I’ve decided that I’ll be reading 12 books of Readings Past and not a whole year of them. I think that would be a bit much. So, probably 24 new books to 12 old. That feels about right. Might read some Shakespearean plays next year. I love Shakespeare very much.

Books I’ve read:

38. Last Watch by Sergei Lukyanenko – Easily the weakest of the series. It lacked any of the Russian feel and Moscow detail that I loved about the rest of the books. It had no style really. Doubt I’ll ever come back to this one.

39. Light by M. John Harrison – Decent sci-fi book with a twist of weirdness in it that was fun. I don’t on the whole like sci-fi, but this was okay.

40. Stress of Her Regard by Tim Powers – Very good book, not at his best, but it is an early work. Typical Powers stuff.

I haven’t said here, but I’ve been taking driving lessons in order to drive in the UK. I drove in America for a decade or so, but over here they have a few challenges to passing the test. There’s roundabouts and they drive on the non-right side of the road. Also, the test is a lot harder in England. In America the test takes 15 minutes, a drive ’round the block and it’s done. Over here it’s a grueling 40 minute test of your complete competence behind the wheel. So unfair!

So, one plan is to have a car for next year in order to get around to more places around the country. We’re a bit stir crazy in the small town we’re in. It’s a lovely place to live, but we’ve done everything there is here a couple of times over. We need to explore! See some of the sights; maybe go to London. So there’s that.

Plans for my reading challenge next year are to re-read books I’ve already read that I thought were great at the time. The thing is… With some very specific exceptions, I don’t re-read books. I love the joy of being surprised by books and the twists and turns of plot. One exception to this rule is The Hobbit, which is my favourite book and I’ve read it ten or so times. This is an experiment, taking me out of my comfort zone.

A sneak peek at some of the books on the slate, in no particular order:

1. Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson

2. Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman

3. Tigana by Guy Gavriel Kay

4. Titus Groan by Mervyn Peake

5. Night Watch by Sergei Lukyanenko

6. The Hobbit by JRR Tolkien

7. Last Call by Tim Powers

8. Perdido Street Station by China Mieville

More plans another day…

We got back from America on Sunday morning and exhaustion was the order of the day for everyone in the household. I’d slept in the car on the way down, but slept on the couch for another hour or so in the afternoon. Then, we went to bed fairly early after watching a couple of Supernatural episodes that we’d missed while we were gone.

Monday morning and NE went into hospital to have her gall bladder removed. G and I spent the day together, playing Britannia, Magic the Gathering, and threw the baseball around a bit in the park. Great fun was had by all. NE made it through the surgery just fine and had no complications. She should be home sometime today, but it’ll be two weeks or so before she’s fully recovered. Tis great though because it means she’ll be able to have some yummy Christmas treats! She’s excited about that for sure.

Roll on mince pies and Christmas cake!

Books I read since the last time I posted the info:

32. Three Days To Never by Tim Powers

33. Taltos by Steven Brust

34. Phoenix by Steven Brust

35. Blood Follows by Steven Erikson

36. The Healthy Dead by Steven Erikson

37. The Lees of Laughter’s End by Steven Erikson

Currently Reading: Last Watch by Sergei Lukyanenko

My mother called just today and she was able to sort out the horrible snafu with airline tickets. Apparently, American Airlines had changed our tickets so that we’d have had to spend seven and one half hours in O’Hare airport with a sleep-deprived five year old! Not acceptable! So, they had an earlier flight that we could take, but wanted to charge $200 for changing G’s ticket even though they are the ones who changed it in the first place! Anyway… it’s all sorted.

That’s not the good news. The good news is that my father is going to be able to come home on the 15th of October! So, he’ll be able to see us more often and probably go round and do a few things with us, aided by a walker and/or a wheelchair. Very good news indeed!

On the reading challenge front, as you may or may not have noticed I’ve read 31 books. I’ve still got three months left. I usually read two books a month. So, barring a hectic Christmas time, I should be able to beat my previous yearly record of 36 books. I’ve got a couple of plane flights so that should help as well. And I tend to read more on holiday. So, I’ve got a chance.

Books I’m reading currently:

Three Days To Never by Tim Powers

Harry Potter and The Philosopher’s Stone by JK Rowling

I’m really looking forward to our trip to America this year. Well, it’s my second trip to America, but the first one wasn’t under pleasant circumstances as my father had taken very ill with complications from his bowel surgery. I flew out for a couple of weeks to look after him and my mother.

It’s looking like there’s a good chance that my dad will be out of the hospital by the time we get to America, which is very good news. I’m sure he’s sick of being in the hospital now. I can be that sure because we talk to him on Skype and he says so. Maybe he could even get around with a wheelchair or something. I’d hate for him to miss out on anything, but if he’s confined to his bed, then we’ll make home a regular hub of all our activities there so that we can keep him updated on all our stories and he can see the pics we’ve just taken. Well, we’ll do that anyway. I’m sure he won’t be going out all that much even if he’s allowed.

This will be a great trip this year. We’re going there at a specific time of year for a double reason. A Halloween in America, which is the best place for a kid’s Halloween and also because it’s my Dad’s birthday in November. So, we’ll throw him a party with hats and streamers wherever he might be located for that. We’ll just have to see what we can do when we get there.

Books that I’ve read:

29.  Station X: The Code Breakers of Bletchley Park by Michael Smith – Incredibly informative and shot through with accounts by the people who were actually there. And not just the highups.

30. American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis – A horrible book and at times very boring. The extreme violence is tedious as well. Put it down once, but it was the only thing to read at the tail end of my holiday and I got most of the way through it. Never read anything by him again.

31. Edward Trencom’s Nose by Giles Milton – It was okay, nothing special. I guessed the “twist” by page 20 and I never try to guess twists.

Got back from Butlins on Friday. I am still tired even now and to top it all off, I think I’m coming down with a cold. That’d be fantastic as I have so much to do this next week. So, I’ll be walking in to work 2 miles each way with a cold and snotting down myself the whole way. NE has also come down with a cold, but she’d a little bit further along and is upstairs sacked out. Which means… SHE gave ME this cold! And I had high hopes of going to the gym every day this week. That’s clearly not going to happen and I ballooned up at Butlins by half a stone, I’m guessing.  Feel bloated and heavy.

I’ll be posting some pics from Butlins when I get some energy. No promises or anything, but some of the shots were good family pictures. There weren’t too many things that I haven’t taken pictures of before. We’ll have a car next year and will probably explore some more of the coast around Skegness, which will be nice for me as I like to explore in that way. We had loads of fun this year, though. Bowling, rides, going out and having a few drinks as well!

We booked for next year already! Bring it on.

Books I read since last time:

26. Dead Lines by Greg Bear – Quite good, enjoyable for something I picked up at random from a library book sale

27. Mortal Engines by Phillip Reeve – One of NE’s course books that sounded good on the back cover. I don’t normally like young adult novels, but this was very good.

28. Double Vision by Tricia Sullivan – A paperback that I picked up at Butlins when I couldn’t bear to read American Psycho on holiday like I planned. Some nicely executed ideas, but a little empty.

Well, I haven’t posted here in a while, but this time I had a good reason. My Dad had complications with his bowel surgery and his kidney and liver shut down. I traveled out to America for my Mom and to see first hand how things were going. Everything went very well and as of today he’s been walking around, up and down the hallway. So, all’s well that ends well.

On a much lighter note, I’ve been playing more tabel tennis all the time. To the detriment of my gym going, so I’ll need to fit that in somehow. After resisting it for nearly a month, I’ve broken down and bought… my own table tennis bat! I didn’t go for the traditional wooden bat; this one is made of space age materials. This might backfire on me, but we shall see. It’s washable, though. Which is a plus.

In between all these goings on I’ve been reading books as well, of course.

24. The Android’s Dream by John Scalzi – Decent Sci-fi and it had it’s charm, but an average read.

25. The Adventure of English by Melvyn Bragg – Brilliant book! I learned so much about how English developed.

X. The Grand Ellipse by Paula Volsky – I got over 300 pages in and the world was well-realised, but the main character got on my nerves!

X. Prince Corum by Michael Moorcock – This fantasy was too old-fashioned for me, really…

So at work we expanded into a new building and one of the rooms in the old building was turned into a game room with Table Football, Dart board, Pool Table, and Table Tennis table. The table tennis table was new. We’d had the other things in one room or another, but we’d never had room for it before.

I should give a little background about me and ping pong. When I was attending University, I used to play like 2-3 hours a day… every day. My roommate, Tom, and I never got tired of just hitting the ball back and forth, developing insane spins. We were quite good by the end of all that practice.

Fast forward around twenty years and I’d not played since those halcyon days of youth, but I had an idea that I’d remember a few tricks. In the initial rush to play on the new table, I found that I was a better than average player, if a bit rusty. But that old love of ping pong came back to me very quickly. Now, I come in early for an hour of practice with my workmates. It’s a brilliant game.

I promised a non-book-related post and here it is…

G loves swimming. This is no accident. I prepared him for swimming in the bath. Not that I made him do laps as an infant, but I made sure he was comfortable with water on his face and not scared of it. When he was a bit older, I took him a few times to the gym on a Sunday morning to swim in their pool. He loved it and we would have continued if we’d been in a position to continue paying the gym membership.

Fast forward a year or so to our Butlins holiday last year. We swam literally every day in their indoor water park. G loved it and in fact we all loved it too. We didn’t think too much about trying to get to a pool between then and now because it would be a bus journey for NE and G, £5+ for that and £2 for the actual pool entry. So, not cheap really. Last week, NE says that she wants to take G to the pool a couple of times a week, but that a gym membership might be cheaper. It certainly was and comes with a lot of benefits for my health to boot. I think you can guess that I joined up.

G and I have already swam twice and next month we’ll be upping that to thrice per week. In preparation for our NEXT Butlins trip! J I aim to have him swimming around without his waterwings by then. It should be doable in 2+ months. Maybe Butlins 2010 will be the year for him to go on the waterslides. Who knows.

I will be posting about something more than books tomorrow. Something memorable.

But for today. It’s books!

19. Shadow Of The Torturer by Gene Wolfe – I’ve read this before, but I didn’t remember much of it. It was a good read, but not as good as I don’t remember.

20. Claw Of The Conciliator – Decent, but worse than Shadow… I was going to read the rest of the series, but I’m not sure I can be bothered now!

21. The Affinity Bridge – Tepid, mediocre, etc. Not worth reading really. Don’t think I’ll read any more by this author.

22. Ferno The Fire Dragon by Adam Blade – A Beastquest book for Gwire. Not bad for a kids book.

23. Alice In Wonderland by Lewis Carroll – Very chaotic and clever really only in the context of when it was written.