Summer Reading List (and beyond)

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Note: WordPress glitched and I published a half-done version of this post! Hence the re-publishing. Woops.

I’ve learned from my Fall Reading List and Spring Reading List that setting myself up to read a set of pre-determined books for three months is one of the most untenable ideas I’ve ever come up with. Which, yes, probably speaks directly to some of my greater personality flaws, but there you have it. Reading plans are not my thing, and it’s also why I didn’t bother committing to any reading challenges besides a Goodreads number!

(Confession: That fall list from last year? I read two books from it. Woops. That’s what I get for not adding anything I could read on Kindle.)

That said, I do have a smattering of books I more-or-less intend to read over the next few months. Some are for book clubs, some are E-galleys, some are sequels that have just or will soon be released (that Tearling book!), and others are actually books that seem like they’d be good summer reads. (And others have just been on my book shelves for too long that it’s getting ridiculous.)

Summer Reading 2015

Obviously, if I’m averaging about 5-6 books a month, and I inevitably add in other books other than these as I go, there’s no way I’m going to read them all before September. And I’m saying ahead of time that that’s OK. In fact, it’s part of why I didn’t bother trying to cull this list back to something reasonable. These are the books I really want to read, and anyways, they do darn good together on my Goodreads list (seriously, check out that accidental color coordinating!)

I’m also getting smarter, and have learned to keep my non-fiction expectations to a minimum. Alone in the Kitchen with an Eggplant and How’s Your Drink? have both been on my shelves for awhile, and they’re begging to be read

I also made sure  that I wasn’t overwhelming my list with books I would expect myself to read on paper. I simply read more books and faster when I focus on Kindle books, so most of these are accessible from my library through Overdrive. (A few still aren’t available, through I’ve “recommended” them to the library, like the Jenny Han sequel and The Sea of Tranquility, so these will be dependent on availability or Kindle sales.) Only three of the fiction books (Invasion, Penumbra, and Life After Life) are ones I already own copies of, and they’re all books that I particularly want to read (or need to for book club!), so I’ll be more likely to be willing to cart them around in my purse as long as I have to, or actually read them when I’m home.

Probably the biggest challenge, though it wouldn’t be uif I read it on Kindle, is The Secret Keeper. I got it off Audible a couple of months ago and haven’t tackld it yet. Almost 20 hours of listening is seriously push my super lax (basically nonexistent) audiobook habit!

So I’m super looking forward to reading all of these (especially the second Tearling book and that new Vanessa Diffenbaugh!), but don’t be suprised if some of these turn up again this fall or something next year!

Happy Summer Reading!

 

Books, Lately [June]

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pages of the book as a bird flying away
Welcome to Quick Lit! This is where I partake in Modern Mrs. Darcy’s link-up and share short (sometimes) and sweet (cavities not included) reviews of what I’ve been reading lately.

So this month we had our first book club, reading Peace Like a River, and it was great. The meeting, I mean. The book was good too, but, um, I didn’t quite finish it. (cough I read half cough). I’m thinking of a post about book club, as in I feel almost obligated to write one, so maybe that and finishing the book will have to go hand in hand!

Only four books this month besides that, but they were seriously all fantastic–and really different. Not like I read a happy clappy spiritual growth book, a bloody horror thriller, and Dosteovsky different, or Rachel Held Evans and Nancy Leigh DeMoss different, but different enough.

 

I CAPTURE THE CASTLE
Dodie Smith

I’d heard this was fantastic, a classic and a YA one at that. And I bought it, but it sat around until I lent it to Cristina on the whim that she imight like it (despite not even having read it myself.) And when she bought it back with a glowing recommendation, it did seem like it was time to pick it up myself. Which I did, but like two weeks later.

Castle  covers some six months of 17- and 18-year old life in the 1930s~ English countryside. It’s essentially a coming-of-age journal full of first love, family disfunctionality, and beautiful descriptions, and Cassandra is a great narrator. Smith captures the ebb and flow of trying to get life down into a journal, including the times when you’re saying, “Oh, I want to write about today, but I still need to write about all of last week first!” Thankfully, Cassandra is adapt at speed writing and I mostly enjoyed the pacing.

THE LANGUAGE OF FLOWERS
Vanessa Biffenbaugh

Do you have any books on your TBR lists that you know very little about, yet they’ve been on there for years? Language of Flowers was in that catagory for me.

I finally downloaded it from my library’s Overdrive one day, not really expecting much from it: maybe a lite women’s fiction or even something closer to chick lit. Definitely something rote.

So, so not the case. It’s deep, it’s a little dark (but thematically rather than plot-wise), and I know this is vague and kind of a cheat word but it’s quite compelling.

 

SAINT ANYTHING
Sarah Dessen

I’ve noticed, because how can you not, that YA contemporary (specifically with female protags) can get stereotyped as lite, fluffy, and overfocused on boy-crazy girls.

I have feminist feelings about this: the assumptions that, (1) teenage girls only care about vapid things and (2) that the things teenage girls care about are silly or irreleveant or not worth caring about. But it honestly might take a while longer and more reading before I try to put those thoughts and feelings down better than this.

Sometimes, of course, contemporary YA is lite and fluffy. (There’s a whole other conversation that could be had about the legitimacy of fluffy reading, but that’s not neccessary here.) But the stereotype is superficial at best, because these books so often deal well with everyday life–including some of the deeper, darker issues that neccessarily crop up. What I’m poorly trying to say is that I’ve found Sarah Dessen, among other YA writers, to create great, varied female protaganists who deal with some serious s—: abuse, depression, crippling social anxiety, etc. (Dreamland is a great example of this.)

What I’m also poorly trying to say is that I really, really liked this book.

THE HERO OF AGES
Sarah Addison Allen

I loved/hated finishing the three-book Mistborn epic. Loved, because it was fantastic. Hated, because it was over. But the love side gets a boost because Sanderson has books coming out this fall and next January that will complete a second triology set in this same world–just a few hundred years later.

I should read something different from him to be sure (Elantris is on my list of summer reads), but I think Sanderson might be one of my newest favorite authors.

WHAT’S UP NEXT

Theoretically, I’ll actually write a blog about the graphic I already made with my (theoretical)(possible) summer reading , but I might take advantage of the fact that the first day of summer is the 21st, instead of considering summer to be June-August!

Right now I’m reading The Library at Mount Char, an eGalley I nabbed a bit back that officially released a few days ago. It’s twisted and mythology-filled and great. And within the next week I’ll be reading All The Light We Cannot See  and Mr. Penumbra’s 24-hour Bookstore as fast as possible for book clubs!

What are ten things you still want to learn?

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learning
1. The first is entirely due to Netflix. Is it weird that I never cared about art history before watching White Collar—but now want to know all of it? I’m pretty much determined now to eventually take some sort of class on this.

2. Science. There is a lot that I’m missing. Because I went to Moody.

3. Kick-boxing. Is anyone in Chicago interested in taking a class? I’d need to find something really inexpensive, unfortunately.

4. Coding.

5. To use InDesign better, to know more about what Photoshop can do, and to know how to use Illustrator at all.

6. How to dredge up the energy every evening to keep up a clean apartment. Or cleanish, you know, whatever.

7. How to sew my own clothes: I’m starting to work on this one! As in, I have pretty much everything I need for a dress pattern, except printing out the pattern. And practicing on the machine I haven’t used in years, first.

8. Pretty much all of the skills involved in being a spy, a con, a space pirate, Arrow, and/or a Time Lord. I’d also accept merely being outfitted with the Intersect in my brain like Chuck (but with better control), and/or allomancy.

9. To draw. A friend and I have started working through a “You can draw too!” sort of book, and by started, I mean we’re both terrible still. We also just sort of skipped a month (or so…) without planning to, so, this may or may not work out. (Sarah, oops?)

10. To be moderately successful at being a functioning adult.

This is not, by any means, all of the things I want to learn. But you have to start somewhere, right? Also, a longer list would become depressing, especially if I have to include stuff like “holding my breathe underwater properly” and other embarrasing things.

Yeah.

What are yours?

When you couldn’t be bothered to fix your old “About Me”

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I wrote an “About Me” sometime in 2011 when I began this WordPress blog, and then never bothered after that. I left it up so long I finally added “from 2011” at the top to explain anything that felt out of date, and another time made a couple of tiny adjustments to make it less dated. And then, finally, I just removed the page entirely. I’ve only just gotten around to working on a new one. Or, you know, starting to.

I think it was easier to describe myself in my teen years because the need to be able to was so strong. That, and in a strange way I think I knew myself better then. I didn’t know who I would be. And I didn’t really have any idea who I should be. But I had an idea who I was, in those moments, and I ran with that.

Finishing school kind of screwed that whole thing up.

I still don’t know who I will be, I only have a slightly better idea of who I should be, and heaven knows I don’t always know who I am. To be honest, half the time I think the question and concept of “knowing who I am” is flawed anyways.

But the funny thing is, the way I described myself in 2011 isn’t half bad.

Overanalytical, argumentative, cynical, hyperactive, stubborn, indecisive, facetious, innapropriate, impatient. My failings.

My passions? Harder to define. Learning and knowing. In the past, and hopefully soon the present, my education. Showing people that most of life’s questions have more than one right answer and we should probably stop hating one another over them. Laughter, being overcome by it and causing it. Showing people love through words and actions. My faith. Words. Sentences. Punctuation and grammar.

Just like you. And you, and you, and you over there with the brown coat.

Now, I don’t think my failures or passions make me that much different from the general populace, but they do make me a bit different from the specific people I come into everyday contact with.

I’m less cyncical indecisive innapropriate… ok, actually, the failings I listed are still pretty accurate. If I were to write them now I might reprioritize them. I might add “listless” or “lost” (although I’ve learned that this one might just be a general symptom of being a 20-something.)

I still wouldn’t list successes or positive traits. I have them, but sometimes they fail me and and sometimes I don’t live up to them and sometimes I lose them entirely. I’d rather not set that standard for myself, here, in public. (I’ll save that for any future job interviews).

And my passions, though using “passions” feels overly passionate now, are a bit immaturely written, but still—there’s still me in there. But now I’d add books, and design, and good feminism, and a need for community.

And through learning about my passions and failings, and how they shape me, I get these glimpses of who I’m maybe, perhaps, potentially meant to be.

This blog is occasionally about that.

The rest of the time, I write to amuse myself.

And hopefully, once in while, you.

The biggest difference? Now I mostly write about books. I hope you don’t mind.