BeckyDouglas 2013

Hi,

Trying this for the first time, and I suspect that 75 books will be a bit much, but I should probably be reading more so I'll give it a go.

Welcome! Fortunately, we're not so much about the numbers and more about enjoying sharing our reading!

ETA: I just noticed from your profile that you're a physicist. Me too! Anybody with Goldstein's Classical Mechanics in their library is ok by me. :)

Hello, thank you! Lovely to meet a fellow physicist, I notice you have lots of lovely fiction too. :)

I have just finished reading my first book of 2013! Hurrah! I read The Slap by Christos Tsiolkas and although I enjoy it I'm surprised it received so much critical acclaim - it was definitely trashy at points.

Going to have to pick something shorter next time if I'm going get anywhere close to this target.

I'm with you - I managed to tackle a large biography that's pulling down my reading rate. Fortunately, it's a pretty good book. :)

Right, so Book The Second is Bad Science by Ben Goldacre. Been meaning to take it off the shelf for a while. It's a lot shorter than the last one and no less compelling for being non-fiction (so far). I might try to alternate between fiction and non-fiction this year, I've certainly got plenty of pop-sci that I've had for a long time but have somehow managed not to get around to yet.

Is anyone else using this as a way of reducing their "guilt stack?" I can't be the only person who acquires books at a greater rate than I usually read them?

Oh, absolutely not alone in that! Most of us are in the same mode. :)

Finished reading Bad Science. Not sure what to go for next. Need to choose a novel now, I think.

Right, update time, and also time to make this look a bit neater.

#1 The Slap - Christos Tsiolkas 12/01/13
#2 Bad Science - Bed Goldacre 25/01/13
#3 The Appointment - Herta Muller 10/02/13
#4 The Franchise Affair - Josephine Tay 10/02/13
#5 A Doll's House - Henrik Ibsen 10/02/13

Currently reading 0.83 books per week. At this rate I will have read 43 by the end of the year. Need to step it up a bit! Also, I had a lot of travelling to do yesterday - hence finishing three short books :)

So much for alternating fiction and non-fiction. The next book is Robin Ince's Bad Book Club though, so maybe I can start to correct the balance.

Book number 6 down! Robin Ince's Bad Book Club was very funny and made me want to read more books (although mostly books that I shouldn't read.

I'm on a trip at the moment and won't head back to Glasgow until next weekend and I am now out of paperbacks. Thank goodness for the Kindle (sorry e-book haters, but I could never carry as many books as I'd like to read otherwise). I'm starting Life of Pi on it now.

That pushes my average up a bit so I'm on 85.7 books per week (or, more accurately 0.125 books per day) which means I will have read about 45 by the end of the year at this rate.

I think I need a bit of planning. So the next ten books I think I will read are:

1. Life of Pi by Yann Martel
2. The Strangest Man by Graham Farmelo
3. Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami
4. The Physics of Superheroes by James Kakalios
5. The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafron
6. In Search of Time by Dan Falk
7. The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy
8. Introducing Postmodernism by Richard Appignanesi
9. Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
10.The Universe in a Nutshell by Stephen Hawking

I reserve the right to change my mind. The first three are on the Kindle - if I'm not back before I finish them (unlikely) then this list will obviously have to change.

The to-read list is still tall and teetering, but I will hopefully reduce its height by a foot or two before the year is out.

Hello Becky! That's a fantastic choice of books and so varied! Life of Pi is on my reading list for February or March! I enjoyed Norwegian Wood very much, when I read it some years ago - I think that it's time for a reread! The Shadow of the Wind is one of the books I've been wanting to read since it was published. The God of Small Things, Heart of Darkness and The Universe in a nutshell are on my to-read-list as well. I'm looking forward to your opinion about all these books.

Hi! I'll make sure to add a mini-review for each one then. :)

That would be great! :)

Well! Life of Pi was a very good read. It was a lot better than I expected (I admit I'd based my expectations on the trailers for the film). It's an exciting and intriguing story with a kind of empty-feeling-in-your-stomach, kind of devastating, kind of bitter-sweet ending. I loved it and I didn't see coming - though looking back, perhaps I should have. Onwards now to The Strangest Man.

(I'm now up to ~0.13 books per day, which comes out at ~47 books in the year. I have a feeling I'll slow down a bit now though, which is a shame.)

Ah, the best laid plans and so on.

I took far too long reading The Strangest Man, which was very good, in spite of how long it took me. I've never read a biography before and I was surprised at how interesting it was, especially given that Dirac wasn't exactly sociable.

Once I'd finally finished that I read Birdsong at my father's repeated insistence (which was good, but a bit too depressing for me at times) and Half Blood Blues which was also depressing, but in a different way that for whatever reason I found much easier to relate to. I guess I found blues musicians in Nazi-occupied Paris easier to think about that soldiers and miners suffering through trench warfare.

I'm now halfway through both The God of Small Things (sad and funny! The best combination!) and Norwegian Wood (profoundly odd). I'm enjoying both, but I was reading Norwegian Wood on my Kindle which has gone awol. So I'll have to finish it on my phone unless I can get a new kindle fairly quickly, which is unlikely.

So, I'm getting back to my original best laid plan, but thanks to the slow reading of the Dirac book I'm miles from the number I hoped to have read by now. Maybe I'll pick some very short books next and try to catch up.

(I'm now down to 0.054 books per day, which is only 19.8 books per year! Don't think I'll meet the target, but I'll try to speed up a bit.)

The God of Small Things was brilliant and very sad. In the same kind of inevitable and all-to-easy-to-accept way that Never Let Me Go was sad. Norwegian Wood has fallen by the wayside for the time being (hopefully I'll be able to get a new Kindle soon). In the meantime I've just finished Against Interpretation which was a gift from my younger sister, who is a photographer. I can't say I understood it all, but it made me want to go out and read everything else, so I guess that's a good thing. Trying to get back to my original list, I think I'll either read The Shadow of the Wind or Heart of Darkness next.

(0.057 books per day! Hah! Slightly up! Still only 20.9 books per year, though.)

I read Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad first. I finished it a few weeks ago but forgot to update this. Is it ok to say I didn't like it? Well, maybe not that I didn't like it, but that for all the fuss that's made I found it a bit boring. I'm sure I'm in the minority, but I felt like there was so much build up with people always talking about this legendary evil character and then nothing really came of it when he finally showed up. I don't know, I guess I just didn't get it.

I also read Lost at Sea by Jon Ronson. That I did enjoy and found it quite a quick read. Lots of true short stories to dip into. I'm looking forward to reading Ronson's next book now.

At the moment I'm reading The Outsider, I'm about half-way through. It's really quite odd, and I'm sure that it's absolutely laced with philosophy that goes way over my head, but I'm enjoying it as well.

I think having read 20 books by 31st December is probably a fairly realistic aim. Pity I couldn't come close to 75, but it's been a busy year. Fortunately the ones I've read so far have mostly been very good.

I really enjoyed The Outsider, I enjoyed the second half much more than the first, because at that stages I started to get at least a superficial idea of what it was about. I'm sure a lot still went over my head, but I at least liked the most obvious points that it made.

So now I'm most of the way through Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep which my dad bought me for a plane journey I'm not due to take until tomorrow :-P Fortunately he also got me Pattern Recognition so I can read that on my flight. Good thing I'm in a bit of a Sci-Fi-ish mood. Although I'm warned that I might find William Gibson a bit cheesy. We'll see how that goes.

Must remember to charge my Kindle as a back up, though, this will be quite a long flight and I'll be abroad for a long time. I'm hoping to get lots of reading done, but you can never tell with these trips.

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep was great. I feel like I should go back and re-watch Blade Runner now. Also, I'm really enjoying Pattern Recognition so far, and I haven't found it to be all that cheesy yet, at least not in my opinion. I didn't realise it was part of a trilogy - I might look into reading the others if I continue to enjoy this one.

Also, I had a miniature Amazon binge last night and picked up a few extra books for my Kindle. Not that I've read all the book I already had on it, of course...

I finished Pattern Recognition and The Untouchable before the year was out and started A Room of One's Own and May We Be Forgiven but didn't finish them.

So I got 19 in total. Not bad for me, but far from the goal of 75. Guess I'll try again this year, but maybe not on this site. Maybe with slightly better planning too.

I had a lot of fun getting through books and getting into the habit of carrying them in my bag so I could always dip into one. I think this might be the first year for many years when I've come close to reading books at a similar pace to that which I acquire them at. It's really nice to look back at what I read over the year and to remember what else I was doing at that time.

Anyway, happy reading. I hope everyone enjoys the books they dip into this year.