Kudz

I have a few of her books from both the Vera and the Shetland series and I was just wondering if its better to read the books in series order, or can they be read as standalones/in any order?

Are they sill having issues with their pre-orders being extremely delayed or are their problems sorted?

I read the first book several years ago and was horrified at the ending. I don’t want to spoil anything for those who haven’t read it yet, but for some reason I was not expecting what happened at the end to happen. Very hard hitting and emotional. I enjoyed the book and I need to pick up the others sometime soon.

Did you have trouble hearing some of the dialogue, particularly from Cillian Murphy’s character or was it just me? I think when I rewatch it I’m going to have put the subtitles on as even turning the sound up didn’t make too much difference. I’m currently working my way through a re-watch of the Scream films; four down one to go.

We’ve got a beautiful day here today, blue skies and sunshine. Feels very autumnal!

I can book my seasonal flu and 4th Covid booster anytime but have decided to hold off until a little later in the year, as I feel it’s still a little early now. I had 3 covid vaccines in the space of 10 months last year, so want to wait a full year before I get my 4th one, so the earliest I’ll book mine for will be October time.

I haven’t been around for a while but just wanted to say what a lovely surprise it was to pop on here this morning and find the much talked about update has finally happened. I’m still working my way through everything that I have missed whilst I have been away, but the site itself is looking great. It’s very fresh and inviting looking! Let’s hope it will encourage people to join and, more importantly, stay.

They're endorsements or sometimes more commonly referred to as book blurbs.

I don't think we necessarily need to do anything fancy, at least not to start with. Even a post-it note with a little handwritten message, and a link to the forum, hidden somewhere in a book would work!

There are some great ideas in here about how to go about promoting the forum. I particularly like the idea about putting little stickers or flyers in books being donated or sold and asking local libraries about putting up a flier. What do you think?

My ultimate literary crush is definitely Gilbert Blythe from Anne of Green Gables. I've had a huge crush on him since the very first time I read the series back when I was in my early to mid-teens. My crush only got worse after watching the 1985 adaptation; Jonathan Crombie will always, and forever, be Gilbert Blythe.

I don't really collect anything as such, although thinking about it, I do have a rather extensive collection of stationery; notebooks, journals, pens, pencils, page flags, post-it notes, stickers, washi tape, you name it, I've got it. I just cannot seem to resist a pretty notebook, even though I already have a large selection, most of which have never actually been used. I also collect books...I do have a lot of them too. I've never actually counted them, or kept track of them, but I'm guessing I probably have over a thousand. I always find it difficult to give away or donate my books, even those I haven't particularly enjoyed. It's a real problem of mine! With regard to hobbies, other than reading I don't really have any as such. I used to cross stitch, many moons ago, but haven't done so for a fair few years now. I do want to give adult colouring a go though and have a couple of books on standby. I've heard people say it's therapeutic and anything that can help me deal with my anxiety, which flares up now and again, I'm willing to give a go.

I have had the most hellish week at work this week – as much as I love working for the NHS, the past two years are really taking its toll on everyone – and I haven’t gotten any reading done at all. Although I am feeling better physically, I am still completely exhausted, both physically and mentally so I’ve been taking it easy during the evenings. Hoping to get back on track this coming week though and although I have a few chores that I need to get done today, I’m planning on spending the rest of the weekend relaxing with my book and hopefully this coming week will be a little bit easier on the work front. Although I haven’t read anything, I did buy a book, oops! I was having such a crappy day on Tuesday I popped into Waterstones in my lunch break and decided to treat myself. There were a fair few that I was interested in, but in the end went for The Distant Echo by Val McDermid, which I believe is the first in the Karen Pirie series. I haven’t read anything by this author before but have heard good things so thought I would give her a try. In hindsight I probably would have been better picking one of her standalone books though, because if I enjoy this one, I’m no doubt going to have to teat myself to the rest of the series, which is not going to help me get my TBR down anytime soon!

It still makes me tear up and I’m now 40. Deal. One of my cousins got a French Bulldog a few years back and named him Wilbur. I was horrified - to me the name will always and forever be a pig’s name.

Me too. I love discussing the book I’ve read with others, but I’m not really interested in writing about it in the form of a review. Like you I would rather spend my time reading, rather than writing, so I’m going to go down the minimal route when it comes to my reading journal. The simpler the better. I still haven’t gotten over it. I think it traumatised me. Same. I spend all day at work on a computer so I’m trying to minimise my time spent looking at a screen outside of work and faffing about with spreadsheets (even though, admittedly, they are rather pretty) is not something that I really want to do. However, if anyone is interested go on YouTube and search for reading spreadsheets and your mind will be blown with the fanciness of them all! Yeah, me too. I have quite the collection. I’ve selected two notebooks – a rather lovely golden one with a bee on the cover which is now my official reading log. I’ll be keeping a list of books read in the form of the title and author, nothing else. I’m going back to basics. It worked for me before so I’m sure it will work for me again. My goal is to see how long it will take to me to fill it completely. The other notebook I have selected is just a standard black grid notebook and I’m going to use this one as my author-back-catalogue-to-read list. I’m still figuring out the details of this one though so it’s a work in progress. I am going to be keeping a Word document too, but again I’m keeping it simple. It’s basically going to be a digital back-up version of the notebook, although I will also be keeping note of whether it is part of a series or not. I will also be keeping my reading log on BCF and although I have put up the initial thread for it I’m going to be tweaking things a little as I have had some thoughts about what I want to do with it, so I will be spending some time on that soon.

To be honest I’m not sure, but I do quite like the idea of having multiple selections for a set period, rather than just picking one at a time. It does need a bit of thought and some planning though but once the initial works been done, we’d be good to go for a while before having to pick again. Maybe those that are interested can brainstorm some ideas together to see how best to do so. I guess we would need to figure out the time period (6 months, a year), and how many books we’re aiming for during that period, and then take it from there as to how we pick the initial selection of books.

We’ve had another lovely week here this past week, sunshine, blue skies but with the occasional fluttering of snow. Also loving the fact that the blossom on the trees is out in full bloom or in some cases just beginning to show itself. I love blossom trees!

I’ve figured out that you can post hyperlinks using the following code [*url=insert link]title of link[/url]. It might come in handy if anyone wants to tidy up links in their reading logs etc. Just remove the * On further experimenting it seems to work sometimes and not others so you need to make sure you paste the link as plain text so it doesn't turn the link blue, if you get what I mean. Then you can link to Book Club Forum or anywere else for that matter, as often as you like.

Whilst I was perusing some of the older threads, I came across this one from 2009 – click here - and was wondering if this is something we could pursue as part of the book club as it wouldn’t be as constrictive as a conventional book club. It could be something like the Richard & Judy book club where we pick half a dozen or more titles, release the names of the selections in one go and then members can read whichever books suit them, when they want, and post their thoughts in the appropriate book thread. I’m thinking we could pick a mixture of new releases and older titles, along with a mixture of genres, and hopefully we could cover all bases. I personally would probably read all the selections as I want to broaden my reading horizons and read things out of my comfort zone, but it wouldn’t be as constrictive as a normal book club as you could read them in any order, back-to-back or spread them out over the course of the year. I don’t know, I just thought it was an interesting idea and one it seems that the original owner of the board was obviously considering at one time or another.

Can I ask what the Clubs section of the board is for? When I click on the Club’s section at the top of the board it brings up four of them but when I select one of them the page just keeps constantly reloading/refreshing and I can’t investigate them any further. Is this a feature of the board that isn’t working anymore or is it just me that this happens to? Hope it’s okay posting this in this thread, I didn’t think it warranted starting a new thread to ask a simple question which no doubt will have a simple answer.

I have always preferred paperbacks, and these are certainly the ones that I tend to purchase the most of for various reasons; mainly the fact that they are cheaper, easier to store/shelve, and I have always found them much easier to read due to the size and weight of them. However, as I have gotten older and now find myself suffering from arthritis in my hands, I’m beginning to prefer hardbacks over paperbacks which is not something I thought I would ever say. Yes, they’re heavier but I find laying it on my lap or on a table is much preferable when I have a flare up than having to physically hold a book which I would need to do with a paperback. This is something that annoys me too; I hate having to wait.

Charlotte’s Web for me too. I adore this book and Charlotte is the only spider I have ever liked. I was first introduced to it during primary school, when I was about 10 I think, and I have reread it every couple of years since then. It’s one of my absolute favourite books. Also, if I ever move to the country and get the small-holding I have always wanted I’m going to get a pet pig and call him Wilbur.

I’ve seen a lot of book tracking Excel spreadsheet templates available online to use; a lot of Booktubers use them. I’ve investigated some of the ones that they’ve made available for others to use, and they are, quite frankly, amazing. I love all the graphs and charts that you can have, but they do tend to track things that I personally have no interest in tracking and without modifying them quite extensively, they don’t suit my needs. They are a good idea though. From my experience searching for books on GoodReads via ISBN is the best way of doing it but it doesn’t always guarantee the exact same edition as the one you’ve read. Books have multiple print runs, and page counts and covers can both change, and to my knowledge there is no way of selecting the correct cover without changing the edition. I may be wrong on this though, so apologies if my information is incorrect. I’ve also thought about keeping a full-on reading journal where each book would have its own page. I’d print out the cover, keep track of the particulars, along with a short synopsis and then a review. I quite like this idea, but it also feels like it might be quite time consuming; I can type a hell of a lot faster than I can write so I have discounted this idea for the time being.

I know there are various websites and apps these days which allow you to track your reading, however I was wondering if anyone on here keeps track via good old pen and paper. Years ago, I used to have an old-style exercise jotter, the type you used to get at school, which I used to record all the books that I had read – it was very simple, just the title and author – but it was my pride and joy. I can’t remember when I started it, but it had a lot of the books by authors I read when I was younger, Enid Blyton, Roald Dahl etc, so I’m thinking maybe from about the age of 10. I was meticulous about writing in it and kept it updated religiously. Then as I got older, and I got my first computer I decided to transfer all the information over on to a word document and disposed of the notebook. Everything went swimmingly until about 2006 when my computer crashed, and I lost everything. I stupidly did not have a backup, and at the time wasn’t computer savvy enough to be able to retrieve it. Now if it happened, I’d be able to recover it, but back then I didn’t have a clue, so the information was lost forever. I did have a couple of the latter years’ worth printed, but for the most part it was gone. I was devastated and, if I’m honest, still am. I have never kept a record since, although not for lack of trying. Yes, I have tried sites like Goodreads, LibraryThing and Shelfari over the years but they have never lasted more than a couple of months because I just can’t get on with them. It bothers me too much that the book covers don’t match, that the page counts are inaccurate and so on and so forth. I also think there is a huge part me that just doesn’t like relying on a website that is out of my control and that could disappear at any time, without warning, taking my reading history with it. Since registering on BCF again and looking at some of the older reading logs it has inspired me to restart my own record, both on here, but also via pen and paper. So, I have selected myself an appropriate notebook from my rather large stash and I’m going to start from scratch. After contemplating what I want to keep track of I have decided to do what worked for me before – title and author – as everything else I have tried over the years has fallen by the wayside so I’m going back to basics. Anyway, my question is - how do you keep track of your reading? Do you just use the reading log feature on BCF? Do you use sites like Goodreads? Or do you keep a physical reading journal, and if so, what information do you keep track of?

We have had a beautiful week here in South Lanarkshire. Sun, blue skies, the whole shebang. I think there were a couple of mornings earlier in the week where it was a tad frosty too, but overall it has been a really lovely week. I’ve even put my winter coat away and gotten my lighter one out, which means it will no doubt snow in the next week or two!