At the weekend, I proudly proclaimed my reaching the halfway point in The Book Challenge. Fifty of my hundred books down, fifty to go. It was a good moment – I suppose similar to how someone with more sporting skill than myself may feel when progressing in a sporting tournament (please feel free to insert your own favourite England joke here).
However, since then I have been struck with Reader’s Block. In the past four days I have started four different books, and the furthest I have managed is page fifty two, and that only by really pushing myself to read on. Nothing is quite catching my imagination, and everytime I start to read I hear a mental sigh echo around my head.
It’s not burnout, and thanks to bumping slightly ahead of myself I can currently afford a couple of days gap, but it is very frustrating. Bob – who has started an heroic effort in catching me up over the past couple of weeks – has been reading a couple of high concept books, all made of strange repeated phrases and thought patterns in the place of regular prose. Meanwhile, I am contemplating picking up the most mainstream, easy reading piece I can get my hands on just to kick start me into action.
As I always do around this time of year, I am going to blame it on the weather. And hayfever. Hayfever is rubbish, but gives you an excuse for being continually crap. The New Challengers all begin their half year challenges today as the first day of the second half of the year – blog on their pages to follow once I have some of their blog pages – and I don’t want to start falling behind to them so early on, so I had best buck my ideas up. And maybe grab me some Mr Men books…