Category: updates

February in Review

~ EMM

Once again, I haven’t been posting much. Don’t worry. I’m still here. I’ve just been busy. Mostly the usual stuff (swim, work, read, write, repeat). Except, this month, I’ve been watching TV and movies a bit more than I’ve been reading.

Books I read this month (links take you to my reviews on Goodreads):

February2016

I’m not making any big reading promises for March. I have exactly one book that I really want to read/finish (The Story of a New Name). But, this is my full March TBR:

March2016TBR

You can see, I’m off my non-fiction kick and moving towards some serious sci-fi, with a little fantasy and contemporary romance to balance things out.

TV and movies I’ve been enjoying:

  • The 100 is back! Yes! Okay, fine. Maybe you gave up on this show sometime in the middle of the first season. But, something made me stick with it, and I love it. There’s just something about the world-building and the story that keeps me coming back. It scratches an itch in my story-writing brain, and the plot keeps going in different directions. Some people may think that’s a bad thing, but I like that it’s not entirely predictable. Like, I have no idea what they’re doing with this whole City of Light thing, and what the hell, Bellamy? And the languages! Did you know it’s the same guy who does the languages for Game of Thrones? He’s so awesome.
  • The Magicians show is so much better than the book. I almost never say that, but there it is. That said, I’m only a few episodes in. I really need some time to catch up on this show, but I started watching it with my husband and now I feel bad watching it without him.
  • I still love Supergirl. I may only be watching it for the Ally McBeal business woman truth bombs, but Calista Flockhart is amazing in this show, and that’s more than enough for me.
  • I watched the first episode of Fuller House. Nostalgia! That one episode was all I really needed, but I’ll probably watch a few more to see where they go with this.
  • Have you seen the movie Dope? It is everything. I loved it.
  • And the movie Chef almost felt like an ad for Twitter (in an awesome way), but it also made me want to pack up and hit the road following my dreams.

Swimming:

I swam more miles in February than I have in any of the past three years, but I swam fewer days than I’d planned.

I didn’t go to any swim meets this month. I haven’t wanted to sacrifice my weekends when I know I’m tired from training hard and not likely to swim as fast as I’d like. I’m going to do a mid-season meet in March, and based on that meet, I’ll decide if I’m going to travel to North Carolina for Nationals.

Writing:

I’ve been editing and polishing my YA fantasy novel and my NA paranormal romance novel. And, I’m getting ready to dive into something new in April. Originally, I thought I would finish “Augmented” or “Falling” (my 2014 and 2013 NaNoWriMo novels) before I wrote something new. But… I’ve had a story in mind for a while now, and I really want to write it. So, I’m thinking I may use the April Camp NaNoWriMo as a motivator and start work on a new WIP.

And there you have it. That was February. 🙂

January in Review

~ EMM

This will probably be a pretty long post… I’m dividing it up into sections, so you can just skip the bits you aren’t interested in.

I had two main goals for January. One was to finish my NaNoWriMo novel from November. The other was to turn up the heat on my swimming training because January is the start of the short course yards season and Nationals is coming up at the end of April.

I’ll recap on how things are progressing on those fronts, as well as recap what I read in January and talk about what I plan to read in February. I’ll also mention some of the other culture I consumed this month in the way of TV shows and podcasts.

Swimming

Spring Nationals is kind of a big deal for Masters Swimming. I’ve qualified in all three breast stroke events (50, 100, and 200 yards) every year that I’ve been swimming Masters. And, looking at my times from last year vs. this year’s qualifying times, I’ve qualified in all three breaststroke events, and I’m very close to qualifying in the 400 IM and the 200 fly.

My goal for this season is to swim qualifying times in 400 IM and 200 fly, and swim under 2:50 in my 200 breaststroke. These are pretty much the three hardest events in swimming and they all require a ridiculous amount of endurance. I started stepping it up in the fall, and now I have about ten weeks of hard training before the focus turns more to speed, in-season racing, and then taper.

So far this month I’ve had some pretty good practices. I’ve repeated a few “test sets” from last year and dropped time. And yesterday I swam The Olympic Club Mile, a 1500 meter race in their competition pool. I’ve never raced a mile in the pool before, so I was fairly conservative with my seed time of just over 24 minutes. But, I ended up blowing away my expectations and holding a strong pace through the entire race to finish just under 23 minutes. Now, if I can just keep this up for another three months…

Writing

The writing hasn’t been going as well as planned this month. I only managed to write about 3k words this month. I love my story and I’ve received some great feedback on the first few chapters. I’m inching closer to the end, but I’ve been struggling with my perfectionist tendencies and worrying about “sticking the landing” (I don’t have enough practice at endings yet).

I like to get things right the first time. I don’t really like “fixing things in revision.” Adding things in revision (description, layers, scenes, etc.) is fine. But I’m having to do a lot of world-building as I’m writing this story. So, sometimes I find I need to stop and figure things out so I don’t write myself into a corner and have to backtrack.

I’ve come to the realization that I need to stop treating this like a “creative outlet” along the lines of “I feel like coloring today.” I need to start treating it a little more like I do swimming. I feel awful if I don’t swim five or six times a week. Even if I don’t want to go, I make myself at least go and swim a warm-up. I tell myself I can get out after warm-up if I still want to bail (I never do). But on the days I skip writing, I let myself off the hook. I feel awful and guilty about it, but I just shrug it off. So, my strategy for February is going to be that I have to at least write three sentences every day. If I want to stop after three sentences, fine. But I have to write at least three.

Reading

If you remember from my TBR post, I was on a non-fiction kick this month. I don’t know where that came from. I read as many non-fiction books in January as I did in all of 2015. And I still have more on my TBR for this month. Here’s what I read this month:

January2016

I just noticed that four out of five books I read this month featured a woman on the cover. Huh. If you want to know what I thought of these, check out my reviews on Goodreads (One Good Earl Deserves a Lover, The Oregon Trail, Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me?, The Art of Asking, and Lean In)

I like to read non-fiction when I’m writing. I feel like it interferes less with my story-telling brain. Or if it does interfere, it interferes in a positive way. But, sometimes, even when I’m writing, I find it helpful to read in the genre I’m writing in because I can see how other authors handled certain sticky plot problems. That’s one reason I threw in a romance novel at the end of this month. I needed a little help getting un-stuck on my current WIP.

I expect that the focus for February will still be on swimming and writing. So, I’m keeping my February TBR on a tight leash. These are the books I really want to read next.

February2016-TBR

I’ve already talked about why I want to read The Boys in the Boat and Deep. So, I’ll just make a few comments about the other three on this list.

I’ve had a feeling that The Magicians is going to be a series I’m going to fall in love with. Based on the blurbs I’ve read, it appears to have just the right mix of magic and grit/darkness that I love. So, I’ve been holding it at an arms length for some time, waiting for the right moment to dive in. Now that the series is complete, and the TV show on the SyFy channel has just started, I must read it immediately.

Similarly, I love the new Star Wars movie and I’m planning on diving into all the new extended universe books, novellas, and comics, starting with Chuck Wendig’s Aftermath.

And, we have a weekend road-trip planned in February. So, I pulled Kingpin (non-fiction) off my ancient TBR list, and checked the audio-book out from the library. Hubby and I just finished a binge watch of Mr. Robot, and I think this is going to be a great companion selection.

Other culture consumed

One of the other things that happens when I’m writing is that I consume more TV shows and movies. Sometimes it’s a mood thing (like I’m trying to portray a mood in my writing and I need to immerse myself in something that evokes that feeling). Other times it’s just a time thing (as in, I don’t have enough time to read a whole book, so I’ll substitute my fictional world craving with a TV show or movie). Whatever it is, I definitely watched more shows than normal this month.

The two shows that I’ve been obsessed with this month are Jessica Jones (Netflix) and Mr. Robot (USA Network, but we purchased from Amazon). I’m still digesting all the reasons I love these two shows, and I’m not quite ready to talk about them yet. But, I will say that I’m anxiously looking forward to the next seasons of both.

I’m also learning to love podcasts. Recently, I am most loving the Dear Bitches, Smart Authors podcast by the folks who do the Smart Bitches, Trashy Books blog. I could go on and on about my love for this podcast, but this post is already long enough. So, I’ll just say, if you like genre books, especially romance, and if you like author interviews and listening to smart, thoughtful people talk about books, you should check out this podcast. Just click on the podcast link (above) and read through the synopsis of the recent podcasts. It’s basically the only podcast I subscribe to that my husband will listen to when we’re in the car together.

Okay… that was a LOT for one blog post. Maybe I shouldn’t wait so long between blog posts, huh?

A reading list for January 2016 (and beyond)

~ EMM

I ended 2015 reading non-fiction.

Between the World and Me

And the first book I finished in 2016 was also non-fiction.

Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me?

So, I thought I might run with the non-fiction theme in this first month of 2016. To that end, I created a January TBR of all non-fiction books.

January TBR

Here are some more details and thoughts on these books:

  • The Oregon Trail by Rinker Buck (audiobook, library) — I started this audio book during our holiday travels, but didn’t get very far. It’s a LONG audio book. It’s entertaining, but dense with details on basically everything you never knew you wanted to know about the Oregon Trail: mules, wagons, people, routes, etc. And I’m only 25% done. Phew.
  • The Art of Asking by Amanda Palmer (hardcover, signed) — I’m already about half finished with this book. So far I think it has several things in common with Felicia Day’s book, You’re Never Weird on the Internet (Almost), but I’m not enjoying it as much. Possibly it’s because I’m just more of a Felicia Day fan than an Amanda Palmer fan (even though I like both of them). Possibly it’s because I can relate more to Felicia Day. I don’t know. I may have more thoughts on this after I finish the book.
  • The Boys in the Boat by Daniel James Brown (Kindle) — As I mentioned in a previous post, I purchased this book in July 2014 but still haven’t read it, and it was the book most recommended to me by friends and family in 2015. Time to get reading.
  • Information Doesn’t Want To Be Free by Cory Doctorow (hardcover, signed) — This is a short book about copyright laws, a topic of great interest to me. I’ve listened to Cory Doctorow talk about these issues on several occasions, and if his book is anything like his talks, I think I’ll really enjoy this one.
  • Deep by James Nestor (Kindle) — Ever since I watched The Big Blue in a high school French class (in French), I’ve loved the idea of free diving. Nestor’s book talks about the science behind this sport that fascinates me so much.
  • Lean In by Sheryl Sandburg (Kindle) — This is the book I least want to read on this list. But, it’s short. Based on what I’ve read about this book, I’m not sure I buy into her advice, but I know a lot of people think highly of her and the advice she dispenses in this book. So, I’m going to read what she has to say.

And more about the one I finished:

  • Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? (And Other Concerns) by Mindy Kaling (Kindle) — I picked this up because it was on sale and I have a vague awareness of Mindy Kaling as someone I think is cool even though I’ve never seen The Office (yeah, I know…) or her show on NBC (It’s on NBC, right? I can only watch TV on my computer, so I don’t pay attention to networks these days.). In general, I don’t watch a lot of sit-coms anymore. But I enjoyed the book. It’s funny. In a few places it is even laugh-out-loud funny. It made me like her even more, and maybe want to watch her shows. Or at least read her latest book.

In general, my intention for 2016 is to read books I already own, since I own about 100 books that I haven’t read yet. If I really want to read something that I don’t own, I’m trying to get it from the library before I consider buying more books. The exception to this plan is going to be for 2016 new releases that I am super excited about. So excited that I can’t wait for them to go on sale or for a library hold, and must read them immediately upon release.

Some examples from my pre-orders shelf on Goodreads:

2016 Releases

As you can see, several of these don’t even have titles and/or official covers yet… but they’re due out this year and I’m so excited to read them! About half of these are written by what I would consider to be my “auto-buy” authors (Alastair Reynolds, Sarah J Maas, Laini Taylor, Victoria Schwab, Curtis Sittenfeld). The rest are either the next in a series I enjoyed (Sabaa Tahir’s book), or debut novels by PitchWars mentors that sounded like books I would love. There’s one more that should be on this list, but Goodreads seems to think comes out in 2017, even though I’m pretty sure it’s a 2016 debut novel: The Blood Rose Rebellion by Rosalyn Eves.

I know I already said no book projects or challenges in 2016. I’m sticking to that. I reserve the right to change my mind at any time and not follow through with any of these plans. 😉

Reading List: Powell’s staff’s best books of 2015

~ EMM ~ 2 Comments

I don’t read a lot of literary fiction, but when I do it’s almost always because it was a Powell’s staff pick. Maybe it’s our shared Pacific Northwest sensibilities, but if Powell’s staff loves something, it’s highly likely that I will also love it. That’s why I subscribe to their Indiespensible box. It’s also why I pay close attention to their end-of-year best of lists. These lists are extra special because every staff member does a “top five” list of their favorite books read in that year. And you know how much I love top five lists.

Last year, I posted about how Buzzfeed created an uber “top thirteen” list using their “top-secret scientific algorithmic process” to determine the best of the best for the year, according to Powell’s. After I saw that list, I created a Goodreads shelf to track these books and keep them on my radar for future reading.

This year, Powell’s staff’s top five lists were posted on New Year’s Day, and I’ve been waiting for another summary post from Buzzfeed. So far, nothing. So I decided to do my own analysis and create my own uber “top thirteen” list.

I’ll be more transparent with my “super secret algorithm” and go ahead and tell you that I did some good old “copying and pasting” of all the lists into Excel. Then I assigned points to each mention of each book based on where it appeared in each list (5 points for first place, 4 points for second place, etc.). Then I made a pivot table and sorted the results by total number of points in descending order. There was an obvious cut-off after the first fourteen books, and one of those books was published in a previous year (Station Eleven). So I dropped that one off this list and capped the list at thirteen.

And the result… Here are the thirteen books that received the most points (mentions) on the Powell’s staff lists:

  1. A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara (50 points)
  2. Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates (40 points)
  3. The Argonauts by Maggie Nelson (38 points)
  4. Our Souls at Night by Kent Haruf (18 points)
  5. A Manual for Cleaning Women by Lucia Berlin (16 points)
  6. Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo (14 points)
  7. Did You Ever Have a Family by Bill Clegg (12 points)
  8. H Is for Hawk by Helen MacDonald (12 points)
  9. A Kim Jong Il Production by Paul Fischer (12 points)
  10. M Train by Patti Smith (10 points)
  11. The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins (10 points)
  12. The Story of the Lost Child by Elena Ferrante (10 points)
  13. Welcome to Night Vale by Joseph Fink and Jeffrey Cranor (10 points)

So far, I’ve only read one of these (Between the World and Me). But several others were already on my “to buy/borrow” list. And there were a few where I had an instant reaction of “no way, I’m never going to read that,” even though they come highly recommended by Powell’s staff.

For example, everyone seems to be in love with A Little Life. It’s the number one book on this list, by far. But every review I’ve read talks about how sad this book is. Here’s an example from one of the Powell’s staff:

Tremendous. Devastating. Torturous. Hard-to-take hurts-your-heart scenes of the deep and dark sides of humanity.

Basically every review I’ve read, or heard in a podcast, says the same thing. But devastating, sad, torturous books are not my jam. The only thing I like less than a tragic sad book is a super scary book. Blood and gore I can handle, but scary stuff creeps me out. As an example, I have never read a Stephen King book. I’m probably missing out, but I just don’t like being scared, or sad. Life is already sad and scary enough. So, even though A Little Life was the clear winner, I will likely skip that one.

Overall, I think this year’s list is a bit heavily weighted towards the non-fiction and memoir categories. Last year’s list felt like it had more novels on it. Regardless, I’m tracking both lists in Goodreads and I’ll be checking them when I’m looking for ideas about books to read. Here’s a link to my 2015 shelf if you want to follow along.

What do you think? Are there books on this list that you’ve read and highly recommend? Do you think you can convince me to change my mind about A Little Life? Which book on this list are you most excited about reading?

#ABookishHoliday Day 31: Ring in the New Year

~ EMM ~ 3 Comments

Nothing like a top five list to “ring in the New Year,” right? (Yes, I’m taking some liberties with today’s #ABookishHoliday theme…)

For today’s post I give you my list of the top five popular sci-fi and fantasy series that are now complete, but that I haven’t read yet and plan to read in 2016 (listed in the order in which I will most likely read them):

  1. MagiciansThe Magicians series — I’m so late to the party on this one that it’s soon to be a series on the SyFy Channel… I bought the first book back in August 2014, but never got around to reading it. This will be rectified in 2016.
  2. SelectionThe Selection Series — I have the first book in this series, but I haven’t read it yet. I guess the series is still going if you count the “next generation” books. But the original series is complete, and it’s a hugely popular series, so I’m including it here.
  3. LunarThe Lunar Chronicles — I own the first three books in this series, but I’ve only read the first book (Cinder). Now that the two companion books (Fairest and Winter) are out, and the series is complete, I probably should just binge-read my way through these.
  4. InheritanceThe Inheritance Trilogy — I bought the whole series on Kindle back in August when the price dropped to $9.99. Basically, the cost of one “normally priced” Kindle book.
  5. AncillaryThe Imperial Radch series — Probably better known as “all those books with Ancillary in the title”… The first book has been on my TBR for a while, but I didn’t own it and there was a long wait at the library. Then the first book went on sale last week for $1.99 on Kindle, and now I have no more excuses.

So that takes care of at least fifteen books of the fifty or so I plan to read in 2016….

Happy New Year! Here’s to another great year in reading!

#ABookishHoliday Day 30: December Wrap-up

~ EMM

DecemberReads2015

Today’s theme is “December Wrap-up.” December isn’t quite over yet. There is still more reading to be done. But, these are the books I finished (and anticipate finishing) in December:

December reading stats

  • Total books finished: 12 (6 novels, 2 comics trades, 1 novella, 1 non-fiction, 1 short story, and 1 audiobook)
  • Favorite book read: Illuminae
  • Book(s) read by diverse authors (per my 2015 reading project): My Brilliant Friend and Between the World and Me

#ABookishHoliday Day 29: Silver & Gold

~ EMM

image

For today’s theme of “silver & gold,” I am posting the book that was most recommended to me this year (even though I already owned it). I’ve always been a swimmer, but in college I took a break from swimming competitively and joined the rowing team as a coxswain. So, yeah, books about rowers “going for gold” are automatic additions to my TBR. Unfortunately, I didn’t get around to reading this in 2014 (when I bought it) or 2015. But, this will probably be one of the first books I read in 2016.

Reading List: Book Riot’s 2015 Read Harder Challenge

~ EMM

About half-way through this year, I decided I would participate in Book Riot’s 2015 Read Harder Challenge. You may remember, this is a list of 24 reading tasks, meant to be completed in 2015, each intended to broaden your reading horizons.

Results: 21 down and 3 to go… (see also: my Goodreads shelf)

Completed tasks:

  1. A book published by an indie press — Sword
  2. A book by or about someone that identifies as LGBTQ — Afterworlds
  3. A book by a person whose gender is different from your own — The Bone Clocks (plus a lot more…)
  4. A book that takes place in Asia — Fire Horse Girl (plus a few more…)
  5. A book by an author from Africa — Half of a Yellow Sun and Americanah
  6. A book that is by or about someone from an indigenous culture (Native Americans, Aboriginals, etc.) — The Absolutely True Diary of a Part Time Indian
  7. A YA novel — The Raven Boys (plus a lot more…)
  8. A sci-fi novel — Fortune’s Pawn (plus a lot more…)
  9. A romance novel — The Duchess War
  10. A book that is a retelling of a classic story (fairytale, Shakespearian play, classic novel, etc.) — A Court of Thorns and Roses
  11. A book that someone else has recommended to you — Handmaid’s Tale
  12. A book published this year — Selfish, Shallow, and Self-Absorbed: Sixteen Writers on Their Decision Not To Have Kids (plus a few more…)
  13. An audiobook — The Rosie Effect
  14. A graphic novel, a graphic memoir or a collection of comics of any kind — Ms. Marvel vol 1 (plus a lot more…)
  15. A book that you would consider a guilty pleasure (Read, and then realize that good entertainment is nothing to feel guilty over) — re-read Suddenly Royal
  16. A microhistory — Astoria
  17. A National Book Award, Man Booker Prize or Pulitzer Prize winner from the last decade <– All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr
  18. A book written by someone when they were over the age of 65 <– Emma: A Modern Retelling by Alexander McCall Smith
  19. A self-improvement book (can be traditionally or non-traditionally considered “self-improvement”) <– You’re Never Weird on the Internet (Almost) by Felicia Day
  20. A book that was originally published in another language <– My Brilliant Friend by by Elena Ferrante
  21. A book written by someone when they were under the age of 25 <– Snow Like Ashes by Sara Raasch

Unfinished tasks:

  1. A collection of poetry <–I’d planned to read The Essential Neruda: Selected Poems. I bought it. I read the first few poems. Then never finished reading it.
  2. A collection of short stories (either by one person or an anthology by many people) <– I was thinking I’d either read Magic for Beginners (which I got in an Indiespensible shipment this year) or I would finish Hieroglyph (which I started reading with my hubby, but stalled out somewhere in the middle and never finished.) I ended up reading neither.
  3. A book published before 1850 <– I’d planned to read The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas as a “buddy read.” We started it. Neither of us got very far. Then we decided to bail on it. I think I’ll try again at some point, but I don’t know when.

I may still finish these last three tasks in 2016. But I’m not committing to anything because I already decided that I wasn’t going to do any reading projects or challenges in 2016. So, we’ll see what happens.