Tag: reading

On the half-way mark

On the half-way mark

I can’t believe that it’s already the halfway mark of National Novel Writing Month.  While I’m not yet caught up on my words, as you can see from the image below it’s going much better than it did when I had made my last update.

NaNoWriMo stats Day 17

For the past few days I’ve been managing a daily word count of over two thousand words and I’m catching up.  At the moment I’m wrapping up the climax of the first act of my novel after which I’ll have to do a spot of planning again to incorporate the new ideas that have popped into my head while writing the first twenty-two thousand, which will include coming up with names for a couple of new supporting characters, but I don’t foresee any major problems and I hope to be caught up and maybe even ahead by Friday.  (By the way, that’s one horrible run-on sentence I wrote there, isn’t it?  I hope none of them have made it into the novel thus far.) Continue reading “On the half-way mark” →

Bookish Q&A

I came across this survey on Cheap Thrills and Charleen got it from Katie’s blog, Words for Worms.  Both of them decided not to tag anyone, but leave it out there for anyone who’s interested to grab it, which is exactly what I’m now doing.

The rules are:

  1. Post these rules
  2. Post a photo of your favorite book cover
  3. Answer the questions below
  4. Tag a few people to answer them too
  5. Go to their blog/twitter and tell them you’ve tagged them
  6. Make sure you tell the person who tagged you that you’ve taken part!

Favorite Book Cover

I can’t really say that I have a favourite book cover.  I’m more interested in what’s in a book.  However, I am a bit obsessive compulsive, so if I buy books from a series I like them all to come from the same imprint and edition (you know, so they look all pretty and organised on the shelf).  And I love the covers of old, especially antique books.  I have a bunch of old books that I bought simply for how they look.

But I’m avoiding the question, aren’t I?  I guess if I had to pick a favourite it would be the original Discworld covers by Josh Kirby.  Since his death in 2001 the covers have been done by Paul Kidby.  Kidby’s are also very good, but I like Kirby’s more, probably because I got to know the Discworld through his drawings when I first started reading them in high school.  Here is one I randomly selected:

Soul Music by Terry Pratchett
Cover by Josh Kirby
Publisher: Corgi Books

What are you reading right now? Continue reading “Bookish Q&A” →

On Dan Brown…and why I didn’t buy Inferno

Like many people (according to one infographic I’ve found on Facebook, around 57 million) I had never heard of Dan Brown until The Da Vinci Code propelled him into fame.  I did not pay the whole phenomenon much attention – I was earning minimum wage at the time and was definitely not going to spend the little cash I had on a novel by someone I had never heard of.

I did some house-sitting in those days to supplement my income.  I spotted the novel on the shelf in one of the homes I was watching and decided I might as well give it a read (and before you get into me for reading other people’s books without permission – I can read a 1000-page paperback novel without cracking the spine).

Can’t say I was crazy about it. Continue reading “On Dan Brown…and why I didn’t buy Inferno“ →