I read my second re-read book after reading Life After Life. It was The Servants by M.M. Smith. Since I’ve reviewed this before in the lifetime of this blog, and since I’m intending to do a summary post about the re-read project itself I’ll not do a re-review, see the link above for that.
A few thoughts – I read it as a palate cleanser I suppose. It was an instant favourite of mine and so a guaranteed pleasant read, plus it’s short and simple. I didn’t quite enjoy it as much as the first time. Perhaps that’s because I knew the ending, perhaps because of where I am in my life right now. I was a little more overcome with the sadness in the story than last time. Still highly recommended though.
TBR is up again. It’s standing at a healthy 265 now. Which is 14 up on 1st Jan and 30 up on my target. I think we can safely say that goal has gone. Even if I manage to read 30 books for the rest of the year I can think of at least 3 books, probably 5 that are upcoming releases I that I almost certainly will buy.
I suppose the other thing is that I’ve removed from my “currently reading” list everything that I’m not currently reading. So all those books I started but set aside are now in a shelf called started-not-currently-reading.
So the overriding principle of “try to enjoy it” has translated to:
- do keep up the spreadsheet
- don’t worry about getting new books on a whim
- don’t force yourself to read books because they’re in a series or whatever
- pick books you think you’d like and set aside ones you’re not enjoying
Which seems to be fine. One example of the third point is that I’m probably not going to re-read Wool which is S&L’s May pick. Part of me would like to – because then it’ll be fresh for the discussions and because I’ve read every pick this year so far – but it’s not a quick read and it’s ok but only ok. Also last time I got stuck half-way because of life events causing me not to feel like reading. Oddly similar events have just re-occurred and maybe re-reading Wool would stir up memories I don’t want to re-vist right now. Or maybe I’ve just got too much other stuff to read right now.