Just a little thing

So.  I'm reading a book, and the author just name checked one of their characters from an unrelated series.  I'm going to make up an example so that I don't have to call out the author, because who did it isn't really the point.

For example, if you were reading one of Susan Elizabeth Phillips' football books, and the hero makes a point of saying that he's watching one of the golf heroes on TV.  It doesn't add anything to the story.  Straight up name check.  Does that bother you, or is it a funny little inside joke for the fans?

My first reaction was to laugh.  But after that it was a little bit icky.  Not so icky/funny as the author who did a cover blurb for one of her own pen names a few years ago, but still just the tiniest bit icky.  I think I had the reaction because this author references real people sometimes, and I've been known to google looking for more information about them.  If other people do this (I can't be the only weirdo out there who does this kind of thing), then they're definitely going to come across other books by this author.  It kind of feels like marketing.  Can't they just trust that readers will enjoy the book and check out the list of other titles in the front and/or back of the book or on the author's website?

What do you think?  Am I being silly?  Do these little references amuse or annoy you?  Do you even notice?  Please, discuss amongst yourselves.

When Do You Give Up?

I'm reading this book, see.  And it's a library book.  I waited in line for WEEKS to get this book.  And I really want to read it, except that I don't.

Sometimes I'm reading along and it just sucks me in.  It's fascinating, and I can't wait to see what happens next.  And then the scene changes, and I'm putting it down every other page to see if there's anything new on the internet and get a snack.  I think part of the problem is that the author seems to be setting up a triangle, and I have no interest in one of the dudes.  Also, I'm a little over 1/3 of the way through the book, about 95 pages in, and I still have little to no idea what the hell is going on.  Obviously there is mysterious, paranormal shit going down.  But none of it makes sense yet.  And all we're getting is the girl's POV, even though it's told in 3rd person, so the author could switch over to one of the guys if she wanted to.  (But please, not the one I don't like, unless you can tell me something in his POV that would make him interesting.)

I'm seriously thinking about scraping this book.  There's other stuff I want to read.  But I've borrowed this book from the library twice now, waiting in line forever both times, and I'm reluctant to give up on it.  When do you pull the plug?  At what point do you decide to let it go and move on with your day?

Chronic Betty's Best of 2010

My original thought, when planning this post, was that 2010 was kind of a "meh" reading year for me.  But after flipping through my journal, I realised that there were some good things in there, just didn't find any new (to me) authors who absolutely knocked my socks off.

I discovered the very competent Jane Yellowrock series by Faith Hunter.  (That's not the faint praise it sounds like.  I'm very picky about my Urban Fantasy.)  The first book in the series is Skinwalker.

I really enjoyed What the Librarian Did by Karina Bliss.  I don't read much category romance anymore, but this one was good.  A well balanced combination of fun and emotion.  And to an Ugly American the New Zealand setting was just a touch exotic.  I definitely look forward to reading more from this author.

Exit Strategy and Made to Be Broken by Kelley Armstrong are the only two books in the Nadia Stafford series.  (So far.  I'm still hoping for more.)  I put off reading these for a while because I wasn't sure I wanted to read about a heroine who's a hitman... woman... whatever.  But Nadia has strong reasons for doing what she does, and it was easy for me as a reader to accept what her line of work.  I absolutely loved her mentor, Jack, and hope if there are further books in the series that they will develop the relationship between them.

Changes by Jim Butcher ended with a real shocker that leaves the whole Dresden Files series in question.  Can't wait to see what happens in the new one, due out this spring.

Draw the Dark by Isla J. Bick was excellent, and a book that I never would have discovered if not for Netgalley.  My review is here. 

Bayou Moon by Ilona Andrews was good.

Beautiful Creatures by Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl was good.  I hope to get around to the sequel, Beautiful Darkness, sometime in the new year.

There were other books this year that, unfortunately, didn't live up to my hopes for them.  Maybe This Time by Jennifer Crusie, The Girl Who Chased the Moon by Sarah Addison Allen, and Dark Road to Darjeeling by Deanna Raybourn were all slightly disappointing.  None of them were bad books by any means.  But they didn't live up to the authors' previous books.

And then there was the Fever series by Karen Marie Moning.  I found these books both obsessively readable and not very good.  The story is told in first person by MacKayla Lane, possibly the most insipid, TSTL heroine I've ever encountered.  In fact, there were times when she wandered past TSTL and into Why Aren't You Dead Yet?  I frequently longed to beat her over the head with one of her pretty pink shoes.  I only put up with Mac to get access to the delectable Jericho Barrons.  Who is also sometimes a bit of a tool-- if I were Mac I'd have planted one of my pretty pink shoes where the sun don't shine about 5 minutes after meeting the guy.  But honey, I'd still bang him like a screen door.  And so I will be putting up with the irritatingly ignorant Mac just to find out what happens to Barrons in the final book, due out in about 3 weeks.

So those were the standouts of my reading year.  For anyone who's curious, you can see my full 2010 reading list here.  Happy New Year, y'all!

I have a plan

After four years with the Little Red Book, I feel like I've got a handle on tracking my reading.  Now I need to work on the other side of the equation.

My TBR shelf was always a bit out of control.  I tried to keep the TBR to one shelf on my bookshelf.  Then it was a double row of books on that shelf.  Then it was a double row of books with others piled on top.  For every one I read, three more magically appeared.  They were breeding like rabbits.  Pretty soon I was going to have to rent them their own apartment.  And still, I didn't always have exactly the right book for my reading mood.

Then came the Kindle.

For a while I did pretty good.  Since I could have just about any book I wanted any time I wanted, there was no need to stockpile.  I could download a sample for any book that struck my fancy, and then browse and buy at leisure.  It was the damn freebies that got me.  Out of the 153 books in my TBR file, I only purchased 8 of them.  Everything else was a promo.

Then All Romance Ebooks had a major sale leading up to the introduction of Agency pricing last spring.  Hello, Sony Pocket, and hello piles of ebooks.  Bought at a discount, of course, but still purchased and languishing on my reader.  With the world of ebook retailers suddenly wide open, I also discovered Kobo.  And let me tell you, Kobo loves to run coupons.  This summer Carina Press opened it's doors, and I've probably bought half of the books they've published so far, many from Kobo at obscene discount.  And then there were the thousands of library books available for download with my Sony.

Are you starting to get the picture here?  I have a lot of books, just waiting to be read.  And with them demurely tucked away on ereaders, and not bursting off the living room shelves, it's easy to forget exactly how much I have, and how much I really don't need to take advantage of that next coupon.

My name is Chronic Betty, and I have a book buying problem.

The only way to take control and clear out some of this backlog is to start making a list.  For a while this summer I had a list of all the books I needed/wanted to read, along with a notation for whether I had paid for them, gotten them as a freebie, or downloaded them from the library.  I'd cross each book off as I read it.  But it quickly got cumbersome, since I didn't dedicate a special notebook to this and instead just mixed it in with all the rest of the every day notes.  (Proof that my Little Red Book was a good idea.)

So for 2011 I'm trying something new.  I've had my Goodreads account for a while, but I haven't taken full advantage of it's shelf system to organize my books.  This year I will.  I've created a shelf called Books to Read in 2011.  There are 105 books on it right now.  A few of these are library books that I know I'll be able to download at some point in the coming year.  A few more are books that are coming out in 2011 that I know I'm going to want to buy.  But the majority are books that are sitting on one of my ereaders, just waiting for me to get around to them.  This list isn't set in stone.  There will probably be additions as the year goes on.  But if I can get most of the books on this list read by the end of the year, I'll feel pretty good about my progress.  If I stay away from the coupons it will help.

Little Red Book

Way, way back in 2006, while making my New Year's resolutions, I decided it was time to get organized about this reading thing.  I knew I did it.  A lot.  But how many books did I read in a year?  No idea.  If someone wanted a recommendation I was reduced to scanning my book shelves, which was only partially successful because I'm also a library junkie.  And when reading a series with a lot of similar titles, the "oh, crap, have I read this one yet?" factor was just too high.  It was time to start my Little Red Book.

The journal itself is something I won that year in the Cherry NaNo group.  Left to my own devices I probably would have grabbed a plain old notebook from the grocery store.  And within a month or two there would be a reading list in the front and grocery lists, driving directions, and all kinds of other random crap in the back.  So the pretty journal was a blessing.  Even though it's showing some wear after four years of constant use, it's still in good shape.  No random doodles, no pages torn out.  Just an ongoing list of the books I've read since I started my project.

Being me, I have a few rules for the Little Red Book.  Only books read in their entirety are recorded.  DNFs don't make it.  If it's an anthology, I have to read the whole thing.  Two stories out of five doesn't make the cut.  And most of all, these have to be books I've never read before.  Re-reads most definitely don't go in the book.

Even with all these rules I've managed to make it to 400 books in the last four years.  I expect to finish book number 401 before midnight on Friday.  At the rate I've been reading, and considering the number of pages I have left, this book should take care of me for another 48 years.  Since that would make me approximately 84 years old, this is probably the only reading journal I will ever need.

I highly recommend you start a reading journal of your own, if you don't have one already.  You can do it the old fashioned way, like me with my Little Red Book.  You can make a spreadsheet and track them on your computer.  Or you can go the social media route and use a website like Goodreads or Shelfari.  And you don't have to use my rules.  Make up your own, or have none at all if that suits you.  However you decide to do it, start a list.  Try it for a year.  You might be surprised to see how satisfying tracking your reading habits can be.

Sweet!

I was poking around at Goodreads the other day, as I am occasionally wont to do, and I rediscovered the giveaways section.  (It's a tab under Find Books.)  Many, many people throw their names in the hat for these things, so I wasn't expecting much.  But I went ahead and applied for a few that looked interesting.  And I was chosen for one!  The drawing was Monday, and they say it could take 4-6 weeks for the book to arrive.  Well, I guess Penguin is ready to wrap things up for the holidays, because FedEx just delivered my copy of A Discovery of Witches by Deborah Harkness.

Obviously, two days before Christmas is not the best time to start an almost 600 page novel.  But the blurb sounds really good, right up my alley, and I look forward to cracking it open sometime after the first of the year.

So if you're on Goodreads, I encourage you to take a look at the giveaways page and apply if you see something interesting.  You never know when you might get lucky!  (Almost 1200 people signed up for 25 copies of ADoW, so I feel pretty lucky indeed.  Anyone want to buy me a lottery ticket?)  And here's a link to my profile, if you'd like to friend me over there: http://www.goodreads.com/chronicbetty.  You know I love seeing what everyone else is reading!

Do you like a challenge?

I have a confession to make.  I love the thrill of a challenge.  52 Books in 52 Weeks, 43 Things, NaNoWriMo, Team in Training.  I like the adrenalin of starting something new.  I like the camaraderie that projects like this create.

But I have another secret for you.  I'm terrible on follow through.  As much as I might want to do something at the start, if the motivation to do it doesn't come from within me, I'm not going to finish.

I've noticed lately, probably because we're coming up on the start of a new year, a lot of reading challenge sign ups, both on Goodreads and various book blogs.  Usually, the challenges are linked to what you're reading in some way-- read x number of YA novels, read x number of first time authors, read every book on this list of classics, etc.  One of the more attractive challenges to me was about stepping outside your comfort zone and trying different styles or genres.  Sometimes I wonder if my reading interests are too narrow, and think that a challenge that forces me to read something different would be good for me.

And this is where I always get hung up.  I don't read because it's good for me.  I read for entertainment.  I read for pleasure.  Reading a book I don't want to read is like forcing myself to gag down lima beans.  I don't like it, and I'll avoid it whenever I can.  Add that to my little quirk about not starting a new book until the last one is finished and suddenly there's a whole lot less reading in my life.  Not good.

That said, I do like having reading goals.  What's the difference?  My goals involve the number of books I read in a year.  The subject matter is totally up to the whims of the moment.  And I have many reading whims.

I think I'm going to create two goals for myself this year.  The first goal is to reach 500 in my little red book.  (I'll talk more about that in a future post.)  My other goal is to read down some of the massive TBR list waiting for me on my Kindle and Pocket.  I may even go so far as to say no buying books for a certain length of time or until I've read a certain number of books in my backlog.  I'm not certain about that part yet.  A no buying policy could lead to another book binge in the week between Christmas and New Year's, especially if there are any good coupon deals.

So, that's my tentative reading plan for 2011.  What's yours?  Have you thought about it at all, or is everyone just trying to hang on until Christmas?