Bookworm's Progress Report
- Rachel King
- Apr 26, 2019
- 4 min read
2019 Reading Challenge: 21 books out of 52 completed (40%).
I've had today off and have spent it with my books, YouTube and my journal. I've just did a flick through read of Andy Weir's book The Martian (on which the movie by the same name is based, its the film with with Matt Damon in it). I bought and read The Martian a few years ago, right before I went to paris to visit my younger sister over Christmas 2015. I have only had it back a few months now as I had left it in Holland with my host family as I couldn't bring everything I owned at the time with me to England in two suitcases. I do own quite a few books that I still need to read, books that I bought a few years ago and that I've been meaning to read but haven't gotten as far as reading. In the last year, I think I've gotten bit too used to having my Kindle Paperwhite in my handbag and being able to read my books on there. Its especially helpful when traveling (either to and from work or doing longer journeys when we're going away on holiday).
Over the last few weeks, I've been doing a mixture of 12:00 - 20:00 (12-8pm) and 15:00 - 23:00 (3-11pm) shifts. Despite the different shifts I've had to work, I've had the opportunity to read freely on my Paperwhite, both on the journey to work and on the journey home again. Its lovely that the days are getting a lot longer so I've often ended up sitting at the bus stop after 8pm in full sunlight, with my Kindle in hand, waiting for the bus. Its been a great delight of mine that the days are getting longer and warmer. The spring seems to be turning into summer. Since I grew up in Uganda, I'm used to the hotter weather, so I'm pretty glad about the fact that summer is coming. I'm also really looking forwards to the holiday Andy and I have booked off in June. I'm hoping to organise a couple of days when we go to the western part of the UK to get away from the hustle and bustle of life in the South East of England. I'll write another post on our holiday plans at some point in the not too distant future.
Current Reads
Over the last week or so I've been reading a book, by Justin Cronin, called The Passage. I've been wanting to read this book for quite a while, and right up until November 2018, I was debating whether or not I should buy it, because I wasn't sure what to expect with reading it. I'm someone who doesn't often read the reviews on a book because I haven't wanted to ruin the book if I ended up buying it and reading it (I had this happen before). As you might have noticed from the cover of The Passage, it has a rather creepy feel to it, which is why you should never judge a book by its cover, because even though there is a rather thrilling sense of adventure to this story it's not creepy in the way you might expect. So in November of last year I took the plunge and bought The Passage and the other two books in the trilogy. I then started reading The Passage this week. Part of it is set in the present and the rest of it set in the future. It gives the idea of what might happen if a secret program that the US army runs goes wrong and creates a virus that makes vampire like creatures, having used death row inmates to run these experiments on. This program goes wrong and ends up causing the spread of this virus across the globe. This led to a near extermination of humanity. Those that did survive the initial spread of virus were sent into special colonies to protect them from those infected. The second part of the story looks at a time set in the future and how some of those who survived the infection were trying to save themselves from their colony and from the virus as they had to flee from the colony into which most of the group had been born into and grown up in. Its an easy read, but its slow going due to the style that its been written in. Its also quite a long book to read through. I'm going to read the second and third books in due course, when I've finished this one as I'm curious as to what happens in the rest of the series.
Continued Progress with My 2019 Reading Challenge
As of when this post goes to publication, I'm currently 5 books ahead of my GoodReads Reading Challenge for 2019. This is intentional and allows me to take a bit longer on some of the thicker, harder to read books that I'm planning to read this year. I'm hoping that I get the chance to read these books without interruptions. I struggle reading thicker, more challenging books if I keep getting interrupted.
I did think of increasing the number of books I'm aiming to read this year, but decided to keep it at 52 books, because I wanted to keep the consistence of having a fixed book goal. I had written before about seeing if I could meet the goal this year that I didn't meet last year. In 2018 I only managed to read 40 books out of 52 (77%). This was down to the fact that I started the challenge a good several weeks late and I also got married in November (as many of you are probably aware), so went through a rather turbulent period before and after the wedding. So during this period I completely stopped reading as I was so stressed with all that was going into the preparation of the wedding, and adjusting to married life.
Footnote
If you're interesting in helping me meet my challenge this year and do better than I did last year, it would be a great help if you'd be interested in gifting me with one of the books on my reading list (the link is http://amzn.eu/7GM9Xqc).
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