Reading - Sam Hardacre

Reading

A collection of 29 posts

2024 Reading Challenge

December 2024 books

I feel like I finished strong in December. Those who've been following all year will know I've had a few months where only 2 or 3 books were read. I feel I should point out that two of these books are very short reads but maybe

2024 Reading Challenge

November 2024 books

Well this fell a little short of my prediction but nevermind. I did read more comics but they were short ones which I don't log in Goodreads so they don't appear here. I'm also reading a bunch of different books at once so progress

2024 Reading Challenge

October 2024 books

I made a bit more of a conscious effort to read a bit more in October. Not exactly challenging reads, most were "read in one sitting" kind of books but there was still a lot to enjoy. I think this might be the first month entirely made up

2024 Reading Challenge

September 2024 books

Another terrible month for reading. I remarked on my August post that my free time has been taken up with comic work and looking back over the year, that definitely rings true. The first half of the year, my comic work was scatty and inconsistent whereas my reading was very

2024 Reading Challenge

August 2024 books

I'm getting worse with these updates. My general mood for blogging has waned a bit these last couple of months. The colder, duller weather usually kicks me into a more creative gear so perhaps more posts will come between now and New Year. My reading has been suffering

2024 Reading Challenge

July 2024 books

Just realised I've not yet posted last month's update. Had a lot going on so far this month so there might not even be any finished books in August! Ellerbisms, Marc Ellerby I first came across this book about 5 years ago when my buddy Xander

June 2024 books

Not sure if it's the heat which (finally) arrived or what but it's been a slow month for finishing books in June, particularly the latter half. I've started a few books this month so I have been reading but they'll creep over

May 2024 books

With the weather picking up a bit, we've had weekends away and stuff to do in the garden so I've not had that much time to read really. I'm still ahead of target for this year, I'll likely hit 30 books before

April 2024 books

J.M.W. Turner: The World of Light and Colour, Michael Bockemühl I used to love my Art History classes at college but we never looked at any of Turner's work. My only exposure to Turner is through various documentaries I've watched over the years and

March 2024 books

Kodi, Jared Cullum I first came across Jared Cullum randomly on YouTube a couple of years ago with his video on his process for making comics with watercolour was recommended by the algorithm. It just so happened to be coming up to Christmas at the time so I put Kodi

February 2024 books

It's been a slow month in terms of number of books finished this month but the quality has been high so it's been a good month for reading. Dune, Frank Herbert My friend bought me this book some time last year after hearing I'd

January 2024 books

Rather than leaving a round up of all the books I've read until the end of the year, I'm going to try giving them a quick write-up on a monthly basis. They're not all going to be in-depth book reviews, just general parting thoughts.

My reading year, 2023

Completely nicking the idea from Austin Kleon, right down to the post title and format. Here are all the books I managed to read in 2023. I don't think I'm going to do a break down of each book. I'll still be writing this

Hooking them in...

My youngest son has been obsessed with a show called Spidey and his Amazing Friends for a good while now. If you're unaware of it, it's basically a Spider-man show aimed at audiences too young to read or watch the films. Recently, Disney+ also dropped a

Bound to books

A discussion in the OnTheSide Slack community was prompted by a post by Sam King about getting rid (or keeping hold) of physical media like CDs and DVDs. The discussion also turned to books with some members getting rid of books after reading them but I really struggle to do

Reading goal for 2023

I didn't do too badly in 2022 for reading, at least when it comes to comics. I had a steady flow of reading material throughout the year but I wasn't really paying any attention to logging what I'd read and when so aside from

20 in 2020

In the years prior to 2020, my reading habit had taken a bit of a nose-dive. I'd pick up a book every so often and work through it, but I wasn't reading nearly as much as I wanted to. With 2020 being a nice round number,

The Count of Monte Cristo

The Count of Monte Cristo

Last year, I planned to read more [https://blog.nocturnalmonkey.com/2018-reading-list/] and failed miserably. I used to read a lot and the last few years it's tailed off a bit so this year, I wanted to try again and not fail. This time is helped by Lu

2018 Reading List

2017 has been a shocking year for my reading. Other than comics, I've not finished reading a single book this year and I'm not at all happy about that. Admittedly, I've been busier drawing commissions than previous years so I've not been

Staying relevant

Last night saw a group of creative types congregate in Huddersfield for another HuddsDigitals [http://huddsdigitals.com/] meetup. As a change to the usual format (casual meet in a bar over drinks), we saw ourselves involved in a more structured panel/group discussion talking about keeping up-to-date in a fast

User Interface Design

One click, big difference

I've been an avid Kindle user since Luisa [https://twitter.com/pooisa] first bought me one for Valentine's last year. I started with a 3rd gen [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_Kindle#Third_generation] model until earlier this year when I broke it [http://instagram.

Self-improvement

Life after RSS...

Back in 2007, I bought my first MacBook. I remember spending an hour or so that morning setting up the apps I needed, dropping some music into iTunes and adding email accounts to Mail. I discovered that here in the Mail app was where RSS feeds were dropped. I immediately

Self-improvement

Challenge for August

I'm very happy with the progress I've made in the last year, going from reading next to nothing at all to reading something, be it articles or part of a book, every day. As I'm a glutton for punishment and feel I need to

Releasing the dam

Over the last few months, I've been lagging behind in my reading of web related articles and watching of past conference videos. I've been saving many of them up for occasions when I need to kill some time which, until recently, rarely came along. Since starting

Self-improvement

Marked improvements

I've never been much of a reader. I've always liked reading but growing up I had a very illustrative, visual disposition which meant I spent less time working on my reading skills. As a result, when I hit my mid-teens and started to pick books up,