Well, it’s that time of the week again – Friday Reads! The time when I realise I haven’t done quite as much reading as I would like in these past few days and so I foolishly try to claim I’m going to make up for it by reading, reading, reading this weekend. I inevitably won’t but, hey, good intentions are the best kind of intentions. Or so I hear.
This weekend will mostly be filled with furniture… by which I mean my IKEA order finally arrives today (hopefully anyway) so tonight/tomorrow could well be spent trying to dutifully follow along flat pack instructions before throwing them away, trying in vain to freestyle it, before realising confusing instructions are actually the best way forward. So, there’s some reading comprehension happening there. But aside from that? Well, audiobooks might well be the way to go.
I realised this week, whilst standing uncomfortably on a train, wedged against the person stood next to me, that I wasted a lot of potential reading time every single day. My walk to the train station is about 10 minutes, my standing journey on the train is about 20 minutes, and I then walk a further 20 minutes to work. That’s 50 minutes each way, 1 hour 40 minutes each day, Monday to Friday – easily enough time to shift through audiobooks, especially if I listen to them at faster than 1x speed. (Although I do tend to only go for 1.5x speed though, otherwise I get way too on edge because the sped up narration makes me feel like every book is a high octane thriller!) So I’ve finally reopened the abandoned Audible app on my phone and started listening to some books I’ve really been meaning to get to, mainly:
Blue Lily, Lily Blue by Maggie Stiefvater (x)
This is a re-read before finally facing the reality that is The Raven King. I’ve been putting off reading the final instalment in the series simply because when it’s over, it’s over… which seems like a dumb thing to say but I know any right-minded book lover knows exactly what I mean! So I’ve been procrastinating by re-reading the first three books in the series, but I had stalled a couple of months ago on Blue Lily, Lily Blue.
However, upon opening Audible I remembered my frankly brilliant idea to also purchase all of the books on audio (Will Patton does an amazing job of reading them, highly recommended), so Blue Lily, Lily Blue has been in my ears this week whilst I try to ignore the distracting sway of a train, and I’ll definitely be listening to it this evening on my journey home. Who knows, I might even listen to a little whilst building flat-pack.
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle (x)
As part of the #Victober readathon this month, I planned to re-read some of my favourite Sherlock Holmes stories which are part of The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes collection. These are quite readable short stories and great bitesize chunks for fitting in reading in 20-minute bursts here and there throughout the day.
Well, no time like the present, I say! I’ll definitely be reading some of this this weekend and, in fact, I might ambitiously say I’ll make the effort to finish it this weekend. Can I do it? Potentially. (Forget ambitious goals, set achievable ones).
Anyone who reads my blog semi-regularly will now notice the distinct lack of George R.R. Martin’s A Feast for Crows on this list. Yes, it has been on my Friday Reads for so many weeks on the trot… now, I’m not saying I’m putting it on hold but I will say that it is now towards the bottom of the rather sizeable stack of books currently “on my nightstand”. I need to shift through some “quicker reads” first, I think, so I don’t start forcing myself to read A Feast for Crows. When it comes to reading, obligation is the death of desire and/or enjoyment!
So there we have it, that was my Friday Reads.
Do you have any books lined up for today and into this weekend?
What are you currently reading? Let me know in the comments below!
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The Terror of Knowing 