Ex Libris: Confessions of a common reader – Anne Fadiman

This lovely little book was recommended by a friend a few months ago; I never would have come across it otherwise.

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I finished some books!

It happens every winter: I stop reading. Or, more accurately, I stop finishing books.

Reading challenge update!

There’s only two and a half weeks left of 2015, and I’ve read 35 of the 50 books for the Popsugar reading challenge that I’ve been doing this year. Whoops. Here are the ones I’ve yet to do:

Reading for pressure

One of my friends at work joined a book group recently, so she asks us to get the books for her and then she tells us about them. The first one was “pretty bleak”, which didn’t seem to get her off to a good start. Recently, she came into the library and announced “I’m 85% of the way through my book club book and I think it’s finally convinced me that it’s alright”. A glowing review.

Book challenge #26: A book you own but have never read

Other Girl, Nicole Burstein

Louise and Erica have been best friends since forever. They’re closer than sisters and depend on each other for almost everything. Just one problem: Erica has superpowers.

When Erica isn’t doing loop-the-loops in the sky or burning things with her heat pulse powers, she needs Louise to hold her non-super life together. After all, the girls still have homework, parents and boys to figure out. But being a superhero’s BFF is not easy, especially as trouble has a way of seeking them out. Soon Louise discovers that Erica might be able to survive explosions and fly faster than a speeding bullet, but she can’t win every fight by herself.

Life isn’t a comic book – it’s even crazier than that.

Book challenge #23: A book set in high school

Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, J K Rowling

Although I have finished several books lately, I’ve been struggling to concentrate. The prospect of starting a book has been sometimes difficult, daunting. This happens to me occasionally but has happened a lot recently. Generally my approach is to read a children’s book, and this time, it was, again, Harry Potter. It helped. It was also massively enjoyable to see all the “omg it’s like Snape can read minds???” which made me laugh every time. The howler will probably never fail to make me cringe in sympathy. My fear of spiders existed long before reading this but I’m sure it didn’t help.

Book challenge #22: A book set in a different country

I return! Over a month since my last post, oops. I’ve been pretty busy, visiting friends, camping, and spending two weeks in the Peak District with my family. I have, though, also finished five books in that time. First, The Jungle Book.

The Jungle Book, Rudyard Kipling

Book challenge #20: A popular author’s first book

Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, J K Rowling

This is by no means the first time that I’ve read Harry Potter, but it’s the first time in a looong time that I’ve read this one: my copy was lent to a friend of my mum’s, never to be seen again. I put off buying a new copy, because how likely was I to read it, really? But then the perfect excuse fell into my lap: the new editions, with gorgeous cover art, and some additional content in the back pages, which was originally on Pottermore. So I picked up a copy in Foyles last Saturday, on the #bookshopcrawl, and dug in over the weekend.

On ebooks

Recently, I saw an author on twitter tell someone that an ebook they’d tweeted about looked great but they should get a physical book instead of an ebook. It wasn’t the first time, it most definitely won’t be the last. This snobbishness about ebooks, this assumption that a paper book is the only “real” way to read, is offputting and unhelpful. It doesn’t (in most cases) change the material being read, as long as the ebook isn’t pirated. The accessibility of ebooks is incredibly important.

Independent Bookshop Week 2015: Give a book

This year’s Independent Bookshops Week runs from the 20th to the 27th of June. While the #bookshopcrawl (see my post about last year’s here – so much fun, I’m really excited for this year’s!) encourages us to visit (and buy something in!) as many independent bookshops as possible in a day, and the Books Are My Bag twitter will be running #indiebookaday, this year will also feature something that I’m really excited about.