I think it's an illness...

My name is Peta and I am a bibliophilic.

Recently, in comments, Jodie from Book Gazing assured me that if my TBR pile was not falling over then it was not too big. Erm. I don't think I could actually carry all the books I own but have not read towards a pile without putting my back out! My addiction is such that, off the top of my head, and yes just for this month so far, I've bought at least 13 books. So that's an average of one a day... Gulp.

It's time to face an unpalatable home truth. I honestly can not keep buying/receiving books at the rate I have been over the last few months and a) hope to find space to home them or b) actually ever read them all! Oh - and c) remain solvent!

When we moved house in May last year my TBR shelf (so more like twoish shelves...) got muddled up with the rest of my books so it's been relatively easy to hide the growing scale of the "problem" from myself. And, more importantly, my husband! Last night I went through my books and pulled all the TBRs into one area. This area is five shelves of books. Yes. Five shelves, each 80cm long, packed with books. Right. So I have four metres of books that I own and have not read. And that excludes oversize books like reference (e.g. I just had to buy a copy of Brewster's Dictionary in January) and graphic novels!

Yep. It's time to go cold turkey. I officially declare that from henceforward No More Books* will enter this house until at least my birthday - which is in June. No more reading a book review and moments later buying the damn thing. No more falling for tempting 2 for £7 deals at the supermarket. No more "just quickly looking" in charity shops then walking out with a bag I can barely carry. No more "reference books" that I neeeeeeeeded for the garden/veg patch.

In a heroic demonstration of my commitment to change, I have even managed to resist the lure of purchasing books for next month's "Women Of" reading clubs and actually been organised enough to place reservations for both Prospero Lost & Darkship Thieves with my library**. What heroic fortitude I am displaying and I am sure that they could do with the additional income of £1.10!

On a more serious note, and I think it's worth the digression, I do realise just how lucky I am to live in Norfolk, where the council is not closing a single one of our 47 libraries which serve around 250,000 active members. Just to our south, Suffolk council hopes to shut at least 20 of its 44 branches. Whilst I am very aware that the cuts have to come from somewhere, I hope that the government do step in to stop at least some of the cuts as once closed I can't imagine they'd re-open in the future.

So to summarise. No more book buying and reduce the TBRs by at least a metre by the end of the year!

* OK so I can't bring myself to cancel my pre-order for The Wise Man's Fear in March, the sequel to the fabulously awesome The Name of the Wind, and the two books already in transit to me don't count either...

** Although if I really enjoy them I reserve the right to add them to my wish list! :)

Sci-Fi Experience 2011

I can't really believe that, firstly, we're in the second decade of this century and, secondly, that it's already time for my (third) annual participation in Stainless Steel Dropping's Sci-Fi Experience which runs until the end of February. Where on earth does time go to?

The "rules" are very simple and, as Carl says, "This is simply an opportunity to get together as a community and share a love of science fiction." I have a large stack of Christmas loot to get through and, for me, this is the perfect time of year to curl up and explore other worlds and new ideas without feeling too guilty about neglecting the huge amount of gardening we have to do. I consciously "save up" books for all of Carl's various challenges and am particularly looking forward to tucking into:

• Peter F Hamilton's HUGE Night's Dawn Trilogy which totals c. 3600 pages... Gulp.
  
• The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson (and possibly Anathem too)
  
• Alistair Reynold's Chasm City
  
• Dust - Elizabeth Bear

If I have time, I'd also like to use this as an excuse to return to Neal Asher's Polity series as I read, and really enjoyed, Gridlinked in last year's experience but somehow have not got around to reading any more of them.

As ever half the fun is seeing what other people are enjoying and using it as the perfect excuse to buy (or borrow) more! I'm also taking part in two book clubs this year that focus on female Sci-Fi & Fantasy authors and it's going to be really hard to resist reading some of the applicable books lined up for later in the year that are ready and waiting in my "library". The Elizabeth Bear book above is one of these reads so at least I can knock one off the TBR pile I have waiting! What temptation...

Graphic Novels Challenge - 2010 Wrap

At the start of 2010 I signed up for The Graphic Novels Challenge, which I will be participating in again in 2011. I am really pleased that I read 19 books that (more or less) fit into my own loose definition of a graphic novel. I tried to make my choices varied but I am sure that I am only scraping the surface of the genre and I know from the bits of paper sticking out of my copy of 500 Essential Graphic Novels that there are plenty more out there to track down!

What really struck me when I was copying the list over was that, with the exception of The Guild, they were all written by men! What's that all about? I'll have to do some investigating and try to find some more female authors for 2011 as I think that the only one I have ever read is Marjane Satrapi's excellent Persepolis.

I'm kicking myself that I stopped reviewing in April but my 2010 graphic novel highlights, from a very strong selection, were Girl Genius (I sooooo wish I could afford to buy all the colour editions!), Absolute Sanman, The Guild and Blankets. None of which I would have read without the blogging community egging me on so thank you and I look forward to seeing what next year brings!

2010 Graphic Novels:
Murder Mysteries - Neil Gaiman & P. Russell Craig
The Magic Flute - P. Russell Craig
Absolute Sandman - Vol 1 - Neil Gaiman
Pyongyang: Journey in North Korea - Guy Delisle
Girl Genius: Omnibus 1 - Phil and Kaja Foglio
Death Note volumes 1 & 2 - Tsugumi Ohba
1: Out from Boneville & 2: The Great Cow Race - Jeff Smith
The Adventures of the Princess and Mr Whiffle - Patrick Rothfuss
When The Wind Blows - Raymond Briggs
The Unwritten: Vol 1 - Mike Carey & Peter Gross
Harlequin Valentine - Neil Gaiman & John Bolton
Comics: The Invisible Art - Scott McCloud
The Invention of Hugo Cabet - Brian Selznick
That's Not My Cow - Terry Pratchett
The Guild - Felicia Day & Jim Rugg
We3 - Grant Morrison & Frank Quitely
Blankets - Craig Thompson

2011: The "Women of Fantasy" & "Women of Science Fiction" Book Clubs!

I've (already!) signed up for participation in two book clubs next year that I would like to mention here in case anyone else want to join in the fun too.


Firstly, Erika from Jawas Read, Too! is running the "Women of Fantasy" book club where each month we'll be reading a book published by a female author in the Fantasy genre. The perfect accompaniment to this is that TJ, from Dreams & Speculations, is hosting "The Women of Science Fiction" book club. I think that both the reading lists look fantastic and I am really struggling to resist the temptation to dive in to the selection right now.

These book club announcements have come at the perfect time for me. One of the (many) wonderful things about moving to this house is that I now have a room (rather grandly referred to as my "Library"!) in which all my books live. All of my books. In one room. In genre-themed sections. Bliss. As I unpacked box after box after box of books a couple of months ago, and settled them into their new homes, I realised that I have very little Sci-Fi and Fantasy by female authors and started to actively seek to redress that balance.

Although I have read four of the books Erika and TJ have selected that does leave 20 new books (and between them fourteen female authors whose work I have never read!) to get me going and that is a great start in the right direction - although I might need a bigger "library"...

"I Aten't Dead"

Just a little note to say, in the words of the indomitable Granny Weatherwax, "I Aten't Dead".

In May this year we moved house to a very English thatched cottage in the country. Three and a bit months on and it still feels as if we are staying in a holiday rental and I can't quite believe that this is actually our home now! It took soooo long to get our internet connection sorted (vile, vile BT) that I just got out of the habit of blogging.

Once I'd caught up on my reader feeds, we'd unpacked, painted, started a veggie patch (look! I grew peas!) and settled in, it just didn't seem as though I had time to to write about the books I read as well as read them! Or maybe it's just not a priority.

So anyway. I'm still here. I'm still reading, I'm still following blogs, and at some point I might start writing on this one again. Or start a blog called "101 ways to eat a home grown courgette..." Seriously.

The Livingstone Tanzania Trust

Without the discipline of participating in The Year of Readers I've rather neglected posting about what I am doing with the donations I make to charity for books I read.

Along with the usual payroll credit into my Charities Trust account I have been diligently adding in an additional £1 per book I read (after costs) and today I made my first (of many, I suspect) bookish-related donation to the Livingstone Tanzania Trust. They are a self-help development charity, focused on Tanzania, working to alleviate poverty through education.

I was born in Tanzania and my Grandmother was a teacher in Arusha for many years so I must admit that a large part of the reason that I chose this specific charity was that their efforts are, at the moment, centred on Babati which is in the northern Manyara region which is "near" where my family lived. I've been looking for a Tanzanian educational charity for a while and so am pleased to have found this one.

A browse through the projects on their website includes building classrooms, teachers’ houses and kitchen/toilet facilities; raising health awareness; farming development and training as well as community support including football pitch building. When my husband and I went to Kenya last year we had the pleasure of a walk through a nearby village to watch the (recently crowned regional champions!) girls team play football on the village pitch. It was such a delight to see their enthusiasm and to see just how much use that pitch got as a focus for the younger people in the community. We also talked about the distance travelled by students to attend school with our guide who was one of the lucky ones - he got a scholarship to enroll in an educational wildlife programme which in turn led to his job working for the company who owned the property we stayed at for a couple of nights.

Not sure how I got from reading to education in Tanzania to football pitches in Kenya but I am pleased to have found this charity to add to my list of ones I support and that I have (eventually) made my first reading donation.

Girl Genius - Phil Foglio and Kaja Foglio

This is both a Once Upon a Time IV & Graphic Novels Challenge 2010 read.

On Friday I read a glowing joint review from The Book Smugglers (who are currently celebrating a second Steampunk Week) about this omnibus edition of the first three volumes in the Girl Genius series. So, despite current attempt to resist adding to Book Mountain, on Saturday my copy arrived and I spent a rather lovely afternoon in the garden reading it whilst enjoying the sunshine. Which, it should be noted, had a rather detrimental impact on the book's spine. :(

Girl Genius is an online webcomic and can be read for free - starting here with new pages released every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Described as a "gaslamp fantasy" featuring Adventure, Romance and Mad Science and, honestly, what more could you ask for?

The Girl Genius in question is the curvaceous Agatha Clay - a student at the Transylvania Polygnostic University who unable to build anything that actually works and seems destined for a lackluster career as a minor lab assistant. Chuck in a tyrant Baron Wulfenbach with an airship city, his son Gilgamesh (perhaps a hint of lurrveee for later episodes?) , a host of supporting characters (mostly made of awesome!) and an action-packed plot and you have a story that is both light hearted and funny. Oh - and I absolutely loved the artwork too.

After the first book, the series is released in colour however the omnibus was black and white. I don't think that was hugely detrimental to my enjoyment but having had a look at the panels online I would have definitely preferred to read in colour. I would absolutely love to be able to justify the purchase of the whole series in individual editions but am not sure even I can convince myself of the $23 a pop (plus post from the USA) investment when it's available free online. Unless it was an investment, of course....