The Terror of Knowing

This past week saw round 19 of Bout of Books readathon happen and I am really, really glad to have taken part in my own very low-key way. At the start of the week I devised a TBR/intentions post and I think I ended up doing pretty well, even if I didn’t get to the books I mentioned in that post (I very rarely do stick to readathon TBRs, tbh). I didn’t get around to doing any of the official challenges owing to wanting to focus my free time on an evening to reading itself, but I still had a jolly good time all the same. I did manage to participate in the Saturday Twitter chat (I can never make the weekday one because it’s much too late in England) and I really enjoyed that too.There is nothing quite like interacting and flailing with other readers.

Now, I can’t deny that the fact that my friend and housemate Liz (aka Travel in Retrospect) has been away on a work trip probably lead to me reading so much for this readathon – that’s not to say that I can’t, or don’t, read when she’s home, it’s just that we often watch TV or a film together on an evening rather than picking up a book. I mostly read on train journeys or just before I go to sleep which means I grab 20 minutes of reading here and there but I don’t tend to regularly sit down for long periods of time to read unless I happen to be in the house alone.

But I really made a concerted effort to make reading a priority this week, and made sure to read on my train journey to/from work Monday through to Friday and I even spent most of my lunch hours with my nose in a book too. It helps that I am in my own office and people only come in to check their pigeonholes and occasionally pop their head in, so I had a very quiet environment in which to read at my desk.

I still managed to fit in some TV so I didn’t feel too deprived of that; when I wasn’t reading I was watching Bluestone 42, a BBC comedy show about a bomb disposal squad in Afghanistan which doesn’t sound like a barrel of laughs but trust me, it’s brilliant. (It also has an army-ified Matthew Lewis, if that floats your boat at all.)

But that’s not what we’re here to discuss – we’re here to round up or wrap up how I did at Bout of Books. This round, rather than updating a blog post periodically (which I always fall out of the habit of doing somewhere around day 4), I chose to do low-key updates via Twitter – you can check out my Twitter thread of updates to see what I got up to this past week. (I know I have a few more hours left of the readathon but I don’t anticipate reading much more of my current book, Soulless, so I’m calling it now.)

The TL;DR version of how I did is this…

Finished 3 books:

from pg 345 – end/295 pages of American Gods by Neil Gaiman (5 stars)
237 pages of A Room with a View by E.M. Forster (3.5 stars)
400 pages of The Lonely Hearts Hotel by Heather O’Neill (5 stars)
Total: 932 pages

Summary: not too shabby at all! I hereby deem my taking part in this round of Bout of Books a success! I just want to take this opportunity to say thank you to the ever-lovely hosts, Amanda and Kelly, and to everyone who commented or tweeted me during the readathon. I always love Bout of Books for these kind of interactions, they are truly what makes the readathon so great to participate in and keep me coming back for more.
I’ll see you all next round and, until then, happy reading!

Did you participate in this round of Bout of Books? Comment below if so, I’d love to hear how you did this past week, what you were reading, and how you liked it.

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