The Slowdown

Thus far, my reading in 2017 has been fairly metronomic - five books per month almost exactly, with April and July sneaking in a sixth. However, August hit a bit of a snag, with a meagre three books being finished - "The Power" (which I'd actually started in the last few days of July), "The Secret Garden", and now "Measure of the Magic". Which means that I've gone from being two books ahead to being right on target for the year. (It also means that I'll be entering September behind in one of the sub-lists, albeit ahead in another one.)

The reason for this is superficially simple: with the house move being completed, I've been spending a lot of time sorting things out and so not spending a lot of time reading.

But it's actually a little more complex than that, as it's actually not the case that I've been short on time to read. Or, at least, it's not like I couldn't have found time if I'd wanted.

No, the truth is that I got rather bogged down in "The Secret Garden", and then got really bogged down in "The Measure of the Magic" (which, in fairness, just wasn't very good).

And now I turn to the penultimate book in Iain M. Banks' 'Culture' series, "Surface Detail", and I again find myself uninspired to tackle it. The slowdown looks set to continue a little longer.

I think my plan for the next few weeks will be to set aside "Surface Detail", and instead tackle some of the books in the 'Other' sub-list - I have a few of these in stock, and they'll give me a bit of a break from my sequence. Which isn't ideal, since it means storing up two big 'Culture' books for later in the year, but if it kickstarts the reading again then it will have served a good purpose. I guess we'll see.

(Of course, it's worth noting that some of this is just the general malaise that seems to have started to infect me over the last few weeks - now that the big challenge of the house move is done, and the list of things to do is both annoyingly long and filled with annoying tasks, it's hard to stay motivated. Mostly, I need a holiday.)

#40: "Measure of the Magic", by Terry Brooks