July 6, 2010 – Tales of a Book Addict

Wow, another half a year gone by! It’s really quite amazing that it always seems to roll around so quickly. Unfortunately this year I have not been reading as much as I had hoped to by this point. But overall I’m happy with where I’m at. I wish I had more time in the day to read, but that’s simply not possible for me right now.

So overall, I have finished 32 books thus far this year.

I didn’t sign up for as many reading challenges as I have in the past two years. This is probably a good thing, seeing as how I’m losing interest in challenges – I really would prefer to just see where my reading leads me.

Here’s some quick statistics regarding my challenges:

100+ Reading Challenge: 32/100 done (Ends 12/31/10)
Celebrate the Author Challenge: 4/12 done (Ends 12/31/10)
Countdown Challenge: 32/55 done (Ends 10/10/10)
Finish that Series Challenge: 0/3 done (Ends 12/31/10)
Harry Potter Reading Challenge: 1/7 done (Ends 7/31/10)
Random Reading Challenge: 10/12 done (Ends 7/31/10)
RYOB: 24/50 (Ends 12/31/10)
Thriller & Suspense Challenge: 12/12! FINISHED: 6/14/10

Okay, so I’m definitely not going to be finishing the Harry Potter Challenge. I’m not even really sure why I signed up for this challenge in the first place. Oh well. And I think I can finish the Random Reading Challenge by the end of the month, I’ve just got to start immediately! But I know I can get two more books in for that one. Otherwise I’ve got a pretty decent start on the rest of these challenges. So I should come out pretty good at the end of the year in terms of my challenges and whether or not I finish them.

So I suppose I should include some sort of a break down in terms of the books that I have read so far this year. Here goes!:

Finished: 32
Abandoned: 3
Fiction: 32
Non-Fiction: 0
New-to-Me-Author: 8
Female Authors: 8
Male Authors: 12
Books in a Series: 20
Review Books: 5
Books I Own: 24
Library Books: 3

One stat that really disappoints me is the fact that I have not read a single non-fiction book this year! It’s not like I don’t have a gazillion non-fiction books on my shelves! It’s not like I don’t like them! I need to read a couple of non-fiction books this year! That is on my immediate to-do list!!

I’m really pleased that I have been reading a lot of books that are part of a series! I love to read books in a series, I love to watch the characters grow throughout the course of the series.

I’m really looking forward to the second half of this year and seeing where my reading will take me!!!

So for my 25th birthday we took a four night cruise down to the Bahamas. We took the Carnival Fascination. And boy do we have some stories to tell!!

I was able to get a little bit of reading done during our time on vacation. I read like a mad woman in airports and during airplane rides. I will be posting a review of a Jeffery Deaver book that I finished while on vacation, and I’m about halfway through a James Patterson book. So be on the lookout for some reviews in the near future.

For anyone who has been on cruises before, you know that there is always a tight schedule that the ship is on. Any deviation from this schedule can cause some problems. Well, of course we had to hit one of those problems. Our ship apparently lost power for 4-5 hours the day before we were due to depart. Because of this power outage, our cruise left 3 hours later than expected. Since we were delayed, our itinerary had to be reversed in order for us to get back on schedule. But this also meant that we had less time in our ports.

We had originally signed up to go kayaking/snorkeling in Nassau and a jeep ride in Freeport. The shore excursion we took in Nassau was great! It was a blast!! We started out by taking a catamaran out to a certain location. Then we set off kayaking. I had never done that before and it was something of an adjustment! It was so hard to keep centered in the kayak! But it was a lot of fun! The kayaks that we had were glass bottom, so we were able to see the fish underneath us! It was great! The water was so clear, it was really amazing! We did that for about 30 minutes and then we got back on the catamaran and got our snorkeling gear on! I have been snorkeling once before, but Nathan had never been. We both loved it! We had a waterproof camera, but I haven’t had the pictures developed yet, so I can’t post any of those pictures just yet. Then we took the catamaran back to where our boat was located and we walked around and bought some souvenirs for family members before we had to be back on the ship for sailing time.

Our second stop was in Freeport. Unfortunately, our jeep ride excursion was cancelled due to the shortened time in Freeport. So we were able to book another snorkeling excursion in Freeport. But when we arrived in Freeport it was raining and almost every single shore excursion offered was cancelled because of the weather! It stunk big time. We got all the way off the ship and over to the meeting place for the shore excursion and then were told that our tour had been cancelled – ugh! So what did Nathan and I do? We got right back on the boat! That’s right – we didn’t see one bit of Freeport. It was probably silly of us to do that, but by that point we were so frustrated with all the issues that we had run into with the jeep ride being cancelled first and then the snorkeling being cancelled because of the weather that we were so fed up with everything.

The boat itself was alright. It was a little on the small side for my personal tastes – I prefer the larger ships, the larger the better in my opinion! It was a little crowded though for the size of the ship and the amount of people that they had crammed on there. The layout was kind of funky too. And my biggest gripe – there was really only one pool. I put it that way because there was the main pool and then there was the water slide, but the water slide area didn’t have any type of a pool around it, it was actually a lot of wasted space if you want my opinion. But on the one day at sea, sitting by the pool is pretty much the only thing to do. But there wasn’t a single deck chair to be had. So we were a little bit bored on our day at sea.

Overall the experience was definitely interesting. It was a little bit frustrating at times. I will never take another Carnival cruise again, my opinion of them is not much to be said about anymore. I realize that very few vacations will ever be perfect, and to be perfectly honest, the Bahamas is not my personal favorite place to visit anyway, but our vacation could have been better. I feel bad for Nathan since it was his first cruise and his experience was not what is normal for cruising and was a little bit negative. But that doesn’t mean we aren’t already planning our next vacation 🙂 Alaska, watch out! We are coming to visit you next year!

Here are a few pictures from our trip: