No Novel November (2014)

Like last year, I felt like I had been reading too many novels, and so as November approached I challenged myself to repeat last year’s experiment: No Novel November. It went less well than last year for a couple of reasons.

1. I actually cracked and read a novel (Nov 26).
2. I watched the entire of The OC (Amazon).
3. I didn’t read as much non-fiction (only about 4 books to last year’s 8).

I did:

• Get through a bunch of my online reading backlog (my Twitter favourites are my “to read” list).
• At least start on books that I had not got around to.

What made this year harder?

Main thing, I think, I was not relaxed. Whereas last November I was taking a break and seeing the world, and No-Novel November took place in Barcelona, Canada, Iceland, Portugal. This year it took place in Denmark, Sweden, and Romania, but mostly the UK. The nearly 3 week period in the UK was the hardest, especially as I was struggling with a knee injury which restricted my movement.

The other thing was that I made a mistake, and having started on a book that I couldn’t read more than 2-3 chapters of a day, opened another book that was also quite hard going (the next chapter will apparently take 28 minutes to read, I saw that and could not begin it), and ground to a halt. Eventually, I bought a new book that was a lighter read, and interspersed it with one of the others, which helped, but I didn’t do that until the end of the month (at which point I had already cracked).

Was it still worthwhile?

Yes! I think it’s good to be mindful about habits of media consumption, and it has at least given me a break from the Georgette Heyer kick I was on prior. Also 4 nonfiction books in a month is not impressive, but it’s at least more than the 1-2 I manage normally.

Next year?

Probably. Hopefully I’ll look back at this and be a bit more mindful about what books I pick, though!