This wouldn’t normally be a problem except for the fact that right now in my life I don’t have the time to read a lot of books. I have assignments to do. (I’m currently ahead of my assignments, so let’s hope this gives me time to read soon!!)

The Reading List page of this blog is woefully behind. I’ve added a lot of new entries into the list I keep on my phone but I haven’t had time to put them onto the blog yet. I also haven’t had a chance to review those books that I have actually read. I WILL do that over the weekend. I promise! I’ll also try to update my GoodReads account for those of you out there on the site. There’s a link to it on the reading list page. (Note: it may not be on there but it will be soon!)

So to keep the book nerdiness going whilst I catch up with writing reviews, I thought I’d share a few books from the list in my phone. If anyone has read any of them then please let me know what you thought via comment or email, no spoilers please!

The Midnight Palace – Carlos Ruiz Zafon
Pigeon English – Stephen Kelman
The Five People You Meet In Heaven – Mitch Albom
Hawk Quest – Robert Lyndon

I will update everything soon!

Keep reading!

It broke again, exactly the same as before.

Needless to say I took it back to the repair shop on Monday and they diagnosed an underlying fault in the cable that feeds the inverter, which was shorting and causing the inverter board to blow. So for the past few days I have been living without a laptop again, spending larger portions of my time in University computer suites to try and keep on top of my work. It hasn’t been as bad as it could be, I mean I still have my BlackBerry which allows me to send and receive emails and do all my social networking. But still, I can’t keep up with Castle and New Girl without a laptop! Watching tv shows in the library is kind of frowned upon…

Luckily it is ready to pick up, after what is hopefully the last repair it will need!

If any of you guys have had computer issues, how bad have they been?

Until next time…

Looking for the silver lining, at least I have a smartphone whilst this is happening. This means that I can still read and reply to emails, write blogs and do all the little things on the BlackBerry, saving me from having to make an effort to go somewhere else just to check my emails. Hopefully, I’ll be able to get the uni IT team to either fix it or forward me to someone that can do.

I’d best get going to the library now then, since I can’t do work in my room…

My laptop, with the torch I’m using as a backlight

As is so often the case with things that we want to do, life gets in the way and takes up our time with all those little jobs that need to get done. For me, it has been a return to the weekly grind of lectures, though my modules this semester look very interesting and I’m sure that I’ll be sharing many a story about them in future posts.

Other things that I’ve done include joining the gym, a shock to the system after a fairly sedentary lifestyle last year. The aim is shift that stubborn stomach that seems to have built up and to generally improve my health and fitness in an aim to be happier and healthier in my lifestyle. My housemate and I made and decorated a birthday cake, as seems to have become our thing to do for friends birthdays. This one was shaped like a bee and tasted delicious if I do say so myself. Copious cups of tea have been drunk with friends and a lot of washing has been done, since I mistakenly left it here last time I went home!

But back to the post office…
Isn’t it always the way that you wait in for a delivery for a few days and the one half an hour that you go for a run, it turns up and you’re left with a little red slip and the knowledge that you will be queuing for over twenty minutes in a tiny room filled with people that are equally unhappy to be there.

Such is life.

In two posts, I seem to have made this a “Book Blog”. I’ll try to steer away from that slightly, but reading is a big part of my life so there will be a lot of posts about books and if that’s not your thing then I can only apologise and hope you’ll stick around for some of the other things that I’ll eventually talk about.

I’ve known about Goodreads for a while but I never bothered to sign up for an account until today. What a mistake that was.

Goodreads is a website where people rate the books they’ve read and can post a small review in comments on the book. This is a great idea as Goodreads will recommend books that you may enjoy based on your previously listed books and it can help broaden your reading selection. Oh no, this wasn’t why signing up was a mistake.The mistake was the fact that you can add books to your “To Read” list.

THERE ARE SO MANY BOOKS THAT I HAVEN’T READ!

Now, I’ve always thought of myself as a well-read, bookish person but there are just SO many books that I’m clicking “want to read” on. I feel slightly ashamed by some of them. For example, I’ve never read ‘The Great Gatsby’ or ‘The Catcher In The Rye’. How? How have I never read these books that are listed under the heading of ‘Classics’? I’ve got a lot of reading to do, it would seem…

Check out Goodreads here, if you havent already: Goodreads and I’ll put a link on the “Reading Lists” page to my profile so we can share books, if you would like to!

I’ve never been one for making a list of books that I want to read, I tend to just pick up something that grabs my eye and have a read. The unfortunate truth of this though, is that I do not read enough anymore. Cue the creation of my reading list.

I’m aiming to review every book that I read from now. I’ll make a new page on the blog where you can check out the list as it stands and see what I’ve finished and get a link to the review post if you’re interested yourself.

The goal of this is to read more books, and not just those books that are useful or necessary to my course (though undoubtedly, these books have a higher level of importance). I’ll be reading both fiction and non-fiction books and I’ll aim to have as broad a selection of genres and subjects as I can manage.

Hopefully, some of you out there that may stumble over my blog will be doing the same or may just love reading. In that case, please get in contact with any book recommendations that you might have and I’ll add them to the list. You can do this in comments or by email, i’ll put it either in the “About” page or somewhere in the sidebar.

Happy Reading!

Not completely unrelated links:

What’s on Your Reading List?

“To Read” List of 2012

You Inspired Me…To Compile My 2012 Reading List

I’m Rob and you can find out a bit more about me in the “About” page. You can also keep up with what happens to me on Running Jump, the blog that I co-author with my old school friend, Justin – there’s a link in the blogroll for that!  Twitter links can be found in the sidebar so that you can follow me and see the generally mundane but sometimes unintentional hilarity of my life in real time.

That’s about it for this brief note, but I’ll be back before long with some actual content! (Provided that I don’t get bored and do other things instead…)