You may have noticed that I've been a bit quiet lately. I know what you're thinking. "Good fourth blog birthday bash, eh? Suffering more than a book hangover afterwards? Nudge, nudge, wink, wink?" Well, tut, tut and how dare you! There's only so much jelly and ice cream one person can eat and the clown was rubbish (Bit too Stephen King perhaps..?)!
After a really good year last year, I suddenly went through a bad patch, finding it hard to settle and flitting from book to book like a moth with a paper penchant. I couldn't get into anything and in the end I had to accept I needed to take a bit of a break so I didn't inadvertently lose my love of reading by making it a chore.
But all that seems to have changed now and the episode has given me the impetus to work on a new mini-project.
As you know, I've been trying to read sets of books so I can reach mini-goals and feel like I'm making progress even though reading all 500ish books seems a long way away. This has been quite successful and I've now read most of Philippa Gregory's Cousins War series (although she keeps ruining it by writing more. Surely that's cheating?). I've also read all of Bernard Cornwell's Anglo Saxon books and I'm a good way through Ian Fleming's James Bond novels, which I'm enjoying very much. I would've started reading the fifth Poldark by now, but got a bit distracted by the BBC series. I kept accidentally giving away the plot, which didn't go down too well with my co-viewers, so decided to not make it any worse. I'm unlikely to hold out until the next series though!
In a pile by the bookcase is another set of books, but one with a very specific link. They're by different authors, of various genres and, on the face of it, have no particular connection. Open one at random, however, and you'll find they're being used to store bookmarks. Or, to put it another way, I started but didn't finish reading them. So I've decided the next 'set' of books I should tackle are these, the Ones that Got Put Away.
They include Alexandre Dumas' 'The Three Musketeers', a feminist book called 'Wifework', Robert Harris' 'Lustrum', 'Angels and Demons' by Dan Brown, Charles Dickens' 'Little Dorrit' and a biography of Queen Isabella by Alison Weir. Unlike the books I've given up on, I really do want to finish these and can't actually remember why I stopped reading them.
So, earlier this month I made a re-start on 'Marie Antoinette: The Journey' by Antonia Fraser. The last time I remembered reading this was seven years ago and it's bloomin' massive, so it could've been arm strain that made me stop reading it, Anyway, yesterday, I made it to the end (also known as page 548), so my next post will be all about that.
I hope that you'll be happy to join me on this new stage of my journey towards book 500. Then we can party!
Previously from the Girl Who Loves Books...
May
'Mr Briggs' Hat: A Sensational Account of Britain's First Railway Murder' by Kate Colquhoun
'Live and Let Die' by Ian Fleming
June
'A Host of Voices' by Doris Stokes
'Dr No' by Ian Fleming
'The Psychic Tourist' by William Little
'The Essential Marx' by Groucho Marx, selected by Stefan Kanfer
July
'All My Friends are Superheroes' by Andrew Kaufman
'The Art of Being Brilliant' by Andy Cope and Andy Whittaker
'Warleggan' by Winston Graham
'My Baby Shot Me Down' by Blinding Books
August
'Wake' by Anna Hope
'Octopussy, the Living Daylights and Other Stories' by Ian Fleming
'Moranthology' by Caitlin Moran
September
'The Illustrated Man' by Ray Bradbury
'Thunderball' by Ian Fleming
'Love and Treasure' by Ayelet Waldman
'Warm Bodies' Isaac Marion
October
'Office Politics' by Oliver James
'We Bought a Zoo' by Benjamin Mee
'The Tiny Wife' by Andrew Kaufman
November
'How to Read a Graveyard' by Peter Stanford
'Moonraker' by Ian Fleming
December
'The Miniaturist' by Jessie Burton
January
'The Empty Throne' by Bernard Cornwell
February
'So, Anyway' by John Cleese
'From Russia with Love' by Ian Fleming
'The Victorian Chaise-Longue' by Marghanita Laski
March
'Goldfinger' by Ian Fleming
'Living Dolls' by Natasha Walter
April
'When I Met You' by Jemma Forte
'So You've Been Publicly Shamed' by Jon Ronson
Birthday Blogs
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The First Post
