Wrapping Up Long-Awaited Reads Month

First of all, my apologies for posting this round-up so late. Long-waited Reads Month ended a week ago, but it’s taken me until now to finish this post. As Iris and I said at the beginning of January, the goal of these round-ups is to gather everyone’s links, so we can share our experiences of the month and have them all in one place. The first link round-up can be found at Iris’ blog, and the second is below:

• Priscilla at The Evening Reader read Zadie Smith’s The Autograph Man, and reminded me that I really ought to pick it up. Somehow I always catch myself thinking that I’ve read all of Smith’s novels, even though I know perfectly well that this one exists.
  
  
• Library Hungry posted about Kristin Cashore’s Bitterblue (I could totally have read this whole series for LAR Month) and declared the month a success – hooray!
  
  
• Jenny read Thomas King’s excellent Green Grass, Running Water, a favourite among book bloggers, and very kindly passed on her copy to another reader.
  
  
• And the lovely Care did the same with Toni Morrison’s Beloved, which is now in Iris’ hands. Don’t you love book bloggers?

• Sasha discovered Stephen King’s Dark Tower series last month and posted about it several times. I love her enthusiasm.
  
  
• Sakura at Chasing Bawa read Silence by Shusaku Endo, “a study of Christianity in early modern Japan and the terrible path it carved through the lives of its believers and those who tried to stamp it out”.
  
  
• Charlie at The Worm Hole read and enjoyed Beatrice Colin’s The Luminous Life Of Lilly Aphrodite.
  
  
• Debi at Still Nothing of Importance blogged about Ben Goldacre’s Bad Science, which is also a big favourite of mine.
  
  
• Joanna at Create Your Own World loved The Peach Keeper by Sarah Addison Allen (an author I really have to try).
  
  
• Bina read a historical mystery for LAR Month: Iain Pears’ An Instance of the Fingerpost.
  
  
• Meghan finished Connie Willis’ WW2 duology and reviewed the second instalment, All Clear. I meant to have read these books too, but unfortunately I didn’t get around to them.
  
  
• Julia at The Card Catalog shared some reading notes on Anna Karenina.
  
  
• At Charlotte’s Library, Charlotte shares her thoughts on Lev Grossman’s The Magicians.
  
  
• Beth at Too Fond listened to Ready Player One by Ernest Cline and had a lot of fun with it.
  
  
• Finally, my co-host Iris read her first Moomin book, A Comet in Moominland. Earlier in the month she also read E.M. Delafield’s Thank Heaven Fasting, one of my favourite books.

  As for me, the month was certainly a success: I fell in love with Megan Whalen Turner’s Queen’s Thief series, finished Jo Walton’s excellent Small Change trilogy, and finally read The Song of Achilles, which I still need to tell you about. One thing I’d have liked to do was get around to all those long-awaited classics on my shelf, but alas. I briefly toyed with the idea of making February my own personal Long-Awaited Classics Months, but because of some upcoming changes in my life (on which more soon) I doubt I’ll get much reading done at all. Guess how many books I’ve finished so far in February? I also don’t want to overplan my reading – I think the reason why this themed month worked for me was that it was broad and flexible enough that it never felt restrictive.

  Before I go, a housekeeping note: Iris and I are still going to drawn two winners from among the participants in Long-Awaited Reads month, and they will get a book they’ve always wanted to read but don’t own yet that is up to $15/€11/£10 on Book Depository. There are two reasons why I didn’t draw a name from this link round-up and announce it now: a) I worried I might have missed a couple of links and b) you don’t actually need to have reviewed your book(s) to be entered. So if you’ve read something you didn’t review, just let me know in the comments before the end of the month and I’ll put your name in the hat. The same goes for if you wrote a review that wasn’t included either here on in Iris’ earlier link round-up. We’ll draw two names and get in touch with the winners.