Glut-tome-y

Over the last couple of months I have been very neglectful of this blog, I’m blaming it on a combination of a new job, school holidays and actual holidays. Oh, and the flipping lawn doesn’t mow itself either, which seems to be a task equal to the painting of the Forth Bridge, at least in these slightly warmer months. Now, like a renegade reprogrammed T-800 model that keeps its word, I’m back.

One plus side to not writing so much is that I had more time for reading, so I treated myself to some absolute belters that’d I’d been saving up for a proverbial rainy day. Over the next few weeks, I’ll deposit the reviews for: Mark Lawrence’s The Broken Empire Trilogy; Brian Staveley’s Chronicles of the Unhewn Throne Trilogy; Francesco Dimitri’s The Book of Hidden Things; and round up the last couple of Tiffany Aching books.

I also have a confession to make; I think I might have a severe case of glut-tome-y. Defined in the Tomeopathy dictionary as the inability to see an interesting looking book and not purchase it, especially if it’s on a limited time offer and there’s a possibility (no matter how remote) that I might want to read it in the future. When I created my Book Pile list, discovered that I had 265 unread books sat on my Kindle and calculated that I had (an optimistic) 5 years of reading material ready and waiting, I experienced a strange cocktail of horror and elation, followed by a vertigo like feeling of disorientation, where should I start. That was back on the 29^th of May, since then I’ve read 12 books at a rate of roughly one a week (caveat, The Chronicles of the Unhewn Throne is a hefty beast of a series), almost exactly the required rate to reduce my book pile to zero in the five year window. There’s really only one problem, during that time another 25 books came into my possession (weirdly someone seems to have purchased them through my Amazon account, delivered them to my Kindle, and they’ve charged them to my credit card), that’s a net gain of 13 books. My reading future is now secure for an additional 3 months, at least autumn is upon us and the grass will stop growing quite as fast. Time to stop writing and start reading again.

For those interested, here’s the new arrivals in my bulging Kindle.