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The book-year 2009

The stats for 2009: 30 books read, 3 of which were Penguin Celebrations. 30 books is the lowest of the 4 years I've been keeping track of my reading habits online (though I've been tracking my books since 1999 in paper form), and it reflects this year where there were plenty of distractions from reading, some of my own choosing, and some not so much of my own choosing. 

I bought a number of books this year, a couple of new bookshelves, and visited Hay on Wye, which was exactly as I thought it would be. We only had a few hours, and I intend to go back to explore some more. The Oxfam shop on Portobello Road is a new discovery as a good (though as with most charity shops an unreliable one) source for books. I love living close to the Travel Bookshop, and working close to one of the good design/art bookshops in London (on Rivington Street). 

Bookish delights expected in 2010: read more of the Penguin Celebrations, and I intend to read more fiction. 

My review

My review of Winter's End got published today here at Blog a Holiday Read. 
Haven't had much time to read lately, due to work and personal busy-ness, started Paul Auster last night, enjoying it lots.

Holiday reads

So I was optimist and brought both the Leonardo da Vinci Penguin I'm reading at the moment, and Alistair Cooke's Penguin (I try and read local if I can, so a US book for a US holiday seemed appropriate)... and read neither. Instead I ended up buying a stack of books, some design, some business, some travel, some novels, mostly at Borders and Half Price books (how good is Half Price books! I absolutely loved them, that is my secret tip). Read a few of them (see the bar on the right hand side of this blog), so no progress on the Penguin Celebrations front yet. Must get back into the Celebrations at one point. Oh, and must move sometime soon-ish. I have too many books and too little room to put them. Or I can just stop buying books I suppose.

Book-packing

Over the next few days I have some serious book-thinking and packing to do. Today's my last day at work before my hols, and that means from tomorrow plenty of time to read (well, that's what I think now, the list of things I want to do is so large I'll be happy if I read anything more than emails and signage on the street) and thinking about which books to bring on holiday. One for the flight out, maybe a spare one in case the original one doesn't work or bore me. I'm going to Dallas and am presuming there'll be plenty of opportunity to buy books there, but even so I'm considering bringing my own for the way back too. Once I figure that one out, it's time for the next dilemma: which magazines to bring. Vacation's hard work!

Mark Ritson on Penguin meets Match

One of my favourite professors at b-school has written an article on the Penguin-Match marriage and co-branding here.

So why am I doing this?

What possesses a person to order a series of 36 books and read them, and then write about it? I don't really know. The best I can come up with is because I can. Because the mountain is there. But that's not enough. It's an exercise to discipline myself into reading consistently, and to reflect and record what I read. Also, it's a great way to veer outside the narrow confines of my own natural reading tastes. Not all of these books I would've chosen myself if I had to buy them seperately, either out of ignorance or out of prejudice. But it's good they're here. I enjoy having them around.

Reading desert

After what was a veritable reading binge a few weeks ago whilst I was cooped up in bed trying not to sneeze my brains out, the reading now has dwindled to a small trickle. And as I'm typing that, I remember that I actually read a book over the weekend. Ahum. And I read Winter's End, my BlogAHolidayRead, for which I need to write a review (will do over the weekend). Just logged onto BlogAHolidayRead and saw that the first reviews are up, I'll have a little browse and see what my 'colleagues' are doing. And I've been a good reviewer so far, I haven't checked what other people are saying about 'my' book. I can't wait to dive into my stack of Celebrations again though.

Rules

So I can't help but think about this, and I know it's slightly disconcertingly control-freakish: what happens if I run across a book I really don't like in the Celebrations series? I normally have a policy of not finishing a book if I think it's really really crap (as you can tell by the star system on the books I've read), since there are too many good books out there, good books I'd enjoy. So far everything I've read in the Celebrations series has been enjoyable, diverting, made me think or laugh or both, and not for once did I consider putting the books down. However, with 5 books down, there's 31 still left and what if I don't like some of them? Will I finish them anyway? Don't get me wrong, I trust the folks at Penguin, but what if not 100% of the time our tastes overlap? Will I finish the book anyway? Hmmm. Let's cross that bridge when we get to it.

On an unrelated note, I'm on the mend from my summer cold, feeling tons better if still a bit tired. Not sure if I'm up to Brian Greene yet, I might squeeze in one other book before I return to mr Greene.