November Group Read: Check in the First

[glinda]

I spent all day excited to make this post and then when the time came I...emm...forgot. Sorry about that.

Anyways... the first week of the challenge has reached an end. Time to share with the class your triumphs and tribulations. Finish a book? Make a start on something that you've been meaning to get round to for ages? Or finally accept that that one book everyone recommended you is just not your thing and you're never going to get past the second chapter?

Successes and failures below the line please!

Comments

[alexseanchai]

Read the first book of the Iliad. :)

[glinda]

Well done! :D

[alexseanchai]

Eh. 24 books in the Iliad. Today's the fifth. At one-book-a-day rate, which is not unreasonable given my reading speed, I'm behind.

[peaceful_sands]

Ah, but did you enjoy it? Was it worth your time?

[alexseanchai]

Definitely!

[peaceful_sands]

Glad to hear it - I seem to remember there being a copy somewhere on my TBR pile or if not it's something Iliad related... I shall be interested to hear how you get on with the subsequent books. After all, I'll get to it one day.... Hmmmm, wonder how many books I've said that about?

[shanaqui]

It's a start! *cheers you on*

[glinda]

I've made a start on my first book, I've read half of The Gracekeepers by Kirsty Logan, which is every bit as lovely as I'd hoped it would be. I read a short story version of the book (more like a snippet of its world) a couple of years ago, so I was really excited to find that she'd made a book of it.

[peaceful_sands]

Glad you're enjoying it.

[shanaqui]

I think I've had that on my maybe-read list for quite a while! But I don't know much about it...

[shanaqui]

I have so far managed to read a book a day, four of them being books I bought pre-2016. So I am hitting my goals, though not catching up to my year-long goal.

Finished:
-The Talisman Ring, Georgette Heyer.
-Predictably Irrational, Dan Ariely.
-Genome, Matt Ridley.
-Natural Causes, James Oswald.
-This is Your Brain on Music, Daniel Levitin.

[glinda]

Powering on I see! :)

How did you enjoy This is your Brain on Music? I read chunks of it for my dissertation and I've been meaning to go back and re-read it properly (ie for pleasure rather than research).

[shanaqui]

I enjoyed it, though despite Levitin's best efforts, sometimes the music-specific jargon was a bit too much for me!

[peaceful_sands]

Congratulations on hitting your month goals (if not your yearly ones). Hope you're finding some good things in there too.

[shanaqui]

Thank you!

[peaceful_sands]

I finished Dead in the Water by Ann Granger, a murder mystery set in a UK town but was fairly unimpressed (I've previously read some others by the same author and enjoyed them more than this one). I also read Black Butler volume XX by Yana Toboso which was a good continuation of the series.

I'm a little over halfway through The Riddle by Alison Croggon and almost halfway through The Crowded Shadows by Celine Kiernan. This probably puts me about on target for the month.

[glinda]

Yay for being on target! :)

[shanaqui]

I need to get round to reading some of Alison Croggon's books!

[tamsin]

Go you! I've found Ann Granger's books to be hit and miss.

[peaceful_sands]

Shame really, but I have a feeling there was another one that I read a while back that I hadn't enjoyed as well as the ones I did. Always makes me dither about whether to pick another one up or not.

[tamsin]

I've finished one graphic novel (Same Difference by Derek Kirk Kim) and one non-fiction book (Die Frauen der Genies by Friedrich Weissensteiner).

[peaceful_sands]

Well done on your finishes - did you enjoy them?

[tamsin]

I did, but not enough to give them shelf space. So off they go to my library's give away basket.