* Last week many of you took part in Bloggiesta, which was hosted by Maw Books. Although I found the previous Bloggiesta in January very productive, I decided not to participate this time because I knew last weekend was going to be too busy for me to commit enough time to make it worthwhile. During the week though I’ve had a sort of personal mini-Bloggiesta of my own and made a few improvements to my blog. Here are some of the things I’ve done:

Created Read in 2009 and Read in 2010 pages.
Improved navigation of the A-Z Reviews Page.
Created a Short Story index page.
Updated my About page. This also satisfies the requirements of this week’s Blog Improvement Project task. The task asked us to think about blog branding and building a consistent identity across our blog title, subtitle and about pages.

There are still a few other things I need to do – including moving my completed challenges to another page to keep them separate from the ones I’m currently working on – but those can wait for a while until I have time.

* Did you know 14th-21st June was Independent Booksellers Week here in the UK? I didn’t hear about it until it was too late, as it ends tomorrow, but it made me think – there are no independent booksellers that I know of anywhere near where I live. There are some charity bookshops, second hand bookshops, and chain stores such as Waterstones and WH Smith, but I can’t think of a single independent bookshop. Isn’t that sad? I suppose it doesn’t help that so many people, including myself, are buying most of our books online these days. Are there any independent booksellers near you – and if there are, do you try to support them?

* You may have heard that the author Jose Saramago died on Friday at the age of 87. He became the first Portuguese-language winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1998. I haven’t read any of Saramago’s work but over the last few days have been hearing a lot about how good his books are. Have you read any of his books and would you recommend them?

* Eoin Colfer’s Artemis Fowl has been voted the all-time favourite Puffin children’s book according to a poll on the Puffin Books website. The other six choices were The Family from One End Street by Eve Garnett, Charlotte’s Web by E.B. White, Stig of the Dump by Clive King, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl, Goodnight Mister Tom by Michelle Magorian, and the Hundred-Mile-an-Hour Dog by Jeremy Strong. Have you read any of these? Which is your favourite? My vote went to Charlotte’s Web.

I’m going back to my books now. Enjoy your reading this week!

Sunday again already – and it’s a long weekend so I’m not back to work until Tuesday!

While I was trying to think of a topic for this week’s After the Sunday Papers post, it occurred to me that it’s been a while since I reviewed a newly published book. Recently I’ve been reading a lot of classics and books from the early 20th century. I don’t know if anyone has a problem with blogs that review older books, though I’m guessing that if you’re following my blog you probably don’t mind!

We all have different reading tastes – some of us like to read the latest books as soon as they are published; others prefer Victorian classics or World War II era books; many of us just read whatever we’re in the mood for or whatever happens to be on our shelves. But have you ever thought about when most of the books you read were published?

If you had asked me that question yesterday, I would have said that I don’t read enough new books. It’s not deliberate – I do read other people’s reviews of the latest releases and make a note of the titles, fully intending to read them, but when it comes to actually buying books or borrowing them from the library, I find myself choosing books that sound interesting regardless of publication date and regardless of whether everyone else has already read them years ago.

However, today I took the publication dates of the 35 books I’ve reviewed so far on this blog, put the figures into a pie chart maker…and this is what it came up with:

As you can see, I’ve obviously read more books from the last decade than I thought! What about you? Do you read mostly new books, older books or a mixture?

As I mentioned a few weeks ago, moving my blog from blogger to wordpress meant that I lost my Sunday Salon membership. I suppose I could have continued to do unofficial Sunday Salon posts, but I thought I might as well come up with something different – and I decided to stay with the quote from which I took my blog title (“She had read novels while other people perused the Sunday papers”).  So, welcome to my first After the Sunday Papers post, in which I’ll look at some interesting news and links from the previous week and update you on my current reading plans.

Inspired by Iris’s post on readalongs yesterday, I’m considering taking part in Nymeth’s Middlemarch readalong. I haven’t had much luck with reading Middlemarch in the past – I attempted to read it a few years ago and gave up halfway through. I had a second attempt the following year and this time couldn’t even get past the first couple of chapters! I can’t understand why I’ve been finding it so difficult to read. The length isn’t a problem – I’ve read and enjoyed plenty of books of the same length or longer (my all-time favourite book is The Count of Monte Cristo and they don’t come much longer than that!) The fact that it was written in the 19th century is also not a problem – as most of you will know, I love Victorian classics.  I don’t think I even have a problem with George Eliot herself – I’ve read Silas Marner and although I can’t remember much about it, I know I enjoyed it (and Middlemarch is considered to be better). So what is the problem? I don’t know, and that’s why I would like to try again.

Are there any books that you have repeatedly tried to read with no success?

• One book that I am finding a success (at least so far) is the one I’m currently reading, Daphne du Maurier’s My Cousin Rachel. I had my love for Daphne du Maurier reawakened when I read I’ll Never Be Young Again earlier this month, so couldn’t resist borrowing two more of her books from the library – this one and The Scapegoat, neither of which I had read before.

• Some good news for any of you who are parents: a new study by Nevada University has found that having even 20 books in the home can have an impact on your child’s education – and having more than 500 books can lead to a child staying in education for an average of three years longer than in households with less access to literature.

• Here’s another interesting link I found this week.  John Mullan in The Guardian lists Ten of the Best Towers in Literature.

• Finally, if any Charles Dickens fans are reading this, here’s an article from the Daily Mail about his relationship with Ellen Ternan, the actress for whom he separated from his wife, Catherine.  I found it interesting as this period of Dickens’ life, including the Staplehurst Rail Disaster, was covered in Drood, which I read in March. Apparently the BBC are making a new film about Dickens and Ellen, though there’s no news on when it will be shown.