The Terror of Knowing

I don’t know whether you’ve noticed by now but I am rather terrible at actually sticking to TBR lists. Oh, I can make a good list along with the best of them, and I always have honourable intentions, but come the end of the month I look back on those good intentions and realise I was horribly misguided.

In the month of November I read a total of 10 books, technically (I’ll explain the technicalities in a minute), but most of these were for university. Now, that isn’t a bad thing, at all – in fact, I’m glad I’ve read the required reading. ;) However I did hope to continue to recreationally read alongside my MA courses. I’m getting better at it than I was during undergrad but there’s still some way to go I think. Here’s a quick break down…

Read in November 2014

1. The Selection – Kiera Cass (3/5 + review)
2. The Adventures of Master F.J. – George Gascoigne (2/5)
3. Lola and the Boy Next Door – Stephanie Perkins (3/5)
4. Isla and the Happily Ever After – Stephanie Perkins (3/5, maybe 3.5 + review)
5. Atomised – Michel Houllebecq (3/5)
6. Starter For Ten – David Nicholls^ (4/5, maybe 4.5, much-loved re-read)
7. Foxe’s Book of Martyrs: Selected Narratives – John Foxe* (3.5/5)
8. A Woman Killed With Kindness and Other Domestic Plays* (Arden=4/5, AWKWK=3/5)
9. The Flood – Maggie Gee (3/5)
10. Never Let Me Go – Kazuo Ishiguro^ (5/5)

All in all, not a bad reading month. I did manage to finish off the Anna series of companion novels and whilst I didn’t enjoy them as much as the sheer cuteness that was Anna and the French Kiss I did enjoy them for what they were. I got to re-read a couple of favourites too – Starter for Ten and Never Let Me Go – and it was so nice to revisit some favourites and see what extra I picked up on the second time round. There were some surprises, too, namely how much I ended up loving ‘Arden of Faversham’ which was in the Domestic Plays collection, and I think I’ll even be focusing on that text for my module essay so many more frantic re-reads are probably on the cards.

Note: Books marked with * are the technicalities. With university reading it’s sometimes hard to classify if I have actually ‘read’ a book because very often you’r eonly asked to read selections/passages from it. This is the case with the Foxe text – which is a hunker, if you see a full copy of it – and with the domestic plays collections – of which I read (and loved actually) the first two of four. Similarly, whenever I read a few chapters from an edited collection of essays, I don’t usually mark it as a ‘read’ book. If I did, I think I’d easily meet my reading goal. But technically I haven’t read them, not really, which is why I’m hesitant to include those. Maybe I’m being facetious (quite probable to be honest) but that’s how it goes.

To Be Read in December 2014

1. Mr Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore – Robin Sloan
2. A Game of Thrones – George R.R. Martin
3. The Luminaries – Eleanor Catton
4. The Bone Season – Samantha Shannon
5. Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea – April Genevieve Tucholke
6. Cinder – Marissa Meyer
7. Not A Drop to Drink – Mindy McGinnis
8. Daughter of Smoke and Bone – Laini Taylor

Trying to pick out books for this month is a weird one. Term finishes on Friday 12th but I won’t be going home until 24th. I have 2 x 5000 word essays due like 12th January so I should use that 12 day free period when I’m sat waiting around to go home to do work. If, by some miracle, that actually happens then when I am at home I intend to do nothing resembling university work until the New Year. So, it all depends how things pan out in these first few weeks as to how much reading I actually get done. I am like 48% of the way through GoT and 40ish pages into The Luminaries so… yeah, that’s the way to do it, Emma, pick the two longest books ever and try to read them side-by-side whilst finishing up the term. That’s obviously a recipe for success.

(Side note: I’ve had this post saved in drafts for like 10 days, no I don’t know why either.)