This month I have mostly been...

...reading!

I've found my inner bookworm again and have been curled up with a book for an awful lot of my spare time, so much so I've managed to read 12 books since the end of Jan!  Admittedly 7 of those were Aunt Dimity books and they're very quick reads, but still, it's brought my total for 2012 up to 17 and we're only just in March.

I've loved the Aunt Dimity series and have now read them all apart from the latest release which arrived here three days ago from Amazon.  I so want to read it but I also want to get other books finished up so I've decided to be good and finish all the books I have already started before I pick it up.  That's 9 books to finish before I treat myself LOL.  I'm sure that horrifies some of you out there but I've always got at least five books on the go at any one time - my reading is totally dictated by my mood.

Of the other books I read there was another Agatha Raisin - again a quick read but I find more than a couple at a time and they become very 'samey' and I don't enjoy them as much so I space them out - and then four very different novels although I think all of them would come under the banner of chick lit. 

Of all of them I think I enjoyed Me Before You the best.  I'd definitely recommend it - I even found myself welling up at the end and that's totally not me!  By the middle of the book it's quite obvious how the end is going to be but it's so well written that it still managed to surprise me.

I've read most of Freya North's previous novels but it's been quite some time since I picked up her work and I did enjoy this one - Love Rules - pretty standard relationship stuff although it does have a thought provoking relationship issue that is a little away from the norm.

Which leaves The London Train and The End of Everything.  Both were good reads, I didn't get distracted and put them down which is always a good sign, but I have to say they weren't novels I would go out of my way to recommend.

The full list with authors is at the bottom of this post.

In other book related news I now have a Kindle.  I used the money my office gave me as a leaving gift because, despite my determination never to have one (I LOVE REAL BOOKS! LOL) I was bowled over when I saw a friends and I immediately saw a use for it which is this: all those 'classics' I've never read or haven't read since school that I'd like to try.  Lots of them are free for the Kindle and others are of minimum cost and I can load them up on the Kindle and dip in when I choose.  There are so many books I have never read that I would like to and this is a way of having them available to me without filling up house space with them.

It also helped that once I got the Kindle I found DH had 2102 ebooks stored on our network that he'd got from a friend for his iPad...

So I'm slowly sorting them out and loading up the Kindle.

I've never read and Agatha Christie novel, or a John Grisham or Ernest Hemmingway.  I've not read Austen, a Bronte sister or Thomas Hardy since school and there are several Dickens novels I'd like to try.  I've never read a Sherlock Holmes novel either.  So many books I need to try but of course with the Kindle I'm in danger of spending more time organising them than actually reading LOL.

If any of you have an recommendations please shout - I picked up the first Aunt Dimity novel thanks to another blog and I'm always on the look out for good reads.

2012 Reads

4th Mar -  Love Rules - Freya North
28th Feb -  Me Before You - Jojo Moyes
23rd Feb - The End of Everything - Megan Abbott
21st Feb - Aunt Dimity Down Under- Nancy Atherton
21st Feb - Aunt Dimity Vampire Hunter- Nancy Atherton
15th Feb - Aunt Dimity Goes West - Nancy Atherton
13th Feb - The London Train - Tessa Hadley
6th Feb - Aunt Dimity and the Deep Blue Sea - Nancy Atherton
5th Feb - Agatha Raisin and the Curious Curate - M.C. Beaton
3rd Feb - Aunt Dimity and the Next of Kin - Nancy Atherton
31st Jan - Aunt Dimity Snowbound - Nancy Atherton
29th Jan - Aunt Dimity Takes a Holiday - Nancy Atherton

Previously recorded 2012 reads:

25th Jan - Agatha Raisin and the Day the Floods Came - M.C. Beaton
23rd Jan - Agatha Raisin and the Love from Hell - M.C. Beaton
20th Jan - Starter for Ten by David Nicholls 
7th Jan - Twelve Days of Christmas by Trisha Ashley
6th Jan - The Magic of Christmas by Trisha Ashley

Books read

I've been zooming through books recently and my 2012 finish list looks like this:

6th Jan - The Magic of Christmas by Trisha Ashley
7th Jan - Twelve Days of Christmas by Trisha Ashley (yes I did indulge myself and spend a whole day on the sofa reading!)
20th Jan - Starter for Ten by David Nicholls
23rd Jan - Agatha Raisin and the Love from Hell - M.C. Beaton
25th Jan - Agatha Raisin and the Day the Floods Came - M.C. Beaton

I enjoyed all of them although none of them were more than light reads really but that's exactly what I need right now. I found the Agatha Raisin books by chance a couple of years ago as The Book People did a 10 pack of the first 10 in the series and they're good for a quick read - murder mysteries of the fluffy kind. I discovered they had a second 10 pack at the beginning of the year and couldn't resist (£10 for 10 books!) There are currently 22 in the series so I'm sure at some point I'll get the last two.

I read One Day by David Nicholls last year (although I didn't bother to see the film as I enjoyed the book enough to be sure the film would probably disappoint). Starter for Ten wasn't as good (IMHO) but it was a fun read.

Reading plans

I kind of lost track of the number of books I read last year but I think it was around 40.  I've decided this year to keep a rolling blog post going with all the books listed as I got bored of scrabbling around trying to find titles and counts last year.

Books for me are the same as stitching and quilting when it comes to stash - I estimate I have around 200 piled up in my wardrobe waiting to be read so I am determined to be good and reduce that number rather than buy more.  I think I'll give myself a limit of 1 new book for every 25 I read as I'm not sure I can cope without buying any books at all but in the spirit of WIPocalypse I need to reduce the piles.

So my first finish of the year was last night and it was The Magic of Christmas by Trisha Ashley.  It was a good read, a nice light chic lit type of book perfect for the season and very charming and moreish.  I'm contemplating reading her 'Twelve Days of Christmas' next as I'm not quite devoid of the Christmas spirit yet but that may change after the postman has been today as I'm waiting for my next Aunt Dimity book to arrive.  I'm definitely addicted to these stories and have three in my 'to read' pile but the one I'm waiting for preceeds them in chronological order and I'm way too OCD to read out of order LOL.