This year I want to complete the 52 Book Challenge, essentially reading one book per week. Seeing as I now work in a bookstore this makes a lot of sense. Even though I get a discount (and books are cheap anyway), I will try to mix things up between buying at work, buying second-hand and using the library.
I want to read at least one non-fiction book per month and challenge myself to read a wide variety of genres, authors and subject matter. I think I can do it!
Book 1: The Circus of Ghosts – Barbara Ewing
Of course I had to start this challenge with a 500 page book, so I am already a few days behind. Circus of Ghosts is set in New York in the mid-1800s, where mesmerist Cordelia Preston and her daughter Gwen have joined a circus after escaping a cruel past in Britain. However trouble is brewing when a devious London lawyer travels to New York with plans to murder Cordelia and kidnap Gwen, while Cordelia’s husband Arthur (a police officer) starts to attract the interest of the brutish and wild New York gangs.
The setting and landscapes in this book are fantastically vivid, and I would love to learn more about mesmerism now. However, I think this book could’ve been much shorter. If a book is 500 pages long I want to be kept on tenterhooks and this only happened in the last 150 pages. Perhaps if I had read The Mesmerist first I may have been hooked quicker. 3/5
Travels and Tea Leaves 
Looking forward to reading your reviews and books that you read – will give me inspiration for trying new books!!
I love the idea of 52 books, I can be such a slow reader though! I can plough through one if I’m on a long train journey, doing lots of commuting or having regular tea breaks {when I used to have a ‘proper’ job}. But I just don’t do much of that at the mo. I need to get back on the backpacker circuit! It’s taken me almost two months to read ‘The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet’ by David Mitchell despite absolutely loving it! I’m almost there!
This is such a good idea – all the best with reading from a variety of genres. I find this the hardest thing to do sometimes. Kicked off this year with a romance book and today, 22 days later I’ve read 9 or more romance books and only a handful of other genres. Sigh. Keep up with it, I’d love to see what you end up reading 🙂