Bout of Books 11: Friday to Sunday and Wrap-Up

Apologies for the lack of an online presence during the last two days. Life got in the way, as it has an inconvenient habit of doing.

Friday

I worked a four-hour shift across the lunchtime period on Friday, meaning I got a bit of a lie-in and some quality reading time over breakfast. I'd begun Terra on Thursday, and could have read the whole book in a day, but by the evening my attention had started to wander - not through any fault of the book, which is excellent, but due to internet distractions and a bit of DVD-watching.

I spent most of my shift giving the department a very thorough clean, and spent the rest of the day sneezing. After work I met a friend for coffee and cake, and then went around to the other bookshops to browse, and in my case, to see if I could find any other titles to go onto my birthday list. In the evening my parents and I had dinner at a very nice riverside pub, The Bargeman's Rest. When I got home, very full and sleepy, I finished off Terra, which is a really lovely, feel-good science fiction story which leaves you with good feelings about people, read a bit of the Deadpool comic and had an early night.

Friday Stats

Books read today: Terra - Mitch Benn

Deadpool Max: Second Cut - David Lapham

Pages read today: 188

Books finished so far: 4

Quote of the day: "The cleverest of the scientists and astronomers admitted - privately at least - that any really intelligent life would be smart enough never to allow its presence to be detected by the human race. It wouldn't have cheered these scientists and astronomers up one bit to know that they were right."

Saturday

Well, Saturday was a tiring day. Nothing really awful happened, but it was dull, the jobs I had to do, though necessary, seemed to render the previous week's work pointless, and I had a steady stream of mildly irksome customers. At lunchtime, after spending half the hour on errands, I made a start on Joe Hill's Horns - possibly not the best book to follow on from Terra. Terra left me feeling really good about people - whether human or not - whereas Horns shows the worst in everyone. 

After work I fell asleep, but was awake in time to watch Peter Capaldi's first episode as Doctor Who. I like him in the role - grumpy and a bit rude, but with an unexpected vulnerability too. And I adore the brand-new credits sequence, it's really beautiful.

I still felt a bit too tired and fidgetty to settle down with a full novel or even a short story in the evening, but I finished off Saturday with Deadpool. I've now, for the first time ever, reached and exceeded my readathon target, if you count comic books. 

Saturday Stats:

Books read today: Horns - Joe Hill

Deadpool Max: Second Cut - David Lapham

Pages read today: 117

Books finished so far: 5

Sunday

Thankfully I've got today and tomorrow off work - I've been almost enjoying my job recently, but yesterday and the day before I've been quite restless and not wanting to be there at all. Some of that mood's followed me into today. I've read over a hundred pages of Horns before lunch, but right now I'm just mooching around not wanting to settle down to anything. I wonder if it's the book, which is a challenging one. The main character wakes up one morning to find that not only has he got a pair of horns growing out of his head, but people are telling him all their darkest secrets. We've gone into flashback mode now, but it's difficult to like any of the characters when we know some pretty awful things about them. It's interesting and thought-provoking, but not an easy read.

10.30PM

This evening I took a break from not-reading to show my parents Frozen, which they'd never seen before. We all enjoyed it, but I was horrified to find myself shedding a few tears through "Do you wanna build a snowman?" Since then I've done a bit of knitting, dithered around on the internet for a while and fell down the TV Tropes black hole, which has got me desperately wanting to reread my favourite Terry Pratchett novel, Night Watch. Although I'm concentrating on the unread Discworld books as my light reading, I expect I'll pick up some of my favourites when I get to that part in the series, but Night Watch is quite a way off yet.

I think there's no chance of me getting much more reading done as long as this computer stays on, so I shall shut it down now and get some more chapters of Horns read before I go to bed. I'd have liked to have ended the readathon on another finished novel for tidiness' sake, but am quite happy with my overall progress. I'll write up some mini-reviews of the books I've read during the week, and will add up my total page count at the same time.

Goodnight.

Sunday Stats:

Books read today: Horns - Joe Hill

Pages read today: 262

Books finished so far: 5

Wrap-Up (Monday)

Well, Bout of Books is already over. How did the week go so quickly? Here in the UK it's a bank holiday, and it has kept reliably to the tradition of marking the end of summer by pouring down with rain.

But how did Bout of Books go overall?

The Stats:

Total books finished: 5 (one more than target) : That's Not A Feeling
The Miniaturist
Hawkeye: Little Hits
Terra
Deadpool Max: Second Cut
Additional books read from: 2: The Elephant Vanishes 
Horns
Total pages read: 1764
Favourite book: A tie between The Miniaturist and
Favourite challenge: As I only took part in one challenge, on the first day, it has to be the Book Monsters' Scavenger Hunt
Favourite new blog discovered: Romancing the Laser Pistol
Best reading day: Wednesday (my first day not working)
Worst reading day: Saturday (Last day working.)

Thank you to Amanda and Kelly for organising this readathon, and to everyone who took part to make it awesome! I've had a great time and it's helped me to get my to-read pile down a bit - although today I broke my self-inflicted book ban and bought three more books from the Ryde Bookshop to replace those I've read last week. Oops.