October Summary

October was a really quiet month on the blog, for which I apologise. I’ve been married coming up to two months now, and the time’s just flown by! As well as returning to work and the run-up to Christmas (yes, I know it’s early, but that’s what you get for working in retail!), we’ve had a family situation to deal with, and are also in the process of confirming dates etc for moving house! I’m really excited about the move, as it will mean that we’ll have a second bedroom, which I’ve been given permission to turn into a reading room! I am literally *so* excited I’ve been pretty much running round in circles since we found out. Also since the new place is on the ground floor, I’ll finally be able to get a piano, the lack of which I’ve been feeling severely for the past year! The bad news is that it may mean that our internet connection is even more sporadic than at present, which to be honest I can’t even imagine, but hopefully we’ll be able to find a way around it!

What I have managed to post this past month or so has been mostly rambling and updates rather than actual reviews, and I am so behind that I think it’s unlikely I’ll actually manage to catch up with myself before the end of the year, but I will try!

And now for the exciting news!

Drumroll........

On January 9^th An Armchair by the Sea turns one!

I actually cannot stress how much of a gigantic achievement this will be for me. I’m the kind of person who is forever getting really excited about projects and fully immersing myself in them for about a week before getting bored and giving up, so the fact that I’ve actually kept this going semi-regularly for an entire year is nothing short of a miracle. I think it may actually be the first project I feel like I’ve succeeded in since I was a little kid, and I cannot describe the awesomeness of the feeling that gives me! Obviously, I want you lovely readers to feel as awesome about this as I do, so I’m currently trying to think up something fun to celebrate with. Any suggestions or ideas will be greatly appreciated, and there will undoubtedly be an incredibly gushy, rambling post about how much I love blogging and you book bloggers nearer the time!

Anyway, back to October. I may not have blogged a lot, but here’s what I read:

1.       A Conspiracy of Violence – Susanna Gregory

2.       A River in the Sky – Elizabeth Peters

3.       Blood on the Strand – Susanna Gregory

4.       Death: The Time of Your Life – Neil Gaiman

5.       Fables: Legends in Exile – Bill Willingham

6.       Franny & Zooey – J.D Salinger

7.       Persuasion – Jane Austen

8.       Snuff – Terry Pratchett

9.       The Annotated Peter Pan; The Centenary Edition – J.M Barrie & Maria Tatar

10.   The Night Circus – Erin Morgenstern

11.   The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake – Aimee Bender

12.   Whip It – Shauna Cross

So all in all, a pretty good reading month! It also saw the arrival of my first ever 24 hour readathon, which I adored and will definitely be participating again in April!

From a sense of great achievement, to a bit of a disappointment.... I went to work out how I’m doing on all my various challenges, and realised that I basically suck and haven’t got anywhere near target on any of them. This being my first year of blogging and given my obsession with lists, I think that I *may* have got slightly carried away, so next year I am definitely going to take on less! There will be some posts going up during the week about some of the challenges I’m planning to participate in next year. For 2011, I’m focusing on The Graphic Novel Challenge and The Historical Fiction Challenge, as they’re the two that I’m close enough to completing to finish by the end of December!

If all goes to plan, I should have quite a lot on the blog for you guys to read this coming week, hope you have a good one! I’m going to get back to the packing.... :-/

*forgot to mention - I also joined NaNoWriMo this week. Late, I know, and with no discernible idea of what it is I actually want to write, but I'm hoping it will get me into good habits. Plus two of my younger sisters are doing it and they were shaming me!*

My Year (or week...) of Not Buying Books..

So I've decided to be brave, and attempt to not buy any more books for an entire year, until the beginning of February 2012.... I really don't know if this is going to work, but I'm giving it a go! Especially since I looked through my TBR, and have switched my challenge reading lists around a bit, and it turns out that I can accomodate most of the challenges I've signed up for in stuff I've already bought, or stuff that my amazing library can get for me!

I'll admit I'm absolutely terrified at the idea of not buying books at all. This is an incomprehensible idea to me - I've always bought books! I counted, and at the moment, my TBR stands at around 190 books. And we just moved house, and I gave a load that I thought I'd never get round to reading to the charity shop. I dread to think what it would have been before... I think this will be good for me....

In other news, I'm very annoyed with my lack of access to the internet. Currently we don't have it in our house, so I'm using my (amazing) phone, as a kind of mini computer, but unfortunately, while it allows me to make changes to some things on my blog, it doesn't let me put up new posts or anything quite that sophisticated. So for that I have to come to the library, which I can only do on days I'm not working, and then only for an hour a day... so it's difficult to slot regular posts in, which is very frustrating, as I'm now getting really behind on reviews I've posted compared to what I've actually read!

Things I read in January (with links to reviews):

• Dream Angus by Alexander McCall Smith (for my myth challenge)
• Freaky Friday by Mary Rogers (Gilmore Girls challenge)
• Her Fearful Symmetry by Audrey Niffeneger 
• Mini Shopaholic by Sophie Kinsella
• Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi (for the Graphic Novels Challenge)
• The Love Verb by Jane Green
• The Red Queen by Philippa Gregory  (for the Historical Fiction challenge)
• V for Vendetta by Alan Moore (for the Graphic Novels Challenge)
• The Growing Summer by Noel Streatfeild (for my Noel Streatfeild challenge - haven't posted the review yet!)

Good reading month, February's set to be even better, I'm excited!(also, I've just finished The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins, because I was reading so many awesome reviews of it, and I literally read it in two hours, I couldn't put it down! Thanks for the reviews, everyone!)