…october book report…

After smashing through the first half of the year and making excellent progress towards my 2020 reading goal, things started slowing down over the last couple of months. I could blame birthday season, but more accurately, I lost my mojo when the book I started in August turned out to be slow going, and I was trying to avoid starting a new book before finishing that. Then, I accidently picked up a book in BigW one Sunda after church and read it in an afternon. The week after, I fell into the library book sale, and picked up three new books for $1 each. The kids took so long deciding on their books that I ended up borrowing a couple more. I read one of those that night, and I was back on the reading bandwagon!

Book Of Colours – Robyn Cadwallader: The book that blocked me. I can’t quite pin-point why I struggled so much to get into this book. The writing was fine, the plot was ok. I certainly read worse books, but for some reason I just couldn’t get into the rhythm of it. I misread the synopsis and it turned out to be a different story than what I expected, which didn’t help either. But I am reluctant to leave books unfinished, and finally finished it over the weekend. Didn’t love it, didn’t hate it, just didn’t connect with it.

The Lost Flowers Of Alice Hart – Holly Ringland: another long termer that I finally finished recently. I had this one on audiobook, and over winter, instead of listening to audiobooks and crafting of an evening once the family went to bed, I instead got into the habit of going to bed and hiding under my warm blankets with some netflix instead. As the weather warmed up and I started walking more, I started relistening to it on my morning walks. I was instantly hooked again, and polished off the last half of the book in a week or so of listening while walking, listening while hanging the washing, listening while crocheting of an evening now it’s warm enough to stay up. A beautiful, heartbreaking story of love and family and cycles of dysfunction and finding your own story. I absolutely loved it. I think I would appreciate it even more in physical format.

Across The Water – Ingrid Alexandra: This is the one I picked up at BigW, and planned to read a chapter over lunch…and I was hooked and powered through the entire thing in an afternoon. It was a good weekend/holiday read with enough mystery to keep me turning the pages to find the true culprit.

How I Clawed My Way To The Middle – John Wood: I first came across this one in BigW, and then spotted it at the library, so decided to pick it up. I have been knee-deep in a Blue Heelers re-run marathon, thanks to Amazon Prime, so I thought this might be a fun read. I did read it in one night, and there were some fun behind-the-scenes tidbits, both of Blue Heelers and the entertainment industry as a whole, but towards the end of the book, he wrote something along the lines of not having enjoyed the writing process, and I think that came through a bit in the reading of the book as well. It did inspire me to pop over to the Kindle store and pick up William McInnes’s novels, though, so that was a plus. I would only recommend for hard core fans – I was pretty devoted to BH in the day, and have loved my rewatched, and didn’t particularly enjoy the read, so it would be better suited to fans of Wood himself, not just of one or two of his works.

The Lightkeeper’s Wife – Karen Viggers: another library find, I took this one away with me earlier in the week with only a couple of chapters read, and between reading at the pool and of an evening when the kids went to bed, finished it in the three nights of our trip. I loved it – a story of relationship, commitment, disconnection, betrayal, loss, and identity. I figured out the “twist” fairly early on, but enjoyed the story as the characters discovered it and had to deal with it.

Now that my reader’s block is smashed, I’ve got a stack of books waiting for me. Four on my kindle. Three ex-library books. Five paperbacks from my birthday. I’m sure I’ll also manage to fall into some more library books as well.