Welcome to another month of WOYBS!
It’s great to have you join us for another month of our What’s On Your Bookshelf Challenge (WOYBS), #whatsonyourbookshelfchallenge.
I’m happy to co-host this link party with my good friends, Sue, Donna, & Jo.
Good friends are like stars. You don’t always see them but you know they’re always there.
What have I read lately?
I’ve read some cracker books lately so I’ll only give you the ones which I rated either 4 or 5 stars – which means they were really good reads!
You can see all the books read lately in my screenshot below. Are we friends on Goodreads?
- The Wattle Island Book Club by Sandie Docker 5*
- Clancy of the Overflow by Jackie French the final instalment in the Matilda Saga 5*
- The Banksia House Breakout by James Roxburgh 5*
- A Three Dog Problem by S J Bennett 4*
- The Naturalists Daughter by Tea Cooper 4*
- The Bellbird River Country Choir by Sophie Green 4*
- The People on Platform 5 by Clare Pooley 5*
- Exiles by Jane Harper 4*
My 2022 Reading Challenge
You may have noticed that I have surpassed my goal of 100 books for 2022! Yay me -as I always say, I read a lot and I’m a fast reader often with a couple of books in various formats on the go – so don’t feel bad if this sounds like a lot of books! It’s not a competition!
Book of the Month
I don’t normally do a book of the month but I feel compelled to this month as I really enjoyed Clare Pooley’s The People on Platform 5 so much.
I wrote this as a review:
| This was a book I NEEDED to read at the moment. I’ve had a few bad starts lately, but this book, recommended by a good friend (thanks Jo) made up for them all. It was fresh, feel-good, kind, hopeful, and a pure delight which I just couldn’t put down. You know sometimes you read a book at just the right time and everything clicks? This was it, great timing thanks Iona and co! The way Clare wrote about inter generational friendships, the feelings of Iona when she was made redundant (I related to so much because that was me too) and the fact that we all deserve…a Triumphant Second Act. Love, love, love this book!!!! Thanks heaps @cpooleywriter, I’m now a massive fan! |
What I’m reading at the moment
- Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen (paperback) – our online bookclub is reading this as part of our Jane Austen collection and I’m loving it!
- The Heron’s Cry (#2 in the Two Rivers series) by Ann Cleeves – listening to this via Audible
- The Kookaburra Creek Cafe by Sandie Docker – ebook via BorrowBox
It seems I have all forms of books covered in this list – ebook, paperbacks and audible!!
What do you do about a book you’re not enjoying?
It’s sometimes hard to know when to pull the pin on a book isn’t it? How long do you give it – a certain number of pages? I don’t have a set number of pages but I usually give it a good few chapters and if I’m really not enjoying it I give up. It’s not often that I give up on a book but sometimes I just have to. I think some of it was the space my head was in and the books I was trying to read just didn’t suit that moment in time. Do you get like that sometimes?
Recently I have had a few books that I haven’t been able to finish. I’m not going to mention them but one of them was from NetGalley and feedback was required because it was an advance reader copy (ARC). I wasn’t keen to continue the book and didn’t know what to do in this case. I contacted Donna (co-host of WOYBS) to ask her opinion and she was able to point me in the right direction.
There’s a very useful ‘I will not be giving feedback’ option available with. a selection of reasons why you won’t give feedback – like unexpected content, did not finish, file/download problems – and you can give more detailed reasons why in a comment box. I felt much better once I had done this and the book was deleted from my NetGalley account.
NetGalley members are expected to provide feedback for the books they access, in exchange for getting free digital review copies. When you finish reading a book, make sure to submit your star ratings, reviews, opinions, and industry list nominations. However, we know that there are legitimate reasons why you may not be able to submit feedback for certain books—and the “I will not be giving feedback” option will allow you explain why you aren’t reviewing the book.
This also raises issues about reviews – do you give bad reviews, or do you just give a low rating of 1 or 2 stars to indicate it wasn’t to your liking? I don’t leave reviews on Goodreads on all the books I read but I do rate them with stars, mainly for my records rather than anyone else’s.
I really enjoyed Carol’s post last month (Reading Ladies Book Club) where she talked about her Top 5 Problems of a being a Bookworm and I could relate to them all! She talked about not finishing a book and as she says there is no rule about finishing every book you start, and I also appreciated her section on writing kind but honest reviews. I’ve linked to her post and it’s well worth a read! Carol always has interesting book related posts which I enjoy immensely.
What are your thoughts?
Will you join us?
If you’re into reading, please feel free to join us, even if it’s just to leave a comment with what you’ve been reading lately. We’ve added a linkup (at the end of my post) so you can add your posts directly there and see what others have posted about for the month as well.
Sue, Donna, Jo and I hope that you will join us in this fun series.
You can read more from my stunning co-hosts here:
Sue from Women Living Well After 50
Donna from Retirement Reflections
Jo from And Anyways… (Jo is away travelling at the moment)
We’re all in this together, sharing our love of reading 🙂
Happy reading!
Deb xx
All my WOYBS posts can be found here
Guidelines for WOYBS:
What: What’s On Your Bookshelf #whatsonyourbookshelfchallenge
When: Third Thursday PM (Northern Hemisphere)/ Third Friday AM (Southern Hemisphere). Next linkup: Friday 18 November 2022
Why: Share a love of reading.
Where: Linkup below, Blog, Blog Comments, Instagram or other Social Media.
Who: This linkup is open to everyone.
How: You can share in the comments, with a blog post, or on other social media of your choice. You can use the hashtag #Whatsonyourbookshelfchallenge
You can also find Deb’s World in lots of other places – stay in touch by clicking any of the buttons below.
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Deb's World 
A friend of mine who’s a former English teacher said she always advised her students to give a book 50 pages before giving up on it. I don’t have a set number of pages, or anyhting, but I am, as others have mentioned, less and less willing to put up with a boring, poorly written, or book that’s just not working for me than I used to be. I also need to be in a certain head space for some books, so sometimes I put them down (or return them to the library) for a while, and then come back to them when it works better for me.
For me, I know I’m really not liking a book if I want to throw it across the room!! Especially if I want to do so repeatedly! Sometimes I’ll try and persist with some of these to see if they get better, but after the third time I want to throw a book across the room (in disgust or anger or… some other negative emotion) then I give up on it and either return it to the library or get rid of it in some fashion. (Either trade at a used book store, or donate to one of the little free libraries near me, usually.)
I don’t often do reviews or ratings, though I’m getting more into that. Usually I have to feel really strongly about a book to do either. I have been asked for resource recommendations often enough though for nonfiction especially, that I have started a page on my website with my favourites, as well as some secondary options that I wasn’t entirely enamoured with, but also found some useful information in. I seem to keep expanding what I’m covering in it, so who knows what will eventually all wind up there. Right now it has nonfiction favourites on autism, other disabilities, diversity in general, trauma, and mental health in general. There is also a small section on fiction with diverse characters in it (published since 1993 with a few older exceptions.)
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I’m a bit late to this party, but thought I’d comment anyway.
I tend to not persevere with books that are poorly written. If I notice the writing, if it’s clumsy or lazy or word choice is particularly bad, then I don’t continue. Luckily I don’t come across too many books like that, but I don’t feel obligated to continue reading if the author hasn’t done a good job of the basics.
There will inevitably be books that don’t appeal to me in terms of subject matter – but that’s a different story.
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