Thursday, January 21, 2010

My new experiment

I have chosen eight books from my personal library. They are of varied genres - paranormal romance, urban fantasy, fantasy, mystery, young adult, and possibly literature. My goal is to read these books before the end of January, regardless of whatever else I read. I currently have an armful of books from my local library and for some reason I seem to be on a Jayne Ann Krentz kick lately but no matter what, I'm going to read these books:

Covet by J. R. Ward
Furies of Calderon by Jim Butcher
Charmed to Death by Shirley Damsgaard
Lord of the Fading Lands by C. L. Wilson
Out of the Deep I Cry by Julia Spencer-Fleming
The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde
Wicked Game by Jeri Smith-Ready
Hush, Hush by Becca Fitzpatrick

Here goes...

1/13/10 Update: So far so good. Got lucky with Wicked Game. I even posted the review right away. I think Charmed to Death and The Eyre Affair will be my most difficult challenges. I also must remind myself that I am not required to read these eight back-to-back but since I don't want to swallow both my Jeri Smith-Ready books in one gulp I'll move on to Jim Butcher.

1/15/10 Update: Two days after I started Furies of Calderon, I'm still working on it. In fact, I'm not very far into the story since I haven't had much time in the last two days to read. Makes me think that I'm not going to finish my booklist before the end of January. I've got two library books to read as well: The First Rule by Robert Crais and Kindred in Death by J. D. Robb. Covet, Lord of the Fading Lands and The Eyre Affair are all books I have started to read but didn't finish. I hope to have time to read this weekend so maybe that will help pick up the slack.

1/16/10: I read some more of Furies of Calderon last night and I'm having a difficult time keeping focused with this one. Starting the first Harry Dresden book was great because I was sucked right into the story and completely charmed by Harry. In Furies, Butcher is setting up massive plot lines to carry multiple books in the future and I am completely lost. It doesn't help that fantasy novels with strange names tend to irritate me more than any other kind of book but I am determined to get through this since I have the next three in this series sitting on my shelf. As far as I'm concerned, a Jim Butcher book should never go to waste :)

1/21/10: Well, this is going better than expected. I've read five out of my eight and have enjoyed all of them. Originally I had picked nine books for this thing with A Dose of Murder by Lori Avocato being the ninth. What a disaster. It was so painfully obviously a ripoff of Janet Evanovich's Stephanie Plum series, minus the humor. Definitely a DNF but not a wallbanger :) I just finished Out of the Deep I Cry by Julia Spencer-Fleming this evening and launched directly into To Darkness and To Death, the fourth in that series. I had planned to next read Kindred in Death by J. D. Robb seeing how it's due back at the library on Monday but I love reading about Russ and Clare and their predicament. They finally kiss in Out of... and I was kinda surprised by it. I had wondered how far Spencer-Fleming was going to push them before everything exploded in their faces (i.e. Russ's wife Linda finds out), especially if Clare lets her guard down and takes her collar off. Turns out coming thisclose to drowning and/or hypothermia is the breaking point. Now I get to find out what happens in To Darkness... Looks like Kindred in Death will be going back unread :)

1/27/10: Finished Lord of the Fading Lands yesterday. Loved it and am waiting to get it from PBS. Hopefully it will be sent today or tomorrow. Lord was different than I expected and I like that book two picks up where book one finished. Will be starting The Eyre Affair if I get the opportunity today but am not holding my breath since I expect to busy as I have much to do. Later.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Good luck with your experiment Jen.....maybe I should give it a try too. Let me know if it works for you :)

Jane

Jen said...

I am going to try to do this every month this year. I just came up with this idea yesterday while I was looking at my "library." It has become so out of control I've got to do something. But let's not hold our breath, okay? (LOL)

Jane said...

Go Jen...you are half way there!