Tuesday, November 25, 2014

Thanksgiving Preparations

2aLast week I messed up my status post, but I also barely read anything so not much lost. I'm finding that writing a book really interferes with my reading time.

On the bright side, everything that I do read seems quite good by comparison with my own work, so there's that silver lining. I should have saved up the worst drek I need for my challenges.

Somewhere in here I've also got to find time to cook about 1/10 of a Thanksgiving meal. I think I'm responsible for 3 dishes, while my sister makes everything else. Well, my brother-in-law contributes some things, and my niece is stepping up to the plate a bit (see what I did there?). Also, I shall probably force my son to make a pie, even though he's technically not eating with us. He'll be here this weekend, though, so leftovers could be in his future.

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:
  • William Shakespeare's Star Wars, Ian Doescher
  • After I'm Gone, Laura Lippman
  • Yaqui Delgado Wants to Kick Your Ass, Meg Medina
  • Thorn Fall, Lindsay Buroker
  • The Bronte Sisters, by Catherine Reef
  • Dark Triumph, Robin LaFevers
  • Shards of Time, Lynn Flewelling
I think I did these last week:
  • My Side of the Mountain
  • Shifting Shadows
What am I currently reading? 22 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.
  • Wide Open, Deborah Coates. NOOK. Someone in South Dakota sees ghosts.
  • Conjured, Sarah Beth Durst. Cybils pick.
  • Pantomime, Laura Lam. Cybils pick.
  • Slow Reading in a Hurried Age, David Mikics. Book about the pleasures of reading. As a converted, I like being preached to.
  • Boys Wanted, Flynn Meaney. Boy shortage in a Wisconsin town.
  • The Shadow Throne, Jennifer Nielsen. Third in a series -- my kids read this months ago.
  • 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. 
  • 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. 
  • 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. 
  • The Jury, Stephen Adler. 
  • Reading and Learning to Read, Jo Anne Vacca. How scattershot strategies aren't that effective.
  • Nerds, Michael Buckley. 
  • Out to Canaan, Jan Karon. The bad mayoral candidate has won the election.
  • The Pickwick Papers, Charles Dickens.
What's up next?  Still starting a book every other day, until I get this library backlog under control. So reading nothing from my shelves :-(. I'm choosing books I've borrowed that have to go back soon.

Monday: Let's Explore Diabetes With Owls
Tuesday:
Wednesday: Hawk
Thursday:
Friday: Mind Games or possibly Minion
Saturday:
Sunday: The Turning Season

For my NOOK, I have The Summer Prince waiting.

2014 Challenge Progress:
  1. Cybils: 68/77. Starting to look like I might finish.
  2. Where Am I Reading? 37/51. We are in crisis mode here. Anybody have ideas for Missouri, North Dakota, or New Jersey? I've found books for Arkansas, Wisconsin, and South Dakota -- I just have to read them.
  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.

Tuesday, November 11, 2014

Falling, Flailing, and Fictioning

2aIt'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.

Monday, November 3, 2014

Friends, Romans, Archeologists

2aThis week ended with an abundance of candy. The boys dressed up as a Roman senator and Indiana Jones, and went off gathering goodies with their cousin the Dark Angel. The high schooler carefully shaved before heading out because he didn't want to look too old.

Hey, my rule is, if you wear a costume, you can trick-or-treat. I decorated up my house with the jack-o-lanterns and all the clearance Halloween stuff I've accumulated (dangling skeleton, glowing skull stakes, eyeball and spiderweb lights. I think I hit it about right when I heard a four year old explaining that it wasn't too scary because he was very brave. So I have him an extra piece of candy. We get lots of kids, from the toddlers who toss aside their pumpkin basket to get their hands on the candy I'm offering, to the slacker teens who won't dress up. Although I always ask, because I'm open to the idea that I'm just missing the joke. After all, how was I to know that those kids were dressed like Nerds? I thought that was the style these days.

I'm off to sign up to see what everyone else is reading lately at bookjourney's and Teach Mentor Texts lists.
  • I'd Tell You I Love You But Then I'd Have to Kill You (Gallagher Girl 1), Ally Carter. This was a lot of fun -- I may get some of the rest. Thanks to my elementary book club for the recommendation.
  • Wrinkle In Time, Madeline L'Engle. My family book club picked this. It has held up well.
  • Magic City: Recent Spells. Many good short stories.
  • The Heiress Effect, Courtney Milan. Fun romance, and I want to see some of those dresses.
  • Uzumaki 1-3, Junji Ito. This Cybils pick was much too creepy for me, and I also have problems with the depiction of women in it.
What am I currently reading? 21 books! Argh, I am back on two pages. I will try to finish a few of them quickly.  My currently reading list is now on up-to-date on GOODREADS.
  • Alif the Unseen, G. Willow Wilson. Last month's Sword and Laser pick. I'm always behind.
  • Boy on the Wooden Box, Leon Leyson. Cybils book about the Holocaust.
  • Kiss of Steel, Bec McMaster. NOOK. Vaginal Fantasy alt from last month. I'm not really liking it much.
  • Pleasure Unbound, Larissa Ione. Very old Vaginal Fantasy pick. I think. I hope I am laughing in the right spots.
  • Thorn Fall, Lindsay Buroker. NOOK. I have to say that Buroker does urban fantasy just as well as she does her steam-punk stuff set in a different world.
  • Codex Born, Jim C. Hines. Second book in a series where magicians get their power from books, so it's hard to see how it can possibly go wrong. I liked the first one, so I bought this one.
  • 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.  They get to the island and take a bath.
  • 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. I've never read anything by this romance icon.
  • 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 eager take the chance to beat him up. I need somebody to root for here!
  • Out to Canaan, Jan Karon. The rich guy brought home a wife.
  • 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 think my the New Year I will have this under control, just in time for three month drought where I try to get no new books.  I picked a book for it's location, a book recommended by my elementary school book club, a Cybils finalist, and the Sword & Laser October pick.

Monday: 
Tuesday: Aunt Dimity and the Lost Prince
Wednesday
Thursday: Shifting Shadows
Friday: 
Saturday: The Bronte Sisters
Sunday:

For my NOOK, I have Dark Triumph ready to start.

NOOK books:

2014 Challenge Progress:
  1. Cybils: 62/77. Still need to finish nonfiction YA.
  2. Where Am I Reading? 36/51. We are in crisis mode here.
  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: Fifteen boxes into square 2.
  6. Gentle Spectrum Challenge complete!.
  7. Small Fry Safari: 8/8. All done! Except for the reviewing...
  8. PoC Speculative Fiction: 23/5: Umazi counts.
  9. Best of the Best 2012: 52/25.  I am stalled.
  10. Reading My Library: Library temporarily closed, so on hiatus.