It’s been another glorious SciFi Month – always a great way to brighten up November as the nights draw in and the clocks go back. Cold weather and wet days make good reading days, and with the state of the world knocking my concentration and peace of mind for six, it’s been wonderful to contrast it with some great stories, some geeky discussions and our very first guest post from Lesley Conner and the Apex slush team!
Category Archive: Redux
Today is x+1’s first blogiversary – and I’m delighted to say there’s still always room for one more. And […]
There’s always room for one more has been a byline in our household for years (which I can’t take credit for, I hasten to add), and it’s nearly a year since I realised it described my reading habit perfectly and stole it for my book blog.
I like the hobbit approach to birthdays as a time to give gifts to others, and as it’s SciFi Month it seems a no-brainer that I should give away one of my favourite SF reads of 2016 to celebrate this first year at x+1. So I have a shiny new copy of Yoon Ha Lee’s debut novel Ninefox Gambit to put in the hands of one lucky winner.
The giveaway is open internationally. The winner will be drawn out of a pirate hat on November 26th, the day x+1 turns one.
September was all lingering summer, but October 1st saw a 10 degree drop in temperature and a downpour. Autumn had arrived, and it was perfect reading weather! Conveniently, it was also a month where I could catch my breath and read through weekends rather than work through them. Long may this continue.
If August was a month of distractions, September has just been damn hard work as I juggled clients and deadlines in meatspace. I’ve enjoyed pushing my boundaries and I’ve been rewarded by the spectacularly good reading squeezed in around the edges (somehow finishing more books than in August, even though the only weekend I had off I was too sick to do anything). Can you say VERY GOOD BOOKS?
August has been the month of I’d Like To Be Reading But I Just Need To Do This Other Thing. Some of those things have been work; some have been amazing (come to the Nine Worlds Geekfest next summer! Make it your Worldcon warm-up!); and some have been distressing (although thankfully all’s well that end’s well).
I have a history of having a little reading slump through the summer, and this year appears to be no exception: partly because of a couple of longer-term reading projects in progress (The Republic of Thieves read-along and my weekly helping of Tremontaine) and partly because Life Wins All Ties (family visiting from overseas, not being very well, and a delightful trip to Paris).
June was a busy month at work for me, which has meant less reading outside of read-alongs. I also became a slush reader for a certain magazine I love, which now gets a portion of my reading time. In between, I’ve chosen to focus on bite-sized books, continuing my sashay through award nominees and dipping in and out of anthologies as time permitted.
It feels like spring has arrived here in the UK, and I haven’t been as busy at work as I should have been. In spite of this, I don’t feel like I’ve read an awful lot to fill the gaps – partly because I’m engaged in a lot of read-alongs, which stretch books out longer and often deter me from picking up something else in between. However, it’s all been good reading and I’m loving the discussions with my fellow readers.
April feels like it has zoomed by when I wasn’t looking, and I’m not quite sure where it went. My reading has been dominated by bite-size books and read-alongs, with distractions and a number of DNFs that have stopped me sinking my teeth into much else.
I have really enjoyed March, not least because of Rinn’s excellent March into Middle-earth, which let me dive into books I’ve loved since childhood. I’ve balanced those doorstops with read-alongs and bite-size books for a varied diet. And as March involved an intercontinental trip and Easter, I’ve got through a lot of books…
A slightly early recap for February, because this evening will be full of Swordspoint (hurray!). It’s been a busy month of travelling, visitors and read-alongs, so my reading has been somewhat fractured – if very rewarding.
January has felt very episodic as I started the year travelling around Iceland (I’ll write about it at some point, but instagram has day by day scenery porn picspam), had to take unexpected trips north and work has been fragmentary. Sadly, this hasn’t resulted in READING ALL THE BOOKS, because exploring Iceland was distracting and Lagoon took longer than expected (a sure sign I’m not enjoying something).
2015 has been an excellent reading year for quantity (over 70 books) and quality. I’m back to working more or less full time in 2016, so I think I’m going to have to be a bit less ambitious and a bit more selective in what I focus on…
…which is a problem, because I want to (re)read all the things.
I recently reread The Kraken Wakes, always my favourite John Wyndham book. Wyndham for me is something like comfort food, or cartoons: when I need a light, refreshing, familiar interlude I can always turn to one of his novels to tide me over to the next challenge. In this case, I had left the book I intended to read at the office, leaving me stranded over a weekend with nothing to read.
Oh, the horror.
