It’s been another week of slow reading progress. Unfortunately, it’s also been another week of my life being overtaken by house renovation nonsense. We finally reached the end of what has felt like a never-ending saga, followed by an entire weekend spent deep cleaning every room in the house to get rid of months of renovation dust. It wasn’t exactly the relaxing weekend I’d imagined, but it does feel wonderful to have an almost-clean house again at last.
I have also been a little distracted from reading by watching the football. Truth be told, I had never watched a World Cup match before, and I struggle to think if I’ve ever even watched an entire football match. It’s just never been my thing. But my husband and I decided to give it a go for the World Cup and somehow we got completely hooked. What a year to start watching too, with Spain going all the way! Now we’re left feeling slightly confused… do we keep watching football? Should we pick a club team to support? We are absolute beginners, but it’s been surprisingly fun to get invested in something completely new and to develop strong, entirely unfounded opinions along the way. (Case in point: me shouting at the television, “That should have been a foul!” despite having had absolutely no idea what constituted a foul just a week earlier.)
In terms of reading, I haven’t made quite the progress I’d hoped for by this point in the challenge. We’re now three weeks in and I’ve only finished two books. Rather than racing through novels, though, this has been a week of slow and steady progress across three different books, which honestly suits me just fine.
I had hoped to finish Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen this week, but I’ve only just reached the 40% mark. That said, I am absolutely loving it. It’s far funnier than I expected, with Austen’s wonderfully dry wit keeping me very entertained. The characterisation is brilliant and so entertaining. I feel very confident with my 5-star prediction for this read.
I’ve also continued with The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas. I mentioned last week that I was trying to read one chapter a day, and I can now confirm that it has been the perfect pace for this wonderfully entertaining novel. As I’m writing this, I’ve reached Chapter 11 (so I’m a little behind schedule!), but I’ve found it incredibly easy to jump back into the story each day. It’s sooooo melodramatic, with its almost pantomime-like villains and dramatic twists, and it’s proving to be fantastic to read aloud.
Finally, this week I reached roughly the halfway point of The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky, my year-long slow read. It’s difficult to put into words just how much this book has surprised me. If you’d told me even a year ago that I’d happily be working my way through a novel of this length and complexity, I don’t think I’d have believed you. For a long time I found very long books rather intimidating, and I hadn’t read many classics since my teens. Reading it slowly has made it feel entirely manageable, and it’s given me the space to really think about each section before moving on, alongside the helpful videos each month over on Henry Eliot’s substack. As I’ve mentioned before, there are certainly chapters I’ve enjoyed more than others, but it’s still firmly on track to be a five-star read- we will see come December.
Thanks for reading my bookish updates so far! Next Wednesday I’ll be posting my progress at the halfway point of my TBR challenge and hopefully some books finished too.
Read While It Rains 