It's time to wrap up my first challenge of the year. I signed up for the What's in a Name challenge on August 12, so I was late to the game, but not as late as in 2012, when I started at the end of August.
I posted my first review on August 18, and the last on September 27, so it took me 6 weeks, give or take, to finish it - counted in reading time, not by reviewing dates.
The challenge got me back in the groove of reading, as I had been in the kind of slump where I wanted desperately to read but couldn't decide which TBR book to pick up next, so I usually ended up with rereads or loan books I needed to return soon.
The challenge gave me something solid to base my choices on, and as a matter of fact I think I may continue letting my book choices be guided in a similar way. One coffee break at work when I had nothing better to do I decided it might be fun to see what categories had been used in previous What's in a Name challenges that I had not participated in. I came up with a nice list of categories that I just might use to help me decide what to read, but more about that later...
Here are the books I chose, shown in the order I reviewed them and with links to the reviews:
Half of the books were mystery novels. Of the rest, there was one romantic historical novel and two non-fiction books, one a travelogue and the other an expatriate memoir, so there was not a whole lot of genre variety.
Of the six, my favourites were Show me the Magic and The Affair of the Mutilated Mink, but I was happy with all the choices. Technically, I could have used the non-fiction books for the other challenge I am participating in, the Nonfiction one, but I decided that since the aim was to get me reading more, that would be cheating. And now to finish the Nonfiction challenge!
I posted my first review on August 18, and the last on September 27, so it took me 6 weeks, give or take, to finish it - counted in reading time, not by reviewing dates.
The challenge got me back in the groove of reading, as I had been in the kind of slump where I wanted desperately to read but couldn't decide which TBR book to pick up next, so I usually ended up with rereads or loan books I needed to return soon.
The challenge gave me something solid to base my choices on, and as a matter of fact I think I may continue letting my book choices be guided in a similar way. One coffee break at work when I had nothing better to do I decided it might be fun to see what categories had been used in previous What's in a Name challenges that I had not participated in. I came up with a nice list of categories that I just might use to help me decide what to read, but more about that later...
Here are the books I chose, shown in the order I reviewed them and with links to the reviews:
- A title with the word ‘tree’ in it: A Parrot in the Pepper Tree by Chris Stewart.
- An item of furniture: Cards on the Table by Agatha Christie.
- A month of the year: April Lady by Georgette Heyer.
- An item of clothing: The Affair of the Mutilated Mink by James Anderson.
- A country: Show me the Magic: Travels Round Benin by Taxi by Annie Caulfield.
- A profession: The Hermit of Eyton Forest by Ellis Peters.
Half of the books were mystery novels. Of the rest, there was one romantic historical novel and two non-fiction books, one a travelogue and the other an expatriate memoir, so there was not a whole lot of genre variety.
Of the six, my favourites were Show me the Magic and The Affair of the Mutilated Mink, but I was happy with all the choices. Technically, I could have used the non-fiction books for the other challenge I am participating in, the Nonfiction one, but I decided that since the aim was to get me reading more, that would be cheating. And now to finish the Nonfiction challenge!
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