
Read:
Nightingale Wood by Stella Gibbons
What Would Mary Berry Do by Claire Sandy
Started:
The Storms of War by Kate Williams
Tickled Pink by Christina Jones
The Beach Hut Next Door by Veronica Henry
Still reading:
Titus Groan by Mervyn Peake
American Blonde by Jennifer Niven
And as far as book acquisition goes, a copy of a book that I’ve won appeared in the post – and I’ve ordered a few more, but they haven’t turned up yet, so I’m not sure whether to count them in the total or not… Oh and the Christina Jones that I started was a Kindle Freebie this week. I’m trying not to think about the state of the July stats after this week. Here’s hoping this week coming (four day shifts, home every night) is better.
Slightly derailed by an unexpected nightshift on Friday night but an unexpected Saturday evening at home meant I finished Bill Bryson which made everything look a lot better. This week coming up is #sunathon – as dreamt up by @EmmaIsWriting – so I’ve put together some summery reads I’m hoping to be reading this week – you can look at them here.
Read:
Death Cloud (Young Sherlock Holmes 1) by Andrew Lane
Tiger Milk by Stephanie de Velasco
The Fourth Bear by Jasper Fforde
How the Scoundrel Seduces by Sabrina Jeffries
One Summer: America 1927 by Bill Bryson
Started:
Nightingale Wood by Stella Gibbons
American Blonde by Jennifer Niven
Still reading:
Titus Groan by Mervyn Peake
Now as regular readers will know, nightshifts usually mean book buying in the early hours. Well I resisted – this time the impulse buying was from ASOS’s sale… So the bank balance did suffer – but not with a book splurge – which is an achievement! Several arrived in the post – a twitter competition prize from Doubleday for #bookadayuk, a Goodreads review copy of The Mysterious Affair at Castaway House (which isn’t due out until the very end of August so I feel very special to have that one) and Clare Sandy’s What Would Mary Berry Do which is out at the end of the month (and which the author sent to me so I’m very excited about that too). I’ve been through my diary marking up when the various books I’ve been sent ahead of publication are due out – in the hope that I’ll schedule posts for the appropriate times – I think there’s nothing more annoying than finding out about a really good book that someone else has read and not being able to get hold of a copy yourself!
Emma Louise over on her eponymous blog has come up with the fabulous idea of the #Sunathon which is all about encouraging people all over the world to take time and make time to read. It starts tomorrow (Monday) so I’m hopping onto that this week – and I’ve come up with a list of summery books that I have sitting on the to-read pile (or in the unread folder on the Kindle) that I’m going to be reading this week and wanted to share them with you (as I’ve found the best way to make sure I actually read what I say I’m going to is to put it down in writing so I can’t sneak off and do something different!) I can’t promise to get through them all but I’ll try. So the books on the #sunathon list are:
Unfinished Symphony of You and Me by Lucy Robinson
What Would Mary Berry Do by Claire Sandy
The Beach Hut Next Door by Veronica Henry
Longbourn by Jo Baker
The Storms of War by Kate Williams
The Physical part of the #Sunathon to-read pile and my sunlounger
You’ll notice that several of these are recent releases or due for release in the next couple of weeks, so hopefully there may be some reviews of them coming up too. For now though, follow my progress over on Twitter – I’m @WildeV and join the conversation or even join in yourself using #sunathon.
Apologies for this brief spurt of posting – I meant to post the Children’s/Young Adult blog earlier in the week and time got away with me somewhat. I do try and space my posts out, but to do that I need to actually schedule them when I write them not just save them in drafts *headdesk*
Despite appearances, I’ve actually made good progress this week – I’m more than half way through Tiger Milk now (thank you trip to the hairdresser!) and probably would have finished it already if I wasn’t working over the weekend, which necessitated taking a fresh book with me rather than a nearly finished one. I did re-read Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret – but I can’t count that as it’s one I read over and over when I was at primary school, and I’ve finished my Phryne Fisher re-read too.
Read:
The Big Over Easy by Jasper Fforde
Wild Strawberries by Angela Thirkell
Don’t Point That Thing At Me by Kyril Bonfiglioli
Ivy Lane: Spring by Cathy Bramley
Started:
Death Cloud (Young Sherlock Holmes 1) by Andrew Lane
Still reading:
Titus Groan by Mervyn Peake
Tiger Milk by Stephanie de Velasco
One Summer: America 1927 by Bill Bryson
As far as the buying goes – 4 from the charity shop and two from the Kindle means no net progress on reducing the pile – especially as Ivy Lane was on the Kindle. Bad times all around!
I’m finding Tiger Milk (which was a Goodreads win) heavy going so far – and Bill Bryson is too big to take to work with me – so thee are some new lingerers on the pile, although of course Titus is still the King of Lingering. I really enjoyed Michael Tolliver Lives though – and I’m desperate to know what happens next in the Harriet Evans – as my pleadings earlier in the week will attest!
Read:
Michael Tolliver Lives by Armistead Maupin
Memento Mori by Muriel Spark
A Place for Us Part One by Harriet Evans
A Bone to Pick by Charlaine Harris
Tom Brown’s Body by Gladys Mitchell
Started:
The Big Over Easy by Jasper Fforde
Still reading:
Titus Groan by Mervyn Peake
Tiger Milk by Stephanie de Velasco
One Summer: America 1927 by Bill Bryson
As far as purchases go – only two this week – but I’ve acquired two more – so the physical to-read pile isn’t even any smaller, because the Harriet Evans was on the Kindle. When will I learn? Still at least I only paid for two of them!
I read a lot of books. I have read a lot of books. I like to think I read widely and across a lot of genres. But I have not read a lot of award-winning books. Why is this – and what am I going to do about it?
In researching this article, I printed myself out a list of the winners and nominees of the Booker and the Orange/Bailey’s prize and the winners of the Costa awards. I settled down with a pink highlighter to mark up what I have read. There is not a lot of pink on the lists. But there are a lot of books that I think I should have read – and others that I would like to read, but have never got around to.
What do I mean by not a lot? Well, I’ve read seven books from the list of Booker winners and nominees – yes, just seven. Of that seven, two are winners (Ghost Road and Wolf Hall), one I studied at A-Level (The Handmaid’s Tale), two have been read in the last month (Mrs Palrey at the Claremont and Loitering with Intent) entirely coincidentally and the remaining two have been read in the last year as well (Good Behaviour and Restoration). You may have noticed from that little list that I have only read two books from the last 20 years of Booker nominees. Now considering that I think of myself as a book person, I’m a bit ashamed of myself.
Handmaid was one of my A-Level books (the battered cover is from my schoolbag!), whilst Restoration is a more recent acquisition
There are some authors on the list where I have read some of their other works – just not the prize-winning ones, people like Muriel Spark, Nina Bawden, Penelope Lively, Jill Paton Walsh and David Lodge. But there are some authors where, despite their reputations and in some cases multiple entries on the list, I haven’t read any of their books – let alone the prize-winning ones. People like Salman Rushdie (although I listened to some of Midnight’s Children when Radio 4 serialised it when I was about 14), Iris Murdoch, Doris Lessing, Beryl Bainbridge and Ian McEwan to name a few. There are some who I have books by on the Kindle waiting to be read – two of this year’s list including the winner – that I haven’t got around to because there’s always something “better” there as well.
So what’s my problem?
Well, I think it’s partly in my head – I think they’re going to be boring and hard-going. My mum used to read the Booker winner every year – a habit she gave up when she got stuck while reading Ben Okri’s Famished Road. I can remember her saying that there was no point in reading something you didn’t enjoy, that she hadn’t enjoyed the last few winners and she wasn’t going to force herself to read them just because they were winners anymore. I think this has stuck with me – I avoid them because they’re award winners or nominees, even if the blurb on the back makes them look interesting – I think it’s a trick.
My collection of pretty Designer Virago books – and a couple of other VMCs by award nominees
Now I am starting to get over this – the two nominated books I’ve read in the last month, I’ve enjoyed – and I didn’t know they were nominees when I picked them out and read them. In fact I was surprised when I found out – because they were interesting and funny. I’d also like to thank Virago for their role in this – they keep turning out attractive looking reissues of intelligent (and often funny) women’s fiction. I have half a shelf of their Designer hardbacks – many of which I’ll admit I first picked up because they looked beautiful – and I have a lot of their paperback Modern Classics too. They are widening my horizons.
The other issue – that I can think of anyway – is the size of the to-read pile and the Goodreads challenge, both of which mean I often go for books I know I can read quickly so I can get them off the pile. I leave long books and “difficult” books on the shelf – favouring short ones and “light” fiction.
As you can see, there are a few books by nominated authors waiting to be read
Writing this has made me feel a bit embarrassed – and very ill-read. So. I’m going to try harder. I’m going to try to do better. I’m going to try to improve my hit rate with prize winners and prize-winning authors. I’ll start by working my way through the books on the to-read pile that are award nominated or written by prize winners. And to make sure that I do do better and read these books that I say I will – I’ll keep you posted too.
Help me on my way by recommending me your favourite prize-winning or award nominated books in the comments below.
Verity Reads Books (lots of them) 