Falling, Flailing, and Fictioning

It's a good thing that my house is full of sugar, because I have commenced NaNoWriMo-ing. For people have have spent their lives among sensible people and so have no idea what this means, I am spending November writing a novel of 50,000 words. So are approximately a zillion other people. It's a Thing!

I've tried it before, but this is the first time I've made it past the first week. My secret? Abandon all standards! My book is awful. I ran out of plot thousands of words ago, so my characters just stand around and talk until I figure out how to get them to move. But the whole point of the exercise is to get in the habit of writing, and already I am getting better of noticing that I am writing myself into a dead end. So I think I'm learning something, even if what I have at the end will not be an undiscovered masterpiece. I have hopes about the undiscovered bit. Please all the heavens it remains undiscovered.

All this novel-writing is making it harder to keep up with my reading, although I do have to finish about thirty more books between now and the end of the year. I hope someone has stuck in a dozen or so leap days (weeks?) somewhere in December.

I'm off to sign up to see what everyone else is reading lately at bookjourney's and Teach Mentor Texts lists.

Finished this week:

• My Side of the Mountain
• Shifting Shadows

What am I currently reading? 21 books! Unfortunately, I'm nowhere near finishing anything and I will start a new book tomorrow, so I'm stuck on two pages. ARGH!  My currently reading list is now on up-to-date on GOODREADS.

• The Shadow Throne, Jennifer Nielsen. Third in a series -- my kids read this months ago.
• Dark Triumph, Robin LeFevers. NOOK. Another Cybils pick. My tenth grader liked it enough to order up the third.
• The Bronte Sisters: The Brief Lives of Charlotte, Emily, and Anne, Catherine Reef. Another Cybils pick -- this is the last of the YA nonfiction.
• Alif the Unseen, G. Willow Wilson. Last month's Sword and Laser pick. I'm always behind. So far I'm not sure I like the main character. 
• Thorn Fall, Lindsay Buroker. NOOK. I'm going to go back and buy the first one, because I'm having a lot of fun with this.
• Codex Born, Jim C. Hines. 
• Dead Man Walking, Sister Helen Prejean. From my shelves.
• A Matter for Men, David Gerrold. No change.
• Anna of Byzantium, Tracy Barett. No change.
• About That Night, Norah McClintock.  No change. 
• Rogue, Michael Z. Williamson. 
• Wildflower, Alecia Whitaker. 
• Tell the Wolves I'm Home, Carol Rifka Brunt. No change.
• Yonder Comes the Other End of Time, Suzette Elgin. No change. 
• Shards of Time, Lynn Flewelling.  The princess has been kidnapped! Can Alec find a way to the land of the dead to save her? Also, Seregil's hair has been ruined! Shades of Nightvale.
• Tinker, Wen Spencer. I do enjoy this book. Windwolf saves her from a bad date. 
• Inkheart, Cornelia Funke. No change.

Reading intermittently, and deliberately slowly. These never change much:

• Lost Enchantment, Barbara Cartland. That sweet young thing has no idea that the nice man is the duke.
• The Jury, Stephen Adler. Why intelligent people are tossed off juries. 
• Reading and Learning to Read, Jo Anne Vacca. How scattershot strategies aren't that effective.
• Nerds, Michael Buckley. The protagonist is still a jerk. The kids he bullied eagerly take the chance to beat him up. I need somebody to root for here!
• Out to Canaan, Jan Karon. Evil rental shenanigans!
• The Pickwick Papers, Charles Dickens. Sam's dad is widowed.

What's up next?  Still starting a book every other day, until I get this library backlog under control. I picked two Cybils books (that's the challenge I really want to finish), a book club read, and I'm knocking off Wisconsin with a borrowed book. So reading nothing from my shelves :-(.

Monday: 
Tuesday: Slow Reading in a Hurried Age
Wednesday: 
Thursday: After He's Gone
Friday: 
Saturday: Pantomime
Sunday:

For my NOOK, I have Yaqui Delgado Wants to Kick Your Ass ready to start.

2014 Challenge Progress:

1. Cybils: 64/77. Still need to finish nonfiction YA.
2. Where Am I Reading? 36/51. We are in crisis mode here. Currently reading Arizona, and have a Wisconsin up this week.
3. Alphabetically Inclined: 19/26. Only books from my shelves count, and all my library books are due! Still need EIJ V XYZ.
4. What's In a Name?: 7/7. Still have to review everything. Ha!
5. Book Bingo: Decided to be happy with one square.
6. Gentle Spectrum Challenge complete!.
7. Small Fry Safari: 8/8. All done! Except for the reviewing...
8. PoC Speculative Fiction: 23/5: Nothing new.
9. Best of the Best 2012: 52/25.  I am stalled.
10. Reading My Library: Library temporarily closed, so on hiatus.