Well, I did it. After three years of attempting to read a book a week, I squeaked through and managed 52 in 2018. Granted, I spent the last week furiously reading everything I could find under 100 pages. So, having kept a rather wonderful Google Sheets record of everything I read, I can now throw a tonne of quickly-made charts and graphs to make all of this reading worthwhile! Stat Attack! Total pages read: 11,176 Average book size: 214 pages Days taken: 359 Average read time

I'm late again on an update - but I have a good excuse. At the end of November I started a new job, and have been settling into things. Still, for most of November I really went for it with the books. I realised that time was running out and to save a mad sprint in the last few weeks of December (which I'm having to do now anyway) I predictably fell into type and started with a massive non-fiction book: "Band of Brothers" by Steven Ambrose "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisov

Yes, I know, I've spent two months AWOL from this blog. That was mainly due to the fact that I read so little in September that it would have been embarrassing to write one whole post about it. With the end of the year rapidly approaching, I really had to get a move on. My September books were: "Jingo" by Terry Pratchett "The Neuromancer" by William Gibson The latter of the two was an audiobook, as well. In total it took me 27 days to finish both books. At a combined 750 odd

The end of year slowdown continues! I once again found myself reading some non-fiction in August, though I managed to keep it to small books, this time. No 500-word tomes this month, for sure! So, after a slow July, I managed to read four books over the course of August, for a total of 596 pages: "The Alchemist" by Paulo Coelho "Flowers for Algernon" by Daniel Keyes "Memes in Digital Culture" by Limor Shifman "The Suffragettes" by Various Paulo Coelho story is one admired by

August already?! Much more than half the year has gone by and I am *still* struggling in terms of pace. I ended up giving up on Making Sense of the Troubles: A History of the Northern Ireland Conflict - I predicted that its 416 page length would be too much and so it has proved. Hopefully I will get back to it, but it will be the longest time between start and finish of them all, I think. So, here are the books I managed to read in July: Storm in a Teacup: The Physics of Ever

This took me far too long to write, and in many ways that mirrors my progress in June. I was awful for the entire. I spent roughly 20 days of the month abroad, attending conferences and having a week off to drive around Ireland. I should have racked up some books in that time but spent most of my time watching Netflix. I'm also straying dangerously far from fiction, which is traditionally easier to read, and into non-fiction. I only managed two books in June: Steel Boat, Iron

I did it. I'm sorry. I knew I would at some point. I got dragged back into historical non-fiction. May should have been the month in which I pulled far ahead of the "one a week" goal and get myself some breathing room. Instead, I decided to buy Antony Beevor's 550-page epic about the downfall of Berlin in 1945. While I great read, it took me a grand total of 18 days to get it read. One book in two and a bit weeks is not the speed I need to be doing! So, I only managed to comp

I was hoping that April would be the month in which I cross over the "halfway" mark and hit book 26, but a busy work schedule and a lot of free time spent playing Battletech and God of War held me back. Despite those (more than worthy) distractions, I read five books, totalling 1,083 pages: "The Burning Land" by Bernard Cornwall "How to Stop Brexit" by Nick Clegg "The Road" by Cormac McCarthy "Norse Mythology" by Neil Gaiman "The Communist Manifesto" by Friedrich Engels and K

Comparatively, March was a failure. I only managed to read four books this month, the same number I managed in February, which was a smaller month. I put the inactivity down to having to attend a few conferences for work, and general malaise. Still, I managed to plough through four books in March, totalling 955 pages: "Through a Window" by Jane Goodall "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" by Douglas Adams "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" by Hunter S. Thompson "Prisoners of

After seeing the clutter that separate posts for every book were doing to the blog section of the site, I decided to do a round-up each month in my 52 books challenge. So, February was a month in which I actually managed to pull ahead. I’m currently on book 12 while only nine weeks into the process. That’s included some fairly large books, too (or at least larger than the 200-page limit I tried to set up). I managed to read four books in February, totalling 826 pages: “The Ti

Book: Night Author: Elie Wiesel Page count: 132 Date started: 26/01/18 Date finished: 29/01/18 Never shall I forget that night, the first night in camp, which has turned my life into one long night, seven times cursed and seven times sealed. Never shall I forget that smoke. Never shall I forget the little faces of the children, whose bodies I saw turned into wreaths of smoke beneath a silent blue sky. Such is Eliezer Wiesel's first experience of the horrors of the Holocaust,

Book: The Prince Author: Niccolò Machiavelli Page count: 140 Date started: 24/01/18 Date finished: 26/01/18 The first of my sub-200 page books and I manage to finish it in two days. That bodes well! The Prince is one of those pieces of work that people tell you is a must read. It's a 16th-century treatise on politics and ruling, published five years after Machiavelli's death. Though quite like other "mirrors for princes" books, in that it aims to school a new ruler on how bes

Book: Feet of Clay Author: Terry Pratchett Page count: 432 Date started: 09/01/18 Date finished: 24/01/18 Well, I'm falling behind a little bit. Book #3 is another Terry Pratchett story, and I think I'll be taking a break from him for the time being, so that my first few books aren't dominated by his work. Feet of Clay is the 19th book of the Discworld series, and a "sort of" sequel to Men at Arms (itself a sort-of sequel to Guards! Guards!). It follows Commander Sam Vimes's

Book: The Templars Author: Dan Jones Page count: 432 Date started: 01/01/18 Date finished: 19/01/18 This one took some time because it was quite a long book, non-fiction, and I chose to listen to most of it instead of actually read it. Nonetheless, Dan Jones provides an excellent historical narrative of one of Christendom's most enigmatic orders - The Poor Fellow-Soldiers of Christ and of the Temple of Solomon, also known as the Knights Templar. Jones tackles more than three

Book: Men at Arms Author: Terry Pratchett Page count: 377 Date started: 01/01/18 Date finished: 09/01/18 “The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money. Take boots, for example. He earned thirty-eight dollars a month plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost a

Those following me on Twitter may already have noticed mentions of it, but this year I intend to re-attempt the 52 books in 52 weeks challenge. The clue is in the title, really. A participant has to read 52 books over the course of a year, trying to average a book a week. I first attempted it in 2016, and managed to read my way through 24 books in around 25 weeks before I got bogged down in reading huge non-fiction tomes. Before I gave up the ghost, though, I managed to accru