Well, there are only a handful of hours of January left, so I figured it was time to review my month in books.
I’ve invented the word ‘bluised’ for this month (well, I thought I had until I googled it and discovered a couple of different uses in play), but anyway, I’m sticking with it. I had less of the January blues and more of the January cruise this month when it came to books; I’ve pretty much sailed through the month with a nice haul of literature and a good few items ticked off the old reading challenge for the first month of the year.
So, in total, I got stuck in to 15 books in January. I’ll only have finished 11 of them by the time I post this, the others I’m *nearly* done with, I’ve been doing that annoying thing of picking up more than one at a time (it’s easily done when I have my personal reading list, work reading list and uni reading list all on the go at the same time). So, I’m only going to count the 11 I’ve read today and I’ll roll the other 4 over to next month (assuming I finish them!) and have ticked off the ones I’m counting towards my challenges.
I decided not to start writing reviews of individual books on my blog, as it will simply hold me back from powering through the actual reading. My target for the year is 150 again, same as 2015, but I smashed that quickly last year and made it to 200 and would like to do the same again! So instead I’ve made do with copying over my Goodreads star rating for each.
- ★★★★☆ This Is Your Life, Harriet Chance! by Jonathan Evison
- ★★★★☆ Lean UX by Jeff Gothelf
- ★★★★☆ Pear Shaped by Adam Blain
- ★★★☆☆ The Power of No by James Altucher
- ★★★★☆ The Book Boy by Joanna Trollope
- ★★★☆☆ Beyond the Bounty by Tony Parsons
- ★★★☆☆ Everything That Rises Must Converge by Flannery O’Connor
- ★★★★☆ Reading My Arse! by Ricky Tomlinson
- ★★★★☆ Pictures or it Didn’t Happen by Sophie Hannah
- ★★★☆☆ The Ladybird Book of Mindfulness by Jason Hazeley
- ★★★★☆ Open Secrets by Alice Munro
The one book I will single out this month is Pear Shaped, which has the subheading “The funniest book so far this year about brain cancer”. Despite how morose that sounds, it is, in actual fact, true. Adam Blain collapsed one day and found himself in hospital having tests that led straight on to brain surgery after a tumour the size of a pear was found in his head. He has a fantastic sense of humour, doesn’t pander too much to self deprecation and simply lays himself on the line for the reader to enjoy. This was my wildcard book this month as part of my Amazon Prime subscription, it literally just hit the Humour category on the Kindle Store and picked the first book whose cover I liked. Pretty good choice in the end, I recommend it.
And so, on to February. I plan to finish a few of the books I’ve been lingering over (mainly so I can get some of the back to the library before I get chased!) and I have a few goodies lined up I’ve been waiting to get in to for months.
Here’s an update of the ones I’m ticking off the big list:-
- A book by a female author (The Book Boy)
- A book of short stories (Open Secrets)
- A nonfiction book (Lean UX)
- A book based entirely on its cover (Pear Shaped)
- A book you can finish in a day (Pictures or it Didn’t Happen)
I’m sure a few of the others crossed over too, but I don’t want to over-excite myself in the first month!
Hope those of you tackling your own reading challenges are enjoying them so far. If you’ve not started one yet, why not hop over to Goodreads and set a small target to get you started… how about just 10 for starters, focus on one a month, and see how you get on?