This week’s prompt from Ok, Let’s Read is about where you read:

Where do you spend the majority of your time reading? Are you the kind of person who can fall asleep reading in bed? Do you read in public? Why or why not? Where would be your fantasy reading location?

I’m not really the sort to pick a place and stick to it — I read too much for that. But there are trends, of course. I read propped up near the front desk when I’m on my clinic shift; I read on the bus on the fifth seat back if I’m not getting travel sick; when I’m at my parents, I read in my desk chair with my feet on the bin; in Cardiff, I mostly end up reading sprawled out on my bed. Sometimes, when I want to ignore my computer, phone, etc, I go into the spare room and flop across that bed.

In the winter, I can often be found reading while huddled up to my portable gas fire. Now that is lovely.

I don’t fall asleep reading in bed; I do find that I’m getting sleepy, of course, but I’ve never woken up ages later with the book on my face or anything. There’s always a point where I realise I have to sleep now, and then I put the book aside. It helps that I have to wear glasses even to read, I’m that short-sighted, so I have to remember to take my glasses off and put them away safely before I can sleep comfortably.

I do read in public, wherever I can. I usually have my ereader now, which probably puts a stop to potential conversations with random people about what I’m reading, but normally I resented the interruption anyway. I do like heading off into the woods nearby and finding myself a quiet spot: last summer it was a bench under some enormous conifers. That was public, if a curious raven counts as an audience. I haven’t had chance to go back this year, but there’s another spot I’m thinking of higher up the mountain, just a little off the path, which is in a nice patch of sun — probably better than the shady spot under the conifers now we’re getting into autumn.

One thing I would quite like is to be able to just take a book and go sit in a castle to read. Castell Coch isn’t that far away, but I’m not sure how they’d feel about me commandeering a window seat near one of the arrow slits and putting my feet on the stonework.

This week’s theme from Ok, Let’s Read is about covers:

Are you someone who likes your books to look very uniform or do you usually not care to much about that? How do you react when there’s a cover change in the middle of a series? What are your opinions on movie-tie-in covers with the actors from the movie adaptation? Which book covers are your favorites?

I’m not too bothered about covers. It does annoy me when I’ve been collecting a series for a long time and then the covers change — Robin Hobb, sorry, I’m looking at you. I had nine books and then the covers changed, what’s with that? Also, I quite liked my old set of Neil Gaiman books: I sometimes find the old editions still on sale, but there’s a lot more variation in the covers now. Probably because he’s written more children’s books, graphic stories like Truth is a Cave in the Black Mountains, but still, rar! But it doesn’t bother me too much, especially when I’m collecting the series in ebook. I’m pretty resigned to it, I think: I can be quite obsessive about other things, and it’s not particularly good for me!

Movie tie-in covers… I’m not a big fan, because I usually think they’re not as nice as the original covers, and sometimes I am so not in favour of the casting, etc. Especially when it’s white-washed. I don’t know if they ever made tie-in covers for the Earthsea TV series where Ged was white, but I wouldn’t touch that with a barge pole.

My favourite book covers tend to be ones with really pretty fantasy art. Kinuko Craft and Thomas Canty do good stuff. Just pulling from the covers I already have loaded on here, here’s some Kinuko Craft and Thomas Canty…