Rereadathon #5: Day 1 - Introductory survey

It's here! The Rereadathon is probably my favourite blogging event, and this year I've signed up to co-host the event with Bex and Gee. This week we've got a busy schedule of challenges and blogging prompts, and I'll be hosting a Twitter chat on Wednesday. You're welcome to take part in any, all or none of these; most importantly, it's about the reading. It's lovely to take some time out of your week to rediscover old favourite books and return to the story worlds that feel like a second home - or a holiday you loved once and have been long meaning to return to.

So, without any further ado, let's start with a mini-questionnaire from Bex!

1. Tell us a little about yourself. 

I'm Katie, I live on the Isle of Wight and as well as being a voracious reader, I'm a massive sci-fi and fantasy geek in other genres. I've written a book for children and I'm just about ready for it to leave home and go out into the world. I enjoy crafts such as cross-stitching, knitting and crochet, love bright colours and have a very sweet tooth.

2. Have you participated in a re-readathon before? How often do you re-read books?

Yes, I've been doing this from the beginning, but this is my first time co-hosting anything. I re-read fairly regularly, but not as often as I would like due to my feelings of guilt about my ever-increasing to-read pile.

3. What is your current favourite book? 

You'll hear all about my all-time favourite book tomorrow, but the best thing I've read in the last year is Becky Chambers' debut novel, The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet. Set in a far-distant future, where the human race has quite recently joined an interstellar alliance, it follows the lives of a spaceship crew, an engineering team commissioned with the job of building a hyperspace wormhole in uncharted territory. But it's not about the job so much as the journey; Chambers has created a wonderfully diverse universe, celebrating the unity of different types of people discovering the things they have in common. I loved spending time with her characters and exploring her world-building, and the optimistic view of the future.

4. What do you love most about re-reading? Or what makes you wish you re-read more?

I love the feeling of being reunited with a good friend, and of noticing new things that you might have missed before, picking up on nuances and concentrating on different elements of what you're  reading, rather that racing ahead to find out what happens next.

5. What's on your TBR? What are you going to read first?

"Here's one I prepared earlier!" I've been adding books to my list over the last few months and came up with this lovely grey-and-orange pile.

Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell. Apparently this book has shot to the top of the bestseller charts in the last week or two, for some reason... I studied this one for A-Level, and wrote an essay about how it seemed to predict the future. That was back in around 2003 - how much more relevant it'll seem fourteen years later, I am curious and a little fearful to discover.

Assassin's Apprentice by Robin Hobb. Part of a series of trilogies; I read this one ten years ago, and it just so happened that three of my friends were reading it at the same time, so we had an informal series of book clubs involving wine and deep discussions - sometimes even about the book! Two of the friends have moved away now, one to Gloucestershire, the other to Canada, but the remaining two of us still have our very own mini book clubs from time to time, in memory of these days.

The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood. Another dystopia, another A-Level book, and another one that cries out to be read again in 2017.

Kindred by Octavia Butler. A time-travel story, but more historical than science fiction. We're used to white men travelling here, there and everywhere in fiction, where all they need to come to terms with is the right clothes and language. But for a black woman in Maryland, the past is a very dangerous place indeed. With her narrative, Butler joins the dots between past and present and reminds readers that it is not a straightforward thing to say "that was then, everything is different now." And again, sadly, I am reminded more than ever that the past does not stay safely locked away. I think this book, often harrowing and heart-breaking even the first time around, is going to be even more difficult to read today. But that's just what makes it so important!

Ready Player One by Ernest Cline. This is just pure fun and escapism, a treasure-hunt story stuffed full of nerdy '80s references. Some I know, some I am less familiar with, but they are a geek's delight.

Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro. I went into this novel the first time around knowing nothing about it, and I think that's the best way to read it; to gradually come to terms with what is going on in the seemingly idyllic English setting alongside the characters. It'll be interesting to read it with that extra knowledge a second time. There won't be the surprises, but I'll be curious to see what significant details I overlooked first time around.

All of the Above by Juno Dawson (published under the name James Dawson.) A book for young adults about a teenage girl trying to figure out her own identity while campaigning with her friends to save their favourite hangout spot.

The Earth Hums in B Flat by Mari Strachan. I really loved this book and read it two or three times a while back. A precocious young girl tries to investigate what has happened to a missing man from her Welsh village. I remember it being quite quirky, with a childlike innocence unwittingly revealing a darkness the narrator does not quite understand, but the reader does. 

But the first book I read for the rereadathon was one I started a couple of days ago: Anne of Ingleside by Lucy Maud Montgomery. It's the sixth book in the Anne of Green Gables series, chronologically, though written last. It's been one of my least favourites on my last readthrough, only ahead of Anne of Windy Willows/Poplars, but I warmed to it more this time around. The focus is shared between Anne and her children, and we see a down-to-earth reality of the ups and downs of family life after the "happily ever after" of Anne of the Island and Anne's House of Dreams. I've also got the next book, Rainbow Valley lined up for this week, or next - I do not expect to finish ten books in eight days. 

Sunday's Stats:

Books read from: Anne of Ingleside

Books completed: 1

Pages read: 164

On the menu: Pizza, cookies and ice cream, blackberry wine.

What else have I been up to?: Feeling bunged up with a cold, watching Labyrinth (again) with a friend and introducing her to Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell BBC series.

You can use the linky below to share all your rereadathon posts.

Sunday Summary: January in review

The last month has been a fairly quiet one after the madness that is working the Christmas season in retail, and now I get some recovery time in my first holiday since the beginning of November. Next Saturday is the London Bookshop Crawl which Bex has been organising, and which I am so excited for. A big group of us are getting together to stock up on books and cake, beginning at Foyle's and ending at the big Waterstone's in Piccadilly before heading off to Pizza Express afterwards. I've met Bex and Laura before, last year, and I recently found out one of the other attendees, Hannah, also lives on the Isle of Wight, so we met up for coffee the other day to get to know each other a little, and ended up geeking out wildly about books in general, and TV and Netflix series - always a good starting point for a new friendship. And I'm very excited to meet a couple of people who I've "known" online for years but never met.

So, how did I do with my January reading?

Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell - Susanna Clarke

The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet - Becky Chambers (In progress)

Upstairs at the Party - Linda Grant

The Drawing of the Three - Stephen King

Silence is Goldfish - Annabel Pitcher

The Rest of Us Just Live Here - Patrick Ness

Disclaimer - Renee Knight

Career of Evil - "Robert Galbraith"

Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen (reread)

Our Mutual Friend - Charles Dickens

Also Read:

The Ghost Hunters - Neil Spring (begun December 2015)

Sofia Khan is Not Obliged - Ayisha Malik

Second Term at Trebizon - Anne Digby

The Tree of Seasons - Stephen Gately

The Trebizon boarding school stories were one of my favourite series when I was growing up, alongside the Chalet School and Malory Towers books, but they were rather lesser-known than the others, marking the very end of the school story fashion. So imagine my delight when I learned that Egmont have started reprinting the books again. I found this out through Robin Steven's Twitter feed, and practically started screaming with excitement. I'm pretty sure that Miss Stevens must be at least partly to thank for this rediscovery, with the success of her Wells and Wong mysteries making old-fashioned boarding schools cool again. Yes, I do own all but one of the series already, but I actually quite like the modern-style covers a lot more than, say, the Enid Blyton redesigns which I have grumbled about before, and I'm so pleased that a new generation will get to meet Rebecca, Tish, Sue and the others. I've no intention of buying second copies of all of the books, but I do need to show my support of the reprint, don't I? (Plus one or two of my old editions are very battered.)

February To-Read Pile

Note: I don't expect to stick closely to this list, what with the bookshop crawl expected to add at least another half-dozen books to my shelf, but these are some of the books I'd like to read in the not-too-distant future:

Left over from January:

• The Rest of Us Just Live Here - Patrick Ness
• The Drawing of the Three - Stephen King
• Upstairs at the Party - Linda Grant
• Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell - Susanna Clark

New or re-entries:

• A Place Called Winter - Patrick Gale
• The Book of Strange New Things - Michel Faber

Books I want to reread soon:

• The Charioteer - Mary Renault
• American Gods - Neil Gaiman. 

American Gods was on my shortlist but not read on Bex's last Rereadathon (are we going to do another one this spring?) With the work apparently coming along nicely on the TV adaptation, and the casting of Ricky Whittle as Shadow, (not someone I know, but he looks the part more than any other actor I've seen suggested) that book has made its way back onto my to-read list. I've read most of Gaiman's books several times, and American Gods seems to come out every two or three years or so. It's time once more.

Month in review: July

Hello to you all. In the books world, July was all about Go Set a Watchman. Whether you couldn't wait for it, or were nervous about it, or tried to avoid it entirely, it was everywhere. I used the two weeks running up to Watchman's release to read through the small pile of library books, loans, and gifts, which I did not count towards my "read 3, buy 2" policy for this year. After Go Set a Watchman, with all the hype and discussion, I fell into a little bit of a reading slump, a sense of "Now what?" It may not be a full-on reading slump; I've still read four books (plus a penguin mini-classic) in the past two and a half weeks, which is still pretty good, but I haven't felt that draw to my bookshelves, or that immersion into a really engrossing novel. That's okay. It happens, and it's nothing to beat myself up about.

What I read

Abarat - Clive Barker

The Rabbit Back Literature Society - Pasi Ilmari Jaaskelainen

The Coincidence Authority - John Ironmonger

The Outcast Dead - Elly Griffiths

Nunslinger - Stark Holborn

The Night Guest - Fiona McFarlane

Also

The Man in the High Castle - Philip K. Dick

Go Set a Watchman - Harper Lee

The Beginner's Goodbye - Anne Tyler

Weirdo - Cathi Unsworth

Interesting Times - Terry Pratchett

And (Penguin Mini Classics)

The Fall of Icarus - Ovid

The Night is Darkening Round Me - Emily Bronte

Lord Arthur Savile's Crime

With a new to-read pile for August, I'm starting to feel a bit more excited about reading again. I bought two new books yesterday, both from the children's section: First Class Murder, the latest in the Wells and Wong series about schoolgirl detectives in the 1930s, and Katy by Jacqueline Wilson, a modern-day retelling of What Katy Did. I'm often very wary of retellings, but I think that some of the literary webseries, such as The Lizzie Bennet Diaries and Green Gables Fables (as well as, recently, Project Green Gables.) have softened my purist's attitude, and I find it very interesting to see how they translate to the modern day. And What Katy Did is a book full of really good characters, incidents and stories... but it is ultimately very Victorian in its moralising in the second half, and the "character development" turns an adventurous, ambitious, feisty little girl into a dull, sanctimonious little angel. I think the characters and family life of Katy and the Carrs would fit quite well among Jacqueline Wilson's original novels: she writes about dysfunctional families, often with lots of children and maybe a single or remarried parent, and her characters are believable children. Let's see how she handles this classic.

Provisional August To-Read Pile

Thief of Time - Terry Pratchett

First Class Murder - Robin Stevens

A Wizard of Earthsea - Ursula Le Guin

When We Were Orphans - Kazuo Ishiguro

Dark Places - Gillian Flynn

HhhH - Laurent Binet

Goodnight, Beautiful - Dorothy Koomson

Reasons She Goes to the Woods - Deborah Kay Davies

Katy - Jacqueline Wilson

The Rook - Daniel O'Malley

I've really got stuck back into my writing in the last month or two. Where I work part-time, I'm trying to make the most of my days off as an opportunity to work on my novel, which I began for NaNoWriMo last year. I'm setting myself achievable targets and am really pleased with how it's coming along now. And I've also come up with my idea for this November's project: a children's book set in a girls' boarding school, involving time travel. But unlike the usual time-travel narrative in which someone goes back from the present day into the past, this girl, Olive, comes from 1940 and has to figure out how to pass as a 2015 teenager, with many lessons to learn, while trying to get back to her own past and her family. It's taken inspiration from Charlotte Sometimes, Cross Stitch and Captain America, and I'm going to have to reread a load of my old school stories from childhood, in order to figure out Olive's character and world. 

Which is handy, seeing as Bex is organising another ReReadathon for September, not one but two weeks this time. I fully intend to reread last year's favourites: 11.22.63 and The Martian, as well as at least one Sarah Waters novel, but I'm sure I'll have plenty of time to read a Chalet School, Malory Towers and maybe a Trebizon or two for comparison. 

And away from the world of books, reading or writing them, I've finally got around to buying Star Trek: Deep Space 9. We don't have many places left on the Island which sell DVDs, and especially not older ones or box sets (although CEX the exchange shop opened this week - yay) so I'd been looking in every HMV or CEX whenever I went to the mainland, with no joy. But suddenly I remembered that Hive sells DVDs as well as books. Hive is an online shop I don't mind using - normally I go out of my way to buy in a shop if at all possible - because it supports local independent bookshops.

My Trekkie friends either seem to like DS9 best of all, or hate it. I'm really impressed with it so far; I've only seen about half a season, but I already like it more than The Next Generation. (Gasp! Controversial!) TNG is pretty much how I imagined Star Trek to be before I ever had any interest in Star Trek. It's got some good characters, and some really interesting, thought-provoking storylines, but I never quite warmed to it the same way I did the original series. I felt like it was trying to be more of the same. Picard's crew is still seeking new life and new civilisations, boldly going where no-one has gone before, their ship is even called the Enterprise. DS9, by contrast, is set on a space station, and it's not even a Federation space station; instead, a team from the Federation has been called to work alongside the Bajorans, whose space station DS9 really is, and there is the conflict as the two teams learn each other's ways.

Deep Space 9 ties in nicely with the franchise so far. The pilot opens with a flashback to the biggest season finale of The Next Generation - the Borg attack in which Captain Picard was assimilated, and the battle of Wolf 359, where a Starfleet officer's wife is killed. This officer is Benjamin Sisko, three years later the commander of Deep Space 9, who has been bringing up his son alone. It was good to have some of the issues I'd had with the series so far addressed: the throwaway nature of the doomed redshirts and unseen nobodies, and why it is really not a great idea to have civilian spouses and children onboard the Starship Enterprise. Yes, she is a ship of exploration, not of war, but you might be forgiven for forgetting that, considering the number of space battles all her incarnations have seen, and of course the redshirt mortality rate!

Sunday Summaries: Whoops, some books fell on my pile!

Well, here we are at the end of the month and the end (or is it the beginning?) of another week. And what a week it's been: all the jobs squeezed into one day, planned out and then disrupted when The Powers That Be launched a whole load of extra promotions on the very same day. On the last week of the school holidays. Great.

Perhaps because I'm so tired, but I've been not feeling so great about the world this week. Perhaps reading Joe Hill's Horns didn't help my mood. It was an interesting read, and perhaps one that could be used for in-depth philosophical and theological debate if you read it really closely, but I can't in all honesty say that I enjoyed it. When every character we met confesses to terrible, terrible secrets it left a very grim view of the human race, compounded by all the ugliness in the news and on the internet of late.

But enough of the grumbles: I have books! Many books. This week started with a traditionally rainy bank holiday (which seems like such a long time ago now) during which Judith and I made an excursion to the Ryde Bookshop. I'm sure I've talked about that shop before: a small section at the front full of new books, and then a door that leads to a three-story treasure trove of second-hand stock. I came away with three books: Cross Stitch (otherwise known as Outlander, a time-travel romance that has apparently just been turned into a TV series) Foundation,by Isaac Asimov, as I ought to read some more classic science fiction, and Poison Study, which I've been not-buying ever since possibly my first visit to Forbidden Planet in London a decade ago. (Ugh - was it really ten years since I started university? Apparently so.)

Bought new: Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage, the new novel by Haruki Murakami, whose short story collection The Elephant Vanishes I have just finished reading. And the long-awaited Sarah Waters: The Paying Guests. I cannot wait to get stuck into that one, but may leave it until next week, when I should have three days off together.

And from the library: the eighth volume of Sandman: Worlds' End, which was my favourite volume on my first read-through, This Is What Happy Looks Like (because a title like that's bound to cheer me up, no?) The Coldest Girl In Coldtown which Ellie reviewed quite recently and which I sent as a ninja book swap gift but haven't read myself yet, and a book I'd never heard of but which caught my eye: Tomorrow There Will Be Apricots. 9 books acquired in a week! Oh, well. In part thanks to last week's readathon, I've read a massive 14 books this month, even if three of them were comic books/graphic novels. I have a lot of reviews to write...

Readers Imbibing Peril IX

For the last few years I've been aware of Carl V. Anderson's RIP challenge, and have watched my fellow bloggers spook themselves with books through autumn, and this year I've decided to join in the fun. I'll be going straight in there with Peril the First: the challenge to read four books in the genres of mystery, suspense, thriller, dark fantasy, gothic, horror or other such spine-chilling stories in September and October. I've got several suitable books on my to-read pile, and have selected a shortlist of potential RIP reads (although these are subject to change.)

• Full Dark, No Stars - Stephen King
• The Ghost Hunters - Neil Spring
• Weirdo - Cathy Unsworth
• Dream London - Tony Ballantyne
• The Passage - Justin Cronin
• The Coldest Girl In Coldtown - Holly Black
• The Little Stranger - Sarah Waters (a reread)
• The Silkworm - "Robert Galbraith" 

Not Necessarily Coming Soon...

but maybe some day.

This post was inspired by the lovely Nomes at Inkcrush who asked:

how many books [do] you own but have not read?

Now, I am notorious for buying books faster than I can read them, and I thought that now would be a great opportunity to look all through my bookshelves and compile the definitive to-read list: the books which I intend to read, maybe not this month or even necessarily this year, but one day. No doubt I've got books on my shelves I don't even remember buying. So here goes:

From Grandma:

When my Grandma moved out of her house into a smaller flat a couple of years ago, she gave me her bookcase, the very first piece of furniture she bought herself! And with the case came a lot of books, mostly classics in nice old hardback editions.

*The complete Dickens. I've been working my way through the better-known titles, but there are still a lot more to go.

A Child's History of England

Sketches by Boz

Our Mutual friend

Martin Chuzzlewit

Dombey and Son

Barnaby Rudge

The Uncommercial Traveller

The Pickwick Papers

Christmas Stories

Pictures from Italy

American Notes

Master Humphrey's Clock

Miscellaneous Papers

(I'm pretty sure that much Dickens isn't designed to be read in the long term, but maybe across a decade or two...)

Also:

Adam Bede - George Eliot

The Mill on the Floss - George Eliot

John Halifax, Gentleman - Mrs Craik

Vanity Fair - W.M. Thackeray

Borrowed:

The Confession of Katherine Howard - Suzannah Dunn (from a friend)

The Poison Tree - Erin Kelly (from library)
The Private Patient - P. D. James (from library)

Kids' books:

Mandie and the Forbidden Attic - Lois Gladys Leppard. (A charity shop find.)

Rabble Starkey - Lois Lowry. (I'm sure I read this when I was a kid, and recently rediscovered the Anastasia books by this author. Bought from a charity shop at least a year ago)Gene Stratton Porter. (My Grandma once lent this to me to read when I was bored at her house when I was maybe 11. I didn't get very far but enjoyed what I did read, and took it off her hands with the bookcase. I must read this, if only to find out what a "limberlost" is.)

Jean's Golden Term - Angela Brazil and Just The Girl for St Jude's - Ethel Talbot. (Two old-style girls' school stories, found in charity shops or second-hand bookshops.)

A Girl of the Limberlost -

Inkdeath - Cornelia Funke. (I read the first two a while ago, but never was quite in the mood for this one. Bought half-price when it came out in 2008)

Fantasy:

Weatherwitch and Fallowblade by Cecelia Dart-Thornton, books 3 and 4 of the Crowthistle Chronicles.

Sorcery Rising and Wild Magic by Jude Fisher, books 1 and 2 of the Fools' Gold trilogy

The Word and the Void trilogy by Terry Brooks. (I think I've had that since my first or second year at uni - around 2005-2006!)

The 13 1/2 Lives of Captain Bluebear by Walter Moers. (This was donated to a charity shop I used to volunteer at, but it couldn't be put on sale because someone had written in the front. It was too good quality to throw away, never read.)

The Children of Hurin by J. R. R. Tolkien. (Full-length version of the most interesting story from the Silmarillion, my cousin had two copies and gave me one. I've had it 4 years.)

General/literary fiction:

This is the long one!

The Other Hand - Chris Cleave. (Bought on a 3-for-2 offer after I met Mr Cleave at a writers' conference. My old supervisor George kept telling me to read it. I really should.)

Granta New Fiction Special. (Not so new now. Given away at the same writers' conference in September 2009.)

The Gormanghast Trilogy - Mervyn Peake (Another charity shop find from my early uni days.)

Witch Light - Susan Fletcher.

The Life of Pi - Yann Martel. (Given away at the World Book Night evening in March this year.)

The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake - Aimee Bender.

The Other Side of the Bridge - Mary Lawson.

Bad Boy - Peter Robinson

The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini.

The Little House - Philippa Gregory. (another charity shop! Bought when I was still in uni, so I've had it at least 4 years.)

The Firemaster's Mistress - Chrissie Dickason (bought new 2006)

Mr Rosenblum's List - Natasha Solomons. (Bought BOGOF this year with the Richard and Judy book club.)

The One from the Other - Philip Kerr (free with a magazine, either this year or the end of last.)

Non-fiction:

The Brontes - Patricia Ingham

Wedlock - Wendy Moore

Battle of Britain - Patrick Bishop

Eating For Victory

Spitfire Women of World War II - Giles Whittell

Total unread books in my possession: 51. Watch this space for reviews - but not all of them, and not right away! Have you any recommendations for where to start? What is your to-read pile like?