February Goals and Progress

Tell us about your plans for February!

I need to work on my ABC books. The next one up will probably be Murder on Mulberry Bend by Victoria Thompson. I'm also planning to read The Ivory and the Horn, one of my own that I'll be releasing. It's a short-story collection from Charles de Lint, one of my favourite authors.

My goals for February are to pack & move. Plus read 4 books for my alphabet rings. We'll see how well that goes!

I'll be reading mostly library books this month. We will be away all of March so I scheduled a bunch of library books for January and February. That means that I won't get to most of the challenge books until March but I do hope to finish Blackfly Season by Giles Blunt. I didn't get it read before the TV series based on this book (Cardinal on CTV) so I've been watching the TV episodes and then reading part of the book that was covered in the episode. This has its downsides because the TV series doesn't exactly follow the book and I get confused about what has happened in which medium. So my aim is to finish that one and maybe an ABC book this month.

My goals for February are to:

1. Finish reading Long Nights Alone which I started in January
2. Attend a Bookcrossing meetup this month in Alexandria, Virginia, and release some books at "Becky's Tree", a tree planted in memory of the younger daughter of ResQGeek. She died tragically in a bicycle accident in 2010. We still miss her very much. This Valentine's Day, she would have been 17 years old.
3. Register enough books on Bookcrossing to move up to the #62 slot in this list. I'm almost there! :D

By the way, I just registered my local Bookcrossing club, BCinDC, for a booth in the Kensington International Day of the Book street festival (Kensington, Maryland, USA). Every year since this festival has begun, we've given away free books, more recently to the tune of 1,000 to 1,500 books per festival.
https://dayofthebookdotcom.wordpress.com/

My goals for February are to:
1. Finish reading Long Nights Alone which I started in January
2. Attend a Bookcrossing meetup this month in Alexandria, Virginia, and release some books at "Becky's Tree", a tree planted in memory of the daughter of ResQGeek. She died tragically in a bicycle accident in 2010. We miss her very much. This Valentine's Day, she would have been 17 years old.
3. Register enough books on Bookcrossing to move up to the #62 slot in this list. I'm almost there! :D

By the way, I registered my local Bookcrossing club, BCinDC, for a booth in the Kensington International Day of the Book. Every year since this festival has begun, we've given away free books, more recently to the tune of 1,000 to 1,500 books per festival.

Here's a nice article that ResQGeek wrote about the festival back in 2008 (nine years ago!)
http://www.bookcrossing.com/articles/3003/Giving-away-books-in-Kensington,-Maryl...

>6 SqueakyChu: It's great that you're keeping Becky's memory alive through BC activities, and I'm really impressed by the efforts of the BCinDC group over the years!

>7 mathgirl40: They are such a fun group. I look forward to every meeting very much.

I had a really good February. I finished my roundabout book, The River at Night by Erica Ferencik and an ABC book, Murder on Mulberry Bend by Victoria Thompson.

I also finished and registered a bunch of books from my own shelves: Satellite by Nick Lake, All Those Explosions Were Someone Else's Fault by James Alan Gardner, The Ivory and the Horn by Charles de Lint and South: The Endurance Expedition by Ernest Shackleton.

How did the rest of you do with your goals this month?

I had a great reading month (but only because I’m still on my babysitting leave since my daughter-in-law delivered her second child in January). During my babysitting days, it takes me too long to read because I get so sleepy. By this month’s end, I will have finished ten books. Of course, some of those were children’s books, but that’s okay.

My current read is Clover by Dori Sanders, a book I got years ago, but don’t know when because I labeled it by accident with a duplicate BCID. Don’t you hate when that happens?

ETA: I just finished the book and here is my review on my thread:
http://www.librarything.com/topic/279093#6396899

My next read will be The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt. Wish me luck because that book has over 700 pages!!

>10 SqueakyChu: Congratulations on the new addition to your family!

I loved The Goldfinch. I'd actually listened to the audiobook version and the narrator David Pittu did a fantastic job.

>11 mathgirl40: Thanks! I tried to post a picture but it came out sideways, and I don't feel like doing picture editing now. :/

The Goldfinch is starting out very interesting. The writing is amazingly dense, but so descriptive and good. I know nothing about this book so I'm discovering everything as it happens. I love to read books and see movies with a clean slate like this. I'm not sure I can get through this whole book this month, but I certainly am going to try.

Keep an eye out for the sentence that's over a page long.

>13 Lukerik: Oh, no!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! :D

>13 Lukerik: I wasn't aware of that, since I'd listened to the audiobook, but I do recall some passages that seemed awfully long! I suppose the narrator had to pause for breath a few times.

It's as perfectly balanced as all her sentences :) She connects all the clauses with semi-colons so your brain can still deal with distinct units of sence without going verb-hunting. It was only after I'd read it that I started wondering 'was that one sentence?' and went back and checked. It's an action scene and I think she's done it to give it pace.

>16 Lukerik: I'll probably reread this book one day, and when I do, I'll be sure to look for it in print, just to get a different experience.

>16 Lukerik: >17 mathgirl40: Have you read any of her other books? I loved A Secret History but the reviews of The Little Friend were not good so I avoided that novel.

>18 SqueakyChu: I loved The Secret History too but I've not read The Little Friend yet.

Little Friend is a much more grown up novel. Half-way through she gives you a critical piece of information in an off-hand way. If you don't take note the end won't mean much. It was only on the second reading that I got it.

Just like in Secret History she tells you who the murderer is quite early and then doesn't mention it again.

I suspect there's a secret hidden in Goldfinch too, but having only read it once and not knowing what to listen for, I don't know what it is.

>20 Lukerik: Yikes! That's huge book to have to read twice to "get it"! :O

I have been taking notes on The Goldfinch and recording the important pages, plot developments, characters, and vocabulary. I started doing this recently with books that are long, complicated, or have many characters that I can't remember from chapter to chapter. So far, I just love this book. I really like the mysterious and emotional story and well as the perfect descriptions of what is going on. I have a feeling that I am going to hate when this book ends, although I'm barely into the heart of this story.

I loved it too. I must have gone back and read the opening pargraph with its tricolon a hundred times before I bookcrossed it. That's the problem with the audiobook, Mathgirl - you can't see what she's doing with the punctuation.

>22 Lukerik: Yes, that is indeed a limitation of audiobooks. Sometimes, when I listen to an audiobook, I'll also get the print copy from my library so that I can flip through it and see how names are spelled and if there are any illustrations, maps or other supplementary material.

My February goals:

COMPLETED: Finish reading Long Nights Alone.
COMPLETED: Attend a Bookcrossing meetup this month in Alexandria, Virginia,
INCOMPLETE: Register enough books on Bookcrossing to move up to the #62 slot in the books released list on Bookcrossing ~ Result: I'm 46 books short and still in slot 63.