Sometimes you just have to hate WordPress. I had an entire post written and apparently the autosave didn’t work so when Firefox crashed I lost it. UGH. This will be a ‘snippy’ post because I’m now grumpy that WordPress didn’t save my stuff and Firefox crashed.
Memorial Day weekend Tom and I drove up to Maine. We stayed with his parents and just relaxed. I didn’t read as much as I wanted to, but I did start (and have since finished) Mansfield Park. the photo to the right is from our last night out by the lake (yes we were making smores), which was spent having a cookout and playing horseshoes (which I’m not great at but did score a few points). It was a lovely weekend and was a much-needed breather from the city.
Book Buying Ban
So I’m going on a book buying ban. I did really well the first part of the year, but in March and April I went a little crazy and ended up with 10-15 (maybe more) new books added to my TBR shelf. So Friday night I decided to go through my shelf to find out how many books are on there and there are 75 book waiting to be read, and this doesn’t even include all of those on my Kindle! Now that’s not a lot of books compared to some people’s lists I’ve seen, but that’s too many for me! I don’t really have the space to have those books just lying around and I don’t think they should just sit there. So no new books for me for a while at least (I’m taking it a month at a time). Hopefully I can make a dent on the shelf – but not all this year.
Challenge Progress
- Mount TBR Reading Challenge
- May Progress: 2 books
- Overall Progress – 16/25 (64%)
- Back to the Classics Challenge
- May Progress: 1 book
- Overall Progress – 3/9 (33%)
- Tea and Books Reading Challenge
- May Progress: 0 books
- Overall Progress – 6/8 (75%)
- The Classics Club
- May Progress: 3 books
- Overall Progress –
6/85 (7%)6/100 (6%)
That’s about it for the month of May. I started to read The Bird of Night by Susan Hill this weekend after finishing Mansfield Park (which is technically June but eh). I also used random.org (only the 2nd time I’ve used it) to pick my next challenge read and it selected Anna Karenina which is part of all three of my 2012 Challenges and The Classics Club.
Did you enjoy Mansfield Park?
I did enjoy it. It’s one of my favorite Austen novels. For some reason the fact that Fanny Price is such a divisive character draws me to her. My response, as it’s not really a review, will be posted Wednesday.
I like the idea of a ‘response’: stress-free views.
And it definitely allows for me to not actually review the novel and tangentially go off on a minor detail or favored character 😀
File under: ways to trick my brain #47 in a series.
You’ve accomplished quite a bit in May!! Glad you’re enjoying using random.org. I haven’t used it in a while! hehe I should probably get on that. And the campfire looks lovely! yummy smores!
And there I was thinking I’d been a slacker. One of these months I’ll actually have to slack off 😀
You should get Windows Live Writer for writing blog posts (it’s free providing you don’t have an Apple computer) http://www.windowslive.co.uk/essentials/writer it’s much better then relying on the web-based blog editor as it doesn’t matter if WP goes down or FF crashes.
Good luck with the book ban… 75 is hardly any! I’m probably not helping. As you know I’m on one too – I’m now down to 498 from 499, go me!
And well done with the challenges. I’ve just finished one book which counts towards three challenges. I’ve kinda left it all to the last minute. I can’t believe it is June already… what happened to the first half of 2012??
I’ll check out Windows Live Writer. I haven’t heard of it! And I know what you mean about 75 being hardly any, I just don’t have any space which is great 😀
I don’t really have any space either… I’ll probably turn into some mad hoarder person. Just need a cat and I’ll complete the image.
Windows Live Writer is great – complete life saver can’t live without it.
Mansfield Park is on my Classics Club list too, look forward to your thoughts on it.
Oh! I’m looking forward to hearing what other ‘non-experts’ think about the novel (you could be an expert, but I’m assuming most everyone is not). I don’t have any friends who have read it so I can’t see how they feel about Fanny.