Tag: novels

stats, The pile, week in books

The Week In Books: May 12 – May 18

veritywilde

Squeezed in a bit of over-time this week and had an elections briefing on Saturday – so you’d think that was plenty of commutes to get my teeth into some books, but I don’t seem to have covered as much ground as I was hoping.  I’m blaming this on my attempts to reduce the number of non-fiction titles waiting to be read – because they take me longer to read than some light fiction does.  But it remind me how much I enjoy good non-fiction  and so I’m thinking of adopting a policy of having one on the go at all times.  But then I already have too many rules and policies and it’s starting to get ridiculous.

Read:

A Delicate Truth by John le Carré (review)

Beautiful for Ever by Helen Rappaport

Death of a Mad Hatter by Jenn McKinlay* (review)

Fanny and Stella by Neil McKenna

Night of Pleasure by Delilah Marvelle

Started:

The Loveliest Chocolate Shop in Paris by Jenny Colgan

The Blessing by Nancy Mitford

Still reading:

Love, Nina by Nina Stibbe

Titus Groan by Mervyn Peake

A pile of books
A bad week for self-restraint – but one of these was free and another borrowed

Now I was doing really well on the not buying books front, until Saturday lunchtime when I arrived really early for my shift and ended up wandering into a charity shop.  Four books later and suddenly the to-read pile was looking monstrous again.

I had a bit of a panic earlier in the week when Jenn McKinlay’s book turned up – as I didn’t remember ordering it.  It turned out that I hadn’t – it was a win in a Goodreads giveaway – so of course that had to jump straight to the top of the pile so that I could review it because when some one sends you a book and wants you to review it, you should really do that as quickly as possible…

The Railway Detectives is borrowed from my Dad, and the Terry Pratchett is the replacement for my duplicate copy of Trisha Ashley, so only 6 (gulp) books bought this week and a net gain of 2 on the pile (because the Delilah Marvelle was an ebook).  I really do need to try harder, still, I have many shifts this week.  But then that’s what I thought last week!

stats, The pile, week in books

The Week In Books: May 5 – May 11

veritywilde

Only two days at work this week – and it was looking like a really bad week for progress down the to-read pile until I put some effort in over the weekend to improve the situation…

Read:

Tales of the Jazz Age by F Scott Fitzgerald

Sure of You by Armistead Maupin

Lavender Lady by Carola Dunn

Every Woman for Herself by Trisha Ashley (review)

The Viceroy’s Daughters by Anne de Courcey

Started:

Night of Pleasure by Delilah Marvelle

A Delicate Truth by John le Carré

Beautiful for Ever by Helen Rappaport

Still reading:

Love, Nina by Nina Stibbe

Titus Groan by Mervyn Peake

More books
Some of this week’s purchases – one of which never made it to the to-read pile…

On the plus side, I finally finished Tales of the Jazz Age after making a concerted effort not to go and start something new until I’d finished with it.  And the Anne de Courcey was a book that I borrowed from my mum *literally* years ago so I’m really pleased to have read that so I could give it back to her.  On the downside, the physical pile isn’t getting any smaller – as two books this week were from the kindle and that was before the Incident in the charity shops and the fact that the new Trisha Ashley came out – and was in two for £7 at the supermarket… On top of that I may have made an unscheduled stop in The Works in Leamington Spa on Saturday night and bought another one! At least five of the six were books that I already had earmarked to read on my Goodreads list.  And I said last week that I wanted to get the number of books on the go at once down – and I have. By one. I’m grasping at straws aren’t I?!

books, stats, week in books

The Week In Books: April 28 – May 4

veritywilde

Not the busiest week reading wise – six things finished, a couple more started and still on the go.

Read:

Dead Reckoning by Charlaine Harris

I Am Shakespeare (a play) by Mark Rylance

Vivian’s Heavenly Ice Cream Shop by Abby Clements

Significant Others by Armistead Maupin

The Three of Us (short story) by Cathy Woodman

Manna from Hades by Carola Dunn

Started:

The Viceroy’s Daughters by Anne de Courcey

Sure of You by Armistead Maupin

Lavender Lady by Carola Dunn

Still reading:

Tales of the Jazz Age by F Scott Fitzgerald

Love, Nina by Nina Stibbe

Titus Groan by Mervyn Peake

What have I learnt making this list? I have too many books on the go at the moment.  And I’m feeling guilty about the fact that I’m still no further on with Titus Groan, which I started in January… The fact that it’s still lingering is another illustration of the problem with the massive to-read pile actually – if I don’t get into something quickly, there’s always something else I want to read, but because the book has been sitting on my shelf for so long, I think that I can’t give up and say it’s not for me.  Although with Titus I’m only 75 pages in and I usually read at least 100 pages or a quarter of the book before I’m prepared to admit defeat. On the bright side, Vivian’s… and I Am Shakespeare were long standing residents of The Shelf, and Dead Reckoning was from the pile too.

As you’ll see I’m working my way through Armistead Maupin’s Tales of the City series (expect a post on that at some point) and am nearing the end of the True Blood series – in fact Dead Reckoning was the last I could get for a penny plus postage from Amazon, so I was expecting to have to wait to finish the series and then I found the last two in the library on Thursday!

As for the others, Cathy Woodman is one of the authors on the list of people I automatically buy new stuff from so I picked up her short story soon after it came out, Manna from Hades has been on the Kindle a while but I’d forgotten about it (oops) until I picked up the next two in the series in The Works this week so I bumped it to the top of the pile.

My aim for this week?  To reduce the number of things on the go…