February? You mean that’s tomorrow?

Posted by: Eva on: January 31, 2008

In: *Personal| Challenges| ReadingDangerously
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Where has January gone?! I couldn’t tell you-but I do know that I have three draft posts that were supposed to be for January that are wondering what they’re doing still hiding. I read a *ton* this month, more than I have for any month that I can remember: I read twenty-seven books and listened to one more! I didn’t go back to work until the 14th so that had something to do with it, and so did the weather, but I think a lot of is that since I’m trying not to acquire new books I spend less time compulsively checking bookmooch and wandering through bookstores and more time actually reading! Good side effect of that resolution. The resolution has also caused me to seek out more reviewing ‘venues’ (if you would), and all the people I’ve been in contact with have been great! While I don’t intend to pursue a book-related career, it is fun to do amateur reviews, and I think it somewhat ‘justifies’ my hobby in the eyes of certain non-readers. I also blogged every single day, which was an unvoiced resolution of mine-it’s definitely become a habit now, so at least until circumstances change I see doing this all the time!

This month had its highlights-finally reading War and Peace (even if I have yet to write my actual ‘review’-I mean, how do you review something like that?), meeting Captain Hornblower and Commissario Brunetti, revisiting some old favourites, two great fairy tale novels, and some non-fiction that had me turning the pages faster than a thriller! It also had some lowpoints-my persistant cold (my right ear can’t really hear right now-fortunately that only mattered with my audiobook), two of the Austen ‘adaptations’, that fake memoir, but it was a ton of fun. Unfortunately, among the less-than-stellar was my attempt to read The Pickwick Papers for the January Reading Dangerously group: I got about halfway through (somewhere around page 360), but it had begun to feel like homework, so I decided not to push myself. I think it’s better read serially, the way Dickens published it. I do have ‘notes’ I took throughout with my favourite passages and some random thoughts-I might just hold on to those until I finish the book completely.

The Madonnas of Leningrad Finally, I’d like to round off this post by reminding everyone of how cool book bloggers are. The ‘You Make My Day’ award/meme (I’ve seen it called both) that’s been making the rounds has sparked off a regular lovefest, which is awesome! I went to Ravenous Reader’s yesterday to discover that since an author-slash-blogger has cancer, the blogosphere is doing a book launch for her; Lisa also talked about it. How neat is that?! Then there’s Melanie, who was kind enough to kick off the Russian Reading Challenge with a book giveaway (even though she’s not the host), and even kinder to send me one of the two copies of The Madonnas of Leningrad, despite the postage to ship from Canada to the US-I got it in the mail yesterday, and I’m so excited about it! (Of course, it reminded me that I still need to send out Dewey and Myrthe’s books from my own giveaway-I’m so sorry guys-it’s difficult to get to the post office with a toddler who has decided to have the most erratic nap schedule ever) And I’ve discovered whole other ‘groups’ of book bloggers via my meme who’re all reading and talking about great books. Ok, I’m going to wrap this up before I become maudlin (there are precisely eight minutes left of January here in mountain time). And hey, this year’s a leap year-and the 29th is a Friday. Doesn’t that sound like a great excuse to stay up late reading?