Books

I need to read more.

This isn't a problem I ever thought I'd have.  Especially not now - I mean, I've crammed my bedroom with as many books as it will hold and I work in a library.  If there's one thing I'm surrounded by all day, it's books.

But so far this year I've read less than half-a-dozen new books.  Very poor show, I'm sure you'll agree.  I'm currently 500ish pages into Game of Thrones by George R. R. Martin but have found myself a little... stuck.  Perhaps I expected too much from it but I'm not particularly enjoying it.  I'm even finding it, dare I say it, a bit boring?

Of course the problem could lie in the fact that I've watched the tv series, though having experienced a story in another medium has never been an issue for me before.  It is no doubt a highly unpopular opinion but I'd anticipated more (and therein lies a problem I've ranted talked about before - I don't much care for high expectations).

Part of me wants to persist, though, if only so I can get to the point in the story which I haven't yet seen.

Another part of me, however, thinks that all that sounds like rather too much effort, thank you.  I don't want to have to fight with myself to read - with so many books and so little time, maybe I should be sticking to those books which grab me tight and don't let go until the very last page.

That sounds like the sort of book I want to read.  And, you know, write.

Major Catch-Up, reporting for duty

Wow, it has been a long time since I last wrote a blog post.  My excuses, which must inevitably arise at this point, start off pretty valid but then sort of peter out towards the end.

In March I was hit by a rather horrid bout of flu, which left me too pathetic and useless to do anything much beyond stare blearily at terrible daytime telly and feel annoyed at my under-performing immune system.  It lasted about three weeks and by the time I was better again the Easter holidays had arrived.

Here start my excuses which aren't quite as convincing but are nonetheless legitimate.  I went to Plymouth to visit my older brother and his fiancée over the Easter weekend and on my return spent the rest of that week participating in the Great Redecorating Feat which is my bedroom.  I therefore, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, had little time for blogging.

(I did reorganise all my books on my lovely new bookshelves though!)

But as the second week of my Easter break came around (ah, how I love working for a college sometimes!), my excuses become somewhat less convincing.  Why didn't I blog during that time?  Well... you see... I just... um... didn't.  Yeah, that's pretty much the sum of it.  Fully recovered from bouts of both flu and decorating fever, I was tragically struck down by a lack of motivation.  I knew I should write a blog but not doing it just seemed infinitely easier.

But I suppose the blog-writing isn't really the most important casualty of all this.  It's the novel writing which, while not having suffered a complete halt, has slowed down far more than I'm happy with.

I did manage to keep my chain unbroken during the last month and a half, writing every day when I was ill, if only a couple of sentences.  Some of it even managed to make sense, I discovered later when I typed it all up.

But the fact still remains that I'd hoped to have finished the first draft of book two by now and I haven't.  The final five chapters have all got bits and pieces - the earlier ones more so than the latter - but have yet to become whole.

So now comes the task of filling in the blanks - and doing it without going horrendously over the word count.  Oh well, miracles do happen.

And I have a major catch-up to do on everyone else's blog posts which I haven't read in so very long.  All in all, I've been a very bad blogger.