Tag: reading

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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 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.

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book reading

Hurray!

A book!

Was Read!!

By ME!!!

Yep. I finished The Martian by Andy Weir and I’m pleased that I did. I may even review it.

Or maybe I’ll read another one.

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reading

A New Start

Er hello.

Been a while. Again.

I’ve been thinking about this blog and how I’ve not posted for a while and how that’s because I’ve not read much and am unsure what else, if anything, I want to post here.

I thought I’d catch you up a bit on the reading. Not completely because I’m still not up for that really.

Since January, according to my Calibre library, I’ve read 21 items but only one was a full length novel (The Rosie Project by Graeme Simsion, which I enjoyed). The rest were short stories, comic book issues and comic strip collections, a couple of non-fiction Kindle Singles and a play. However in that time I have bought/acquired 47 new items costing a total of £159.77, which I must admit I’m embarrassed by, only because I haven’t taken advantage of those books yet so it seems wasteful.

It’s starting to get to the point where I’m worrying that if I get out of the habit of reading longer works then I’ll lose my concentration span completely. So I’m going to start a new book tonight. I had planned to make a new-to-me book too – because that tends to engender more initial enthusiasm – but that was before I calculated that total spend for the year figure. What the heck, I may do it anyway.

I’ll see if I can finish the book in a week or two and then I’ll report back – maybe not with a full review but at least noting I’ve completed it.

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reviews

2013 Reading Wrap-up/2014 Goals (part 2)

So I’ve been doing this reading-and-blogging-about-it thing for five years and I usually get excited toward the end of the year to both wrap-up and report the results for the existing year and lay out the targets for the new.  This year I’m not feeling that. The reasons for that are not reading related so I’ll skip them here. 

So I intend to do a quick 2013 wrap-up and present the new goals in one post. I’m not going to do a very detailed post of the numbers, nor am I going to do the “Melissa Awards” – but I reserve the right to do those later if I feel like it.

The headline result of 2013 was that I read 28 books. This is below my target of 40 and way below what I was projected to hit early in the year. There’s a couple of reasons for this. First is that when certain life events hit I didn’t feel like reading. I don’t like this. I’d love to be one of those people for whom a good book is an escape (I’d even more love to be someone for whom writing is) but sadly it takes just enough effort to read to put me off when I’m feeling down about other stuff.

That’s only half the story though. The other big theme was not finishing books. I read 26 of those 28 by the middle of August which makes it look like I hardly read in the second half of the year. However this year I read 9918 pages but only 8862 of those were from completed books. In other words I read 1056 pages in books I started but didn’t finish. In fact I started another 17 books, a couple of which I was more than 50% through. This was partly due to a dogged and frankly ill-advised attempt to keep up with the S&L book club. But it was also a habit of not reading for a while and then when I came back to pick up something new. 

As for goals well I already said I’d joined the Triple Dog Dare thing, which means TBR books only until April and if I can I want to focus on books I’m already in the middle of. Not necessarily just those 17 either but any that I’ve got significantly into in the last few years and always meant to get back to.

I’m repeating my overall book goal of 40 books. I have a few extra “sub-goals” which are nice-to-have but I’m not going to be slavish about:

  • reduce TBR by 20 (1 Jan 2014 TBR is 327)
  • read exclusively from TBR in Jan/Feb/Mar (i.e. Triple Dog Dare)
  • finish 4 of the 6 abandoned books that I was more than 10% through
  • try to choose books I’ll enjoy and increase my average score above 2013’s 7.0/10
  • read 2-3 short stories a month

I’d really like to recover some of the joy of reading though. I don’t think is something you can do by setting goals. I think you just have to read and hope it “catches fire” again. Some people think you can squeeze the joy out by goal-setting but I know for me if I don’t do that I’ll probably hardly read at all. 

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book reading

New Goal for 2014 (part 1)

It’s almost that time again when I round up how well I’ve down with the year’s reading goals and set the new ones for the next year. Well I’m going to do half of that (setting goals).

Erm actually I’m going to do half of half of that (set some goals). Or a quarter of a half. Or something…

I’m officially signing up for the “TBR Triple Dog Dare” – which is a challenge to only read from your TBR list for Jan, Feb and Mar. My TBR is pretty healthy and gives a wide selection to choose from.

Actually I’ll go one further and say I want to finish books I’ve already started. OK so that’s my goal for Jan-Feb-Mar. If I get bored I’ll allow myself TBR books that I’ve not started.

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reading

Reread #2 and TBR

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.