June Recap

Half a year gone, just like that. I am pretty sure I am nowhere near my reading goals for this year, especially after the weak showing this month. However, I have done my first group read and that should count for something, right?

I can pretty officially call this Connie Willis month since the two books I managed to finish are Doomsday Book and Fire Watch both by Connie Willis. I enjoyed them both quite a bit.

Now I am making my way through A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson. It's a pretty sizable book and as with all non-fiction, I am making my way through it slowly despite it being well-written and interesting. I just hope it won't take all of July to finish since I replenished my to-read pile in June.

The next few books loaded up on my Kindle/shelves are:

The Dog Said Bow-Wow by Michael Swanwick

I am looking forward to trying one of his books after all I've heard about him.

Across Realtime and The Children of the Sky by Vernor Vinge

The first book has been highly recommended by one of my friends and the other one came as a result of going to an author talk by Vinge. It's a recent sequel to A Fire Upon the Deep which I read last year. Funny thing about Vinge fans -- they all turned out to be men in their 30-50s. I was one of two women in a room of 100+ people.

The History of Love by Nicole Krauss

This is Chad's recommendation and my chance to experience a new author. Looking forward to it.

The Hammer by K.J. Parker

I picked this up off Amazon since it was on a $3 sale for Kindle. I've read The Company before and heard a  lot of praise for The Hammer, so I think this is going to be fun :)

The Rose of Fire and The Prisoner of Heaven by Carlos Ruiz Zafon

The first is a free short story that I stumbled upon just today. The second is a newly translated novel set in the universe of The Shadow of the Wind. I have to say that even though no other book by Zafon has come close to The Shadow of the Wind, I am now pretty much prepared to buy his books the day they are released, which in this case is going to be on July 10th for The Prisoner of Heaven.

So there's plenty of interesting reading for me to look forward to.

Before I wish everyone Happy Canada Day and leave, there's a short half-way-through update on my new years resolutions:

1. Read 42 books.

So far I've read 20 books this year, so pretty close to completing half of the total number.

2. Discover 15 new authors.

Doing pretty well on this, 10 new authors -- most of them read in January. I've been slowing down on this, but hopefully will make it to 15.

3. Read at least one book published before 1900.

No progress on this yet, need some inspiration.

I also had two climbing goals. The first I achieved: a clean 5.11b climb. In fact I've done two different clean 5.11c climbs this year, so I am all set on this. The pull-ups goal is nowhere in sight. I made huge progress in going from zero to 3 pull-ups, but I have my doubts about hitting 20 by the end of the year. Guess we'll see.

That's it for the first half of 2012. Goodbye!