Book of the Month: January

I didn't manage to read as many books during January as I had hoped. Normally I like to read a book every three days or so, I don't mind spending a week on a book, but when it's taking me longer than that there's usually a good reason. Sometimes that's because life is getting in the way, I might be ill or working an awkward shift, but sometimes it's because I'm just not enjoying it a great deal. I hate giving up on a book as well, especially when the end is in sight.

In January I only made it through four books (and one of those wasn't finished until February). Those were:

1. The Fellowship of the Ring - J.R.R. Tolkien
2. Eugenie Grandet - Honore de Balzac (ebook)
3. Flash and Bones - Kathy Reichs
4. The Idiot - Fyodor Dostoyevsky (ebook)

Of those books The Fellowship of the Ring was definitely my favourite book of the month, with Flash and Bones a very close second. The two ebooks were both taken from the 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die list because since starting my literature course I'm very aware that there are a lot of 'classic' books out there that I've never read.

Unfortunately this is proving to be a bit of a challenge to me so far, part of this may be before I've picked books to fill slots in a reading challenge I'm taking part in, rather than picking books that actually sound like they would appeal to me. That's not to say that I didn't like the sound of the ebooks that I picked, I just didn't get into them as much as I hoping having read about them.

So what am I going to read in February?

Well, I've got several books which are being covered in my OU course; Wuthering Heights and The Sign of Four both of which I read a couple of years ago when I first decided I was going to do this course, but which I need to revisit for course work and assignments. The first time around I found Wuthering Heights to be a bit of a drag, but having started looking at the Victorians now (a period of history that fascinates me) I'm hoping that I might enjoy it a little more; The Sign of Four I'm not too worried about, I enjoyed it first time around and we've watched a couple of different versions over the last few months. My only worry about this one is that my edition is different to the one used in the course book, but I'm surviving with an older edition of Wuthering Heights (where all the page references are one page out), I'm sure I'll get by with that one too.

We also had a friend pop round with some paperwork the other week and spotted my bookcase with all the Kathy Reichs books on it and suggested I might like to read some Patricia Cornwell novels. Several people have told me this and I've thought about picking them up for ages, but I've always been a bit put off because I didn't want to start reading in the middle of a series. He lent me the first one so I've got that on my shelf to read now as well, I don't like having borrowed books hanging around too long so I'll get onto that quickly.

And there's War Horse which I bought to make up a Book People order after seeing the film. I selected it as a challenge read on HTV so need to get that out the way before the end of February. I've only read a couple of Michael Morpurgo books but I've loved what I've seen so I think this'll be a fairly quick read for me. I'll also probably move onto The Two Towers as well, I'm wanting to draw out my Tolkien reading a little this year though so I might see if I can hold off on that one til March.

As for ebooks, I've still got the A Song of Ice and Fire series which I'm about halfway through just now. I stopped in between the two volumes of one of the books which is split into two (luckily my Kindle remembers where I've left off because off hand I honestly can't remember where it was now without checking my Book Journal). I like to alternate between book-books and ebooks so I might see if I can get at least one of those books read this month as well.

Of course, now I've got more books out on display in the living room because we've moved around our furniture, I might change my mind because I've got access to a lot more books than I used to. I think the main thing will be finding time to read, not reading material.