I Read Therefore I Am discussion

Let us know what you hope to read this month - here:

Lees August 2013 Reads
Dirt Music
Where Angels Fear to Tread
Winter's Tales
The Historian
The Return of the Soldier
Swamplandia!
Our Man in Havana

Well, from the Library, I've got:

Nineteen Eighty-Four - George Orwell
The Angel's Game - Carlos Ruis Zafon
The Prisoner of Heaven - Carlos Ruis Zafon

From NetGalley I have:

Angel City - Jon Steel
Song of the Shaman - Annette Vendryes Leach
Thanksgiving - Ellen Cooney
Bitter Like Orange Peel - Jessica Bell
Kissing Bowie - Joan Taylor

and I was supposed to be reading Crusade by Robyn Young as the 'C' of my A-Z, but, erm....

I like the sound of kissing Bowie - I used to quite fancy him

I think a lot of people did/do :) The book looks interesting, will let you know my thoughts when I've finished.

Think it may be downloaded from the author's website

Thanks for that - I'll have a look

Lees Plan for September
Monthly Author Daphne Du Maurier
Don't Look Now and Other Stories
The Birds and Other Stories
Daphne
A Severed Head- Monthly Book,

Pickwick Papers - 2nd Instalment

Mason & Dixon chapters 8 - 50 (come on Lee!) - Quarterly Read - currently reading

From TBR List
The Historian - E Kostova abandoned :o(
Picnic at Hanging Rock - Joan Lindsay

Frost in May - Antonia White

Belinda - Maria Edgeworth

My plan for September is:

The Angel's Game - Carlos Ruiz Zafon (a library read)
Thanksgiving - Ellen Cooney (NetGalley)
The Birds & Other Stories - Daphne Du Maurier
Mason & Dixon (or at least some of it! - Thomas Pynchon
A Severed Head - Iris Murdoch

And maybe, depending on time:

The Prisoner of Heaven - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
Kissing Bowie - Joan Taylor
A Possible Life - Sebastien Faulks (which is October's Book Club read)

Let us know what you think of A Possible Life - some of the stories I really liked, others I wasn't so sure.

I'm planning to read:
The Birds & Other Stories currently reading
The House on the Strand
Daphne
A Severed Head

Want to finish Vanity Fair - currently reading;
make a start on Mason and Dixon
and have got library books to read before they go back as well: The Calligrapher's Daughter, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, The Secret Rooms: A True Gothic Mystery, Teller of Tales: The Life of Arthur Conan Doyle, In Cold Blood and The Bloody Red Baron (Anno Dracula #2).

Have just added the Conan Doyle to my to acquire list (no. 607!) and the Secret Rooms one is already there.

Well I've been reading the Sherlock Holmes stories again so I decided I wanted to find out more about Conan-Doyle. The Secret Rooms looks good doesn't it?

I thought I read a lot but you beat me easily!

My list is more ambitious than realistic, rather like the to do lists I make my self at work!

@ Laurel, yes the secret rooms looks excellent - I love those real life stories that turn out to be more unbelievable than film plots.

I know, the only thing I like better than a gothic mystery is a TRUE gothic mystery!

I'm the same with the list's - I will make one and then read everything else but what's on the list :S

Updated List:
The Birds & Other Stories
A Severed Head
Vanity Fair
Teller of Tales: The Life of Arthur Conan Doyle
The Calligrapher's Daughter
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle currently reading
The Secret Rooms: A True Gothic Mystery
In Cold Blood
The Bloody Red Baron
Mason and Dixon
The House on the Strand
Daphne

So I'm about halfway through (ish) and I've stuck to it pretty well!

Interested in how you like In Cold Blood. I really enjoyed it but I seem to remember their was recently a lot of controversy about it - just can't remember when.

Thats good going Laurel

Ok so I managed most of my list though I gave up on The Historian and I got distracted from The Birds & Other Stories and Belinda

Here's my wildly ambitious list for October

Smiley's People
A Perfect Spy Le Carre overdose - put aside
Mist Over Pendle
I am Not Sidney Poitier
Daphne Du Maurier- currently reading
Effi Briest
Mister Pip
The Imperfect Tense
Your Face Tomorrow, Vol. 1: Fever and Spear currently reading
3rd instalment of the Pickwick Papers
Must get to the end of part 2 of Mason & Dixon
William - An Englishman

Giving up eating and sleeping then?

Snort!!!

What are you reading for the last two week then?

I shall be

- ploughing on with Mason & Dixon
- finishing off A Severed Head
- finishing off A Possible Life

And tucking into:

- Effi Briest
- Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy
- Mist Over Pendle
- Girl With A Pearl Earring
- The Vicar's Wife

I really enjoyed The Girl With a Pearl Earring - but then got put off it by another book (which I hated) by the same author - this is very silly of me . Must reread it.

What a shame, that we can forget why we loved a book because of later works :(

Yes - I must fight against this tendancy - I'm the same with music too.

Paul wrote: "What are you reading for the last two week then?"

In Search of Lost Time and the Complete Works of Shakepeare :0)

You're far from alone in that, Lee, I know I have a tendency to do the same

Ok still reading the Du Maurier bio, Your Face tomorrow and the Imperfect tense (at a snails pace) Mason & Dixon. Put A Perfect Spy back in the to read pile due to a Le Carre overdose - but didn't do too badly apart from that ! :0)

So to read in October

Part one of Stranger in a Strange Land- Quarterly Read
Sense and Sensibility Monthly Read and Re-read
The Collector Collector Monthly author
Instalment 4 of the Pickwick Papers
Mr. Fortune's Maggot - Virago Modern Classics No 2
Ariel or the Life of Shelley- Penguin No 1-gave up
book:True Grit|257845]- from kindle TBR mountain
The Leper's Companions - from book TBR mountain
Summoned by Bells
A Journey Round My Room
5 more chapters of Mason and Dixon
The Little World of Don Camillo as recommended by Hilary

By the way - a number of these books are very thin :0)

I am still reading Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy and The Vicar's Wife. Also near the end of Blue Skies and Black Olives by John Humphreys. Then I will be working my way through:

Sense & Sensibility
Stranger in a Strange Land
The Strangler Vine (a Literature Festival find)
The everlasting Mason & Dixon

It's going to be a busy month this month so I will be conservative with my predictions. If I can squeeze something else in, I will

Why be conservative when you can be wildly, madly, hopelessly over optimistic?

Ok: War of The Worlds and The Little Coffee Shop of Kabul are gazing at me from my TBR pile.

I have four to read and return to the library by next Thursday / Friday!

Well I never like to set myself targets but:

Finish Mao's Great Famine and The Garden of Evening Mists.

Then catch up with the Pickwick Papers (read along)
Sense and Sensibility (monthly Boxall)
The Thought Gang (monthly author)
Stranger in a Strange Land (quarterly Boxall but will probably finish it)
Restoration Rose Tremaine (TBR shelf)
The Good Earth Pearl Buck (TBR shelf)

And a variety of dip in and out poetry and text books.

And pigs might also fly!

@ Paul - good luck I hope they're all slim volumes :0)

Sadly not...

@ Ellie - I've never actually read War of the Worlds. If you'd like to do a readalong I'd be up for that.
@ Hilary - what's the Garden of Evening Mists like - it's been hanging round on the periphery of my to read list for a while.

My list for November then:
finish Mason and Dixon, Dracula and The Return of Sherlock Holmes
Part 1 of Stranger in a Strange Land
Sense and Sensibility
Good To Be God by Tibor Fischer - currently reading
Mistborn: The Final Empire - Brandon Sanderson
The Heroes - Joe Abercrombie
Lord of Chaos -Robert Jordan
Furies of Calderon - Jim Butcher
We Need New Names and The Lowland for the booker challenge
The Accursed - Joyce Carol Oates
Let the Right One In- John Ajvide Lindqvist - currently reading

Oooh - better add We Need New Names to my November list then.
You confused me with Something by Tibor Fischer - I thought - I don't remember that one !!

Ha ha, no I just haven't figured out which one yet :)

@ Lee I'm not that far into the Garden of Evening Mists but last night I had to force myself to leave it at midnight. The opening chapter particularly reads like poetry and some of the phrases were very memorable. I will do a bit of a review when I'm finished.

Oh, I'd forgotten Tibor! My order from Amazon has just arrived so will add The Collector Collector to my list for the month.

@Lee, War of the Worlds is a reasonably slim volume, c180 pages, so we can probably squeeze it in :) When do you want to start on it?

I'm ready whenever you are Ellie

Right, revised November plan:

Just finished Blue Skies and Black Olives - John Humphreys;
Finish The Vicar's Wife - Katharine Swartz
Finish Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy by John Le Carre
Read the first section of Stranger in a Strange Land - Robert Heinlein (quarterly Boxall read)
Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen (monthly Boxall)
The Collector Collector - Tibor Fischer (who I keep wanting to call Trebor!) (monthly author)
War of the Worlds - HG Wells (readalong)
The Strangler Vine - MJ Carter (ARC copy acquired at Cheltenham Literature Festival)
The Little Coffee Shop of Kabul - Deborah Rodriguez (from my TBR pile)

Yep, I think that's sufficiently over-optimistic!!

@Lee - I have to go up to our Preston Office for the first half of this week, so how about we start when I'm back home on Thursday evening?

Perfect :0)

I didn't do too badly in my plan in the end, finished everything bar Sense and Sensibility and Stranger in a Strange Land and Little Coffee Shop. I did throw in a slim volume in the form of A Christmas List by Chrissie Manby, a chick-lit seasonal read available as a Kindle single.

So this month is:

Dear Life - Alice Munro (monthly author);
Austerlitz - WG Sebald (readalong);
The seasonal read (yet to be announced);
Finish The Little Coffee Shop in Kabul;
Read more of Stranger in a Strange Land;
Finish Austen's Sense and Sensibility;
Finish Trollope's Sense and Sensibility, which I have been reading alongside Austen;
Tackle a bit more of the increasingly frustrating Mason and Dixon (I do believe that buried deep within the dirge there is a very good 250-page novel trying to escape);
And maybe a couple of quick and easy reads - some more Christmas chick-lit or a Kindle single, maybe.

I did ok too although I gave up on Ariel and didn't get round to Summoned by Bells or Mason and Dixon and am still reading Don Camillo.
I also got through some extras - War of the Worlds, We Need New Names and The Testament of Mary.
Here's December's list

The Murder of Roger Ackroyd - monthly read
Selected Short Stories- monthly author - Alice Munro
Austerlitz Readalong
2nd part of Stranger in a Strange Land
Christmassy read
The Dark is Rising
Someone at a Distance - Persephone No. 2
Tales from the 1001 Nights - Penguin No 1001
Gulliver's Travels
The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner from TBR Mountain
The Summer Isles - From TBR Mountain
Period Piece
Crusoe's Daughter<\s>
Instalment 5 of the Pickwick Papers
Summoned by Bells left over from last month<\s>
More Don Camillo<\s>

I've got so much to read this month!
Group reads and readalong's -
The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie
Dear Life: Stories by Alice Munro
Hogfather by Terry Prattchett
Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert Heinlein
Austerlitz by W G Sebald
Catch up with the Pickwick Club and some more of Mason and Dixon
Then my library books (which I got out far too many as usual):
The Lowland by Jhumpa Lahiri
The Accursed By Joyce carol Oates
Your Face Tomorrow, Vol. 1: Fever and Spear by Javier Marias
City of Thieves by David Benioff
Carpathia by Matt Forbeck
Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood
The Children's Book by AS Byatt
and A History of Reading by Alberto Manguel
And I'd also like to finish the Mistborn books by Brandon Sanderson if I get time.
So plenty to keep me occupied anyway....