Thanks for all your lovely messages yesterday – it now feels mean to make you wait a week before unveiling the Shiny New Books magazine properly, but if you follow us on Twitter we’re giving a few teasers from reviews and features. Which may or may not be crueller…
You may remember from the last time I did A Century of Books that I gave quarterly updates – and that, by careful planning or complete coincidence, I actually read exactly 25 qualifying books in each quarter.
Well, dear reader, things have gone awry. I’m doing better than the sidebar counter suggests, but I’ve only read 22. That’s right, I’m three books down in what should be the easiest part of that year… inauspicious!
Since I’m reading 1914-2013, it’s not so neat to divvy up the decades and see how I’m doing. But, bear with me… This is how many books I’ve read so far in each span of ten years.
1914-1923: 2
1924-1933: 2
1934-1943: 2
1944-1953: 3
1954-1963: 4
1964-1973: 0
1974-1983: 4
1984-1993: 2
1994-2003: 0
2004-2013: 3
Well, you're ahead of me! I've only managed 18 – but then you're doing it in a year, right? I'm aiming for 2 years. I need to read more in the first half of my mid-century (1850-1899).
I Facebooked info on signing up for Shiny New Books to about 10 people whom I knew would be interested. Looks like 5 of them signed up already! And things are just getting started.
Well done Simon – with everything else you've had to do this quarter, it's amazing you've managed all these!
Ooh – you're doing well, I've done 9, though currently reading two of them (one is a 600 page book about protest songs, the other is Iris Murdoch's "Sartre" and I know which one I'm likely to finish first! Mind you, I am not doing it to a deadline, just seeing how it goes … As I'm doing the same timeline as you, I can report that I've done …
1914-1923: 1
1924-1933: 1
1934-1943: 1
1944-1953: (reading 1)
1954-1963: 1
1964-1973: 1
1974-1983: 0
1984-1993: 0
1994-2003: 2
2004-2013: 2 and reading 1
not sure what that says about me, but there you go!
You're doing well! I'm at 26 now I think (need to check since things have gotten away from me a bit lately) but would be at 38 if I were doing your years! Might be time for me to switch the parameters of my Century…That said, it hardly matters how much I've read if I don't get around to reviewing them! Working on it…