Updates

September 2012 Recap

Where to begin?!? Let’s start with the big news! If all of a sudden I go missing in October, don’t worry – I will be starting a NEW JOB on the 15th! I’m sad about leaving my current workplace, but excited and ready for my next adventure. I will be joining an amazing fundraising team at an amazing school and am really looking forward to it! (A lot of my posts throughout October will be scheduled at least a week, if not more, in advance so I can focus on work.)

The same week I found out for certain I got my new job, I also won a book from Robert over at 101books.net and it arrived this past week. Check it out to the right. I got to select it and I’m REALLY excited about reading it and hopefully it won’t be on my TBR shelf for too long. In addition you should check out Robert’s hilarious post on How to carry an embarrassing book in public. It was one of the first posts I read over on his site and I truly enjoyed it!

In addition to the above book, I picked up a copy of Aravind Adiga’s The White Tiger from the remainders tables at Harvard Book Store. It was only $3.99 (or so) and it’s on my list as it won the Man Booker Prize in 2008. But more interesting the printing at the bottom of my Harvard Book Store receipt. Now, I fully understand and support why it is there, but it made me feel guilty and I don’t like that.

It says “How much money stays in your community when you spend $100?” It then breaks it down based on a locally owned store, a chain store and amazon.com. I get why they do this, drawing an emphasis to the fact that they are a locally owned independent store, but it still got to me. I think they forgot that they just happen to have one of the most successful brands of all time behind their store name (Harvard University) even though they’re not affiliated with the University, and I think they also forgot about the overwhelming number of young people and students in the Boston/Cambridge/Somerville area. I know I can rarely afford to buy a newly released book at cost from a local bookstore or even a chain bookstore. But I DO, however, go out of my way to make sure I get all of my used books from smaller independent stores and when I order from Amazon (again, used more often than not), I try to order from sellers within Massachusetts and New England to support the local economy. It’s not a lot, but it’s the bit I can do until I CAN afford to only shop at little local stores.

Challenge Progress

The most exciting change this month is I COMPLETED the Tea and Books Reading Challenge!  Other than that it was a pretty standard month.  I’m slowly making my way through my remaining books for this years challenges and trying to start making decisions on what, if any, challenges I will participate in next year.  This month I read 2 ARCs from NetGalley, 3 Library Books and 1 book I already owned.  As I am participating in The Literary Others October Reading event, there will be very little change on my challenges until the end of October.

  • Mount TBR Reading Challenge
    • Monthly Progress: 1 books
    • Overall Progress – 22/25 (88%)
  • Back to the Classics Challenge
    • Monthly Progress: 1 books
    • Overall Progress – 6/9 (67%)
  • Tea and Books Reading Challenge
    • Monthly Progress: 1 books
    • Overall Progress – 8/8 (100%)
  • The Classics Club
    • Monthly Progress: 1 books
    • Overall Progress – 12/100 (12%)

9 thoughts on “September 2012 Recap”

  1. Well done and congrats on the new job, always good to move closer towards your dream job. Nice to win something too, seems like the stars are in alignment for you 🙂 so make the most of it.

    I do admire you participating in all those challenges, I only set myself one this year, to read a book a week and I’m almost done with that. I guess it’s because I like my blog to be a place of complete freedom where I can change my mind and meander readingwise wherever I am lead, often by the recommendations of other bloggers just like you.

    1. Thanks Claire! I’m still waiting for the third thing (or is it bad things which come in threes?), I can never remember.

      I agree with you about the challenges. I think I did too many, but luckily most of the books overlapped. I think next year I will keep the Mount TBR which is a necessary evil in clearing off my bookshelves, but the only other ones I will participate in are those I can also fit within that number of books. I’ve managed to read everything I want to outside of challenges this year, but I’ve been really conscious of not looking too hard for new books, like the new Orange Prize winner you recommended which I really want to read now 😀

  2. It’s funny how you guys across the pond do make a big deal out of supporting local business (well, those of you who aren’t thriving on the wealth of multinational plc’s), where as here, things like that aren’t really encouraged to the same extent. They probably should be in order to put the UK back on track to financial recovery.

    1. It is crazy. The most I heard about it over there was the demise of the locally owned pub. I guess over here they’re just so vociferous you can’t ignore it even if you want to.

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