Awkward* Reading in Twenty Ten

More of this.

• Nonfiction.


• Graphic Novels.


• High Fantasy.


• Bestsellers and book club choices.


• Essays, articles, books, blogs on writing by writers.


• Audiobooks. This is one area of my own RA and everyone else's where I have trouble. I know what I like when I hear it but very often it takes a special book to draw me in and keep me listening and that is hard to find.

Less of this.

• Superhero stories, until someone does something that really surprises me like "Hero" by Perry Moore did.


• Comfortable fluffy reads (for emergency use only.)


• Bizarrely addictive blogs where people laud appalling behavior. (I think you know what I mean.)


• TV. Seriously way too much of my reading time goes to the evil USA and TBS crime drama marathon monster.


• Blogs about publishing. Why do I obsess about how to write a query letter when I haven't even written anything worth inquiring about?

*The reading itself isn't awkward, but as usual, I am.

A post.

A band.
Do you know who it is easy to love? A little indie band called the wrens, that's who. They played a very packed Schubas. There was one awkward moment (probably because I was there, as I make things awkward with my very presence) when the mike was turned out to the audience during the last song of the encore "She Sends Kisses" and we collectively froze, then forgot the words to chorus. That didn't ruin the magic of seeing a band that doesn't often tour, and when they do, they put all of themselves into the shows. I've been to a lot of concerts in my life and the majority of them have just been like listening to the album but really loud with the musicians in the room, drunkenly not doing much to entice me to care about watching what they do onstage. This concert of middling aged indieguys from the East Coast was the exact opposite of that experience. Good times were had by all, because this band understand showmanship, and how to vary up sound, texture, distance and style to help make good music.

A challenge.
Abby and Liz have made me aware of the Color Online:Color Me Brown Book Challenge. I will be answering the call of the challenge, will you?

A discussion.
As part of the Year of Dangeresque Reads I joined a Literary Genre Study. Last week I went to the second of the Adult Reading Round Table literary discussions. This one was of Amsterdam by Ian McEwan. I went in thinking I was going to spend the majority of any time I spoke defending my position that the book was trite and could have been better. Instead I found myself drawn into a lively discussion about the fact that had it been a genre book it would have been panned by everyone, but because he was a credible literary author he must have made the decisions he did with the book very intentionally, perhaps to point out that very fact? It is hard to say what McEwan's motivations truly were, and that is when the conversation turned to leading book discussions generally. Some of the Librarians present like to introduce information about the author and facts surrounding the novels, some only like to discuss the book without outside information at all, some will bring up the topical info if the discussion itself isn't going well, it seemed like every single person at the discussion had an entirely different style of book club. Which, was really awesome when you think about it. I've had a couple of not-well attended book clubs over the summer and all of this information is serving to make how I lead discussions in the future much better. Of course, taking the info about book clubs geared towards adults and seniors and applying it to Teens is going to take some work.

A plan.
I'm forming a plan to do a giveaway this week of the last ARC I reviewed, Laura Ruby's Bad Apple. I haven't exactly decided how this is going to work out so please bear with me until I come up with a suitable book-themed contest.

A convention.
I just found out I'm going to Bouchercon! I'm trying to figure out a way to get my mom in just for one day to meet Michael Connelly who is one of her FavieFaves of all time. I'm totally excited about a weekend of whodunits, even though after ALA last week I swore off conventions for a while....oops.

A review.
Fathom by Cherie Priest


My rating: 4 of 5 stars
A very long time ago on a Livejournal Community called Gothic Babes I saw a post by a writer calling herself WickedWish. She had written and published a book called Four and Twenty Blackbirds. I thought she was interesting and so I paid attention to her journal for a while, because even though her book wasn't a national bestseller and she still worked a dayjob I thought her writing style was interesting enough that she was going to publish something worth national attention. I was, of course, quite right and she's become quite the popular fantasy author. Good on Cherie. Now that I've regaled you with my tale of discovering her so long before you did, let me tell you about this book. It is dark and quick and epic and slippery. The point of view switches pick you up and drop you down into the important parts, there is not a lot of fat in this book. There is also no mercy. Characters you like will die; characters you hate will live.
I took away one star because I felt like there was more to this story, that there were some blank pages waiting to be filled in. But there were pirates, and sea monsters, and stone girls and gods and monsters, and murder and mayhem and what more could you as for really? Not much, if you ask me.

View all my reviews >>

You can all return from the edge of your seats.

So I decided that what this blog, and I, could use is a little reading challenge to spice things up. I already read about a book a week on average so I decided to skip the 52 books in a year challenge and to focus on something a little more sexy...a little more DANGERESQUE.
So I decided to try the year of reading dangerously challenge. The basic tenet of the challenge goes like this:

Your job: Read 12 books you deem "dangerous." between January 1st and December 31st 2009. They may be banned or challenged books, new-to-you genres, books that seem to inhabit a permanent space on your stacks, or authors you're afraid of. The possibilities are endless! If it's dangerous to you, it's challenge-worthy to us!

Of course, since I'm already in a genre study group that reads a book from a different genre every other month this challenge can have those proverbial two birds killed with just one stone (my next genre study group is focused on historical novels,a category I shy away from anymore.) I created a special Goodread's bookshelf to help myself with the challenge. The first book for me is the Invention of Air by Steven Johnson. Historical narrative non-fiction puts me to sleep like nobody's business. Which is why I'm reading it right before I pass out for the night. So far though it is actually going along at a fairly nice clip, and I'm interested in the anecdotes. I'm not enthralled with the large blocks of quotes on every page from original source texts. It feels like cheating. Still, it was a gutsy choice for me. The other choices I've made so far are books that I've consistantely skipped over when trying to find new reading materials, or they came from abanned/challenged ALA booklist. Anyway, check back to see how it goes. Will I finish the challenge? Will I flake? Will I even remember I started this challenge by this time next year? Will I find 3-4 more books I'm afraid of? Oh...so...so....Dangeresque.