When you don’t want to read…

This month hasn’t been the one for me. I thought I would start out with the biggest book on my tbr to get it “out of the way” and instead it has just slumped me SO BAD. I’ve barely read anything at all. Nothing. Nada. Ziltch.

Weirdly, I am liking the book. I really am. It’s super interesting. And yet here I am… not reading. I think I need to “give up” on this one. I even took it on a train ride from Newcastle to Portsmouth (a solid 7/8 hours of train travel) and back, and read maybe 20 pages. So clearly I don’t want to sit down and read this at the moment. I’ve “discovered” this a little late in the month to catch up on my tbr. But at least I know!

I think I’m going to either stop reading Labyrinth all together (for now) or just read a chapter a day to keep myself in the story. So now I have…4 days to read the other 7 books on my tbr…. I don’t think I’ll be managing that this month. But I’m really going to aim for 4 of them. I know that’s a bit much, but I just really want to get back into reading! And if I don’t manage it, it’s not the end of the world.

How do you feel with big books? Do they put you into a slump? Or do they get you out of them?! Let me know!!

First Lines Friday #13

It’s time for another First Lines Friday! Hosted by Wandering Words!! It might be Christmas day but book blogs stop for nobody!! (and this was prescheduled in November, so sue me)

What if, instead of judging a book by its cover or its author, we judged the book by its opening lines?

Here is how it works:

– Pick a book and open to the first page.

– Copy the first few lines without revealing which book it is.

– Reveal the book!

So… do these first lines entice you?

On the day King George V was crowned at Westminster Abbey in London, Billy Williams went down the pit in Aberowen, South Wales.

The twenty-second of June 1911 was Billy’s thirteenth birthday. He was woken by his father. Da’s technique for waking people was more effective than it was kind. He patter Billy’s cheek, in a regular rhythm, firmly and insistently. Billy was in a deep sleep, and for a second he tried to ignore it, but the patting went on relentlessly. Momentarily he felt angry; but then he remembered that he had to get up, he even wanted t get up, and he opened his eyes and sat upright with a jerk.

‘Four o’clock,’ Da said, then he left the room, his boots banging on the wooden staircase as he went down.

Scroll down to reveal the book!

Fall of Giants by Ken Follett

A first for my first lines fridays! All the other books I’ve mentioned so far I’ve not started, but I’m actually around 100 pages into this book. But… I’ve been 100 pages in for well over a year… Right look it’s a big boy. My edition is 851 pages long and a girl gets intimidated! But I am still really interested in this book and series. It’s a historical fiction with the first book being set during the Great War, the second being through WWII and the third in the Cold War (which I know the least about cause I’m British and we barely study it in school haha). I definitely plan on getting my butt in gear and reading this one, but it’s just pushing myself on through!

Books I’m taking to University| 2018

I’ve gone on about it enough, but if you’re new to my content… I’m off to do a Masters this September in Geological and Environmental Hazards! The University I’m going to is different than my undergrad one, and a lot further away, and also the course is going to be much harder. All of this means that I won’t be taking as many books away with me as I would like, so let’s get into this sadly small list.

First things first, I will be taking my Kindle, so I’ll have my eBooks and eARCs with me on top of these physical reads.

A Song of Ice and Fire by George R. R. Martin (Game of Thrones #1)

I started reading my dad’s copy of this a couple years ago, but never got around to finishing it. Fingers crossed, taking this large book as one of my few should encourage me to finish it (you’ll see this as a theme in this list).

War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy

Again, another book that I have started previously and another one that is intimidatingly large! I’m only 60 odd pages into it, so not very far in this 950 odd page book!

 

A finally, yes – finally

Fall of Giants by Ken Follett (The Century Trilogy #1)

Yet another huuuuge book! And I have this in hardback so it looks even worse! I’ve not actually started this one, but I’m looking forward to getting into it.

 

And that’s it! I’m only taking 3! Part of that is because they’re so big, I’m hoping that by having a limited selection of physical books I might finally tackle these intimidatingly large tomes that I’ve been putting off. Also, as I said, a Masters is (obviously) more difficult than an undergraduate degree and I imagine I’ll have a lot less free time so at the start I don’t know how much I will be able to read.

I will also have my kindle, and there are a few libraries within the city that I’m moving to so I’m definitely going to sign up there and take some books out if I have the time! I’ve never been to this city before so I don’t know where the bookshops are… so I need to go exploring! And I’m sure I’ll end up buying some books when I do this so I shouldn’t take too many with me!

I’ll be heading back home for Christmas so if I end up finishing these three then I can swap them out for some more then, and seeing as they’re so big I can take more, smaller books! So I’m hoping I have it all sorted out and that I’ll be able to read a lot more than I’m expecting to! But if not then I’ll have to suffer through for the year and focus on my education, I’m sure I’ll survive!