Bout Of Books 15 Daily Updates

Welcome to my Bout of Books 15 update post! Rather than have lots of small daily posts I shall just update this one every day with my progress (or lack of) and any challenges I may do.

Goals

• Read 7 books over 7 days
• Participate in social stuff - Twitter, commenting etc.

Progress Report

Day 1

Day 1 started off looking after the twins and ended after a long train journey back home. I was very proud of myself though for finishing my first book and replying to some messages on Twitter while trying to stay awake on the train!

Today's Read(s): The Seventh Bride - T Kingfisher
Number of books I’ve read today: 1
Number of pages I’ve read today: 183
Total number of books read: 183
Total number of pages read: 183

Day 2

Back to the everyday routine today after Christmas/New Year break and straight back into a mound of paperwork and assorted other mundane jobs. I didn't think I'd have much time to read never mind anything else but I managed to fit in some contemporary fluff. That was it though, I don't think I even managed to look at Twitter never mind tweet!

Today's Read(s): The Christmas Surprise
Number of books I’ve read today: 1
Number of pages I’ve read today: 382
Total number of books read: 2
Total number of pages read: 565

Day 3

A hospital day today so wandering attention! I picked up and started 3 books, read more of some than others and contemplated starting another... No socializing as no signal at all in the hospital and no challenge :(

Today's Read(s): The Chill of Night - James Hayman, Skulduggery Pleasant: Death Bringer - Derek Landy, Deadly Curiosities - Gail Z Martin
Number of books I’ve read today: 0
Number of pages I’ve read today: 505
Total number of books read: 2
Total number of pages read: 1070

Day 4

Not much of anything done today but I did manage to finish one book, Death Bringer, from the Skulduggery Pleasant series which I'm loving more with every book. By the time I got home I was too tired to do anything except read a few more pages and then watch old episodes of Criminal Minds...

Today's Read(s): Skulduggery Pleasant: Death Bringer - Derek Landy, The Chill Of Night - James Hayman, Deadly Curiosities - Gail Z Martin
Number of books I’ve read today: 1
Number of pages I’ve read today: 450
Total number of books read: 3
Total number of pages read: 1520

Day 5

Bad day today, biggest panic attack I've had in a long time so was pretty much out of it from about 4pm onward with no reading done. I did however manage to finish The Chill Of Night in the morning in between sporadic bouts of work - no pun intended!

Today's Read(s): The Chill Of Night - James Hayman, Deadly Curiosities - Gail Z Martin
Number of books I’ve read today: 1
Number of pages I’ve read today: 366
Total number of books read: 4
Total number of pages read: 1886

Day 6

It's got much colder here over the last couple of days so I spent most of the day curled up with a blanket, book and a large cup of tea! The only time I wasn't reading was when my niece & nephew came over to deliver our invitation to his wedding in April. I've now read 6 books so hopefully I'll meet one of my two goals for the week and that was to read 7 books in 7 days. As usual I've been a complete fail on the socialization front but between work, panic attacks and sheer exhaustion I just haven't been able to do it.

Today's Read(s): Deadly Curiosities - Gail Z Martin, Thirteen Chairs - Dave Shelton
Number of books I’ve read today: 2
Number of pages I’ve read today: 481
Total number of books read: 6
Total number of pages read: 2367

Day 7

Last day and I made my reading target!!!

Today's Read(s): Neversuch House: Mask Of The Evergones - Elliot Skell
Number of books I’ve read today: 1
Number of pages I’ve read today: 384
Total number of books read: 7
Total number of pages read: 2751

Book Haul #117, Or How To Survive The Holidays...

Stacking the Shelves is a weekly event hosted on Tynga's Reviews where we can share what new books we've picked up this past week be they bought, borrowed or downloaded. There are also lots of other 'book haul' memes out there for you to choose from!

Welcome to 2016!!! I'm so glad that the holidays are done & dusted, I don't think I stopped to do much of anything until this week and the insane amount of work I need to catch up on is not funny at all. Not having my Kindle Fire tablet is really impinging on my reading and requesting. I can't download anything from Edelweiss and a couple of titles I was approved for on Netgalley have already been archived because of fail... My new one is meant to arrive any time between January 12 and 18 so I'm counting down the days! Strangely enough I haven't compensated for this by rushing out and buying lots of physical copies of books instead.

Bought

Review Books

Reading Challenges For 2016

There will be lots of reading and lots of organization in 2016... Well, I can hope can't I? I'm hoping by not overloading my plate I won't get so bogged down in the detail so I'm doing three challenges, including the annual Goodreads challenge. The other two are Mel's retelling challenge (failed miserably last year but will do better this year) and Evie's 2016 TBR Pile Challenge (also failed miserably but if at first you don't succeed try again).

Target - 275

 I've set my target at 275, lower than the ridiculous target I set last year but slightly higher than what I actually achieved.

Target - 26+

 I'm going for Cheshire Cat level again because I've got even more retellings to read now than I did last year! Sign up here if you want to join Mel's challenge.

Target - 50+

Last but not least, Evie's TBR Pile challenge! This is the year I do read my own books along with what seems like hundreds of other bloggers who all want to do the same! If you want to join this particular TBR challenge sign up here!

YA Faeries & Fantasy Giveaway!

Welcome to the Faeries & Fantasy Giveaway Hop hosted by BookHounds & I Am A Reader Not A Writer! Up for grabs is a YA book of your choice featuring fantasy, faeries or both, - up to the value of $13 - from the Book Depository as long as they deliver to your country - find the list here. The hop runs from now through until midnight on January 14 2016. All you have to do is follow the instructions in the rafflecopter below and you could be the lucky winner!

a Rafflecopter giveaway
Check out the list of blogs taking part here for more chances to win, thanks for entering and good luck!

My Year Of Reading 2015

As reading years go 2015 didn't exactly go to plan for me, in terms of number of books read and challenge targets. I traveled far more last year than I have done for a while and then the inevitable health problems cropped up over the last four months of the year, both of which combined to give my lowest total of books in eight years and a ton of unfinished challenges.

I initially set my target at 365... Who was I trying to kid?! I thought I would have more reading time, not less and so was far too ambitious! By the end of the year this total had come down to 250 and I finished on 261. The last time I read less than that was in 2007 when I spent roughly 14 weeks in hospital!

All Other Challenges

Netgalley & Edelweiss Challenge

My target was 50, I read 28. Not much else to say...

British Books Challenge

The only one I finished, I tracked 21 books but it was more than that by December 31. I lost track of most of my challenge targets somewhere around August. C'est la vie!

Fairy Tale Challenge

I'm disgusted with myself over this. If you're a regular reader you know how fairy tale obsessed I am but I only managed a paltry 3 titles before losing track completely?

2015 TBR Pile Challenge

I went for 50 books in this one and should have smashed that target easily but didn't. Before losing track I'd read 34 books published prior to January 1 2015. It was probably more by the end but no record...

My challenge post for 2016 will go up shortly but I'm limiting myself to Goodreads, 2016 TBR Pile Challenge and the Retelling challenge this year.

Statistics

Total Read - 261

Adult - 120

YA - 71

Middle Grade/Children - 22

Picture Books - 17

Unknown - 31

Source

Own - 89

Library - 72

Kindle - 90

Frem Books - 17

Waiting On Wednesday #144 - Roses And Rot

Waiting On Wednesday, where we put the spotlight on upcoming releases that we're eagerly anticipating, is hosted by Jill at Breaking The Spine.

This week's choice is -

Roses And Rot - Kat Howard 

ISBN - 9781481451161

Publisher - Saga Press

Release date - June 7 2016

Find - Goodreads | Book Depository

Imogen and her sister Marin have escaped their cruel mother to attend a prestigious artists’ retreat, but soon learn that living in a fairy tale requires sacrifices, be it art or love in this haunting debut fantasy novel from “a remarkable young writer” (Neil Gaiman).

What would you sacrifice in the name of success? How much does an artist need to give up to create great art?

Imogen has grown up reading fairy tales about mothers who die and make way for cruel stepmothers. As a child, she used to lie in bed wishing that her life would become one of these tragic fairy tales because she couldn’t imagine how a stepmother could be worse than her mother now. As adults, Imogen and her sister Marin are accepted to an elite post-grad arts program - Imogen as a writer and Marin as a dancer. Soon enough, though, they realize that there’s more to the school than meets the eye. Imogen might be living in the fairy tale she’s dreamed about as a child, but it’s one that will pit her against Marin if she decides to escape her past to find her heart’s desire.

Love, love, love the sound of this and can't wait to get my hands on a copy. Love stories about sisters, thrown in a fairy tale slant too and I'm there!

Top Ten Tuesday #103 - Bookish Resolutions For 2016

Top Ten Tuesday is hosted by the fabulous girls cover at The Broke & The Bookish. This week's topic is -

Top Ten Seven Bookish Resolutions For 2016

I have plenty of bookish/bloggish resolutions I want to stick to this year. most of them in a concerted effort to either save money (to fund a holiday to France and Comic Con) or to declutter (my study/library and my bedroom both look like a library threw up in them, not in a good way...)

This one should be self-explanatory! We all have the same problem, piles of books on our shelves (and floors in some cases) which get overlooked in favor of the shiny and new. This year I am reading from my shelves as much as possible. I was going to be really ruthless and say 'and only from my shelves' but in view of no. 3 I decided to ease up and say...

But not to reserve books in silly amounts as I have been doing for years! I'm allowed up to 30 books at at a time and I know for a fact that some quite a few go back unread because someone has put a hold on them. I'm going to try and request mainly new titles which will hopefully help with...

This is the one I'm going to struggle with most because of all the shiny new titles! I am determined to stick to it though. I want to go on holiday and I want to save more money for ComicCon this year - the hotel I'm staying in this year is a bit more expensive but it's an extra night this year and it's close to the venue. If this means no new books so be it! I have allowed myself a handful of preorders from the Book Depository including The Raven King and a hard copy of Every Heart A Doorway which are already paid for so technically no money changes hands in 2016...

I thought about going completely cold turkey on the Netgalley/Edelweiss thing but I've tried before, failed miserably and ended up requesting even more than usual. This is my compromise. If I want to request a new title I have to make sure I have reviewed 5 (or more) previous requests first. This will help to maintain a sensible amount of e-galleys and help bump up that old percentage a bit.

Including Goodreads I was taking part in 5 challenges last year and in the end it just didn't work. This year I think I'm going to limit it to 3, if that. I've set my Goodreads challenge already - 275, reasons for which will be in my challenge wrapup post coming later this week but I'm dithering over a couple of challenges to join for more specific targets.

I spent a lot of 2015 out and about and as a result the blog suffered. Add in the health problems and hospital visits over the last four months of the year and it all turned out rather disastrously. This year I'm going to try and keep a couple of weeks worth of posts in reserve so should the same thing happen again I'm slightly better organized!

This was maybe my biggest fail of the year! I know I wrote some but I discovered a couple of things last year. Firstly, the more I love a book? The harder I find to write a review about it, I have no idea why but there you go. I will try to sort that out this year but just not quite sure how. Secondly, I discovered tat I cannot review historical novels to save my life. As much as I love them there is obviously a mental block about reviewing a historical novel. This is a huge shame because at least one of my all-time favorite authors writes historical fiction. Something else to work on this year...