The September-October book piles, aka I need a new reading strategy.

So I pretty much bummed around the house the entire month of September... which really isn't that big of a deal, considering the fact that it's what I've been doing for the last three months. What's surprising, though, is the dismal number of books I've read the previous month - four novels, of which I'm gonna cheat with and say I read one per week.

It's a bit of a let-down, really; this abysmal  reading turnout has prompted me to ask the quintessential question for every bum out there: I have all the free time in the world, yet not enough time to do the stuff I wanna do. Where has my time gone?

So far, I've only been able to post one book review and author interview, while the rest are saved as drafts, waiting for me to publish them. I honestly don't know what I  am waiting for exactly, or why I'm even waiting. I feel kinda lost in (or is it with?) my reading, if you know what I mean.

My September reads are not too shabby, if I may say so myself. Of the four, three are review copies sent to me by their publishers, while the other one is a giveaway I won from 2 months ago and only recently got around to reading. Room is a finalist for this year's Man Booker Prize (fingers crossed!), and Billie Girl won the Leapfrog Fiction Contest last year. Oh, I even got included in author Robin Spano's virtual book tour for Dead Politician Society! Expect their reviews sometime this week.

• A Map of Home by Randa Jarrar
• Dead Politician Society by Robin Spano
• Billie Girl by Vickie Weaver
• Room by Emma Donoghue

I'm kinda excited with this month's book pile, mainly because I've decided to turn over a new leaf and organize my life, even though I'm not doing much at the moment (perks of not being in school). I'm not really big on the whole organizing scheme of things and setting schedules for myself - I prefer winging stuff, and needless to say it hasn't done much for me recently (more on that on my personal blog). For one, I've set reading goals for myself, set some deadlines (my biggest weakness), and even scheduled to post one review a day (since I'm still hell-bent on posting reviews of books I've read for the entire year). My main goal this year is to read at least seven more books in order to cap off my Project 52 list and allow me to work on my A-Z Reading Challenge next month (yes, I'm actually thinking ahead, so stop snorting).

My October to-be-read pile includes: my second Erma Bombeck book (the first one being A Marriage Made in Heaven: Or Too Tired for an Affair, which I randomly grabbed from one of our book shelves sometime during high school); the first book whose passages I will attempt to highlight as a step to writing better reviews (more about this dilemma later); an ebook I won over at LibraryThing last month but never got around to reading much because, well, it's an ebook; and a bunch of egalleys I got from NetGalley and I'm dying to read but can't because the internet holds too many distractions and I have the attention span of a cute little hummingbird.

That's pretty much it. Check back a month from now and see if I ever got around to achieving said goals. :)