The idea is delightfully simple: for 30 days, you post once a day in response to a book-themed question. That’s it. No essays, no footnotes, no need to summon the ghost of Shakespeare, just honest answers, curious reflections, and maybe a few cheeky confessions about your reading habits. I have decided to take part this year, and since I picked a month with 31 days (I know it would have made more sense to use a 30 day one) I am using March 1st to explain what I am doing.

Each day brings a new prompt: favourite characters, memorable endings, guilty pleasures, and the books that made you weep, rage, or fall in love with the written word. It’s a gentle nudge to celebrate your literary life, one post at a time.

So why not give it a go? Dust off your bookshelf, sharpen your wit, and join the challenge. Thirty days. Thirty questions. One slightly eccentric bookworm’s journey through the pages.

DAY 21. – Book you tell people you’ve read, but haven’t (or haven’t actually finished).

Today is an absolute copout, and I am owning it. There is no book that I claim to have read when I have not. There is no secret shelf of shame where unfinished novels gather dust while I pretend to be well read and sophisticated. If I fail to finish a book, I will cheerfully admit it to anyone who asks. In fact, earlier in this challenge I confessed that I abandoned one of the Wheel of Time books and have been pretending to read it for years. It sits there, judging me, while I remain convinced that it is just painfully dull.

If there is ever a book I feel I ought to read in order to fit in with a group, then I will simply read it. I have endured some truly dreadful books in my time. I have also been part of book clubs with tastes that can only be described as questionable. The Vaginal Fantasy Book Club springs to mind, as does Sunday Beer, which was less a book club and more a social experiment in how far enthusiasm can carry you through bad literature.

I also work in IT and I am a man, which means I proudly uphold the ancient tradition of never reading instructions or manuals. If something breaks, I will figure it out through trial, error, and mild swearing, not through documentation.

So no, there is no book I pretend to have read. If I have not read it, I will say so. If I have abandoned it, I will say that too. And if it was terrible, I will absolutely tell you all about it.