Holiday Reading Update

Hello all, again it has been a while. I seem to be a feast or famine kind of blogger, but I am getting internet in my flat (finally!) which will make my life an awful lot easier, and my blog a lot more content-filled.

I decided to do a quick round-up review of the books I read on holiday as it has been a few weeks now. I had a wonderful holiday, and lots of much-needed relaxation was enjoyed. The first week was pretty hot (averaging 44°C some days), and I struggled to concentrate whilst I was acclimatising. The second week was moderately cooler and much more bearable (about 39°C) and allowed me to up my reading speed.

I am slightly ashamed to say I only read 4 books on holiday, in fact, arguably only 3 as the third was finished on my return. My boyfriend will never let me live down the fact that he read more books than I did. On his list were James Kelman’s How late it was, how late, Juan Pablo Villalobos’ Down the Rabbit Hole, Jo Nesbø’s Headhunters and F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby. And he even had time to start on Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.

I started with the epic (in size and yarn) Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts, and to be honest, if we’re going by page count, I definitely read more. But that’s by the bye…I’m not bitter, I know it wasn’t a competition. But still…

Holiday Reading

My holiday books all packed and ready to go!

A holiday is around the corner – hurrah! I haven’t been on a beach holiday for about four years now and I am stupidly excited at the prospect. One of the reasons for my excitement is the opportunity to spend even more time reading books, and hopefully catch up on my goal of reading 52 books this year (I am on number 21 of the year so far, pretty poor for a supposed book blogger…). Two weeks of sunshine and beach reading can’t come soon enough! I have six books packed at the moment and I am waiting on two more arriving in the post. And my boyfriend is taking a few for himself which I may have to muscle my way in on!

Currently packed are as follows:

Bookish Gifts

Recently I have been the lucky recipient of three books in the post and thought it was high time I thanked everyone properly!

Through the Literary Blog Hop Giveaway organised by Leeswammes’ Blog, I won two books:

The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton

From Ali at Heavenali

&

A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry

From Debbie over at ExUrbanis

Thank you very much to both Ali and Debbie, and of course to Leeswammes for organising the Literary Blog Hop. The next giveaway is in October and I hope to be taking part. Keep checking back on my blog around then and you may be a lucky winner too! 🙂

I also received a free book from Book Oxygen – The Invisible Circus by Jennifer Egan.

They have started a forum called the Inner Circle which will be a forum for publishers to consult about new releases and to find out a little more about readers’ thoughts. You can read more about it and join on their website.

I would also like this opportunity to thank Bundleofbooks who nominated me for the Versatile Blogger Award! Please do have a look at her blog as there are always lots of interesting posts and book reviews. And if you’re interested in finding out more about the Versatile Blogger award have a wee look here. I’m pretty new to blogging so it’s very nice to know that people are interested by what I post on here!

In the spirit of the Versatile Blogger Award I would like to nominate a few of my favourite Versatile Bloggers and will do so on my return from holiday (end of July).

I haven’t had internet of late so please do excuse me for the upcoming barrage of posts. Should keep readers busy for an hour or so!

Jennifer 🙂