Sunday Sundries: The Midway Point

Well. This week was going fine until Wednesday night, when I was out having fun at a gig (my friend knows the drummer, it's all very cool) and my mum was simultaneously having a high temperature, and as we later found out, a urine infection (apparently a common chemo infection type thing, obviously not all that pleasant for her, but nothing to properly worry about. I think) and was at the hospital by the time I got home. Cue: hospital visits and housekeeping and general grumpiness and disproportionate anger at various situations. And the week started so well!

So. I'm attempting to put all that out of my mind for tonight at least (I'm writing this early Saturday evening, because I'm not sure when I'll have time tomorrow cause the hospital steals all mine) because me and Alley and Alice and Megs are going to be attempting to watch Clueless together across 4 different time zones and it could be a complete disaster or it could be the greatest thing ever or, obviously, both. I'll know by the time I post this, and if I have time I'll put a little ps at the bottom of this  post to let you know how it went. But if I don't, you know, leave me alone, my mum's in hospital! (And also, I had to sleep. Probably. This is all getting very meta...)

Anyway, so there's that. But the real purpose of this post is to lay out allll my reading progress for the first 6 months of the year because I like to do my little admin tasks and to see what I've done and what I've still got left to do. Yes, even though I complain because the challenges are 'all too much!' for me, actually, this part of them, the tallying up of what I've done is the actual best bit. Apart from the reading, I guess, but who cares about that?! (Me. I do. And you probably do too if you're reading this.)

SO! Where to begin? I really don't know. Let's see...

I've read 11 Stephen King books so far this year, which seems like less than I feel like I've read which is probably because The Tommyknockers was so very very bad. I guess I've had a few self-enforced breaks from Stephen King this year too, which probably explains the slightly low numbers there.

For The Classics Club I've read 6 books, which isn't amazing but isn't really bad either, and I don't really think of that as a challenge so much as just a guide to the classics I should read, mainly because I basically own all of the ones on my list and haven't read most of them yet, so there's that.

Aaaaand, what else is there? Ok, well, let's talk about the Back To The Classics challenge. Cause it's my least impressive achievement and yet, YET, I'm still quite impressed with myself. I may have only read one extra classic since last time (I'm now at 3 out of 9) BUT I am currently reading another one, and I have firm plans for another (Grapes of Wrath readalong in October you guys? You'll love it!) so I feel pretty good about my plans. Although less good about reading Crime and Punishment at any point ever. Feels like a winter book to me...

And then there's the TBR Challenge, in which I'm almost where I should be at this point of the year- I've read 5 of 12 books so far, and I would have read 6 if one of them hadn't BORED me from the very beginning (Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell. Don't even tell me that it changed your life or whatever, because I just can't. Still, at least I got rid of another book) so, yeah, that feels pretty good too! I think I have a few of these on my Fuck the Patriarchy reading list for July and August (more on that later) too, so... I think it'll get done. It'll be good.

And finally, and this is my BIGGEST achievement- in the Off the Shelf challenge, which, last time I'd read a grand total of 3 books for, I've now read THIRTEEN books for! Which is still not really enough considering that I've got waay more books than that that I need to read, and I'm still reading library books, AND I didn't add to that list at all last month, but I'm still super proud of that, and it's only 2 books where I should be at this point to make my hopeful yearly total, so it's all good.

Aaaand, now I feel good about my challenges again, so yay! And since today marks the beginning of the Fuck the Patriarchy Readathon, I think I'm going to add that book list (which I've modified slightly since I made it) to my current challenges tab, where, by the way, you can always go to look at my progress if you're so inclined, even though I realise literally no one cares about my challenges progress but me. But I do, so y'all have to hear about it! Ha.

Oh yeah, and apparently I'm doing some 3-day readathon thing like next week? That I've managed to mostly forget about as soon as I signed up for it, but which I am pretty dedicated to because OH! I agreed to read 20 books in July and August, and 3 days of reading as much as I can therefore sounds like a pretty good idea! Um, so yeah, there's that, which I probably could have waited til next week to inform you about, but there we go. Sensibleness=not really a thing with me at the moment. Oh yeah, and ALSO I haven't finished a book for about ten million years (I dunno, a week?) so it could be a lean lean blog week. You poor bastards.