July – Winter’s middle month, with two weeks of school holidays at its beginning. So, numbers should really be higher than usual, one would think…
#aww2019: 4 books
Book Bingo with Mrs B’s Book Reviews and The Book Muse: 2 books
The Classics Eight: 1 book – break out the bubbly, she’s finally started this challenge!
Total books read in July: 15
I honestly expected a higher total than this. It feels like I’ve been reading all the time, yet this is only three more books than what I usually read during busy working months. Shifting my focus from the numbers to the actual books read, I am pretty happy with the variety of what I’ve read and I also managed to read a few titles that have been on my TBR for a while. And of course, I read a classic! There will be another one down for next month because of #rebeccabuddyread, so at last, I am making inroads with this challenge. I think I might have watched too much TV in the holidays, that always cuts into my best of intentions for steady reading. I might need to do another Spring break no TV challenge this year.
Until next month…😊📚☕
Theresa Smith Writes 
I really don’t find it meaningful to compare the number of books read: some are long, and some are short, and some short books can be more difficult to read than long books that can be romped through.
But also, consider this: what does ‘too much TV mean?’ did you enjoy watching TV? When I was flat on my back with a recurrence of a whiplash injury from 30 years ago, I could not enjoy reading because there wasn’t any way to comfortably hold a book for long. So I watched the entire series (so far) of Game of Thrones. And I really enjoyed it!
A challenge is something you do for enjoyment. If the challenge makes you feel pressured, then maybe it’s not doing for you what you wanted it to do…
LikeLiked by 1 person
I’m starting to agree with you about the comparison thing. The challenges themselves I enjoy, it’s the monitoring of totals that makes me antsy of late because I have this tendency to compare, and as you point out, there are so many variables involved that make this a less than ideal habit to form.
For me, too much TV is spending all day watching. My ideal watching schedule if I’m on holidays is an episode or two each day. But in the first week of the July holidays, I was keeping a migraine at bay so had pain on and off all week, so really, reading was not ideal, hence the TV watching. I did enjoy what I watched though, so that’s nice.
I didn’t mind my September school holidays TV ban last year though. It’s only two weeks, but it allowed me to really refocus on reading uninterrupted and also to read some titles that I had been itching to get to. I’ll see what I do closer to the time.
LikeLike
Glad you enjoyed Normal People!
Following on from what Lisa says – I think things like a short TV-ban can be useful for refocusing/ appreciating/ reminding yourself of other things important in life (regardless of whether you ‘like’ TV or whatever else it is your banning). For example, I had a book-buying ban a few years ago – I like buying books! I like visiting book shops! I like reading new releases! I like discovering authors new-to-me! But I also had a huge, huge stack of unread books… So my ban was a good way of focusing on and rediscovering what I already had. I wasn’t denying what I liked, just re-directing it.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I did the TV ban last year in the September school holidays and it worked really well for me. I had slipped into a Winter slump of binge watching TV and not reading much, but I missed the reading, all of these lovely books were beckoning. But during that two week ban, I felt like my focus was renewed and for that, I consider it a success.
I plan on reading Conversations with Friends now too. I like her writing style.
LikeLike