#BookishBloggersUnite is a weekly hashtag that a group of bookish friends participate in to talk about books. This week’s host is Bookish Bron, check out her blog for more links. With the second half of 2018 starting tomorrow, it's time to look forward to what books I've got my eyes on for the rest of the year. My TBR (to be read) is sitting at 484 books today so I scrolled through it today on Goodreads to see what I wanted to prioritize and broke them up into categories. Digression: I spend a lot (A LOT) of time browsing for books, organizing the books I want to read into categories, talking to other people about books, and making various plans to read these books (which I almost never keep, by the way). I do not pretend this is normal behavior, this is book dragon behavior. (Shout out to all my fellow book dragons who know what I'm talking about) Author Challenges I stalled out on Leigh Bardugo when I got sick of YA, but finishing the Grisha Trilogy and Language of Thorns is a high priority, especially with King Nikolai coming out next year. Bardugo also wrote Six of Crows and Crooked Kingdom, which I just love, set in the same Grishaverse. I am reading The Inheritance Trilogy as an omnibus, and I have the last two books (The Broken Kingdom, The Kingdom of Gods) to go. I did read The Killing Moon, but The Shadowed Sun is on hold indefinitely until someone else reads it and lets me know how prominent the sexual violence is. I really enjoyed The Killing Moon and the story stands on its own, so for now it's just keeping me from checking a box. Read Harder Challenge This year I am actually participating in the Read Harder challenge and making reasonable progress. These are the tasks I have left and the books I intend to read for each one.
Classics by Audio
Nonfiction:
Tea I am on a mission to learn about tea. In June I read The Tea Book by Linda Gaylard and The Art and Craft of Tea by Joseph Wesley Uhl, covering tea 101 pretty thoroughly. Fun fact: that herbal "tea" you're drinking is not Tea. Only tea made from one of the 3 varieties of the Camellia sinensis plant are Tea. Those other things are tisanes. You're welcome. So I'm moving along in my studies to The Tea Enthusiasts Handbook by Mary Lou Heiss, Darjeeling by Jeff Koehler, The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane by Lisa See (this is a novel, but that's how you round out studies, historical fiction), and For All The Tea in China: Espionage, Empire and the Secret Formula for the World's Favourite Drink by Sarah Rose. African American Studies I guess I'm doing kind of an African American Studies independent study. I didn't learn nearly enough about my own history in school, so no time like the present. What's really exciting is all the contemporary authors telling their stories as Black Americans. What's not exciting is how for every forward push, there is a substantial backlash, most recently the Civil Rights Movement and the War on Drugs and mass incarceration. New Releases
..that's a lot of books. 30 to be exact. I'm probably not going to read all of those books but it is statistically possible, so we will see. I really really did narrow it down. And there is something about each one of those books that kept me from being like, nah book, I'll see you in 2019, but I honestly feel like every book is just something to read until Muse of Nightmares comes out in October.
Thanks for reading this very, very long post. What are you most looking forward to reading the rest of this year?
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So I have been reading my ass off this year. Far more than I have read in any other year of my life. At the beginning of the year I set my Goodreads challenge at 48 books. One book a week felt like too much, so I went with 4 books a month and set a stretch goal of 100 books. Because why not, right? It's good to have goals. I also set a goal to read (eyes on print) every day this year, 365 days, and am currently at 173 days.
For the last 2 years I have been keeping a pretty detailed reading spreadsheet that I got from Rachel Manwill from Book Riot. (NEW YEAR, NEW GOALS, NEW AND IMPROVED READING LOG). It's way more than a casual reader needs, but I'm not a casual reader, yo. And here are my stats: As of June 23, I have read and listened to:
Format:
Form:
While I've always preferred YA, I hit a serious wall with YA in April and then all fiction in general. Nonfiction was the only thing that didn't just irritate me (Lumberjanes aside). So in the last couple months I have read The New Jim Crow (infuriating), I Contain Multitudes (fascinating, you actually do have cooties), The Nature Fix (go outside folks), The Orchid Thief (the geographical history of Florida and the world of orchids, my god. I had no idea), The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying up, and two very comprehensive books about tea. (I'm kind of a tea expert now). The only fiction that snuck in was A Gathering of Shadows and A Conjuring of Light, both on audio, and both amazing. Mini Challenges: Read an author's library:
Thanks for checking in with me and happy reading! Aka: Somehow the internet can make you feel inadequate about the thing you love to do most and thought you were real good at
Whoooo. It's been awhile. But here we go. I have always been a reader. And I thought I had read a lot. I thought I was a book nerd. But when I decided I wanted to start a book blog, and ventured into the bookternet I realized I am not a book nerd. I am more of a recreational reader. (My desire to hoard books of all formats aside.) Which started this whole questioning who I even am if not a book nerd. And if Bitches Love Books even has a future if I can’t impress the world with my “have read” list and witty book reviews. So I’ve done a little reflection that looked something like this. I guess I’m a niche reader. I can’t account for the 27 years before I started teaching (since 5 of those years involved almost no fun reading, since I was in school) but growing up I read what they told me to in high school, and I remember Anne of Green Gables, Judy Blume, and a fleeting love of Stephen King. I taught 6th grade for 12 years, so in the belief that I should read what my students are reading, I read a lot of middle grade books. And only in the summer. (What teacher has time to read during the school year? Not this teacher.) At some point I gradually moved into YA. Even then my tastes sat pretty firmly in sci fi and fantasy. I discovered while trying to get my English credential, there’s a ton of “classics” I haven’t read, either. So, I’m not that well read, apparently. And, I don’t write book reviews, because I don’t read them. I like to discover books as I read them, with as little information as possible to get a general sense of the plot line. So then, what good am I to the reading community? Pause for reflection. Dramatic pause for effect. Fucking plenty. One of the goals of Bitches Love Books is to read and promote more diverse books. The publishing world is still mostly white and male, unless it’s YA, and then it’s white and more female. But other voices are out there, and I want to read them, and amplify them. So that’s what we’re going to do. Alla this is about our journey to read more and more diversely. Read on! Harmony
Did you find something bookish this week? Leave us a note in the comments. Until next week!
Happy Reading! -H.
honorable mention
Did you find something bookish this week? Leave us a note in the comments. Until next week!
Happy Reading! -H.
Evoking memories of book-filled libraries, this handy notecard set reproduces the original cards used to keep track of literary classics. Enclosed in a keepsake replica card catalog box with tabbed dividers, each card features a different beloved work of literature straight from the storied collection of the Library of Congress. Did you find something bookish this week? Leave us a note in the comments. Until next week!
-H. AKA: How to horde invisible books
I like books in all formats. Paper, kindle, audiobooks. I want them all. ALL THE BOOKS. Far more than I’ll ever be able to read in my lifetime, I think. I have a book buying moratorium on paper books since both of the bookshelves I have are double stacked and it would be unacceptable to the people I live with to just stack them on the floor. Which, for the record, I think is a fine way to keep books. There’s a lot of ways to pick up cheap books. But I like the internet and instant gratification (read: instant download). So there are a few places I frequent to add to my growing Kindle collection. There’s something for all literary tastes. Newsletter
Internet Scavenging
I usually scour the Amazon monthly deals right after the beginning of the month. The cheap price makes me adventurous and I usually find a couple titles outside of my usual genres to add to my TBR. Also!! Many classics have moved into public domain and both Amazon and Barnes and Noble keep their own stock of these titles in ebook for free. Or you can visit Project Gutenberg or Google Books. Happy Reading! -H. A lively discussion from some bitches who really love books.
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April 2017
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