Sunday, February 1, 2009

Sunday Salon: January Wrap Up


January has been a very surprising month. The beginning of it was filled with new resolutions, the promise of a better school semester, and a honest chance of tackling my TBR pile. Instead I added dozens of new books and watched as the pile grew. Unread books are now double the number of read books in my home. The school semester is going pretty well, though I do have a professor who is crazy enough to give my class several hundred pages of poetry and autobiographies from the 17th century for assigned reading every week.

Another surprise was how often I turned to children's books. Of the thirty books I've read this month, only four were adult reads: How to Be an Explorer, The Man in the Picture, Gods Behaving Badly, and The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. All four were great reads. Hopefully this month will be much better for adult fiction since I have a ton of books that are due at the library and I've run out of renewals.

I've only read five short stories this month for the 100 Shots of Short challenge:

"Farewell, Navigator" - Leni Zumas
"Dragons may be the way forward - Leni Zumas
"The Everything Hater" - Leni Zumas
"Heart Sockets" - Leni Zumas
"Lucky Chow Fun" -Lauren Groff

In December I joined The Year of Readers challenge. I pledged $1.50 of my own money for each book I read throughout 2009 to two great charities: 828National and FirstBook. Every month I'm alternating between the two charities. January was the month for First Book.org. With all my reading I earned $45! Next month I'm going to try to match that for 826National.

Currently I have four books going:

Tigerheart by Peter David
My One Hundred Adventures - Polly Horvath (middle school fiction)
Chicken Feathers - Joy Cowley (middle school fiction)
The Butcher and other erotica - Alina Reyes

Hopefully I can get all four read before next Sunday.

What are you reading this week?

3 comments:

Literary Feline said...

My TBR pile grew quite a bit this past month too despite my intention of lessening the pile. We must continue the good fight though. Maybe someday we'll be able to say our read books outnumber the unread ones.

Yikes! Your professor must think you are only taking one class. I've had professors like that before. It was always a challenge to balance everything in, but somehow I ended up making it through. I am sure you will too. :-)

I will be reading Tigerheart within the next couple of months. I look forward to reading your thoughts on it.

I am currently reading The Woman in White (still) and Slumdog Millionaire. I'm enjoying both.

I hope you have a great week!

Gavin said...

It's interesting what you wrote about turning to "children's" books.
I always have a couple on hand from the because I'm trying to add good books to my school library. I am finding I can get through them quickly and really enjoy most of them. There is some great stuff being written for young adults. I need to add "Tigerheart" to my list.

Vasilly said...

Literary Feline: You are so right about new books. I'm trying to read a few books on my TBR list every month to help dwindle it down.

If you made it with your class, I'll make it with mine. But why does she also assign an essay that due every week with the pages? =(

I can't wait to read your reviews on both books.

Gavin: You are so right. There are great books being written for young adults. I'm trying to read as many as I can this year.