Skip to main content

Reading report for November 2013

November was a less than average reading month for me: I finished 8 9 books. (Tsk! I forgot one).
Of those, 5 were rereads and 3 were TBR.

Unusually, this was not due to one of my fits of depression (reading little and rereading are two of the danger signs), but simply because I have had other things to do. I have been using some of the time I usually spend reading to draw/doodle instead, something I love doing but I haven't had much energy to do for a long time. One of the things I did was to hand-draw all my Christmas cards. I also made a number of paper ornaments, most which can be hung anywhere at any time of year, but of course they also look nice on the Christmas tree.

Any time I do less than my usual amount of reading for a while, I begin to feel the difference in my body by the second week or so, especially my neck and shoulders. Having myalgia means I need to take good care of myself and reading unfortunately puts a strain on my muscles. But if I had to choose between being perfectly free of myalgia and not reading, or having myalgia and continuing to read, I would still choose reading and the stiffness and sore muscles it entails, because I can't imagine not having the joy of books in my life.

The stand-out was undoubtedly  L'étranger by Albert Camus, not only because it is good literature but also because it is the first unabridged, unsimplified novel I finish reading in French. Reading it and then discussing it (in French) helped me get a better feeling for the French language than any book meant for teaching possibly could.

But on to the books:
  • Mary Balogh, Sandra Heath, Edith Layton, Barbara Metzger, Patricia Rice: A Regency Christmas Feast. Historical romance novellas. Reread.
  • Albert Camus: L'étranger. Novel. 
  • Martha Grimes : Help the Poor Struggler. Murder mystery. TBR read.
  • Georgette Heyer : The Masqueraders. Historical romance. Reread.
  • Georgette Heyer : Powder and Patch. Historical romance. Reread.
  • Georgette Heyer : Cotillion. Historical romance. Reread.
  • Terry Pratchett : Night Watch. Fantasy. Reread.
  • Helen Scales : Poseidon's Steed: The Story of Seahorses. Natural history. TBR read.
  • Marilyn Wann : Fat!So!. Self-help. TBR read.


Comments

Steve Benner said…
November 2014???
Bibliophile said…
Thank you for pointing out the error. Clearly my fingers were feeling creative when I typed this up. All corrected now. On the positive side, at least I now know someone's actually reading the occasional post.

Popular posts from this blog

Book 40: The Martian by Andy Weir, audiobook read by Wil Wheaton

Note : This will be a general scattershot discussion about my thoughts on the book and the movie, and not a cohesive review. When movies are based on books I am interested in reading but haven't yet read, I generally wait to read the book until I have seen the movie, but when a movie is made based on a book I have already read, I try to abstain from rereading the book until I have seen the movie. The reason is simple: I am one of those people who can be reduced to near-incoherent rage when a movie severely alters the perfectly good story line of a beloved book, changes the ending beyond recognition or adds unnecessarily to the story ( The Hobbit , anyone?) without any apparent reason. I don't mind omissions of unnecessary parts so much (I did not, for example, become enraged to find Tom Bombadil missing from The Lord of the Rings ), because one expects that - movies based on books would be TV-series long if they tried to include everything, so the material must be pared down

List love: 10 recommended stories with cross-dressing characters

This trope is almost as old as literature, what with Achilles, Hercules and Athena all cross-dressing in the Greek myths, Thor and Odin disguising themselves as women in the Norse myths, and Arjuna doing the same in the Mahabaratha. In modern times it is most common in romance novels, especially historicals in which a heroine often spends part of the book disguised as a boy, the hero sometimes falling for her while thinking she is a boy. Occasionally a hero will cross-dress, using a female disguise to avoid recognition or to gain access to someplace where he would never be able to go as a man. However, the trope isn’t just found in romances, as may be seen in the list below, in which I recommend stories with a variety of cross-dressing characters. Unfortunately I was only able to dredge up from the depths of my memory two book-length stories I had read in which men cross-dress, so this is mostly a list of women dressed as men. Ghost Riders by Sharyn McCrumb. One of the interwove

First book of 2020: The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel by Deborah Moggach (reading notes)

I don't know if I've mentioned it before, but I loathe movie tie-in book covers because I feel they are (often) trying to tell me how I should see the characters in the book. The edition of Deborah Moggach's These Foolish Things that I read takes it one step further and changes the title of the book into the title of the film version as well as having photos of the ensemble cast on the cover. Fortunately it has been a long while since I watched the movie, so I couldn't even remember who played whom in the film, and I think it's perfectly understandable to try to cash in on the movie's success by rebranding the book. Even with a few years between watching the film and reading the book, I could see that the story had been altered, e.g. by having the Marigold Hotel's owner/manager be single and having a romance, instead being of unhappily married to an (understandably, I thought) shrewish wife. It also conflates Sonny, the wheeler dealer behind the retireme