Get Lost in Literature

 Leaving today to go read on a beach and pretend that adulting is not a thing I have to do. I'll be back in July with new reviews and recommendations. See you soon!

What does it take to become a writer? I wanted to be a novelist. That was the dream. I wanted to take the things that I could imagine, write them down, sell them to people who would appreciate them. I wanted to be a published author. I went to school for it and everything. I really do feel that my writing improved with my education, I’m not saying it didn’t. But the dream never came true… And now I work in manufacturing and write novels at night that will probably never see the light of day. Hindsight being everything, I should have gone to school for accounting. But there are a lot of successful authors out there who never went to college. It didn’t hurt them. The lack of education doesn’t negate raw talent. They had the vision, the skill, and the dedication it took to write down their ideas and get them to the finish line. Maybe it’s simply those three traits that qualify a writer. I can’t look at any one novelist and compare them to the next. I can’t find a common life thread that u...

Happy New Year! The Sunday Post is a weekly news meme created by Caffeinated Reviewer . I will be posting on the first Sunday of each month and I hope you'll join me. I hope you are all doing well, and are as excited about the New Year as I am. I'm welcoming it in with a recap of last year and my goals for 2025. In 2024, I challenged myself to read 12 books. I know it's not a flashy number, but I figure if I'm doing one a month I'm doing alright. I'm happy that not only did I meet my goal of 12 books, I exceeded it by reading 33, a grand total 14,755 pages. Last year I had set aside some reading goals (other than book count) to help keep my reading habits organized. I wanted to read only from my TBR list, except for when following up previously started series, or rereading prequels to their sequels. And while I did read some from my TBR, I added in a few ARCs and a handful of rereads during the busier holiday months. I'm proud to say, even though I didn'...

Looking Back at 2023 Happy New Year!  In 2023, I challenged myself to 12 books, determined to make time for at least one book a month.  It's not a flashy number, but I was pretty excited to see myself surpass it by three, reading 15 instead of 12. Overall, I read 6,656 pages in 2023. My second goal was to cut back on impulse buys and read something off my to-be-read list. Good Omens   by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaimen  was a book I was inspired to re-read after watching the adaptation of the same name. Th e City Where We Once Lived by Eric Barnes , being my only impulse buy of the year, was also my shortest book . Everything else I read in 2023 was either sitting unread on a physical shelf, or sitting on Good Reads TBR shelf. My  Favorite Book of 2023 was A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini , if you haven't read it I recommend that you do.  My Worst Read of the year was Interview with the Vampire by Anne Rice . I don't want to say it wasn't a g...

There is something wrong with my brain when it comes to connecting long-term human dialogue, to a story I can follow.  I first discovered this problem with radio broadcasts.  As a kid, my dad always had a radio outside on hot summer days, blasting the Red Sox game for the whole neighborhood to hear. I could sit in the stands and watch a baseball game, or sit in front of the television, but I never could bring the announcers voice into my mind's eye to hear the game.  Alternatively, my mother not only could listen and understand the broadcasts, she once told me she actually preferred listening to football and baseball on the radio. She'd get excited about some call made during a Patriot's game during a car ride, and be unhappy when I didn't know what was happening, never-mind which team it was happening too. I made a friend, who was older than myself, but shared my love of reading. Her thing was English Mysteries. She also liked to read "whatever the kids are readin...

Happy Hump-day Readers! I've been trying to figure out which of my GoodReads reviews to integrate into my blog, and when. I had some stories that I read and didn't bother to review, some I reviewed in three sentences or less, and some that got reviewed as if the review was its own novel. While I was on - let's call it an "unplanned-hiatus" - my unplanned hiatus, not all reviews were created equal. I'm planning on using Monday as the day to post older reviews, and I've got the following scheduled: Mr. Penumbra's 24 Hour Bookstore by Robin Sloan 4/16 Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi 4/25 Library of Souls by Ransom Riggs 5/2 A Map of Days by Ransom Riggs 5/9 A Time to Kill by John Grisham 5/16 The Pillars of Earth by Ken Follet 5/23 To Sleep in a Sea of Stars by Chris Paolini 5/30 I've restarted book blog memes TopTenTuesday hosted by  ThatArtsyReaderGirl  and Thursday Quotables brought to you by  BookshelfFantasies ; I'm also trying a new one, Friday Book ...

 Changes are coming to my blog. The biggest change: I'm using it. I haven't been by in awhile, but I'd like to be by more often. I'm still reading and I'm still reviewing, and I find sometimes after work my mind needs a distraction, which has brought me back here. My blog is getting a newer sleeker look, so I'm reorganizing some of my content to fit. Instead of keeping track of my ratings on separate pages, those are now getting added to my labels. I'm working off of a computer with less storage capacity so there will be no homemade graphics...I think this template works fine, anyways. I hope everyone out there is safe and healthy in our strange new world. We've survived the Trump Administration, Covid-19 Pandemic, and things are looking dicey for the Biden Administration as the threat of WW3 looms on the horizon. We've seen royals abdicate for true love, riots against hate, war's end and war's beginning. It's like a post-apocalyptic worl...

I've been gone but I've not been slacking. Long at last, I finally found a job that was willing to overlook my lack of experience, in favor of training me up. The good news is I thoroughly enjoy the job even if it's possibly the weirdest job I could have found. It allows me to do two things I love: work with my hands and work with my mind. Unfortunately, its been an adjustment; getting up early made me come home an exhausted dragon lady with no time to read (even though the books keep piling up!) In 2015 I participated in the AZ Challenge. I haven't decided yet if I will repeat the feat this year. I also set out to read 30 books. I read 14 instead. I started Short Story Sunday, which like this blog has remained obviously inactive (but I remain confident in its purpose). I've finally got a handle on my working hours, which is good because its the First Day of the New Year and I'm excited to be accessing abilities and setting goals for 2016. This year I...

So my upcoming reviews will be typed out slowly on my Kindle Fire, with less spellcheck and probably inferior formatting. I regret the inconvenience.

Taking a moment this Sunday morning to mention my plans for the week. Monday, I will be posting my review for The Knife of Never Letting Go by Patrick Ness, and though it isn't official yet, if The Ask and the Answer is half as fun as The Knife, I'll have that review for you by Wednesday. I'm also re-reading The Wicked series; I have my thoughts on the 4th book posted, but I never did a write up for the first 3 and that's something I want to do. Sometime, in between Monday and Wednesday, I've got a TTT List scheduled and since I've got plenty of reading to do this week, their should be no problem getting a Thursday Quotable to you...And then we're back to the weekend which will probably have me offline.

...I'm stuck in Jury Duty this week. Everybody's got to do it, but nobody actually likes it. Who developed this ridiculous, miserable concept?

So for the past couple weeks, I’ve been AWAL. My Top Ten Tuesday and Wednesday Review post are filled out in several week advance so they don’t get forgotten, but you may have noticed I haven’t been doing Quotable Thursday as devoutly or posting reviews for my more current reads. If you haven’t noticed I was gone, please keep it to yourself. And in the interest of honesty, I admit, despite starting several books and I haven’t finished any of them this year. The sad reality is I’ve been sailing the HMS Depression and all together feeling sorry for myself. People say the job market is more competitive than ever. I don’t like the word competitive in relation to the job market. It implies competition. There is no competition. There are companies, both private and retail, running ads, online and in newspaper, for new employees. People fill out applications and resumes and cover letters and send them in, hoping for a nibble. These companies don’t require themselves to give a courtesy ca...

This list/post was inspired by the Top Ten Tuesday list,  The Broke and Bookish  had scheduled for today. This week's theme was supposed to be:  Goals/Resolutions For 2014 (bookish, not bookish or a blend).  I've taken a few liberties with the list today. Facebook now has a feature that tries to display what it thinks the highlights of my year were...It always pisses me off when Facebook just assumes stuff on my behalf. I mean, who does it think it is? I can leave it any time, right? But it did make me think about the highlights of my year and what I thought they were. So here is a list of my most memorable moments of 2013!  In May I brought home 5 orphaned bunnies and kept three, Lady B, Sprout and Moon.  In June, I graduated from college and later I threw out my back.  Throwing out my back turned out to be a good thing, because it was shortly after in July, I started this blog! And I have 11 followers that I know of, 8 here on Blogg...

Guess who got the new Kindle Fire for Christmas? If you guessed me, you're right. Guess who doesn't entirely know what to do with it? If you guess me, you're right again. Here's the thing. I spend a lot of time on my computer. I spend a lot of time with books. I spend a lot of time on horses. I try very hard to keep my worlds from colliding. The barn is probably the one place in the world where I never carry a book. And when I'm reading books, on a device, I want the device to resemble the pages of an actual book more than my computer screen. Which is why I picked out a Kindle Touch the day I went shopping for a eReader. It's simple, black and white, no extra buttons, no back light to tire my eyes. It had extremely long battery life and great memory. The Kindle Fire is an eReader for the gadget lover...Which I am not.  Dog Shaming  was my first download, mainly because I knew a book of photographs was the most obvious thing to have on a Kindle made for color...

I am not a Christmas person; for me, the best part of this holiday is the tree in my living room, sparkling and bright, wafting its scent through the house. But as I am surrounded by Christmas people, I am obligated to try my hardest to make the holiday bright and cheerful for them even if I'm not having the time of my life. Bah-Humbug!  Where's the Grinch when you need him? Yesterday night, my dad gave me a bit of money, and sent me to Walmart to look for some Stocking-stuffers for my mother's stocking. Normally that's his job, but his actual job had him working overtime and it was unlikely he'd escape to a store. So I discovered Walmart, the week of Christmas, was the epitome of madness. It was like watching panicked looters during the end of the world. Most of the shelves were cleaned out, others looked like they'd suffered a tornado. If I could get near a shelf, I had to get what I wanted or get out...Otherwise, strangers would growl at me. I walked fas...

I was sooo excited when I realized from Thursday to CyberMonday, Amazon was offering so many book deals! I've spent the last few days hunting for e-bargains and picking at leftover turkey. I must have checked in every few hours to look for books on my wishlist and was rewarded for my persistence. I managed to get 9 new books for little more than pocket change before the money on my Amazon account ran out. I should be all set with reading material for awhile... I hope everyone had an enjoyable holiday, or at the very least got some good food and great titles out of it! Happy Monday!

I was nominated for the Shine On Award by Jazmen @  This Girl Reads a lot!  blog! Her blog is amazing btw, so be sure to stop by if you aren't there already! The Shine On Award is a great way to recognize new blogs while learning a little bit about the bloggers! Shine On Award Rules 1. Visit and thank the blogger who nominated you. 2. Acknowledge that blogger on your blog, and link back. 3. Share seven, random interesting things about yourself. 4. Nominate up to 15 bloggers for the Shine On Award, provide a link to their blogs in your post, and notify them on their blogs. 7 Random Things About Me 1. I've been riding horses for fifteen years and I have no intention of stopping anytime soon. 2. People think I'm unlucky in love, but the truth is, I have no desire to be in a relationship. 3. I like to wait until my family is in bed, then pull out my laptop, and write the night away. 4. I actually like shoveling snow; it's a great physic...

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and Other Tales from the Jazz Age by F. Scott Fitzgerald This is one of the books I'm trying to read at the moment. It was a free book, I got off of  Pixels of Ink . Its a compilation of short stories by F. Scott Fitzgerald, a writer who is supposed to be one of the greats. So far I've read, Benjamin Button, Diamond as Big as the Ritz, and Tarquin of Cheapside , and for the most part I'm enjoying them. But whoever did the compiling screwed up. Dropped words, phrases and at times whole sentences. I'll be reading along, reading along, and suddenly I hit a blank space. When the blank space ends, I'm located somewhere in the middle of a sentence. When I finally muster up a review, I'm going to review Fitzgerald favourably... But I'm gonna flame the shit out of the transcriber. The real question is, who takes classic literature and butchers it? Who does that? Seedbox Press, LLC apparently. Here we have a s...

I don't have any official followers yet, but in case I have any unofficial followers popping in from time to time, quiet and anonymous, I decided to clarify. I'm sure you noticed that some of my reviews are marked at the bottom with the phrase "original post date" followed by a different date than the one the blog gives you. This is because I'm posting reviews from previously read books on my GoodReads challenge... And some of those books were part of a series, that were started before I challenged myself to read a minimum of 30 books this year, so you'll most likely receive those  reviews in the order they were read/reviewed. I usually read 2-3 books at a time, depending what kind of story I'm in the mood for, click my  Currently Reading  tab to find out what I'm reading right now and my initial thoughts on those books--->I'll always post a full review when I'm finished.

This week I'm reading: The Dwarves by Markus Heitz ; An epic fantasy, that also happens to have a questionable amount of cheese. I'm 63% done with it. Suspec t by Robert Crais ; I actually haven't started this yet, but I'm told its a murder mystery told by a dog with PTSD. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and Other Tales of the Jazz Age by F.Scott Fitzgerald ; I was in the mood for a classic, and I got this little freebie off of Pixels of Ink... It would be a great collection of stories if there weren't so many typos. 25% of the way through. I will be offering reviews of these, along with images of the cover art, (because people do judge books by their covers) as soon as I'm finished reading.