Read 5 books this month

Oh dear, this one is harder than I thought. I’m halfway through two but it’s already the middle of the month! My next book will have to be short if i’m going to manage this.

Here’s my list:

C.S. Lewis — The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (200 pages)
C.S. Lewis — The Horse and his Boy (250 pages)
L.E. Modesitt — Cadmians Choice (600 pages, of which 300 this month)
Pratchett and Gaiman — Good Omens (380 pages)
L.E. Modesitt — Natural Ordermage (600 pages)
Eoin Colfer — Artemis Fowl (200 pages)
Eoin Colfer — Artemis Fowl: the Arctic Incident (400 pages)
Eoin Colfer — Artemis Fowl: the Eternity Code (450 pages)
The Spiderwick Chronicles 1-3: too flimsy to count.

That’s 2780 pages, so I definitely reached my goal. Also, I conclude that I read too much, and that I read many childrens’ books which are, admittedly, easy to read. I enjoyed them none the less :).

...gee, and not one book in Dutch, lol.

I don’t think I’ll make the movies-Thing I set up, because of the awesome weather we’re having here which makes it awfully akward to stay inside and watch a movie.
The weather is having a postitive effect on my reading, though. The day before yesterday, I already hit half of my set goal of 2000 pages this month!

I’ve read so far:
C.S. Lewis – The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (200 pages)
C.S. Lewis – The Horse and his Boy (250 pages)
L.E. Modesitt – Cadmians Choice (600 pages, of which 300 this month)
Pratchett and Gaiman – Good Omens (150 pages the day before yesterday, so that made 1000)

And it’s not even the 10th! (Well, now it is, but then it wasn’t). Hooray!

Read five books this month, now there’s a tricky goal.

You might ask how this is tricky, because, well, a book’s a book after all. True. But I set this goal because I wan to encourage myself to read more, so I really should take the size of the book in consideration.

For example, I’m currently reading The Chronicles of Narnia series. Fine books though they are, they are also pretty flimsy. Generally, the books that have my main interrest are a5-sized books anywhere between 600 and 800 pages. Besides those, I usually read I don’t know how many other books of varying sizes. With five books I didn’t mean five 700 paged books (that’d be rather unrealistic, given that reading is not the only thing I do), but neither did I mean five 100 paged ones.

I think when I say 400 pages a book, that’s about the average I am looking for. So, instead of ‘five books’ I might as well say ‘2000 a5 sized pages’, but that sounds a lot less nice than ‘five books’. Therefore I shall keep talking about books, but count the pages as well! This also tackles the problem with reading half a book this month and the other half the next.

I absolutely love reading. I’d say I read more than the average person but not enough for myself. I think setting a goal like this will help motivate me to get through more books.

So by the end of May, I will like to have read 5 books.

OK, so I’ve finished this, and I had a lot more fun in the process than I expected to!! OK, so my reading list for this was as follows:

I Just Kept Hoping- Gloria Stuart
With the Light: Raising an Autistic Child- Keiko Tobe*
Godzilla on My Mind- William Tsutsui*
To Catch a Predator- Chris Hansen
The Eagle’s Shadow- Nora Martin

Starred= my favorites out of the selection.

Hope to do this again sometime…but I’ll probably skip March.

Finished To Catch a Predator. It was good for what it was: a tie-in to the show. About half of the chapters in the book were “behind the scenes” accounts of the various stings filmed for the show, the other half delt with issues regarding these types of Internet crimes. I liked the latter chapters as I felt they delt with issues the show does not address, such as the predator’s family and what happens to them, female predators, and the actual benefits of the Internet. That last one in particular is one of the books strengths. It doesn’t use the Internet as a scapegoat, which is refreshing.

Anyways, I have moved on to a kid’s book called “The Eagle’s Shadow”. It’s thin, and I know I’ll burn through it, but I just want to get it read as it has been sitting on my bookshelf for (literally) years!! After that I will technically be done, but I may read just one more as this one’s so short.

I had a lot more fun on this goal than I thought I would have. It’s cool to get back into reading, and I have found that the “I don’t have time” excuse is totally lame. You always have time, you just have to claim time for yourself, y’know?

Finished Godzilla on My Mind today, and started on my next book: Chris Hansen’s “To Catch a Predator” (written in response to Dateline’s popular series of the same name). It’s good so far, more of a behind the scenes book desguised as a parenting guide. It’s not the best writing you’ll ever see, but it works for what it is. If you find the show interesting, you’ll like it.

It’s short and easy to read, I think it’ll go by fast…then just one more!!

I finished reading “With the Light”-great book. Right now I’m (re) reading “Godzilla on My Mind” by William Tsutsui. I’m reading this mainly becuase I don’t have much else around at the moment. But I’m also going back to it becuase it’s a fun, interesting little read.

At least it should tide me over until my next book comes in at the library!

So, to sum up, I’m working on my third, with 18 days left in Feb. Yikes!! I may have to speed this up a little. Well, if I work on it, I could finish “Godzilla” in a few days. Thankfully the weather’s horrid at the moment! ;P

I’ve read one book this month: “I Just Kept Hoping” by Gloria Stuart. Stuart’s an actress who achieved mild fame during the 1930’s with her roles in The Invisible Man, and others. In recent times, she was nominated for best supporting actress for her role as old rose in Titanic. It was interesting, but the writing was pretty mediocre. I reccomend it, but not for everybody.

Right now I’m working on reading “With the Light: Raising an Autistic Child”, which is a 500+ page manga about a mother and her son, a boy who’s diagnosed with autism from an early age. I don’t normally like manga too terribly much, but this is a great story, and I’m liking it alot.

So far so good!!