Category Archives: personal

Looking forward to 2015 and reading challenges

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2015 treeOk, so it’s apparently 2015…and where’s my hover-board, McFly?  2015! This is mind-blowing to me, but hover-board or no, I do have a whole new year ahead of me…we, we have a whole new year ahead of us. It’s a blank slate, just waiting with unlimited potential to be… well, something, anything.

For me, it will undoubtedly be full of books, books and more books. Then of course, these pages will be full of me pontificating about said books, because that’s what the space is dedicated to—me, books and my opinion about books. Makes me sound a little megalomaniacal, but it is my blog.

So, 365 days and probably several hundred books are in my immediate future. I need a plan. I need to share that plan with you, so you know what to expect and I’m held to some manner of accountability…and, frankly, so I can pretend to have accomplished something.

I’Screen Shot 2015-01-01 at 18.06.30m breaking it down like this. On the broadest, most general level, I have committed to read 200 books, with no limiting factors, as my Goodreads challenge. Honestly, I’ve committed to 200 books the past two years and upped it partway through both times—to 225 the first year and 250 the second—and still surpassed it both times. So, 200 is probably on the low side. However, like the past two years, I hope to stop reading so damned much and concentrate more on my own writing. I always seem to fail at this.Screen Shot 2015-01-01 at 16.55.12

Anyone who claimed reading can’t be an addiction is full of horse caca. I need the emotional fix as badly as my caffeine and considering I practically need to be surgically removed from my tea or coffee cup (depending on when and where), that’s saying something.

I’ll also be participating for a third year in book r3vi3ws‘, Indie Fever IndieFever15challenge. I consider this an easy challenge, really, since the vast majority of the books I read these days are Indie/SP. But I’ve signed up at the Fanatic level. This requires I read 75 or more Indie/SP books in the coming year. I don’t anticipate a problem on this front.

Unexpectedly, I’ll also being doing book r3vi3ws’ First Reads FirstReads15challenge. I say unexpectedly because I accidentally signed up for it, meaning to register for Indie Fever. But in the end, I figured I might as well stick with it. I read plenty of new-to-me authors and I really like letting fate have it’s way on occasion. I’ve committed to the Expert level, or 51-75 books written by authors I’ve never read before.

Next, I’ve also signed up for Samantha Lin‘s Author A-Z challenge. Last year, I made a point to read a book by an author for each letter2015-authors-banner of the alphabet, but I never officially signed up for a challenge. This year, I’m getting credit for my effort. I think this challenge is fairly self-explanatory. No levels or anything like that, just trying to make sure each letter of the alphabet is represented by the last name of an author.

I’m also signed up for Evie-Booksish’s TBR pile reading challenge. xSWiAe6Lord knows I need this. I buy books so much faster than I read them. As the name would suggest, the goal here is to read books that have been sitting on your To Be Read pile for a while. It isn’t specified, but I’m setting my limit at two years or more. I’ve signed up for the ‘First Kiss’ level, which requires I read 21-30 such books.

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I’ll also be participating in The Mad Reviewer‘s Reading and Reviewing challenge. I signed up for the Mad Reviewer level, which means reading and reviewing 104 books. They can be Indie, SP or Traditionally published. Again, I anticipate no difficulties in achieving this goal.

Lastly, though not really a challenge per se, I’m committing to read at least 36 review request books. By this, I mean books I’ve received from authors requesting reviews. That’s three a month.

I’ll be starting the year with Liberty and Other Stories, followed by There Will Be Phlogiston, which is an Amazon freebie, BTW. They’re both by Alexis Hall and constitute Prosperity, #2-5. I’ve had these books for a while, but saved them to read in the new year. I’ve enjoyed everything I’ve read by Hall and wanted to ensure I gave myself a good chance at starting 2015 on the right foot. Here’s hoping!

Looking back and wrapping up 2014

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2014 year in review

Wow, I can’t believe 2014 is over already! But whether I believe it or not, it is. That means it’s time for me to sit down and reminisce a bit.

For me, it was a relatively sedate year, something I never complain about. I would rather a nice calm year to one full of strife, even if it does feel uneventful at times. After all, it’s my understanding that the old saying, ‘may you live in interesting times’ is a curse.

What 2014 was, if not exciting, was full of books. I made a significant chip in my reading list. (This would be a far more meaningful statement if I didn’t buy new books even faster than I read them.)

As seen below, I appear to have read 285 books this year. Goodreads tells me it equals 73,296 pages, but that’s not quite accurate. I don’t count short stories towards my book count. They, therefore, won’t be included in the page total, and I read 15 or so shorts. Goodreads also doesn’t discount books marked as ‘read’ but DNF, of which I had 8 (7 & a short), which should be discounted. All in all, it probably averages out in the end, and, really, when you’re talking 70,000+ pages, why quibble over a few hundred? But I’m a little OCD about that kind of thing.

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I don’t use star ratings here on the blog, as I want people to actually read the reviews instead of just glancing at the ratings. But I cross-post to Goodreads and I do use them there. Throughout the year, I’m largely unaware of how many three stars versus five stars versus one star I give. But looking at the whole, I’m pretty pleased with the spread. I think it’s appropriate, considering there should be a bias toward liking a book since I choose them on interest, not at random.

Beyond simply reading a shit ton of books this year, I also broke my reading into a number of ‘challenges.’ Some of these lasted the whole year and were almost detail-less, like my basic Goodreads Reading challenge, in which I set a goal of 250 books and surpassed it. Others lasted all year but were more specific. Others still lasted only short times.

IndieFever 2014The second most significant challenge I did this past year, after Goodreads, was BookR3vi3ws’ Indiefever Challenge. The basic idea here was to read as many independent or self-published books as possible. 2014 was my second year with this challenge and I signed up at the Fanatic level. This meant I needed to read 76 or more Indie/SP books. I surpassed that by a significant margin. The vast majority of books I read in 2014 were Independently published in some manner.

Lastly, for the big ones, I never officially signed up for an A-Z author challenge, but sometime around the middle of the year, I started making a concerted effort to ensure I read at least one book written by an author, starting with each letter of the alphabet. I succeeded at this, even if Q, X, Y, & Z all got read in December.

Throughout the year, I also threw a couple of smaller challenges at myself. It serves to break up boredom sometimes and also lets me focus on single goals in the short term. Generally, it just keeps things interesting. I did this twice this year.

In April/May, I did a ‘taking care of my own challenge‘ in which I only read books by authors I had befriended (or been befriended by) on Goodreads. (Ok, I cheated a couple of times.)  I read 21 books for that challenge.

April montage

Then, in September, I took a week and had a lot of fun doing what I called my ‘Bound by Blood‘ challenge. I discovered that I had five books with the same title and read all five back-to-back. Really, it was the novelty that made it fun because none of the books impressed me much. Here they are, though. (For the record, Soulmates is the series name of that fourth one; the title is, as you would expect, Bound by Blood.)

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Lastly, while not strictly a challenge in itself, throughout the year, I make an effort to include books sent to me as review requests. Not including those I received from Netgalley, which are still books made available for free from authors/publishers seeking reviews,  (of which I read 24) I read 35 review requests.

a2r done 2014

If I’m honest, I’m a bit disappointed by that count. (I wonder if I failed to label some as requests.) It’s fewer than I would have expected, and I kind of feel that I cheated someone, not sure who exactly, but someone. Note to self: do better next year.

Now, here comes the hardest part of a Looking Back post: my top six reads of 2014. (Six, instead of five, simply because it makes a nicer box.)

Honestly, I probably could have done a top ten; it was pretty close between these and a couple of others. I wanted to include Vita Nostra and Father Figure, for example. But I’m already cheating by including a collection in there, so I limited myself.

In the end, I’m happy with my year in books. I’m actually impressed about some of it, disappointed in other respects and amazed at how different it was from 2013. I can’t wait to do it all again in 2015.

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#WeAreSTL (We Are St. Louis)

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Note: I’m leaving this post up, because I’m not hiding that I wrote it. But since that time, I’ve learned a lot and thought more deeply about what the #WeAreSTL posts were about. I’ve decided that, as well intentioned as they were, they were problematic. They, mine included, were written from a position of privilege. What I (I can’t speak for anyone else) was aiming for was solidarity with the city of STL. I intended to show that while the city, including Ferguson, was experiencing was something real, devastating, and important, it wasn’t and isn’t all there is to STL. I thought I could say both at once, without one delegitimizing the other. But you can’t. In actual fact, what was conveyed was “THIS is our Saint Louis, NOT THAT.” It created an us and them I didn’t intend, but was also admittedly too comfortable to recognize. I’ll even be more blatant. It created a ‘this is our white STL, not that black STL.’ Or maybe ‘this is our wealthy STL.’ Either way, it was nothing I understood myself to be part of until I looked back at it. For that I’m ashamed of myself, but again, I’m not going to hide mistakes of my past. Just note that I made them and I’m aware of them. I want to end with an apology, but asking for and expecting the forgiveness that goes with it feels like another privilege. Plus, this post is quite old. I’m well aware that I’m writing this addendum for my own hubris.

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My city is a city in pain. It is with a heavy heart that I’ve watched the after effect of Michael Brown’s death. Everyone seems to have their opinion of it. I have mine too. But while there are a lot of varied ideas on who was or wasn’t ‘right’ in all this, few would argue that the city/county’s poor handling of the matter has inflamed entire communities.

Cultural-DiversityPeople are hurting—’black people,’ ‘white people,’ people who don’t fit so starkly into an ill-defined and largely imagined binary view on race and color. We are hurting and We Are STL.

But we are not all Ferguson, or at least not the Ferguson that the rest of the world thinks they know—Ferguson that the media has reduced to angry mobs and burning buildings.

There is so much more to this city, both the community of Ferguson, which has a long history, a number of stately homes and a flipping farmers market (you never hear about that) and the city of Saint Louis itself.

For this reason the #WeAreSTL initiative was started by a local vlogger, to remind the rest of the world that there is a lot of other good in this city too. (I say other because what is happening in and around Ferguson is a good. It’s a growing-pain, but a necessary one.)

Obviously, we don’t all vlog. I, for example, blog about books. But everyone is invited to participate. All you have to do is create a short video, post or whatever formats you have access to (sky writing? have a go) and link it to your social media.

Here is mine. I am a reader. Saint Louis is eclectic and literary. I love the independent bookstores, library consortium and abundant places to settle with a book.

Le me break that down a little further for you. I love to read. It is one of my greatest joys in life and Saint Louis is a wonderful city to be a reader in. We have our own Independent Bookstore Alliance. Believe me, in a time when the publishing industry is in such flux, this is an amazing and important thing.

Within ten miles of my home I can visit The Novel Neighbor, The Bookhouse, Webster Groves Book Shop, Dunawy Books, STLBooks, two Left-Bank Books, Big Sleep Books and Subterranean Books. Not to mention the normal chain bookstores and probably at least a few indies I haven’t found yet.

The city also has number of yearly bookish events. There is the Greater Saint Louis Book Fair, Lit in the Lou, Saint Louis Jewish Book Festival and  a YMCA Book Fair. And those are just the big yearly events (that I know of). There are a billion smaller or not yearly ones. We have a number of large universities, an expansive library consortium (which I’ll discuss in a moment) and all those book stores, all of which host smaller or not yearly writerly events.

And all of that is without even getting into all of the cool places to actually READ. Our library consortium allows you to borrow books from any library in the system; vastly expanding the number of books a reader has access to, which is cool. But the central library is amazing.

St. Louis Public Library 2012 Grand Reopening Video from St. Louis Public Library on Vimeo.

While the Central Branch is unquestioningly the most architecturally stunning, the people of the Ferguson library have demonstrated most clearly what it means to be a St. Louisian.

That’s right, they’ve remained open throughout the unrest in their area, even as school and businesses were closing (or damaged) around them they’ve kept their doors open to support both their community and those peacefully seeking change in their neighbourhood.

stl arkOnce you’ve visited the library and checked out a book or two (dozen) weather permitting, there are a whole host of parks a reader can relax and enjoy their favourite literary wonder in. I highly recommend Forrest Park, Tower Grove Park and Bee Tree Park. If you have a few dollars to spend on atmosphere, the Botanical Gardens are always a delightful place to pair a book and bench.

If you’re a little more experiential and want to read, say, Planet of the Apes surrounded by actual apes, the zoo is free. Just find a bench facing the primate house and there you go, smellivision to enhance your reading experience.

Not the outdoor type and libraries too quiet for you? How about the vast array of coffee houses? There is one in practically each of Saint Louis’ eclectic array of neighbourhoods. Try this list for some ideas.

A friend of mine and I hit a different one every Sunday morning. Most recently, we’ve been seen at Comet Coffee, Foundation Grounds Coffee and The Webster Groves Garden Cafe. All of which, I can say with some authority, would be a great place to read.

So, while our city tears itself apart in its impotent rage, I #StandWithFerguson, have stood with them. I had to explain to my seven year old why school was canceled this morning, what a riot is and why people are doing it right now. This required addressing race, and privileged and racism and poverty—all very intense subjects for a child and difficult to explain before my morning caffeine.

In my daily life I try and counter any and all blindly condemning bull shitstatements about Ferguson (which could be any other community in any other city), like this one that I recently found on Facebook. Whomever wrote it obviously understands nothing of any of the issues my seven year old was able to grasp the fundamentals of this morning. (Not to mention the difference between a protest, riot and looting. Just because all three occur at the same time, place or event does not mean everyone present is responsible for each.) And yes, the ‘friend’ who posted it got an irritated comment from me.

I also attended the Justice For All march in October and was part of the Candlelight Vigil for Peace, of which there will be another one tonight (Nov. 25th) at 7-8, central time. I invite everyone to participate.

This is our Saint Louis. I am Saint Louis; a bibliocrazy reading zealot who goes nowhere without a Kindle, and obsessively tracks good book stores and excellent coffee.

Now it’s your turn. Tell me what you are, Saint Louis is and what you love about it. Include the #WeAreSTL hashtag, post to your own social media sites and add yourself to the linky below. (If you would like to include the linky in your post, you can find the code here.) Remind the world that, while what is happening in one part of our city is important, it isn’t all our city is.

I’ve lived in a lot of towns, in a lot of states, in two different countries on two different continents and Saint Louis is one of my ultimate favourite places.

Before you run off to write/draw/film/record/sing your own #WeAreSTL post, why not check out some of the others’?

…and just for fun.