Reading_Diary_2015_largeSo. A week after my first post, here we are. I was aiming to do the six book challenge, which is a challenge to read six books aimed at people who don’t read very often. Except that since I’m a voracious reader, I gave myself the time frame of a week in which to do it. So, did I accomplish it?

Nearly.

I went a day over. At the end of the week when I went to sleep on Sunday, I was partway through book six. So I polished it off yesterday, meaning it took me 8 days to finish six books. Which isn’t bad at all.

I probably could have done it in seven days, but I spent the weekend doing other things. Saturday I didn’t even pick up a book. I cleaned the flat, had company all afternoon, and then in the evening was the first session of Dark Metropolis (which was AMAZING). So I was focusing on other things. On Sunday I read book five, and started book six, but I didn’t get up until midday, and then my boyfriend persuaded me to go out for dinner and cinema (we saw Big Hero 6, which was also amazing).

So it can be done, but you have to not be doing a lot else. Or pick smaller books, but I never make things easy for myself.

The books I ended up reading were:

  1. Crown of Midnight, by Sarah J. Maas
  2. Heir of Fire, by Sarah J. Maas
  3. Water for Elephants, by Sara Gruen
  4. The Night Circus, by Erin Morgenstern
  5. The Graveyard Book, by Neil Gaiman
  6. A Spot of Bother, by Mark Haddon

And I quite liked all of them. The graveyard book was aimed at people a little younger than me, but I have wanted to read more Gaiman, and that was the one I could find. Crown of Midnight and it’s follow up Heir of Fire had been sitting on my ‘to-read’ pile for a while. Water for Elephants and The Night Circus were books I wanted to read because they both start out life as NaNoWriMo novels. And I loved The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nightime, so when I spotted another book by Mark Haddon in the library I picked it up and gave it a go. And I loved it, actually.

And I expanded my usual genre as well. Water for Elephants is a historical fiction, and A Spot of Bother counts as contemporary. Much different from my usual fantasy. So I’m also doing well on expanding that out. Didn’t do any non-fiction books, but it does take a while longer to read non-fiction in my opinion.

But there we go. Success. Not quite complete success, but reading six books in only one day over my intended target is pretty darn good.

Anyone else read anything interesting lately?

CrownOfMidnightHeirOfFireWaterForElephantsTheNightCircusTheGraveyardBookASpotOfBother