Cara can read...or can she?

"'Twas the night before Christmas,

when all thro' the house,

Not a creature was stirring,

not even a mouse;

The stockings were hung

by the chimney with care,

In hopes that St. Nicholas

soon would be there;"

After finishing the latest book "A Dance with Dragons" of George R.R. Martin's "A Song of Ice and Fire", the intricate backstabbing fantasy saga, I was at a loss. I needed a break from the intensity of such a momentous book. If I were home home in Osbornes Flat with my now politically incorrect editions of Enid Blyton novels, I would go for something like The Famous Five or The Magic Faraway Tree. I've read them a million times but they are comfort books (if there is such a thing), they smell like real books, some newer than others, some with my Mum's name inside the cover, some with a crossed out school library stamp and either my brother or sisters name below it, but real live books. As you can see, I'm still not convinced by e-books, they just don't smell right! However, I'm not at home home I'm just at home. When I moved to Sweden I brought one book with me which happened to be the second book in the George R.R. Martin series but I brought no comfort books so I've had to make do with Jochen's. His comfort books are the entire Terry Pratchet series. I'm not at a loss for quantity that's for sure. I've read a few Pratchet over the years but haven't really been completely absorbed until now. I fell in love with Mr Nutt in Unseen Academicals and then I decided I should read the whole series from the beginning. So far we have solved one problem, what to read as an inbetweeny-comfort-book. Now for the real problem, after I've finished said Prachet-comfort what will I read next?

There have been a couple of decisions that I believe has lead me to this new page on my blog. One is my faithful sidekick Niki (or perhaps more correctly, I am her sidekick) and the other is Matty Cutts from a TED Talks video. Niki and I decided a little while ago that we were going to become Renaissance men. We had become stagnant and more involved with the lives of people on TV soaps than our own. Therefore we made a few decisions of how to become a Renaissance Man and one of which was to read more. Incidentally, if you are thinking of becoming a Renaissance Man one should "Be able to defend himself with a variety of weapons, especially the sword." (http://www.martinfrost.ws/htmlfiles/Polymath.html) which we were pretty excited about. The other motivation was a TED Talk by Matty Cutts called "Try something new for 30 days"(http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/en/matt_cutts_try_something_new_for_30_days.html). Jochen and I completed a thirty day "No TV" challenge during December. This in turn led to the revival of our bookish natures and in turn the need for new books!

Among some other fantastic presents that I received for Christmas, I was given a plethora of books. So far I've read three of them and I'm currently reading the fourth and fifth (I have to have a bus book and a bed book of course!). The first book I read was a classic, thank you to my family for sending this one. You may recognise it from the couple of paragraphs at the top of this post. "'Twas the Night before Christmas" (unknown author), my all time favourite Christmas book, also probably the only Christmas book. My Mum would read this to me on Christmas Eve every year and it was awesome. Since I couldn't pack my Mum when I came to Sweden, Jochen was kind enough to oblige (unless it was really my Mum in disguise with a beard and long blond hair). I suppose technically I didn't read the book as it was read to me but then what do you say about audiobooks, just because I have listened to it doesn't mean I don't know what's between the covers. 

I will try to post something about each book that I read for this year. I don't want to ruin the books for anyone so I will try to avoid spoilers. I hope this will create some kind of discussion or at least recommendations for new books to read. I don't like the label 'book club', maybe this is more a 'book lover' page. This is mostly a selfish endeavour as I will need a suggestions after I finish this big stack on my desk but hopefully you will get some good tips out of it too. Perhaps if anyone is really keen you can send me your own post about a book you have read and I will happily post it. Check my profile for my email address. Check back soon for the first reviewy-posty-type-thing as I already have a back log.

Happy reading less tv-ing everyone.