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reading

Seven Books – Day 8

Book: False Value
Page: 432
Which is: The end!
Lead/Lag: –136
Time Spent (today): 1hour 42mins
Time Spent: 11hours 40mins
Pages Remaining: 1652 (27% complete)
Favourite Character: Peter

Apologies for not uploading this sooner. Day 8 is correct in terms of the stats and when I did the reading but we’re nearly a week later when I’m actually writing this. I could hunt for a cool moment and quote but honestly none are fresh in my mind so I’m leaving them.

In the end this turned out to be an OK-not-great book. There was a big confrontation and resolution at the end but it wasn’t as exciting or satisfying as I’d hoped. We got another bit of on-going story that felt shoe-horned in. But we also got a bit of universe-expanding lore that’s interesting.

Meta: So I finished this book and after the disappointment of not reading for a day I was cautiously happy and so I decided to swap out my next book (Thud!) for something I knew I had no reservations about (a re-read of The Bishop’s Jaegers). Which I promptly read one chapter of and haven’t picked up since.

So I’m calling it: this project is officially over. I either failed and only read two books, or I succeeded but redefined the goal half-way through. I don’t think it really gave me the feeling I was looking for which I nostalgically imagined when I re-read those HP posts. But who knows when I look back in a few more years maybe I’ll get it then.

I do hope to not leave it so long until my next blog update, but I won’t be trying to do every day again for a while. And I will keep reading, sporadically.

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7 books reading

Seven Books – Day 7

Book: False Value
Page: 332
Which is: Peter confronts Jacob at SCC
Lead/Lag: –141
Time Spent (today): 0 hours, minutes, seconds…
Time Spent: 9hours 58mins
Pages Remaining: 1752 (23% complete)

This post is all meta since there’s no reading to talk about.

I feel like I’ve lost what momentum I had. I’ve nearly completed 2 books but for a few days I’ve wanted to relax and chosen videos or TV over reading, particularly at lunch times. All that happened yesterday was I didn’t even try to pretend I was going to do anything else.

I think with a target that amounts to nearly two hours a day this was too ambitious. I think I thought being able to read more at the weekends would average that down to something reasonable – but I didn’t feel like reading so much on the weekends either.

I’m not entirely sure what I’ll do now. I hate to give up entirely. I will finish False Value and it would make sense to read the novella What Abigail Did That Summer before the 7th when the next novel comes out. Although, given that I may not go straight into reading it that’s an abitrary target (always was I suppose). Maybe I could make it “Four Books” and try to get to Abigail before the 7th. Or maybe I just keep going and see how long it takes. Or maybe I need to sprinkle in some other books.

We’ll see.

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7 books reading

Seven Books – Day 6

Book: False Value
Page: 332
Which is: Peter confronts Jacob at SCC
Lead/Lag: –46
Time Spent (today): 1hour 46mins
Time Spent: 9hours 58mins
Pages Remaining: 1752 (23% complete)
Favourite Character: Peter
Cool Moment: Nightingale fighting Mrs Chin
Quote: “‘Ah, Peter, excellent,’ he said. ‘Would you be so good as to check for casualties?’”

A bit vague on what happened (see meta note below) but the story seems to be reaching a climax. Soon we’ll get a reveal about Deep Thought I think. I don’t think Stephen and Mrs Chin are the real bad guys despite their sudden yet inevitable betrayal. It’s just that they believe they’d be best placed to look after the Mary Engine and aren’t too concerned about who gets in the way.

We also got some more stuff with Beverley and an interesting discussion of the way power and status distorts relationships. It’s mostly ongoing stuff rather than for this book specifically but it didn’t feel forced.

Meta: Today* I mostly read via audiobook whilst I did other things. It means I may have missed some detail but I got most of what was happening. I do prefer to read read when I can (or read+listen) but I didn’t have time/motivation for that in the end.

*Sunday 20th

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7 books reading

Seven Books – Day 5

Page: 241
Which is: Peter talking to Stephen and Mrs Chin
Lead/Lag: -42
Time Spent (today): 3hours 46mins
Time Spent (total): 8hours 12mins
Pages Remaining: 1843 (19% complete)
Favourite Character: Peter
Cool Moment: Peter defusing the demon trap
Quote: “‘So you’re undercover?’
‘Yes’.
‘As yourself?’
‘It saves on having to memorise stuff'”

So I read a lot today* so it was hard to pick moments/quotes. Also Beverley & Alona Silver were both potential favourite characters – but in both cases they haven’t quite done enough yet, they remain potential. For Beverley this is based on what I know of her from past books, for Silver she seems like she might be badass but hasn’t done much yet.

The story is unfolding nicely. It’s got some cool ideas – is it an AI or is it some kind of supernatural entity behind this? Might it be a hybrid of both – like the magic-powered 3D-printed drones, which are also cool. I like the librarians. I like seeing a glimpse into magical society in another country (we might have had a bit of this in October Man but I honestly forget)

Meta: I would have liked to fully catch up on the target but that would require a lot of reading for that. A lot more I mean and I already did a lot. There’s always tomorrow**

*well Saturday, posting this a bit late

**i.e. Sunday, which is when I wrote the draft for this post, but earlier than I posted it.

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7 books reading Uncategorised

Seven Books – Day 4

Book: False Value
Page: 68
Which is: Peter confronts Jacob at SCC
Lead/Lag: -120
Time Spent: 4hours 26mins
Pages Remaining: 2016 (11% complete)
Favourite Character: Peter
Cool Moment: Nightingale sitting down at the next table
Quote: “‘Not librarians,’ he said. ‘The Librarians.’“

Jacob/Stephen seems cool, I am intrigued to find out more about him.

Peter refers to almost being killed by a demon trap? Did I miss something? Was that from a previous book? (No. it’s in the next chapter)

The quote for today is because I’m not sure but it seems like “The Librarians” will be significant. With so pitiful a page count I didn’t have much to choose from.

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7 books reading

Seven Books Challenge day 3

Book: False Value
Page: 53
Which is: Peter confronts Jacob at SCC
Lead/Lag: -40
Time Spent: 4hours 7mins
Pages Remaining: 2031 (11% complete)
Favourite Character: Peter
Cool Moment: erm… maybe the scene at the printers, Peter pulling his police expertise out.
Quote: “Burglary is generally a crime of opportunity and stealth, and worse – it’s done by strangers. Most men are murdered by their mates and most women are murdered by their partners. Most burglaries are done by someone who couldn’t pick their victim out of a line-up.”

I don’t have a lot to say. I am enjoying this, I think, but some things feel a bit off, or maybe it’s me. Like there was a character introduced with a male name but described as female but then referred to (after the name was revealed) as male again. There was some evidence that it was deliberate so maybe I was supposed to infer a trans character? I guess if the character features more heavily I’ll find out.

Had trouble choosing a cool moment, probably because I didn’t read enough for something to naturally stand out.

I am enjoying it I think but I need an hour or two solid reading, when not tired to get past a lot of the set up and into the characters and plot.

Meta: today (yesterday when I’m writing this) was a tough day at work. I was tired and so I reverted to watching things rather than a lot of reading, hence the lag. I’m more impressed I did any reading rather than that I didn’t hit my target.

(Meta-meta: I’m typing this on day 4 and I’m even more tired.)

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7 books reading Uncategorised

Seven Books Challenge – day 2

Book: False Value
Page: 16
Which is: Peter starting work at SCC, beginning to investigate.
Lead/Lag: 18
Time Spent: 3hours 25mins
Pages Remaining: 2068 (9% complete)
Favourite Character: Khrisong
Cool Moment: The Doctor de-hypnotising Victoria
Quote: Not for the first time, Victoria’s well-developed lungs came to her rescue.

I choose Khrisong for favourite character to vary it from the Doctor and also because I liked the contrast of him being very stubborn but also brave and helpful once he was convinced.

I definitely enjoyed this book but I don’t have a lot to say about it. It hits a lot of the “typical” Classic Who tropes and I am intrigued to see the animated version when it gets released later this year.

So I’ve started False Value and I’ve even less to say about that yet. A bit intrigued as to whether Peter is genuinely out of the Met Police or just under cover. Also although I get that the names used by SCC are all Hitch-Hikers references, I wonder if there’s anything more to it than that. Like this place is supposed to be a cool tech company like Google and those places would certainly nod their head to geek culture but adopt a single source wholesale?

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7 books reading

Seven Book Challenge – meta 1

So with the “Am I Crazy” (Potter) challenge I got into talking about time management and spreadsheets quite a lot. This time I want to keep that separate so I’ll tag these “meta” posts instead.

For the purposes of this post I am two people. Let’s call them Paul and Shuggie. Paul is interested in reading, he was the one inspired to start this challenge, loved re-reading the AIC? posts and can’t wait to re-discover the joy of reading.

Shuggie is a nerd. He loves playing with spreadsheets and automating things. He likes the challenge because it gives him the opportunity to play with those spreadsheets again.

So Shuggie and Paul’s interests are mostly aligned. But only mostly. See, I found myself diving back into the spreadsheet and having to find and record a bunch of information (page counts, word counts, time spent reading) and even set up a page similar to the old spreadsheet I used for AIC (which sadly I no longer seem to have). Shuggie loves doing this but Paul is nervous that it will rob him of the simple joy of reading.

Even if the two can be balanced it’s a matter of time. It took maybe 40minutes to set up the spreadsheet again. That may not seem much but the reading time was 1:10 + 12mins at bedtime. Those numbers are too close. If the management time overtakes the reading time the enthusiasm for reading will suffer. (Shuggie disagrees, Paul is nodding)

Part of it is that it was a much simpler affair for AIC. All the books were paper. Which means that I tracked progress with a bookmark. I was recording time spent, but that was mostly noting the time on the clock before and after. And it was literally the first time I’d applied writing a spreadsheet to this problem. So it was new and fun.

The more I think of it it’s not ebooks that are the problem so much as the fact that having ebooks I can then switch between devices at will. But then I need to check progress using different measures – I have a whole page on the spreadsheet called “conversions” – so I need to find and enter the length of the book in pages, epub pages, koreader pages, kindle pages, kindle locations. Actually “have to” is not strictly true and that’s the issue.

All of this is to say that I think I will be trying to favour “Paul” whilst keeping “Shuggie” happy.

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7 books reading

Seven Book Challenge – Day 1

Page: 89
Which is: The guard being berated by Khrisong for letting Travers go.
Lead/Lag: -6
Time Spent: 1hour 32mins
Pages Remaining: 2187 (4% complete)
Favourite Character: The Doctor (naturally)
Cool Moment: Jamie collapsing the cave roof on the Yeti
Quote: [The Doctor] looked pleadingly at them, like a small boy begging to be allowed to go out and play.

So this is an easy book to read but not so easy to write about. Especially since I know some of the reveals due to having watched Web of Fear but not the details of how we get there.

It definitely feels like Doctor Who. The voices of the Doctor and the companions feel right. But then they should as this is a novelisation of an actual TV story rather than an independent novel.

I am enjoying it. It will be interesting to see how the threat (the Great Intelligence) reveals itself, what the plan is and how the Doctor thwarts it.

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7 books reading

Seven Books Challenge

So I’ve decided to break my long blog hiatus with a new reading project/challenge. Seems appropriate. It’s been one of the most consistent features of my blog since the beginning.

This is inspired by two things:

  • I recently re-read the Harry Potter book challenge posts. (They start here)
  • I watched this video.

What I liked about the old challenge posts was the every day nature of them, a quick summary of where I was. However it also reminded me how brutal some of that period was – all reading all the time until I was sick of it.

Similarly with the video above I liked the idea of it, of someone re-finding a love a reading. But I don’t have the kind of job or reading speed where I can do a book a day.

So I decided to construct a challenge that was about reading every day, about completing a fixed number of books in a short-ish time and would involve blogging every day with the kind of updates I did for the Potter challenge.

So the challenge I’m setting is for 7 specific books (see below) to be read by 7th April. This is the release date of Amongst Our Weapons – the next book in the Rivers of London series.

Without further ado, here’s my list of books with, where appropriate, reasons for picking them:

Doctor Who and the Abominable Snowmen – a novelisation of a “lost” classic Doctor Who story. Quite short (~35,000 words) and on the list because I’d already started reading it.

False Value – book 8 in the Rivers of London series and the next unread one for me.

Thud! – my next unread Discworld book, number 34 overall. I’ve had various plans to finish the DW series since before Pratchett sadly passed. I initially was going to make that the challenge (it’s only 8 books) but I wanted some variety in my list so it’s only the next three.

What Abigail Did that Summer – book 9 Rivers of L. A novella rather than a full novel.

Wintersmith – Discworld book 35.

Wired Love – a short novel (~50,000 words) I’ve been trying to read for a couple of years. To be honest I added this so I didn’t have two DW books back to back. More about this when I read, and blog about, it.

Making Money – Discworld #36. The next (last?) Moist Von Lipwig book. I enjoyed Going Postal so this seemed like a good “landmark” to aim for in lieu of not completely finishing the series (yet!).

As I said I already started reading Abominable Snowmen. However I only read for about 10 minutes last night before falling asleep, so today/tonight will be my first “official” reading day and I’ll do my first post tomorrow.