July Roundup

After a bumper June, I've been suffering from "reader's burnout" and only managed 3 books in July. Three is not a bad number, but in trying to read 100 this year it's making it harder to achieve. I was slowed down considerably by The Sea, The Sea by Iris Murdoch, which I was reading for the Friday book club. It was very dense writing and required longer than the week I gave myself to read it. The book club discussion of it made the book sound much better than I thought it was. I may have to add it to my TBR list.

I really enjoyed My name is Memory by Ann Brashares. I was suprised to quite like Brave New World by Aldous Huxley.

Books Read
Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
Elmore Leonard's 10 Rules of Writing - Elmore Leonard
My Name is Memory - Ann Brashares

Books not Completed
The Sea, The Sea Iris Murdoch
The Low Road - Christopher Womersley

This brings my totals to 
100+ Reading Challenge - 54
Aussie Author Challenge stays the same at 5
Bibiliophilic challenge - 7
Buck-a-book challenge - $54

May Roundup

May was a very slow month for reading. I only finished two books. They were both in the Hamish MacBeth series by M C Beaton.


May Books
Death of a traveling man
Death of a nag


Total for the buck-a-book challenge - $31

April Roundup - #bookbinge

April was Australian Librarian's book binge month.  Where we read as much as we can in April, funnily enough.

April started really well with the Easter long weekend and plenty of reading time.
I finished off Beautiful Creatures by Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl. It was quite good and was like Twilight but with witches instead of vampires. I am eagerly awaiting the sequel which will come out later this year.
I then read The Suspect by Michael Robotham, mainly because he is from Casino and so am I! It was quite a good read and I think I will read more of his books in the future.
Then, just as I was overdosing on hot cross buns, I overdosed on the Hamish Macbeth books by M C Beaton. My sister is a fan of the TV show and this spun off into the books. She had the first 8 books in the series. I indulged in all of them over 3 days... and then I really needed a break
from them. The moralising of the author which hadn't worried my so much in the earlier books was starting to annoy me by the 8th.
After so many cozy mysteries I turned to some tougher stuff with Tell Noone by Harlan Coben.
Book club books came next with A short history of tractors in Ukranian by Marina Lewycka and The reluctant fundamentalist by Moshin Hamid. This was my second outing with both books, and they stood up well to it. Especially the reluctant fundamentalist, as I knew what to expect and picked up on things I missed the first time around.
Then came A fair maiden by Joyce Carol Oates. I have a friend who raves about this author, and this book intrigued me for it's tag line of "a modern Lolita". I wasn't sure where the parallels came in until near the end of the book. I think I will have to read more by this author before I
can say how I feel about her writing.
I returned to Hamish MacBeth with Death of a travelling man.
I'm up to $29 in the buck a book challenge

March Roundup

March wasn't as reading filled as I hoped, with only 4 books being
finished. Two of those being book group books.
March List
Saturday - Ian McEwan
Never Let Me Go - Kazuo Ishiguro
Ice - Louis Nowra
Tell No One - Harlan Coben

Saturday was quite hard going, and I didn't enjoy reading it.
I read Never Let me go for the second time. I think I got more out of it
this time as I knew where the story was going.

I am now up to $15 in the buck a book challenge

February Roundup - 100 + challenge

I'm finding that the thinner books are increasingly harder to read than the
thicker ones. I was almost managing a book every four days.
This month I read 5 books:
The Wild Things - Dave Eggers
50 ways to find a lover - Lucy-Anne Holmes
Let me sing you gentle songs - Linda Olsson
Wonders of a godless world - Andrew McGahan
The Single Man - Christopher Isherwood

It was a mixed bag of books this month. From Wild things based on the
Maurice Sedak book Where the Wild things are, to chick lit 50 ways to find
a Lover. Wonders of a godless world, which won the Aurealius Award this
year, to the Single Man by Christopher Isherwood. I really enjoyed Let me
sing you gentle songs. It generated great discussion in book club.
The Single Man was rather hard going. The perspective changed from second
person to third person and back again. The end was well developed. Although
I havent' seen the movie, starring Colin Firth, I could hear his voice as
George.
I've now saved a total of $11 for the buck a book challenge.

A Buck a Book Reading Challenge

DelGal is hosting the A buck a book reading challenge.

You put aside a dollar for every book you read between 1 January 2010 to
31st December 2010. At the end of the challenge you get to spend the money on something fun for yourself! This sounds like a great challenge and it will link in with the 100+ reading challenge that I'm already doing. I can spend the year thinking of things to spend $100 on!! I have to remember to put $8 aside so far.

At the end of my monthly reading updates I will include the total amount saved so far.


Well back to the books for me!