Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ

Hi everyone!

Hope you are all doing well. Just working and crafting over here. Going to try to get Christmas cards made this weekend!

Book club! Please read!

I know a lot of you are on long hold lists for Addie LaRue. Now is about the time I'd usually start the process for picking the next book for January. What are everyone's thoughts? I figure we have 3 options:

a) Pick a new book as usual. Perhaps the next will be easier to get and you can read/participate while waiting for the Addie hold to come up. Also moves it along for those who finished/weren't interested.

b) Wait until January to start picking a book, starting a bit late and letting people finish up.

c) Skip a first quarter book, pick a new book in March so the schedule still stays about the same.

Whichever is chosen, all threads stay open for people to participate in at a later date. So it's never too late to join!

New book challenge

One of our members, Daniele, mod of the Book Nerds with No Shelf Control has made a reading challenge! It's a two part challenge, each part has 50 prompts and they are grouped into sections so you can choose just how much you want to challenge yourself. Challenge is posted within the group! I can send a link if anyone has trouble finding it.

Popsugar has also posted their prompt list for those who do it, I've been poring through it getting ideas!

No pressure to join challenges, i just find them fun and they give me ideas of what to read next. I get indecision a lot!

So books i finished this week? Zero! I know, it's very weird for me. But it's a combination of the book I'm working on is 700+ pages, combined with just being very distractible this week. Keep wandering off when I sit down to read.

Still currently reading: European Travel for the Monstrous Gentlewoman

still doing audio book for A Gathering of Shadows, haven't been able to concentrate on that either.

Hopefully have more to report next week haha.

QOTW:

Are you making any reading goals for the new year? Doesn't have to be challenge related, could be strictly personal.

I am going to do Popsugar again, likely Read Harder unless I hate the prompts. I'll probably fill in the Book Nerds Daniele has worked on, as they overlap with what I'm reading, and see how well I do with my general reading. I don't generally make specific number goals, although i always set my Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ reading challenge to 150 because I know that's a pretty safe number for me, without me hitting it halfway through the year. I read a lot of novellas, some middle grade, Graphic novels, and those are all fast and inflate numbers for me.

Just one finish for me this week: The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue. I loved it. I haven't posted on the book club thread yet because I'm still gathering my thoughts and letting it sink in. I thought it was beautiful.

I'm currently reading Cocaine Blues which will be my Popsugar book set in the 1920s. I'm also still working on the audio of The Hallowed Hunt, my Popsugar book with a bird on the cover.

QOTW: I'm probably going to do Popsugar again this year, but for the TBR advanced prompts, I'm going to try to fill them not from my larger list on Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ, but from the lost list of library holds I've been suspending for about 6 months, so I could finish this year's Popsugar challenge. :D Though I'm not super-excited by the 2021 DNF prompt. I might dip into my Stalled shelf here on Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ as opposed to my DNF shelf - Stalled is where I put books I didn't hate, but had to put down due to time, wrong mood, etc.

I might see how many I can fill in for the Book Nerds list from what I'm already reading, but I don't think I'll have the time to finish two separate challenges. I don't have as much reading time, especially during the week.

For Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ, I usually set my goal for the year at 50 to start, but like you said, Sheri, I kind of inflate my numbers a little by logging short stories, manga, and graphic novels. The number of non-graphic novels and novellas I read in a year is usually around 50.

Since I do multiple challenges, I have zero problems using one book across multiple challenges if it fits haha. (I don't usually double dip within the same challenge). In fact I'll usually purposefully try to find books that work across. Especially if there's two prompts that are pretty similar. Like I think read harder had "a book by or about a refugee" and Popsugar had "a book by or about a refugee or immigrant" so I made sure to read one by/about a refugee just so it could fit for both.

No comment on book club, since my hold already came in. Whatever everyone else wants to do is fine.

I used up my November Hoopla borrows with two short comics, A Quick & Easy Guide to Queer & Trans Identities and A Quick & Easy Guide to They/Them Pronouns. There wasn't a whole lot of new information in these, but they're cute. I wondered before starting them who the target audience was, because if you're open-minded enough to pick up this sort of book, you're likely to already have some clue about the contents. It seemed like Identities might be intended for queer or questioning young people, and I think the audience for Pronouns may be best described by this quote from it: "if education fails and folks are being jerks, you can just throw this book in their face." Like, it could be used to preempt the excuse of ignorance, but I'm not sure it would change anyone's behavior.

I don't normally mention rereads here, because usually it's just the odd short story before bed, but I just reread °ä³óé°ù¾± and feel compelled to mention it because of the next item. It's one of the few books from college that I actually kept on purpose (as opposed to being unable to sell it back to the campus store). It's good for wallowing in a sort of cozy ennui, like in winter during a pandemic.

My last book this week was The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue. I enjoyed this one more than I expected to but will keep further thoughts to the book club threads. I don't think it's a spoiler to say that °ä³óé°ù¾± is mentioned, so that was a fun book club coincidence.

QOTW: I don't really do goals or challenges. I joined the Book Nerds group and I think I might just see what prompts fit each of the books I read, double-dipping included, and see how that goes. If I get close maybe I'll try to complete it. I try not to pay too much attention to the number of books I read, as I feel I might fall prey to inflationism and start prioritizing quantity over quality. I also suspect that if I did challenges I'd just fill as many prompts as possible with mystery novels, and instead of diversifying my reading I'd end up doing the opposite. (Like, Poirot was a refugee, but that might not be in the spirit of the prompts Sheri mentioned.)

That’s funny, right before I read Addie, my book club read life after life. Which was also mentioned in Addie haha

I loved Life after Life!

No strong opinion on the group read schedule - I'm one of those on a long waiting list but I don't object to going forward and will not hesitate to go back and comment on old threads!

I've been in full comfort re-reading mode this week - I finished nothing new. I'm up to Storm Rising in my Mercedes Lackey marathon. I just love these books for comfort reads - everyone gets a happy ever after, even characters who die come back as helpful spirits, bad guys either get reformed or defeated... it's a nice escape :)

QOTW: I just requested to join the FB challenge but I usually don't set reading goals. One more thing to keep track of feels like more work than fun. I'm just happy if I can find the time to read!

Two finishes this week:

Relic, which filled the prompt for an author who shared my initials. Think of it as Jurassic Park or Predator, but inside a museum. Fairly gory. I was pleasantly surprised.

The Marrow Thieves, which filled my last prompt for the 52 Book Club challenge, book by an indigenous author. This was a quick, enjoyable read, despite the grim dystopia of the story. And if anyone is doing the Book Nerds challenge and douple-dipping, this book checks off A DOZEN prompts!

Since my hold did come in for Addie LaRue, I will go with whatever the group prefers.

QOTW: When it comes to challenges, I track about a half dozen, and complete half of those in any given year. This year, I finished three (One PHRC, ATY, and the 52 Book Club). Like Sheri, I don't double-dip within a challenge, but I certainly do across challenges.

This year, I finished 60+52+52 prompts with 75 books. I doubt I'll finish any more, seeing as I still have 11 Popsugar prompts and 9 Book Riot prompts still unfilled.

Next year, I'd be foolish not to put my own challenge to the test, but I've only ever reached 100 books once. I've averaged about 80 books for the last 3 years. (That said, I'll still be tracking ATY, Popsugar, and the 52 Book Club, and we'll see what the Read Harder prompts look like next week, hopefully.)

I do hope people don't decide not to participate just because they are unlikely to finish. You can adapt it to your reading pace, whether by double-dipping, just doing the original challenge or just the sequel (50), just a section (25), or even just a bundle of five prompts within a section, like a single row on a bingo card!

In any case, massive thanks to everyone who has shown an interest in my little challenge. I threw it together on a whim, and I'll admit I got very nervous that I would release it into the void, to the resounding sound of crickets! At the very least, your encouragements helped me complete my first creative project in all of 2020, so thank you thank you thank you!

Daniele wrote: "Two finishes this week:

Relic, which filled the prompt for an author who shared my initials. Think of it as Jurassic Park or Predator, but inside a museum. Fairly gory. I was pleasant..."
Thanks for doing the challenge, it looks fun!

i finished my Supernatural novel, Joyride, and am now reading Warriors: Darkness Within.

book clubs and i don't always align properly. i do have Addie LaRue on my list of books to read, but i'm still working on the books that i suspended back in november. i don't want to put too many on hold, because then i'll get them all at once, and i can't do that anymore. so usually the book club is reading the book and then i finally get around to it XD

QotW: my goal every year is to read more than i read last year. this year i've read 35 so far, i may get another one in by the end of the year, we shall see. so if i read 35 this year, my goal is 36 for next. if anyone looks at my shelves - which are the years i read the books - it's quite obvious which year i started crocheting! (hint: in 2011 i read 110 books, in 2012 it was only 52!)

Trystan, the nice thing about this book club is there’s no real set time :) even if a new book is started you can go back and comment. All the threads for any book we’ve read are open still

Sheri wrote: "Trystan, the nice thing about this book club is there’s no real set time :) even if a new book is started you can go back and comment. All the threads for any book we’ve read are open still"
thanks! this is a great thing to know!
....and now that i know it, will i actually remember it? XD

I have no finishes this week.

I'm still reading the essay book Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants. I'm liking it more. It really is a collection of different essays by the author. Few chapters have any relation to any other chapter. But I'm much farther along that I expected to get when I started.

I'm still just in the beginning of the Expanse book 5, Nemesis Games. Not much has happened yet.

For the book club, I'll go with the flow. I'm still #46 on the list at my library. I will try to remember the threads whenever I actually get it. However I believe a week ago I was #59, so I'm moving up the list.

QOTW:
I am going to try Daniele's challenge. I have no idea what that will mean for me. I feel similar to Shel that I don't usually set any reading goals and don't want more work. I was hopeful that many of the prompts seem like they'll fit my reading, which is a bunch of non-fiction. These prompts feel pretty flexible. I'm going to give it a go but not add stress to myself either.

For those not wanting to stress: Daniele’s reading challenge covers so many points I think you could pretty easily just read what you want, and see if it fits a prompt. Could just do that and at the end of the year, see how many you fill on your own. If you want to stretch just a little could always look as you fill and say “oh I’ve already filled all but two in this group, I’ll purposefully fill the last two to complete that section� etc.

Sheri wrote: "For those not wanting to stress: Daniele’s reading challenge covers so many points I think you could pretty easily just read what you want, and see if it fits a prompt. Could just do that and at th..."

Yes - I took a look at the prompts and I think that's what I'll probably do! :)

Read Harder just dropped their prompt list too, if anyone else is a challenge addict (maybe just me?). I like this one because it really makes me stretch. There's always a few prompts I side eye but I try them. Don't always work, but figure it's good to try! (Looking at you nextyear's fanfiction prompt)

Read Harder seems fun, too... I would have to double-dip for any additional challenges, though. I feel like I barely am going to finish Popsugar's this year. I love the idea of reading challenges, I just don't have as much time anymore.

I was going to joke, if anyone wants to read a fanfic for a prompt, my partner and I wrote some Star Wars... ;) Or there's stuff I'd consider "published fanfic" - media tie-ins like Star Wars, or even something based on an existing story, such as Greek mythology.

I double-dip across challenges, for sure. In fact, I'm already seeing where this one ties nicely with popsugar. Like reading Indigenous author genre fiction, and just generally an Indigenous author. And the body positivity could probably count for the romance that is fat-positive. Nonfiction book that's about Anti-racism could tie into the BLM popsugar. I'm sure there's tons of overlap with the Book Nerds prompts too :)

I've gotten and finished Addie (even though I haven't actually gotten around to commenting on any of the posts about it), so I'm fine with moving on whenever others are. As I've mentioned before, I don't really do challenges because I already get so much variety with all of my book clubs, but if I ever get around to going over to Facebook, I will definitely check out Daniele's!

I'm still working on Black Sun, and still enjoying it - I just wish I had started it at a less busy time, because I think I would enjoy it even more if it wasn't days at a time between picking it up and having to remind myself who everyone is. Things are starting to calm down, though, so I am fairly confident I will finish this week.

I had to do a bunch of driving yesterday to deliver stuff all over town, so I had the chance to listen to almost half of one of my Audible freebies, Silverswift. I am now looking for excuses to do other activities that will let me finish - the timing is perfect, because it's set at the winter solstice, and it is the perfect kind of fairytale story to do as an audiobook. So hopefully that won't drag out as long as the few other audiobooks I've gotten through this year!

QOTW: I don't really have any specific reading goals for 2021 - just continuing to chug along with all of the book clubs and hopefully have time for a bit of my own TBR in between things. :)

Read Harder is really going to be a stretch again next year. I count 8 prompts I'm going to have a hard time filling with stuff I actually want to read.

This year, I've read 75 books, and I've only managed to complete 15 of the prompts! Even though I enjoy stretching my reading horizons, I find their prompts that combine two distinct features just really difficult to fill. I feel like I'm being shepherded to the one or two bestsellers they had in mind when the category was put up.

I think I at least have ideas for most of them. Although the pet one is a little weird because while I HATE when that happens, it’s also essentially making you look up spoilers for a book. But there might be reading lists out there specifically for that, I know for movies and video games there are. There’s even a site “can you pet the dog?� That compiles lists of video games that have dogs that you can interact with and pet (even if it’s completely incidental to whatever the game is actually about)

Daniele and Sheri, maybe if you tell us what the prompts are that you're having trouble finding books for, some of the rest of us could look at them and see if there are any books we've read that would fit them? That might give you some new ideas and minimize the amount of spoilers you have to risk to find books that fit.

The pet one specifically is a book about a pet where the pet does NOT die in the end.

Also if anyone has any good fanfic recommendations? I admit I'm kinda dreading that one. I totally am fine with the concept of fanfiction, but it just isn't something I am into. In particular I don't like it when I feel like the fanfiction isn't having the established characters acting in ways I feel would be true to the already established characters. So ideally i'd like recommendations for well written fanfiction that isn't stuff like "two characters who hate each other are suddenly in a romance". I know there's that one site that's the established kind of "go to" place for it.

Sheri, the first two that spring to mind for the pet category are kind of at the opposite ends of the spectrum - you could go short, illustrated, and cute with the Brian Kessinger pet octopus books (which oddly don't seem to be on Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ) - or there's a long one that one of my book clubs read a while back. I wasn't a huge fan, because I'm not really a horse person, but most of the others loved it - The Horse Dancer.

On the fanfic front - any specific fandom(s) you're looking for? And what kind of rating?

thanks, i'll look into the horse one, I love horses :)

Normally I'd say Harry Potter, but after this year I'm...less keen. Is Mass Effect a big fanfic topic? Or maybe something like one of the Marvel ladies, Spider Gwen or She-hulk , Captain marvel etc. Haha I don't even know. Maybe I just need to go to a site and browse or something.

I'd say I'm fine with clean or a bit smutty but don't think I'd want outright erotica.

I totally feel you on the Harry Potter front - it's been hard to enjoy all the related stuff, even if it's a few degrees away from JKR herself.

This is Agent Carter, but I've always loved it because it is a little taste of what might have been for Tony if he'd had someone besides Jarvis looking out for him. The title is deeply unfortunate, and it is unrated, but I would say it's G or a very mild T. And it's just three chapters, so it's not a huge commitment. :)

Thanks! I’ll check it out once the new year hits (I’m a stickler for starting in the new year haha)

I still have my fanfic journal, (if anyone remembers livejournal.) I have Forever Knight, First Wave, Supernatural fanfic, and quite a bit of it is vampire related; and some crossovers, mostly with the First Wave fic. If anyone would like that, I can certainly leave a link to my journal :D

Sheri wrote: "Also if anyone has any good fanfic recommendations? ..."

This Firefly fic came highly recommended to me a while ago, but I haven't had a chance to check it out yet. It's by Stephen Brust, so if you already like his writing, you'll almost certainly enjoy it. It's a couple entries down on the page - look for "My Own Kind of Freedom" -

I have not ventured into fanfic at all, I don't find it that interesting TBH, but I love Firefly and I love Brust, so I might check this out...

I do like firefly! Not sure who Brust is though, thanks!

Ooooh Sheri Brust's Vlad Taltos series is so much fun!! Start with The Book of Jhereg, which is the first three collected in one volume, if you're up for starting a new series with a snarky assassin with a wisecracking familiar as main character.