I've Moved!

I have been having a hell of a time trying to keep track of two separate blogs, so I combined them! I've moved all of the content of both over to the new site, Books and Beethoven. 

Check me out! All fancy!

RMODB: #24in48

While in the process of joining reading challenges and just being bookish on twitter, I came across the 24 in 48 readathon, which I'd read about last year but had been unable to join. For this readathon, which is put on multiple times a year, participants make an attempt to read for 24 hours out of a 48 hour timeframe. They can do it however they wish; audiobooks, in small batches between midnight and midnight, or for one giant long reading session. I did something in-between: I set a few goals for myself, and then had breaks once I reached them on both days.

Goal Number One: Get the library books out of the way!

I have been trying to be more discerning in which books I actually put on hold as opposed to just adding them to my "for later" shelf on the library website. But the damn things keep showing up, and I have to at least check them out; and if I'm going to check them out then I might as well read them.  And I really wanted to read everything I had checked out. So, best to get those out of the way first!

I'd started reading Gail Carriger's Manners & Mutiny earlier this week, so my first benchmark was to finish reading that. It was the final book in the series and super satisfying, so I had to take a mini break to recover before I moved on to Star Wars: Before the Awakening. That was a quick, easy read, but I had made the mistake of putting on the movie Across the Universe while I was reading, because it had been too quiet in the house after hubs left for work. But I'd forgotten how strange that movie was, and began to get easily distracted. It was over by the time I got around to reading Suffrajitsu, but I just wasn't in the right mindset for a graphic novel—interesting, considering the last readathon I did was almost completely comics—and I didn't enjoy it as much as I might have some other time.

But Suffrajitsu had been the last of my library books, so I'd hit that mark with plenty of time left in the evening!

And it was around this time that I broke to eat and plot my next move:

Goal Number Two: #CleanYourReader

Since it had already been a goal of mine to get through my Nook books this year, I saw no harm in joining the Clean Your Reader reading challenge for the first quarter of the year. With that in mind, I made one Nook book my second readathon goal. I still hadn't made much progress in Masque of the Red Death, so that made for an easy choice. And it was gripping enough that I didn't pay much attention to the sportsball that was on my tv during hubs' split-shift waiting period.

And then it was time for him to leave and I wanted to make sure there would be noise (because I am particularly suspicious of the nighttime without sound). So I did what any discerning person of the book would do: I put on Pride & Prejudice. I'd started out with the 2005 movie version because I was lazy and it was on Netflix. But the changes in dialogue for pacing's sake were more distracting than anything else, so I ended up putting on the DVD of the 1995 BBC/A&E version. AKA, the Essential Pride & Prejudice. Colin Firth and Jennifer Ehle, my first OTP.

Sorry...distracted.

Masque of the Red Death turned out not to be a standalone as I'd expected it to be, but it ended in a good spot and I did not end up going in search of the next book at midnight. So that was good. It was just as compelling as it had started out to be, but I feel no need to acquire the others just yet.

Day Two was a late start. I woke up pretty early but was feeling some indecision. I posted a photo of my to-read corner in distress. What was I to read?  A friend had a solution:

@jessisreading Third column from the left, fifth book down. Go!

— Kylo Wen (@nightxade) January 17, 2016

That turned out to be Daughter of Gods and Shadows, a book I definitely bought for its cover several months ago. Thankfully, it lived up to expectations.

When I finished that, I made another expedition to the to-read corner and pulled out a couple of things for the home stretch. The first was Missed Connections, which is a quick, adorable read, and then In It to Win It, a baseball player/sportscaster second-chance romance I bought at the Dreamers' Tent at the Tucson Festival of Books in March of 2015. That one was a little more dense than I'd expected, so it carried me right on through to the end.

All in all, I had a successful readathon. I read a few of my Own Damn Books; I got all of my library books read for return on Tuesday, and I read cross-format, which is not always something I remember to do (even though I have a million books in both formats). I hope I am able to participate in the next one, if it is on another three-day weekend.

Cause now, I have tomorrow to do all the stuff I didn't do this weekend. Uy.

So Compulsion Problems are a Real Thing

I come from a family of pack rats.

(I also didn't know pack rats were a real animal until I started dating someone from Arizona.)

When you combine a mentality that collecting/keeping is good with a lack of willpower, you get, well, me.

I know there is too much stuff in my house. In the past few years, I have been able to go through my clothing once every year or so and say "I don't need this, this, or this." I've very recently come to do this with my books as well. I've already been able to offload dozens of books at the used bookstore chain in my city. 

Those of you who understand how used bookstores work know the obvious flaw in this scheme: 

Trade.

At most used bookstores, someone will determine what among your offerings will be useful to them, and then offer you either some amount of cash, or three times the amount in trade. You always take the trade, because you can use it for other things! Movies! Records! Little knick knacks and scarves and bags you can give as gifts! Books you can give as gifts!

And then you just hoard it for yourself.

While I might get half the number of books I brought in, I'm still taking books back home. Bad Jess!

At least, for the most part, I only buy books either used or on super kindle sale. Sometimes I'll get something full price, but I'm either getting it with an employee discount (yay, spouses!) or paying full price in order to support my local Indie Feminist Solar-powered Bookstore. This is a good middle ground between my high school and college practice of BUY ALL THE BOOKS (remember those wonderful years of nothing but expendable income?) and my frequent, failed efforts at adulting via moratorium.

I know there will be compulsion buys. I don't feel compelled to buy something every time I'm in a bookstore, but it's probably more frequent than it could be. So I stick to my parameters and try to be strong.

Cause I know if I've just come across it randomly, I won't get to it soon anyway. 

Week One Recap: Total Fail

The year of reading my own damn books did not start out that way. Yes, I finished an awesome galley on the first, and I guess you could consider that mine, but then I went out and bought three more at the used bookstore. And ordered two online. And bought four more at another used bookstore. (And that was just the first half of the week.) So that was fun.

I had already had a book out from the library and needed to renew it because I got stuck, and then my holds came in right before the holiday. So now I've got three library books too. (And another one just arrived on the holds shelf.)

And then, there was the biggie: a colleague in Collection Development ordered a book that I thought would be important to carry just for its face value. Well she bought copies last week. When I went to visit one of her fellows a few days into January, she held up an ARC—coveted amongst book reviewers—and asked if I wanted to read it. 

Hells yes.

I started it on my lunch break. And then I read more when I got home. Library books? What library books?

But my week wasn't a total fail. I've got a grasp of how I'm going to approach this whole thing, And I started acting upon it. After seeing 2001: A Space Odyssey in 70mm on Sunday, I ended up spending a few hours in a bar while hubs and his dad watched football. 

Thank the gods for cell phones.

I started reading The Masque of the Red Death and it's so good! If I hadn't gotten distracted by If I Was Your Girl I would totally have devoured it by now.

It's slow going, but I think I'll be able to pick up the pace once I get rid of All. These. Library. Books. (Plus the ones that I put on hold when they went On Order in the catalog and won't be out for several months...)

I can do this.

RMODB: The First Weekend

Day One: A Valiant Effort

There comes a time in a woman's life when she makes plans for a day off. And then in the process of enacting those plans, the movie she loves to listen to in the background and will always turn on if it's on television ends and a series she's heard a lot about but not yet watched will start from the beginning.

Yup. Friday, as I was doing some routine cleaning, I threw on You've Got Mail because it's adorbs and set to cleaning the living room. And then it went off, and Younger started from the first episode. I adore Sutton Foster and (while I have misgivings about the whole "deception" thing) thought the show was completely adorable. I tried doing other things...but eventually I got deep enough into the house that I could no longer hear the television. And that just wouldn't do.

So obviously, I just spent the rest of the afternoon watching television and reading These Vicious Masks during the commercials. (That book is awesome, by the way. Everyone should read it when it comes out next month.)

Day Two: Making the First Step

I woke up Saturday morning to two goals:

1. Finish These Vicious Masks. And it was awesome. (Seriously, where else can you get Victorian X-Men?)

2. Organize the To-Read Corner.

I'm not going to torment you with pictures of what this corner used to look like. But after going through a few boxes that shouldn't have been there, a little bit of weeding, and then a lot of shifting, I managed to make it palatable for myself and anyone else who might end up in the house.

Yes. This is my To-Read Corner, minus about 20-25 I have on the bottom level of my coffee table in the "read these next" position. I will die before I read all of these, even if I don't buy any more. Did I mention I have an iPad? With three reading apps? And a problem with compulsive buying? Yeah. It's a nice goal, but I doubt I'll ever get that anywhere close to clear. That box down in the bottom right is the collection of first edition Sabatinis I bought at a used book store for 50 bucks. They haven't left that box. I need another bookshelf before I can make that happen. And there are too many weird walls in my house :(

There are a few things that will help contribute to my chances of making a visible dent in this corner, including #readmyowndamnbooks and the Read Harder challenge, among others. 

I can do this. 

RMODB, Goal Number One: Cleaning out the Nook App

I bought my first iPad in 2011. The first thing I did, obviously, was go exploring on iBooks (more about that another time). A few days later, I realized that the other ereader companies had apps that I could download. My Kindle app is a travesty in and of itself—I should never have downloaded so many free ebooks. I knew I wasn't going to read them. The Kobo app is empty but for the third Hunger Games book, which I couldn't find on iBooks when I was reading them and was in too much of a hurry to check on Amazon. I hadn't yet discovered BookShout or Comixology.

Which leaves the Nook app.

The Nook app has never been a big purchasing space for me; mainly because you can't actually buy books in the app and have to go on B&N, and is a far more complicated process than Amazon. But sometimes, there were books on sale there that weren't on iBooks or Amazon, and I bought them there for that reason. I haven't bought a new Nook Book from B&N for goodness knows how long, but I still have about a third of the books left to read. My Nook library includes:

The Prince: A Selection Novella  by Kiera Cass (read)
Curses! A Fucked-Up Fairy Tale by J. A. Kazimer (DNF)
Her First Billionaire by Julia Kent (read)
The Statistical Probability of Love at First Sight by Jennifer E. Smith (read)
Lord Gray's List by Maggie Robinson (read)
The Fake Husband by Michelle Grotewohl (read)
Perfect Chemistry by Simon Elkeles (read)
Under the Never Sky by Veronica Rossi
Eleanor & Park by Rainbow Rowell (read)
Loving a Lost Lord by Mary Jo Putney (read)
Metropolis by Elizabeth Gaffney
Violins of Autumn by Amy McAuley
Quarantine: The Loners by Lex Thomas
A Breath of Eyre by Eve Marie Mont (read)
Catching Jordan by Miranda Kenneally (read)
Uninvited by Sophie Jordan
To Marry a Prince by Sophie Page (read)
To Say Nothing of the Dog by Connie Willis (in progress)
Love and Lists by Tara Sivec
Throne of Glass by Sarah J. Maas (read)
Wrong Bed, Right Guy by Katee Robert (read)
The Sound of Us by Ashley Poston (read)
His Prairie Princess by Kit Morgan (read)
Sovay by Celia Rees
The Luxe by Anna Godberson (read)
Alienated by Melissa Landers (read)
Kindred by Nicola Claire
Masque of the Red Death by Bethany Griffin (in progress)

So, with about ten books left to read, I don't really have a good excuse for not getting them read or cast aside this year. Some of these books have been on my to-read list for years, and I just haven't been in the right mood to read them. Being in the right mood can make or break a book, and I haven't wanted to risk it by reading something at the wrong time. So hopefully, I'll have the sense to come to this list when I'm looking for a particular type of novel.  

Once that's done, Maybe I'll look into cleaning out iBooks.

Hypatia help us all.

Rebranding...Yes, Again...And Reading My Own Damn Books

When I started Our Daily Pryde as a project to hone my writing skills, I was in denial of the fact that I wouldn't keep up with it. At all. And then I came back in 2014 and thought that maybe, I could just use it for my random bits of writing as they came forth.

And then, Book Riot happened.

I had already been writing once or twice a month for The Hub, YALSA's YA Lit blog, for several years, but then I left YALSA for financial reasons and I was still loving writing about books. So I submitted an application to the open call for new contributors when I saw it at Book Riot. And then I started writing for Panels, too. And then I became a copyeditor for Women Write About Comics, and occasionally throw something in the pot there, too. And then I got this awesome new job in Arizona that partially includes regularly writing blog posts and other content for the library website.

So basically, what I'm saying is, I have no creative writing brainpower left at the end of the day.

But I really want to get back into personal writing about books. Sometimes I might have feelings that don't really fit anywhere else, or I might want to take part in something awesome, like Andi's challenge for 2016. Actually, that last thing was what inspired me to come back to this blog. (I also have a blog that I started when I was still in library school called "The Frivolous Reader" and I have a  limping music blog called "Life in Three-Four" but I can't figure out what email account I used for the former and don't want to cross-post on the latter. So here we are.)

So this year, I'm going to #readmyowndamnbooks. And I'm going to make sure the internet keeps me going with it. (Wait until you see my unread physical books corner. Libib says I have 307. But I'll bet that doesn't include various things that didn't have ISBNs or wouldn't scan... and we won't even get into the ebooks. Okay, we will, but later.)

Will you join me? Or at least cheer me on from the sidelines?