Challenge Check-In

Not gonna lie, reading challenges are HARD.

The actual reading part, not so much, but reading specific books when I keep acquiring so many amazing new ones? Man there is just not enough time to read them all.

So naturally I've fallen a few weeks behind on my #Dymocks52Challenge refined.

Here are the books on The List that I still have to read:

1. The Book Thief - Markus Zusak (AA)
4. Outlander - Diana Gabaldon
7. The Narrow Road to the Deep North - Richard Flanagan (AA)
10. The Goldfinch - Donna Tartt
11. The Husband's Secret - Liane Moriarty (AA)
12. The Martian - Andy Weir
16. Shantaram - Gregory David Roberts
19. Reckoning - Magda Szubanski (AA)
22. The Historian - Elizabeth Kostova
24. Wool - Hugh Howey
32. The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart - Holly Ringland (AA)
34. A Discovery of Witches - Deborah Harkness

So that's 12 books to go, and only 8 weeks left of the year. Not a worry if I focus exclusively on these titles, but I have some seriously exciting stuff waiting to be read!

Here's the top ten vying for my attention:

1. The Red Sphinx - Alexandre Dumas

I started reading this one back in April and have severely neglected it! It's an 800-page monster meaning its not one I can carry around in my bag, so it's been constantly shunted aside for smaller books. Considering it's an unofficial sequel to my favourite book of all time, I really need to make a solid effort to finish this before the year is up.

2. Five Dark Fates - Kendare Blake

This is the fourth and final book in the Three Dark Crowns series and I'm a little obsessed. It's dark and full of magic and poison and characters that do horrible things. My kind of fantasy. I'm hoping for a pretty epic showdown to end things!

3. Salvation Lost - Peter F Hamilton

I read Salvation a little while ago and it was incredible so very much looking forward to reading this newly released sequel. Not usually a sci-fi gal but this one has me hooked.

4. The Power of Positive Thinking - Norman Vincent Peale

Who would I be without my motivational books? This one comes highly recommended so I've been meaning to read it for a while, and I'm really hoping to get to it before the year is up.

5. The Chain - Adrian McKinty

I actually won this a while back and feel bad for neglecting it for so long! It sounds like it's going to be a fantastic thriller and I imagine it'll be something I read in minimal sittings.

6. Midnight in the Graveyard - Anthology

I started reading this with fellow horror-lovers in a Goodreads group and it is chock-a-block full of spine-tingling goodness. It's actually the first time I've ever purchased an e-book (since I read e-books so rarely I usually just stick to freebies). I've been lucky enough to be part of group discussion with 25 authors and it's absolutely fascinating to hear more insight into these little gems as I read them. 

7. Snake Island - Ben Hobson

An Aussie crime novel I'm expecting big things from. This one has been talked about since it released so I'm keen to join the discussions on this one.

8. Godsgrave - Jay Kristoff

I read Nevernight earlier this year and rushed out to buy this sequel the day after I finished it. Yet it's been neglected in favour of challenge reads and ARCs. I need to find out the truth about what happened to Don Tric! So let's all cross our fingers this one makes it into the last eight weeks of the year, too.

9. Weapon - Lynette Noni

Speaking of sequels I've been dying for, this one is just waiting to happen. High chance it'll be overlooked for a few months, though, since I'll need to re-read the first book so I can remember what happened. The down side to reading fresh series books is that painful wait between installations.

10. Deeplight - Frances Hardinge

This one promises gods and monsters and the media release considers it a cross between Twenty Thousand Leagues Under The Sea and Frankenstein so guess who is already expecting big things? Love me some monsters. 

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I've been so lucky this year with book wins and publishers spoiling me with ARCs of some of the most incredible books. I intended to read less so that I could be more productive outside of my book lover life but it's absolutely impossible with so many fantastic books being put out into the world! I'd love to get back on track with my challenge, of course, but I'm easing a little of the pressure because reading is supposed to be fun. So I'll get through those 12 books eventually, but it might take me a little longer than I anticipated.

The beauty of it is that I'll have a better understanding of my reading habits when I do it all over again next year. XD

Dymocks 52 Challenge Halftime Musings

Having just finished Book 19 of 38 for my #Dymocks52Challenge refined, I figured it was time to do another update.

To recap:

This year, Australian book retailer Dymocks challenged readers to read one book a week for the entire year, adding up to 52 books.

As a voracious reader, I was well ahead come April, so I decided to make the challenge a little harder for myself for the remaining 38 weeks of the year.

Since 2008 (as far as my research could indicate), Dymocks has produced a list of the Top 101 books, as voted by readers. Using lists from the past five years, as well as unread books on my shelf, I compiled a list of 38 books that I would attempt to read before the end of the year (one a week from time of commencement).

Some of these are books I've never been interested in reading, or books I've been putting off, or books I've intentionally avoided. Others are books I've been looking forward to, and some are books I hadn't actually heard of. It promised to be a diverse challenge.

Now, here at the halfway point, I can admit that this has already been an interesting, worthy ride.

I started with Nevernight by Jay Kristoff, and it was a great book to start with - 5 stars. My 19th, most recent read, was the worst - 1 star and my first DNF of the challenge. The offending book was Clementine Ford's Fight Like A Girl. This was a book I wanted to throw down in disgust after only a couple of chapters, but I'd given myself the rule of reading at least 50% before giving up on a book (DNF = Did Not Finish) so I struggled through 55% before I finally threw in the towel for good.

With other reads, the 50% rule served me well - The Light Between Oceans was a struggle for a while but I thoroughly enjoyed the final third of it, and Boy Swallows Universe had me worried but took off about 50 pages in and ended up being a fantastic read.

My favourite book so far has been The Final Empire by Brandon Sanderson, and that was a fun discovery because the size of this novel has had me putting it off for years. I was also pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed The Happiest Refugee by Aussie comedian Anh Do. 

There's been a couple of disappointments - aside from Fight Like a Girl, Circe left me rather more underwhelmed than I expected, as did Assassin's Apprentice. 

Moving forward, I'm most looking forward to reading The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck, and I'm most nervous about Shantaram, which is of course a 900+ page monster about horrible, horrible things.

The Book Thief, despite having remained in the Top 10 for the past 7 years, and taking out the top spot for three of those, is still neglected. I've been putting it off for years due to my general disappointment in most stories set in WWI and WWII so, true to that, I'm saving it til last.

It's been an interesting challenge to force myself to read assigned books when there's so many other great reads waiting on my shelf. I'm looking forward to continuing to challenge myself.

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Stats so far:

Books read: 20

Pages read: 7771

Average rating: 3.2 stars

Most popular GR review: The Final Empire 

Least popular GR review: Fight Like a Girl

Oldest book read: Jane Eyre *

Newest book read: Becoming

*Note: I've recently finished Jane Eyre, which is book 20, however the write up is still to come. For statistics, I've included it.

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AA = Australian Author
Titles not in bold are yet to be purchased

1. The Book Thief - Markus Zusak (AA)
2. The Happiest Refugee - Anh Do (AA) (12)  4*
3. Jasper Jones - Craig Silvey (AA) (5) 2*
4. Outlander - Diana Gabaldon
5. Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte (20) 4*
6. The Light Between Oceans - M. L. Stedman (AA) (17) 3*
7. The Narrow Road to the Deep North - Richard Flanagan (AA)
8. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams (13) 2*
9. Assassin's Apprentice (The Farseer Trilogy) - Robin Hobb (14) 2*
10. The Goldfinch - Donna Tartt
11. The Husband's Secret - Liane Moriarty (AA)
12. The Martian - Andy Weir
13. My Brilliant Friend (The Neapolitan Series) - Elena Ferrante (11) 2*
14. The Guernsey Literary & Potato Peel Pie Society - Mary Ann Shaffer & Annie Barrows (3) 4*
15. Ready Player One - Ernest Cline
16. Shantaram - Gregory David Roberts (AA)
17. All the Bright Places - Jennifer Niven
18. Big Little Lies - Liane Moriarty (AA) (10) 3*
19. Reckoning - Magda Szubanski (AA)
20. A Little Life - Hanya Yanagihara
21. The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck - Mark Manson
22. The Historian - Elizabeth Kostova
23. The Final Empire (The Mistborn Series) - Brandon Sanderson (6) 5*
24. Wool - Hugh Howey
25. Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine - Gail Honeyman (2) 4*
26. Boy Swallows Universe - Trent Dalton (AA) (16) 4*
27. Nevernight (The Nevernight Chronicles) - Jay Kristoff (AA) (1) 5*
28. Simon VS the Homo Sapiens Agenda - Becky Albertalli (4) 4*
29. Fight Like a Girl - Clementine Ford (AA) (19) 1*
30. Circe - Madeline Miller (7) 2*
31. Mythos - Stephen Fry
32. The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart - Holly Ringland (AA)
33. Becoming - Michelle Obama (15) 4*
34. A Discovery of Witches - Deborah Harkness
35. Crazy Rich Asians - Kevin Kwan
36. Scrublands - Chris Hammer (AA) (9) 4*
37. Normal People - Sally Rooney (18) 3*
38. Nine Perfect Strangers - Liane Moriarty (AA) (8) 2*

Blogger Life (1)

So apparently if you want people to actually read your blog you have to put effort into it?

I mean, that sounds HARD.

But here I am anyway, writing an actual post instead of just clicking the 'post to blog' button on my latest Goodreads review.

So.

What is it that book-loving blog readers like to read about? I need hints here people.

Shall I start with why I'm giving this blog-writing thing another crack?

Yes, I say 'another' and that's not a typo. I've tried in the past. I have. I'm not lazy, I swear. I'm just too busy reading. I'm a book lover, remember?

But I've decided to start making a little more effort because I'm one of those book lovers who is a wannabe writer. And of course part of being a writer is writing. Regularly.

I HAVE SO MANY IDEAS. I just completely suck at putting them on paper.

So here's to this blog getting my creative mojo flowing.

I'm hoping it'll be a fun learning experience, and that maybe I'll write stuff that people will actually want to read. If you're paying attention, you might even get that sneaky access to my rough drafts. Which may not seem that exciting now but, trust me, it's gonna make you feel super special when the polished versions are published and I become a household name. (So modest, I am so, so modest.)

So thanks for reading and feel free to leave your thoughts!

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Question Time: (I've seen this on other blogs; it's clearly an important part.) Do you blog? And if so, why?

NaNoWriMo

So I've signed up for NaNoWriMo for the first time in my life.

NaNoWriMo: That's National Novel Writing Month, for the uninitiated. November, every year, people from all over the world dedicate themselves to churning out 50,000 words of a complete novel. Apparently the prep is a year-round thing - so I'm a little late, boarding the ship at the start of the designated month - but hey, I've always been decent at 'winging it'. (I definitely had to Google how it all works, though.)

I have found that it really helps with the motivation. I've felt the urge to write quite strongly this past month or so, and have been attempting short stories and other writing adventures. But NNWM (is there a rule against shortening it further?!) has inspired me to put some serious effort into a novel I've been working on for years. I've got outlines, sketches, spin-off stories, character summaries etc. but haven't put a great deal of effort into writing the actual story and bringing it all together. So it's nice to finally be spending some time nurturing this one, and coaxing the story out of my mind and on to the page.

At the same time, I'm so eager to get my work out into the public domain, so I'm frustrated at how long this writing process is going to be. So I'm also toying with the idea of putting more effort into the side projects and short stories. But I also feel like I can only write these things when I get creative flares and can punch out a story in one go. I'm notorious for failing to finish my work.

All I know is that I have this burning urge to tell my stories, and have other people read them. I need to create, and I want to give birth to characters that truly come alive. I have such high hopes for my big dreams.

Writing is hard work, man. But I'm looking forward to the extra motivation that NNWM will provide.


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Find me, friend me! And share your writing journeys with me! Username: KrystalLee6363

Musings

Sometimes I wish I could express things as elegantly as the hundreds of books I read.

Create characters that I can interact with so clearly in my mind, with my heart; see them come to life through my words as they do in my imagination.

To create is a wonderful, liberating experience, but it comes with a heavy burden of responsibility.

To do justice to words; to use them well, and carefully; to do no harm.

Because with the worlds we create within fiction, we create lives that can be inspirational, aspired to, emulated.

There is no way to tell what effect our stories will have on readers. What characters will speak to their secret hearts, and what deeds will come from it. Hopefully we can inspire greatness—courage, heroism, empowerment, love, empathy. But there is never a guarantee, and the greater the readership, the higher the chance of unexpected—and unintended—consequences.

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