52 Books in 2014: January's Books

At the beginning of this new year, I honestly thought that 52 books in a year, or four books a month, was too ambitious. But I didn't sign up to the  Goodreads Reading Challenge for an easy ride. It was important to me that I read more as a writer. However, as a writer-in-training I'll turn to someone else to summarise this better, so over to  Joanne Harris;  "Writing without reading is like cooking without eating. Do both. Understand both." 

And here I am counting eight books. EIGHT BOOKS. I am quite astonished at the number "eight". I didn't imagine I'd be writing the number eight in my first month of this challenge, but I'm mighty glad I am.

There were four ebooks (read mostly on my new toy, the Google Nexus 7 as photographed) and four paperbacks (three of them bought in a charity shop). Three of the ebooks were self-published (as indicated by a * in the list below), and all three were just as "polished" as any traditionally published book, I'm very happy to say.

Once I made a concentrated effort to read more than I have in a long time, I found myself embracing this challenge like a new love fling... or rather fling s as I worked my way through these books with little thought for the one before. In fact, do you want to know something scandalous? I double dated all of these books, overlapping them, cheating on each of them and letting several lie by my bed each night, one on top of the other. It was wonderful. I was the bookworm equivalent of a harlot; and I loved it.

So, here are the books I read in January 2014. You can find the reviews in full over on my Goodreads profile. (While you're there, why not make me a friend?) Do let me know a good book you've read recently; I'm on the prowl...

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2. Scoop: A Novel About Journalists (Penguin Modern Classics) by Evelyn Waugh

3. The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde and Other Tales of Terror (Penguin Classics) by Robert Louis Stevenson

4. A Life Unpredicted and other stories by Joanne Phillips*

5. Choose Yourself! by James Altucher*

6. The Confessionby John Grisham

7. Instructions for a Heatwave by Maggie O'Farrell

8. One Night at the Jacaranda by Carol Cooper* 

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