All booked up 2014- reading and reviewing 52 Books in 52 Weeks

“Reading one book is like eating one potato chip.” 
Diane Duane, author of 'So You Want to be a Wizard'

 

  

I belong to the special club that makes bookstore owners weep and true bibliophiles scorn- I own a Kindle.

 (Pic belongs to Adrian Tomine)

And I really like it. I can select from thousands of books whenever I want. I can read huge books without doing weird head tilts every second page. Books no longer cost upwards of $30 from overpriced bookstores. I can go traveling and not have to carry the three or four books I've half finished with me. I no longer have to trawl through my local council library to try and find a book I haven't previously read or one that isn't called ‘The Pirate’s Mistress’ or ‘Legacy of lust’ with a cover that features a woman trying to fuse to a man with either luscious flowing locks or a waxed chest. 

(Well gosh)

With my Kindle I can now read basically any eBook that exists thanks to the interwebs.

But despite having access to all these books on my Kindle, I hardly read at all. As a child my bedside table would be perpetually be overflowing with books. I loved losing myself, and any chances of schoolyard popularity, in a novel and wouldn't emerge until the novel and all its sequels were finished. I even tried reading with a flashlight under the covers of my bed until I discovered it was super uncomfortable and that the children who tried it in the movies obviously never read for more than three minutes at a time. (Being a child actor is not really synonymous with being a bookworm). But now, It's time to get back to what I loved most as I grew up.

So, this year, I have set myself a challenge of reading 

52 books in 52 weeks.
These are my guidelines:

1. I will read as varied as possible a selection and step outside of my comfort zone of just reading award winning novels.
2. I won’t read anything I’ve read before.
3. I will read books I can’t find reviews for online.
4. I will read books in hard copy and not just on my Kindle.
5. I will read books in genres I haven’t before.
6. I will read one book in French or German (my two half fluent backup languages)
7. I will read a book by an author I dislike or in a genre I hate.
8. I will take suggestions of books and read them.
9. Buy books from second hand bookstores and support someone other than Amazon for a change.
10. I will document it all by reviewing each book here after I’ve read them.

So being the first week of January, the week where New Year’s Resolutions are normally fiercely forgotten, I have begun my challenge.

What have I started with?

 

The Husband’s secret- by Liane Moriarty

Funny considering it sounds exactly like the type of Mills and Boon novel I have been trying to avoid. However, there is a reason I chose a book described as a ‘holiday read’. Here's the Goodreads reviews page. Recently I have found myself struggling to stick to reading one book and not drift back to sitting in front of the TV. So this is my easy start to a year of reading.

One more day to finish it, with just over half completed. Time to go read.