Wednesday, April 30, 2008

April summary

Yikes! Not much to say for my book summary this month.

I finished a grand total of...drum roll...THREE books this month!

The Sweet Far Thing
Stardust
Reading Judas: The Gospel of Judas and the Shaping of Christianity

The first two on the list were great, Stardust being the better of the two. The third on the list I read for a book discussion group, of which I never made it to one meeting. Bo-ring. With a capital B.

I did also read half of The Venetian Mask, so, while I can't count it toward my totals, it did take up a good chunk of my reading time before I moved on.

Oh, and I forgot. My daughter and I finished listening to The Subtle Knife this month. So that bring the total up to 4.5.

I feel pretty certain the number will be higher for May, as I'm not currently reading a chunkster and have a couple of children's books planned for the month. Then again, I may pick up American Gods or The Book of Lost Things, neither being on the short side, when I finish The Princess Academy.

Here's where I stand in my current reads:

Princess Academy - about 100 pages to go; expect to finish it by Saturday
The Amber Spyglass - I think we're about halfway through listening to this
Dragonfly in Amber - I've got about 1.5 hours left of this 38+ hour audiobook, so I'm almost done. That's probably a chapter or two's worth of book.
Peter and the Starcatchers - We're maybe barely 1/4 into this one. Our bedtime readalouds tend to go pretty slowly, at maybe 1 chapter per night, 2 if they're short chapters.

What's up next?

I think I'm going to read The Book of Lost Things next, if it's available at the library. Actually, I can see right now that it's not due back until May 16. So, do I request it and hope it's here by Saturday for me to pick up (there are several copies available at other branches)? Or do I choose something else? The something else would either be American Gods (do I want to read another Gaiman so soon?) or Sea of Monsters. Unless, that is, Love Marriage (my most recent LibraryThing Early Reviewer selection) arrives before I finish Princess Academy. Then I will feel obligated to pick that one up next. I think we'll take a wait and see approach. If The Book of Lost Things happens to reappear, I'll go with that. Otherwise I'll start one of the ones I already have in the house.

3 comments:

Debi said...

I couldn't help but laugh reading that last paragraph...it's nice to see others go through such a convoluted thought process over picking their next read as well!

And I know what you mean about how long it can take to finish a read-aloud. We usually have two going at once...one my husband is reading to the boys and one I'm reading to the boys. We more-or-less trade off nights. So it takes twice as long to finish a book with them than it might otherwise.

April was my worst month in while as well. But that just means it will be easy to show improvement in May, right? :)

Somer said...

Debi, I was laughing at myself while writing that paragraph, too! Before challenges it was so easy - I had (still have partly) my TBR shelf organized alphabetically by title and would just grab the next book. Then my TBR shelf tripled, I started challenges, pulled my kids-books off the shelf into another location and mayhem ensued.

chrisa511 said...

Either the Book of Lost Things or American Gods would be excellent choices but I would highly recommend American Gods ;) It's one of my favorite books ever, but I'm extremely partial to Gaiman as he's one of my favorite writers. It's my favorite of his though. Book of Lost Things was one of my favorite reads of last year though and is great if your looking for something of a dark fairy-tale type book. And like Debi said, May can only get better!