Oh, how hopeful I was at the end of August! “Yeah, Ted’s going back to nursery so I’ll be able to read books upon books upon books! Oh, yippee!”
Er, well. About that. My tiny ratbag has indeed swanned back off to nursery for the first time in months, settling back in with his characteristic swagger. That’s three days a week – three! Plus an extra one if he spends Saturday at my mum’s! – where I can chill out, recline on my sofa like the queen of everything, and read to my heart’s content. But… has it gone like that?
No. No it has not.
BUT. (Big but.) (Bigger than my butt, unbelievably, considering the stone I’m unable to shift since lockdown).
I’ve been writing instead.
This started last month, though I couldn’t get fully into my stride while we were moving house and I didn’t have a great deal of time to myself. I was writing in snatched moments during the day, when Ted was fully immersed in CBeebies (and I was probably supposed to be packing). I find it really difficult to write in the evening, when he’s in bed – I’m usually that befuddled and semi brain-dead, I tend to just slump in front of the TV with a cup of tea, and fall into bed by ten. Oh, who am I kidding? By nine.
Now, with the small boy at nursery and the big boy (husband) quietly working from home at the very top of the house, I have found myself with what feels like aeons of time, just stretching out beautifully in front of me. And the words have been pouring out of me in a veritable stream (that sounds dodgy, bad metaphor). I’ve written more in the last month than I have in at least the last two years combined – even if you include my epic self-imposed Edinburgh writing retreat last year (aka quite possibly the catalyst to my writerly burn-out).
It’s really taken away from my reading time and my totals are way down this month.
But, do you know what? I’m not beating myself up about it – especially as, even for me, writing does beat reading in the productivity stakes. Also, though, some of the books I did read this month were pretty epically long, and took some puzzling out. There were a fair few rereads, too – I feel that I deserve some old favourites, after reaching 100 new reads last month.
Oh, I mentioned last month too that I was going to do a full Twilight Saga reread, and blog my ‘grown-up’ impressions of it (under the influence of much alcohol, one would hope). Sadly, this is yet to materialise – I’ve started Twilight, but honestly, holy balls, is this book hard to get through. I started off making notes in it but I’ve given up, because if I carried on all the notes would just disintegrate into one big ‘AAAARGH’. So hopefully I’ll be able to push on with it in October, but we’ll have to see how that goes.
Anyway! Here are my monthly stats: only six new books this month, with four rereads. A dismal reading month, when it comes to numbers, but it does bring my total up to 106 new books read this year, which I still think is pretty impressive. And, to be honest, back in the day I would have considered six new books consumed in a single month as a massive achievement.
Content-wise, it certainly was not a dismal month. And once again, it’s bloody difficult to pick a favourite. But I have made my choice and I’m going to stick with it!
Continue reading
But anyway. The advantage of this being the longest month since time began is that I’ve been doing a lot of reading. I know the world is absolutely falling apart right now and I could wax lyrical about it for the best part of another month if left to it, but I don’t want this to become a political blog. And I don’t think I have the eloquence to sufficiently express my feelings anyway: rambling about the books I’ve been reading is pretty much the extent of my brain at the moment (even though I have been writing too, but that’s another story for another time). I’ve mostly been expressing myself through the very refined manner of, er, 
