Athena

You have lovely hair !

x Awww , I hope you feel better soon. Breaking even is not too bad, but if you're very busy and don't feel like reading, that's never nice. I hope the book gets better soon, otherwise it might be better to read something else and return to Titus Groan at a later time. .

x Very cool ! Pontalba, I envy your collection, so many books !

Some of L.E. Modesitt Jr's books are on my wishlist, nice to hear your opinion on this one . I'm glad things are working out for you in the end.

x Nice haul ! x x Nice haul ! I recently read Danny the Champion of the World and quite liked it. x x This sounds very interesting! I like quantum physics. x

Sorry to hear a lot of people didn't have much time. It didn't go brilliant for me this time, because I was in a bad mood. My statistics: Friday 01-11-2013 50 mins, 121 pages, Kathy Lette - Love is Blind: But Marriage is a Real Eye Opener 1h 10 mins, 214 pages, Roald Dahl - Danny the Champion of the World 1h, 156 pages, Ann M. Martin - The BabySitter's Club 4: Mary Anne Saves the Day (re-read) Saturday 02-11-2013 1h 30 mins, 160 pages, A. C. Baantjer - De Cock 7: De Cock en de Treurende Kater 1h 15 mins, 143 pages, J. K. Rowling - Harry Potter 2: Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (re-read) Sunday 03-11-2013 10 mins, 17 pages, J. K. Rowling - Harry Potter 2: Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (re-read) Total: 6 h 5 mins, 811 pages Friday was an allright read-a-thon day but Saturday and especially Sunday I wasn't in the mood to do anything. I've been in a bad mood and didn't feel like doing anything so I didn't read much, especially not on Sunday. My overall statistics are actually not too bad, I thought it'd be worse. It felt like I didn't read much (well, on Sunday I really didn't). On Saturday I still tried to force myself, on Sunday I didn't bother. Maybe it will go better for everyone next time, in December or maybe in the new year. Kay, how did the visit go? (it might be in your thread, I don't think I have the time today to browse all of the unread posts, so I apologise if it is in your thread)

It'd be great to do our own awards, it'd take some organising though and it's true, we generally read pretty diversely on the forum so I'm not sure how it'd work exactly. I think I've read a couple of books published in 2013, most of the books I read though are generally a bit older.

That looks really good! I've never been to Zwolle, it's a bit of a travel away from here.

I might have to take you up on it ! I have to cook now soon though so I should stop browsing the forum.

Yes we have a tree! I might post a picture of it later this year, it'd be interesting to see what people's trees look like. We normally don't buy or decorate it until in December somewhere, usually after Sinterklaas (5 December) somewhere. Our family has always had real trees, either from our garden or from a shop. Some people here use a fake one, which I like less but I agree it gives less mess to clean up. We normally hang several kinds of ornaments in it, ie. Christmas balls (kerstballen, as we call them). We used to also put Christmas chocolate (kerstkransjes, they're lovely) in the tree, but then one of our dogs (back in the time) ate them so we stopped doing that (our other dog never batted an eyelid for them) (gladly she didn't become ill). At the top we usually put an ornament we call 'piek'. I could find an older picture of our tree but I'm not on my desktop computer atm. Have fun decorating your tree ! 45 books per year, that's a lot! I hope you'll be able to make sense of what you're reading for a long time .

That makes sense, thanks .

x ! I'm glad to hear people enjoyed The Night Circus despite not liking circusses! That's very promising .

x I was kind of the other way around! I don't know why though. Personally I felt Hornby talked too much about football and since this doesn't interest me, it annoyed me a bit. x x

x I could do the same, and might have to in the future. Buying books is so much fun, though , for now. x x That makes sense. I thought after reading a couple of books where the authors specifically talked about what they thought about the books, this was a nice, refreshing change on the subject. But I can see why you'd have liked it to talk more about the specific books.

x I agree! I only read it earlier this year but I also feel I don't remember certain things any more.. I think my tiredness is to blame but I'm not sure. At least it'll be fun to re-read it at some point . x x Awesome! I hope you get all of the books you're waiting for. Sorry to hear it's freezing , that's not nice at all.

x I'm with pontalba, I loved the epilogue! I can see though, it was perhaps not necessary, but I found it intruiging. x x I did like some of the characters, so here we should agree to disagree. x x I'm happy you enjoyed the book, frankie ! (stay tuned for more posts )

x x x x x

I'm fighting with the quote system so going to make a few posts instead. Frankie, I read Replay earlier this year, here is my review. It's not as long a review perhaps as some of my newer reviews and I didn't use spoiler tags, but I agreed with some of your comments (and disagreed with others). Below some of my thoughts: x x I agree! x x x x

x Thanks ! x x I'm glad to hear you liked some of his other books. I have The Stand also on my shelf, though I think I might read Carrie as my next Stephen King read since it's short. x x Thanks ! I'm glad to hear it. It's definitely one of my favourite books. x x Thanks, glad to hear you agree! I look forward to reading The Stand. Not for a little while though since that's so big too, I need to read some shorter books now first . I went to the book fair today and bought some books! Below is a picture of the books my boyfriend and I bought. I also bought one book for my dad (the Dutch version of George R. R. Martin - A Song of Ice and Fire 2: A Clash of Kings) but it's not on this photo. I bought 40 books, two of which were free. My boyfriend got three books, one of which I would've bought if he hadn't seen it just before I did. Since we're together we share our stuff, so everything is kind of "ours" anyway instead of "mine" and "yours". I didn't buy as much as some other times, because there were quite a few books there that I've bought at previous book fairs so I had them already (probably would've bought them if I didn't, though). I saw a few other nice ones that I liked, but they were a bit pricey (in my opinion) so I didn't get them (I don't know anything about them and felt the price was too high to randomly take a shot on them, if that makes sense). I'll post a list once I've sorted out the books and added them to Book Collector, but first there's a read-a-thon so I'll be busy with that.

Nice haul ! I have Little Dorrit on my shelf but I haven't read it yet. I haven't heard of Highly Inappropriate Tales For Young People but I have several books by Douglas Coupland on my shelf. I hope it's good! I think The Martian Way might be on my wishlist, but I'm not sure. If it's not, it should be! I've got several unread books by Isaac Asimov. The Woman Who Went To Bed For A Year might also be on my wishlist, I know it was at some point but I'm unsure if it still is or not (I do know I don't own it). Enjoy your books !

That's excellent news ! I never like it when it's delayed or something's wrong, I'm always glad once I've received what I ordered. It's never gone wrong here, except twice (from two different shops), once they sent the wrong book and the other time the preordered game console (my boyfriend's) was stuck in Belgium for a couple of weeks and they eventually send it back to the online shop and my boyfriend was refunded (gladly). We then bought it from another place (I have had it happen that I ordered something that then was never shipped and they kept postponing the date, in the end I cancelled those books and ordered them frpm another shop). I have had delayed packages before though, but I don't remember for how long I had to wait. Most times it's generally here when the shop says it'll be. All is well now though that you've got your book .

Congratulations! That's pretty exciting . Nice reviews on City of Bones and A Christmas Carol, both are on my TBR, I might read the latter before Christmas this year, it depends how fast or slow my reading of some other books will go.

x Mine got big and after having too little energy and at some point interest in playing many games I decided to buy less of them, since last year. Since then I haven't bought a lot of games (okay, still some, but not a lot). I don't miss it so much most times, though I'm still curious about some of the titles on my "TBP" as you call it. Video games really tire me out though so somehow just that fact makes me reluctant to play some of those that I know will make me feel really bad after 30-60 mins of playing them. At the moment I'm playing Pokémon X on the 3DS and am really enjoying that. It's not so tiring for me so that's good. x x This sounds like a right pain in the ! I find it annoying when things don't work as they're supposed to, and would probably have given up on it unless I was really interested in it (I don't know Path of Exile, the name does ring a bell though..). I hope you can get it to work!

I've read one Don Delillo book and didn't enjoy it much either. I read The Body Artist which was a free book at the book fair a few years ago. Which one have you read? It's interesting to read your both's opinions on these writers. I could comment on all those I know but that might get boring maybe since it's kind of a discussion between the two of you, so will leave it at this for now. I'm not sure if you want others to weigh in or not.