The Great Reading and Blogging Block of 2013 - Part 2

Continued...

•  I tried 'The Re-Read'

The re-read is this wonderful thing - unless your my mother who thinks all books were invented to be read once and shelved - that can eat up hours and hours of your time. Time that perhaps you should be using to discover new characters and place. But you know what? You don't want to go and meet some strangers so you go and reacquaint yourself with some old friends instead. 

So as I have been wanting to move on with the rest of the Mary Russell Series by Laurie.R King I thought I would give the Beekeepers Apprentice another read to remind myself of some things before heading on with the rest. 

Good plan, yes?

No. It failed miserably. For 8 weeks!!!!!! I have been reading this books I am not even half way through. 

This is not a reflection on the book. Not at all! It is a wonderful, fun read (FYI if you are a fan of Sherlock Holmes it is definitely up your street). But have I been able to re-read it? Nope. 

So I though that maybe it was a little too soon to read it again. It is a who-dun-it after all and I kind of knew who did the doing. So I moved on again, and again, and again. And every time the re-read failed. 

OK, so the re-read was obviously not the thing to kick start the reading again. 

• The 'To-Be-Read'

Pretty much covered this (see the end of Part 1 about reading first few paragraphs etc)

Another failure. 

• The Audio-Book

I have some epic favourite audio-books. I kid you not. These are books that I have listened to repeatedly. 

Needless to say that this time there magic was a dud and they actually grated on my nerves. 

Can you believe that? I couldn't and I stopped listening ASAP in case I put myself off. 

So then I went for  nice new shiny Audio-book and I downloaded The Fellowship of the Ring. It can be argued that I have been living under a rock for the past... a long time OK, and I have just seen The Fellowship of the Ring and The Two Towers so I thought I would give the books a try.

*groans*

Couldn't someone have warned me?

(more to come on THAT in a future post - or five)

• The 'screw it' plan

Yip, I reached the breaking point. Up until a week ago the only books I had bought in the last 8 weeks were The Lord of the Rings and they weren't getting me anywhere.

So I began the search.

After all the read pile and the TBR pile weren't doing much good so I finally thought 'screw-it'. This is were all logic (not that there ever was any to begin with) goes flying out the window and I look everywhere for a books to just read already!

ASDA (got to love ASDA) came to the rescue with The Zoo (I wanted to read that when it was in hardback so I thought - you got it - 'S-I') and The Witness (haven't read many Nora Roberts books, but I have read some of the JD Robb ones and so 'S-I lets give it a shot' ended up with it in my basket).

But, needless to say, both of these were a bust. Don't get me wrong, I THINK I am going to really enjoy them when I am in the right frame of mind, but the reading-mojo-sucking-monster of doom just wasn't having either of these.

Want to know what finally started be reading again?

Do ya? Do ya? Do ya?

Of course you do.

The £3.33 e-book came to the rescue. Complete with a red cape and hero-music.

Lovely cute heroine, hero who is a bit of an idiot but catches on pretty quick and a not overly complicated story line.

Just what I needed to get me back into the swing of reading again!

Bit anti-climactic really isn't it. Lol.






I am so glad to be finally reading again *happy dance* because not only am I now...well...reading but I also have my blogging brain switched back on. Yay. It was so weird. I have reviews written down (and some even typed up) but I just couldn't muster up the get-up-and-go to post them or do anything really.

But now I am back! And I can even feel the tension and stress draining through my fingers as I type.

Things will be back into some semblance of a schedule this week coming :)

The Great Reading and Blogging Block of 2013 - Part 1

Reader HELL!

I have passed through the fire and emerged. Slightly singed and frazzled but I shall move on from this horrible experience.

Ok, so slightly dramatic there but you get the point.

I think for every avid reader going through a book block/reading block/what-the-heck-where-have-all-the-good-books-gone spell/whatever you want to call it is something that everyone else just doesn't understand. And its ANNOYING because they just don't GET IT1

Do you find reading blocks stressful?

I find reading blocks stressful.

Now from a logical stand point reading blocks should actually be good things. Shouldn't they? Well yeah, because look at all this extra time I suddenly have to get thinks done. The washing up can be done straight after dinner instead of being left until I am eating off a napkin, that pair of trousers I have been meaning to take-up for the past month, smashing lets do it, those receipts that have been sitting around until I got time to do my accounts, awesome, bring it on.

*tumble weed*

You got it. I had ALL of this free time - or supposed to have - because I wasn't reading and still nothing got done - apart from the washing up, I might have been exaggerating a little there.

Why didn't anything get done?

 Because I was -

1.  picking up any unread book on my shelf, reading the first few paragraphs (or pages if it was lucky) and then throwing it across the room placing it back on the shelf with a look of utter loathing. This happened quite a few times. *pets book shelf* Mummy didn't mean it. 
2. Freaking out about all of the books that I felt I should be getting through and I wasn't because I couldn't get into anything. 

It was like some vicious reading-mojo eating cycle of doom. 

And it was uber-stessful and not just because of all the unread books staring  pleadingly at me from the book shelf but because I read to de-stress. Yeah, EXACTLY! How am I supposed to unwind when I can't get into a book? How am I supposed to forget about real-life rubbish and get lost in someone elses rubbish a fantasy word when it won't let me past the first chapter!

So what did I do?

More next time in Part 2...