The Very Best of Caitlín R. Kiernan

“What she gives us is something more subtle and strangely ephemeral. In a way, her best stories are acts of haunting” – Richard Kadrey, Introduction.

The Very Best of Caitlín R. Kiernan was not my introduction to Kiernan, as I have encountered one of her short stories in the Unicorn Anthology, and I simply devoured her novel The Drowning Girl. She’s an incredible writer, one whom I greatly admire for her dark atmosphere and unique fantastical cosmic horror. This collection includes some of her best short works over the years ranging from 2005-present day. As readers we get glimpses into Kiernan’s growth as an author in the last fourteen years witnessing different styles and plots. Most of these short works have been either published independently in SFF magazines, or anthologized thematically, but here her strongest short works have been collected under one name. Kiernan has received the James Tiptree, Jr. and Bram Stoker Awards in the past, and is an author whose work I would recommend you explore.

Kiernan’s style of writing is not very traditional and her use of language is dark, disturbing, and grotesque, while simultaneously drawing you in and holding your attention. The reading equivalent of: ‘I can’t look away.’ Like in The Drowning Girl here too we find that water and fluidity is a reoccurring symbol in Kiernan’s works. I found that her stories managed to incorporate different arts in the mix, specifically film which was a very interesting take. For instance, “The Prayer of Ninety Cats” tells the story of a movie critic watching a film about Elizabeth Báthory, the Blood Countess weaving in the various arts, film, theory, and historical figures. Such interconnected plot-lines will be found in most of these stories. You will find twins killing people, a unique take on the unicorn, a science journalist investigating lighting strikes and finding the unexpected, art critics interviewing models of famous paintings, art exhibitions, and violins made of human remains. You will find a different fictional take on the “dysfunctional family” (and that is putting it mildly), and pays homage to Sci-fi classics with the incorporation of  non-responsive abandoned ships. And as I mentioned, this collection covers a lot of ground: you will find a bit of everything in this book. What is truly intriguing and captivating in Kiernan’s work is her atmosphere and writing style. I will warn readers, however, that aside from the grotesque, there are many instances of swearing in this work (it did not interfere with my personal reading experience). It’s a thrilleresque experience, rough around the edges.

This collection is not for everyone, and that’s okay. Kiernan writes in a dark niche corner of literature, and I think she directs her writings at a very specific kind of audience. I would recommend this collection to you if you enjoy the works of: Shirley Jackson, Victor Lavalle, Nick Mamatas, Angela Carter, David Lynch, H.P. Lovecraft, or Cosmic Horror. If you have not read any of the listed authors, but you want to get out of your comfort zone and try something different, Kiernan might be a great place to start.

This book has been published by Tachyon Publications.

The People’s Republic of Everything

Earlier this year I read Nick Mamatas’s essay collection Starve Better: Surviving the Endless Horror of the Writing Life. The non-fictional work covered the skill and resilience involved in producing a successful and ‘sell-able’ short story as a freelance writer without waiting for divine inspiration. I immediately requested an ARC from Tachyon when I heard that The People’s Republic of Everything will be published this year. This collection includes fifteen short stories involving a spectrum of science fiction, horror, political satire, and atmospheric settings. Mamatas is very Lovecraftian in his writing style, a presence felt even in his non-fiction. He’s written seven novels and has been nominated for the Hugo, Locus, Wold Fantasy, Bram Stoker, Shirley Jackson, and International Horror Guild Awards.

This collection incorporates a range of stories written over the last ten years. I enjoyed that each story is followed up by Mamatas elaborating on how the story was written, but most importantly, the ever-frequently-asked question: where do your ideas come from? I really enjoyed this aspect because at times short stories in the speculative genre that cross over can be so odd I’m not sure I know what to think of them. Mamatas explains how he came up with the idea and what he was trying to achieve for each one of these short stories. Two stories in this volume are about collecting correspondence to create a personality-emulator. Mamatas writes after “Walking with a Ghost” that he was fascinated by the friendship and correspondence between Jack Kerouac and H.P. Lovecraft and their cult following, and the idea that one can gather enough data on a person’s way of addressing to be able to emulate ‘personhood.’ Yes, there is an AI Lovecraft in this collection. The second story follows a Marx and Engels partnership in the style of Sherlock Holmes and John Watson—told in a steampunk style. These are just two examples of the variety that can be found in this collection. In the middle there are some that struck a chord with me, particularly “Tom Silex, Spirit-Smasher” and “The Phylactery”–mainly because there was something very personal to them with a touch of humanity and interesting characters. There are a few stories published here for the first time for which even Mamatas has no further comments. Several of his stories focus on Communism and politics, and concludes with a novella (what used to be a screenplay) about the George W.H. Bush era and the invasion of Iraq which was picked up for a film and then dropped (but we get to enjoy it in novella format).

I have to say, I learned a lot of new terminology in this collection. For one, I never heard of dieselpunk before which according to a Google search is: “a genre similar to steampunk that combines the aesthetics of the diesel-based technology of the interwar period through to the 1950s with retro-futuristic technology and postmodern sensibilities,” or as Mamatas puts it “like steampunk, but greasier and more efficient.” Mamatas extracts the essence of several sub-genres and cult followings that are in themselves so niche, obscure, and esoteric and creates a genre that is uniquely him. Mamatas quite recently came out to say that he was done writing genre fiction, but I don’t think he has a genre to which his writing belongs. Kerouac’s language, Lovecraft’s atmosphere, and Bukowski’s coarseness are already sub-groups in larger literary circles where such few people have heard of them, read them (enough to create a fandom). But then, Mamatas takes elements from each and incorporates them in a writing style that is also a sub-genre of a sub-genre like: dieselpunk, cyberpunk, etc. Take all that and place it in an urbuan fantasy setting, and you got yourself a Nick Mamatas short story. See!? Not very easy to define.

I liked his writing style. On a sentence-level Mamatas in not pretentious nor exclusionary. His fiction is accessible if you want to be taken into the dark corners of niche-speculative fiction. I enjoyed them very much, and like every short story collection there will be a mixture of what works and what doesn’t on an individual level.

This collection has been announced to be published on September 8, 2018.

The Geek Feminist Revolution

In anticipation for the soon-to-be-published Apocalypse Nyx I thought I’d take some time and get to know Kameron Hurley (or at least her non-fictional voice). I was thrilled to see that The Geek Feminist Revolution has been appreciated by many of my bookish friends and I am no exception. I read a few feminist texts this year, and found some to be slightly repetitive. I find it interesting that a non-fictional work about a topic is greatly affected by who has written it. If another had written this exact same book I may have been annoyed at the biographical bits. However, learning about Hurley’s journey to becoming a (beloved and respected) science-fiction writer against all odds has been worth the read. It also helps to know that she won to Hugo awards. One for Best Related Work (2013), for her essay “‘We Have Always Fought’: Challenging the ‘Women, Cattle and Slaves’ Narrative,” and the second for Best Fan Writer (2014). In addition she has published several books in the Bel Dame Apocrypha, respectively God’s War (2010), Infidel (2011), and Rapture (2012),  and the Worldbreakar Saga: The Mirror Empire (2014), Empire Ascendant (2015), and The Broken Heavens (2017) as well as lots of short fiction published across several online platforms, magazines, and anthologies.

Hurley begins by telling readers of her journey and struggle as a young writer in her teens and early 20s facing rejection after rejection in the writing industry. At the same time there was a rise of women speaking up in all fields and standing their ground. A lot of times Hurley reinforces some of the points Roxanne Gay made in her books and adds to them. She is in many ways in conversation with Gay, and mentions Gay’s work several times. What I appreciated about Hurley’s work was the way she tackled different aspects of what a ‘Geek’ feminist must endure, particularly in the Science Fiction/Fantasy world. She takes us on a journey through the history of the Hugos, the many excuses made by the crowds on behalf of successful men, the ridiculous things authors like Harlan Ellison, and Theodore Beale have said in public spaces about other writers. For instance, finding out that anyone could possibly dislike N.K. Jemisin was already a shock to me, but finding out that someone publicly wrote that she was a ‘half-savage’ and was still read and supported by readers and the industry made me lose some of the faith I had in bookish people. And that’s just it, Hurley takes on the ‘Geek’ feminist dilemma. We’re supposed to be surrounded by the educated folk, the people who know better than to be racist, and sexist. And yet… The back-end drama of the Hugos and the Sci-Fi industry is all laid bare by Hurley here and she backs every single assertion with examples, and supportive evidence. For instance, she looks at the way we look at male heroes versus female heroes from varying angles, and even relates the story of Alice Sheldon being discovered as James Tiptree Jr, pointing out that Robert Silverberg famously said of Tiptree, “it has been suggested that Tiptree is female, a theory that I find absurd, for there is to me something ineluctably masculine about Tiptree’s writing.”

Hurley writes:

I wasn’t the only one often confused by society’s expectations versus what I actually wanted.

Traits we love in male heroes-their complexity, their confidence, their occasional bouts of selfish whim—become, in female heroes, marks of the dreaded ‘unlikable character.’

Anything is possible But to make it possible, we must first acknowledge that none of it is normal.

Hurley also takes on Gamergate and how it looks like from the outside. And how/why did so many young men from relatively cultured and well-off places think that the appropriate response to a heartbreak/rejection/criticism of consumed media had to be met with rage, violence, and threats? Hurley writes:

“when you are promised the world and the world says it doesn’t want you, you’re left flailing and lashing out, and that’s what these guys did.”

Hurley also elaborates on her weight being a secondary barrier for her as a writer and in the way she is accepted or judged in the first seconds of meeting, or being seen in a conference, a reading, or an online video platform. She writes:

“I’d be judged on whether or not I had the ‘discipline’ to take up less space in the world.”

Her bottom line to everything however is persistence. She writes about persistence a lot:

“Persistence isn’t the end of the road, after all. Persistence is the game. The narrative that wins is the one that persists the longest, in the face of overwhelming odds…Persistence is the name of the road.”

Persistence in the name of oppression, persistence in getting your work published, persistence, persistence, persistence.

Lastly, I’ll leave you with this line that Hurley quotes from Ursula K. Le Guin, which I think is a good summary of what Hurley conveys in this work successfully:

“We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable. So did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings. Resistance and change often begin in art, and very often in our art—the art of words”

This work certainly speaks to the here and now. It reflects present day, Western anxieties. I liked that Hurley went for the specific niche “Geek” feminist and took on the SFF world, rather than trying to encompass everything else. Whenever she zooms out of the ‘geek’ circle, she speaks of other issues in her personal experience, and because of who she is and what she has achieved, these experiences are relevant and interesting.

 

What Makes This Book so Great

What Makes This Book So Great is a series of reflections and essays written by Jo Walton for Tor.com between 2008 and 2011. There are several essays where she offers her opinion and personal experience on a particular topic in a frank, and personalized way. The other essays however are specific things Walton wishes to discuss from her reading experience of particular books. They are not quite reviews, rather, they are snippets of what worked or didn’t work in a book or series for her (as a reader). She states in the introduction:

“there’s no impersonality here, no attempt at objectivity. These are my thoughts and opinions, for what they’re worth, my likes and dislikes, my quirks and prejudices and enthusiasms”

For the most part I think she has certainly achieved what she set out to accomplish with this collection. There are three essays that caught my attention, which I’d like to discuss at length here. The rest of the essays just made my TBR longer with about five new long series, and a dozen other individual novels.  I loved the ways Walton describes how she reads when she is cozy, or down, or sick, and how comforting is to be in the company of a great book that seeks only to entertain and be fun.

In the very first essay Walton takes a stand for ‘re-reading’ in favour of only reading new books at all times. There are books one would like to read, or likes the idea of knowing its contents, but not necessarily willing to put hours into reading the material itself. Certain histories and political books fall into this category for Walton, and others alike (myself included). This topic is reoccurring through the collection and becomes apparent in the ways Walton describes certain long series. She writes:

“There are readers and re-readers…when I re-read, I know what I’m getting. It’s like revisiting an old friend. An unread book holds wonderful unknown promise, but also threatens disappointment…upon a re-read one is not surprised…you have more time to pay attention to the characters.”

The second essay that caught my attention is one where Walton discusses Speculative Fiction as it stand in opposition to the mainstream. She writes:

 “when mainstream writers come to write SF, it’s normally the case that they don’t understand the idioms of SF, the things we do when we (SF readers) read SF…the mainstream writers know how to do all the basic writing stuff, stories and characters and all of that, sometimes they know how to do that really well. They really want to write SF…but they don’t know how SF works…they explain too much of the wrong things and not enough of the right things…In a science fiction novel, the world is a character, and often the most important character. In a mainstream novel, the world is our world and the characters are in the world. In a mainstream novel trying to be SF, this gets peculiar and can make the reading experience uneven”

I think this topic gave me pause, for two reasons. The first is that now I think the SFF field has its own sub-genres and its own version of the mainstream. For instance, I consider books like N.K. Jemisin’s The Fifth Season to be so mainstream, because on Booktube everyone talks about it (or has in the past) particularly in the Science Fiction and Fantasy channels. It’s hard to keep in perspective how small this group is overall, and how within society avid readers (10+ books per month) are a small subgroup. I now pride myself on knowing the most obscure texts rather than the mainstream, and yet ‘mainstream’ Science Fiction, is not recognizable by the average person (or reader) as it is a subgenre of a subgenre (speculative). It sort of reminded me of the Jeffrey Eugenides quote from The Marriage Plot:

“College wasn’t like the real world. In the real world people dropped names based on their renown. In college, people dropped names based on their obscurity.”

Walton also made me me reflect on the ways I interact with Science Fiction, and how, compared to many other SFF readers I’m still very much a beginner. This language Walton refers to with technicalities, and knowing what needs explaining and what doesn’t is at the beginning very excluding to a beginner. When I approached this topic I felt like there was a group of smart people, a nerdy and intellectual crowd, and they ALSO told me that I can’t sit with them. It’s almost like they’ve made up an entirely new vocabulary telling the ‘norm cool kids’ or the ‘belonging to no group’ people like me: NO, YOU can’t hang out with us. It’s like being rejected by every group on the social spectrum.

In chapter 95 “SF reading protocols” Walton is in communication with Samuel R. Delany’s nonfiction works, particularly when he was attaching a vocabulary to Science Fiction in 1977 when the field was still finding its defining characteristics. She points out how other genres are defined by their tropes, i.e. romance is two people finding each other, mystery has clues, etc. But

“SF not defined by tropes. Samuel Delany suggested that rather than trying to define science fiction it’s more interesting to describe it, and when describing it, it’s more interesting to draw a broad circle around what everyone agrees is SF than to quibble about the edge conditions…look at the way people read it—those of us who read it have built up a set of skills for reading SF which let us enjoy it, where people who don’t have this approach to reading are left confused.”

Walton also considers what leaves a ‘friend’ who borrows a Sci-Fi book and returns it claiming ‘I didn’t get it’ say that they ‘don’t get it.’ They are not stupid, and they can read sentences. But Walton states that Modern Science Fiction assumes you already know how to interpret its language and:

 “It’s just that part of the fun of science fiction happens in your head, and their head isn’t having fun, it’s finding it hard work to keep up.”

The last essay (and its alluring title) is the main reason I checked this book out in the first place. The topic is “Literary criticism vs. talking about books.” All I’ve ever wanted to do: talk about books! I want to talk about the books I love, and the ones I hate, and sometimes I simply have an emotional reaction, whereas in formal discussion people want a more objective, distant analysis, which makes things very difficult. In undergrad I joined ‘writing groups,’ ‘poetry clubs,’ and all kinds of groups that weren’t quite what I wanted. They all required of me something different from pouring out my heart and soul on what a book meant to me. The way I’ve been using this platform for instance, is mainly me trying to introduce everything I’ve highlighted in a text so I can keep all the quotations I loved from a book in one place. Some turn into reviews, others just into a log of quotations, and most somewhere in-between–but at no point would I call myself a critic, even when I draw lines of comparison between other texts or schools of thought (at times). Walton writes:

“Critics are in dialogue with the text but also in dialogue with each other…I resist the term because critics are supposed to be impersonal and detached, they’re not supposed to burble about how much they love books and how they cried on the train. Most of all I resist because I hate the way that necessary detachment and objectivity seem to suck the life and the joy of reading out of the books critics talk about.”

There’s also the matter of ‘spoilers.’ Often academics go to the core of what they want to discuss in order to have a frame for their greater philosophical or historical point, that they completely forget that some people might have not read the book. The way SF assumes you know the terminology, academics assume you have read every book they refer to. Walton mentioned how a footnote from a Penguin classic of a Victorian book about three chapters in spoiled the ending of the book. This doesn’t happen in bookish circles (like on Booktube, Book Blogs, or just gatherings of bookish friends) because we are quite cautious of spoilers.

“In academia spoiler warnings are fannish and embarrassing….re-reading is forever, but you can only have the experience of reading a book for the first time once.”

The fact that a footnote, or an academic/critic can ruin someone’s first reading experience of a text is devastating, and I have a feeling this happened for lots of people who took literature courses in University, carefully choosing courses they loved, and subsequently having those books ruined for them. Finally I loved the ways Walton distinguishes herself from critics and puts herself in the category of people who love to read and just to talk about books. She writes:

“I’m not standing on a mountain peak holding them at arm’s length and issuing Olympian pronouncements about them…the lines of respectability in the SFF world, or that if something is studied it ought not to be fun, and you can only have fun with certain books…I feel as if I’m not really a grown-up critic. And I don’t want to be. It’s too much of a responsibility and not enough fun”

Yes!

End of the Year | Reflection

First of all, if you are currently reading this, thank you! A many great thanks to readers who have stuck with me this year, and commented on, or read my reading experience. I really appreciate your bookish company and academic contributions. Also, thank you if you’ve recommended books, audiobooks, podcasts, or stories to me, because you contributed to my reading experience, and honestly, that is the greatest gift.

This year was a very strange year for me, mainly because it’s been a “transition” year. In March I officially started this review/reading journal blog which for the first time held me accountable for my personal reading reflections. I also started to get ARCs for reviews which was exciting at first, but became overwhelming very fast. The truth about early editions for review, is that, as exciting as it is to receive a present in exchange for an honest review, it doesn’t necessarily guarantee that it’s a good book. As an early reviewer I have no idea what the book will be like, and because I have promised to give a review, I can’t in all honesty review something unless I’ve fully read it. I chose not to post about any book I didn’t like, which is why you are unlikely to find my negative rants anywhere here (except for monthly wrap-ups). Nonetheless, it means I’ve given hours and hours of my time to books that I didn’t necessarily enjoy all that much. While I was compiling this end of year list, I realized that only one book I got for early review actually made it on the fiction list, which was Ex Libris.

In May I finished University (6 years and 2 degrees later) which led to four months of being on pins and needles trying to get a job in a library. After getting a job in September I then had to move houses three times which was really quite unnerving. Lugging books back and forth, trying to keep my reading going, and at the same time being released from “reading for school” in April to “reading for myself” was very confusing after six years. Sometimes I feel like maybe I enjoyed getting ARCs because they were like school assignments again and that has become my comfort zone. That said, my eye for which books I request as ARCs has also become better. I can see already that books I’m currently reading (to be released in 2018) are far more interesting and right up my alley regarding reading preference. I’m really enjoying Simon Garfield’s Timekeepers: How the World became Obsessed with Time, and Christian Davenport’s The Space Barons: Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and the Quest to Colonize the Cosmos. Although I have not yet reviewed them, I can tell that they will become favourites. I have a long list of fiction as well, which I think I will enjoy much more than what I previously requested.

On my top lists I will count the books which I’ve personally read in 2017 (which were not necessarily published in 2017). I will also not count re-reads, which I obviously enjoyed before if I’ve returned to them. I did however start reading some books that I enjoyed so much but for some reason they coincided with a stressful time and I couldn’t accord them the attention they deserved, so I’ve temporarily put them aside (even though I predict 4-5 star ratings).

If the title of any of the books below is “clickable” it means I wrote an in-depth review/reflection on it (if you want to read it).

Reading Statistics 

• I read a total of  111 books
• Of these books (42 of them) or 38% were written by female authors, (5) 4% by mixed (particularly short story collections) and (64 books) 58% male authors.
• Categories are: Nonfiction (34 books, 31%), Plays (2 books, 2%), Scifi and Fantasy (22 books, 20%), Academic (10 books, 9%), Poetry (14 books, 13%), Classics (12 books, 11%), General Contemporary Fiction 15%. See pie chart
• Of these initially, 70 of them were bought from Indigo, Amazon, and second hand bookstores. 36 of them were free (friends, ARCs, presents), and only 5 of them were from the library….which we should all realize it’s really shameful (I’m a librarian). Bad Andreea! You can already guess my new year’s resolutions.
• From these books 42 were Digital (Kindle/Overdrive), 69 of them were physical copies, and 18 of them were Audiobooks.
• From the whole 32/111 were ARCs (Advance Reader Copies).
• There are a few cross-overs, and I definitely bought WAY more than 70 books this year. By cross-overs I mean: although 18 were Audiobooks from Audible (which I bought), there’s a chance I also bought the physical copy to follow along and annotate. I also bought books that I haven’t read yet (many, MANY of them). Also, sometimes a book was free like an ARC, library loan, or from Overdrive, and I loved it so much I bought a copy anyway. The things I listed in the breakdown were in the “initial encounter” with the book.
• According to my Audible App this year alone I listened to a total of 61 Hours, or 2 days and 13 hours. (The total since 2014 is 8 days, 2 hrs, and 48 min so this year was definitely my best Audible year so far). I am only 56 hours away from “Scholar” Listening Level. I must add that this year I listened to a lot of podcasts from Castbox, and several audiobooks from Overdrive which have not been counted into my Audible app, so I probably listened to a lot more.
• But Andreea, you may say, the year is not over yet. True. I know my schedule ahead for the next two weeks, and I’m currently in the middle of three really large books. I don’t think I’m going to finish them all this year, just based on my plans for the next two weeks, so I will not be counting them towards the 2017 calculations…also there’s no way I’m redoing all these calculations. It took a while.

Books I re-read this year were (No Particular Order):

1. Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace
2. Poor Folk by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
3. Journey to the Centre of the Earth by Jules Verne
4. Odd Type Writers, by Celia Blue Johnson
5. Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson
6. Rabbit Hole by David Lindsay-Abaire
7. Walden by Henry David Thoreau
8. The House of the Dead by Fyodor Dostoyevsky       

Top 5 Non-Fiction (In Order of How much I enjoyed them) 

1. Lore by Aaron Mahnke. I spend two continuous months with Mahnke by means of his audiobook, podast, and text. He made the autumn season glorious for me, and this whole experience was just perfect. I gave him five stars. My long review is linked in the title. Definitely my #1 Non-Fiction Read.
2. The Readers’ Advisory Service in North American Public Libraries, 1870-2005: A History and Critical Analysis by Juris Dilevko. This book was perhaps the most comprehensive “history of the library” book I’ve yet encountered, and I really enjoyed it.
3. The Hermit’s Cookbook: Monks, Food, and Fasting in the Middle Ages by Andrew Jotischky. Exactly what it sounds like: an academic book on monks and food. I loved it.
4. The Witches: Salem 1692 by Stacy Schiff. A comprehensive, well-researched non-fiction work on the history of the Salem Witch Trials.
5. Dark Angel: Mary Ann Cotton by Martin Connolly. The historical account of the “first” female serial killer in Britain.

Bonus: (book I’m currently reading and not really counting in the statistics above, but am REALLY enjoying)

Vampyres: Genesis and Resurrection: From Count Dracula to Vampirella by Christopher Frayling. This work is half non-fiction history of Vampires in literature and mainstream culture, and half anthology of fictional works containing vampires. It is very well put together, and I am enjoying all the non-fiction bits just as much as the fiction.

Top 10 Fiction (In Order of How much I enjoyed them) 

1. The Collector by John Fowles
2. Ex Libris Stories of Librarians, Libraries, and Lore
3. The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss 
4. The Dumb House by John Burnside
5. Jamaica Inn by Daphne Du Maurier
6. Central Station by Lavie Tidhar
7. Rendezvous with Rama by Arthur C. Clarke
8. The Light Between Oceans by M.L Stedman
9. Big Little Lies by Liane Moriarty
10. Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders

Things I learned about Myself:

• I am really bad at maintaining a TBR or participating in Read-alongs. I didn’t read 2/4 books I announced I would for Victober, and I didn’t read 3/4 books I announced I would read for Nonfiction November. I hardly contributed conversations on the Reddit Thread for Infinite Jest, even though it was the only reason I re-read it. I still read Victorian Literature in October, and Nonfiction in November….I just didn’t stick to the list I had prepared. I got very easily distracted by different books. I also find it very hard to read on someone else’s schedule. I tried participating in a few “Goodreads book clubs” and I ended up being unable to do it at either too slow, or too fast a pace (depending on the book).
• I am very much a “mood reader.” This is the reason I buy a lot of my books, even though I’m a librarian. I like to have the foundational texts always around because some days I feel like Tolkien, the next I may feel like it’s a Sherlock kind of day….and I need to have them on hand.
• Some books really upset me (for pretentiousness) and bored me while I was reading them but then I found I couldn’t stop thinking about them after I put them down (Lincoln in the Bardo and Infinite Jest were such examples)

Posts I enjoyed Writing 

• Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes
• Toronto Bookstores
• “Desert” Island Books
• Beowulf: Grendel’s Mother

In the meantime I may still squeeze in a few posts until the year is out, including of course my NEW YEAR RESOLUTIONS in terms of what I hope to achieve with my reading goals next year. I hope you all have a wonderful time in these last two weeks before the New Year! Happy Holidays, and thanks again for reading 🙂