read

I knew it was coming, the end of this glorious season of free reading. I’d just convinced myself that I had a little more time. Alas, there will be review books in my hands by the time you finish reading this, and depending on my schedule, these could be the last few personal choice reads that I had the luck to personally choose. For a few months anyway. (drama, drama drama)

Now that my last three reads feel like MY LAST. THREE. READS., I feel like I made good choices. Last week I flew through All Joy and No Fun, which satisfied the lack of non-fiction in my year’s reading, as well as got rid of an ARC that sat on my shelf for far too many months. It wasn’t a revolutionary read  for me – I spent three years talking about how adults view children and childhood in grad school; I used to read my mother’s parenting books when I was a kid; I read mommy blogs, for goodness sake – but it might be enlightening for a reader who is, ah, not a big fat weirdo.

I also finished John Updike’s Rabbit, Run on audio this weekend. Oh boy. I made my choice because I’ve never read any full-length Updike, because I liked the narrator, and because I got into the story pretty quickly. All was well, until Harry Angstrom turned out to be one of the more loathsome protagonists I’ve met in literature. I like to deride people who deride books based on the likeability of characters, so I listened on with with intent and humility, but I could really only take thirty minutes or so at a time before I just wanted to throttle him. This might have also been due to the narrator? He was a good reader, but maybe Harry would have been less smarmy in my head if I didn’t have a narrator smarming him up.

In less ambivalent news, I read Grasshopper Jungle this weekend and really couldn’t do much of anything else. Read this, please. It’s not as weird as you think, but it’s also as weird as you think.

reading

While I was waiting for my stack of required reads, I really just devoted myself to muscling through the enormous (but quite good) The Name of the Wind. Seriously, though. Enormous. I purposefully checked out the hardback because I hate mass-market paperbacks so very much, but now I’m stuck with this 700+ page doorstop. I cannot bring it anywhere with me. So I also started reading the new Gretchen Rubin (snagged from Edelweiss!) on my Kindle and my phone. So far it’s not quite as readable as her last two, but it’s all about building habits and making changes in one’s life so I am obviously drinking all of that Kool Aid.

I am also listening to What I Was Doing While You Were Breeding. To be honest, I was cheating on Rabbit, Run with this one. Some days, I just couldn’t force myself to spend any more time with Mr. Angstrom, so I spent some time with Ms. Newman instead. She’s much more winning. This is a comedy/travel memoir that flew under the radar this past Spring, but for those of you who like… ah… comedy and travel and reading about single people’s short-term affairs with foreign men, well, this is CERTAINLY the book for you! I will probably finish it in the next few days – it’s quick, and now that Rabbit’s out of the way…

to read

First up in my stack of Required Reads: The Half Life of Molly Pierce. From what I can tell, there will be some mysterious black outs. Some amnesia. Probably some thrills and some chills and some romance. It also weighs less than 8 pounds (*cough* Kvothe *cough*)Let’s get it done, then!

I am feeling incredibly indecisive about my next audiobook. Firstworldreaderproblems. I have a few queued up but nothing I am feeling ecstatic about. This is (bizarrely, needlessly) anxiety-provoking. I am thinking Ann Patchett’s Patron Saint of Liars might be the winner. I listened to Patchett’s essay collection, This is the Story of a Happy Marriage in May and I really enjoyed it, but I haven’t ready any of Patchett’s fiction… even though she’s one of those authors who writes those books that everyone loves and says you’ll love and blah blah blah I have no excuses at this point, so maybe I should read one. I will. I will listen to this book and be happy. Plus, I have been doing a fair bit of Manly Dude Reading in the past few months, so I have been jonesing for something a little more woman-centric. There. Decided. Peace be with me.

 

On some fateful day back in 2012 or early 2013, back when I hadn’t yet adjusted to having two steady, salaried incomes in my household, I made a useful but dangerous realization. Each week, we bring home X amount of dollars, which I regularly extrapolate to figure out how many dollars we will bring home in a month. What’s stopping me from figuring out how much we will bring home in a year? Or next year? Or the year after that? Barring employment disaster or major life change, I can predict my earnings from here all the way to retirement.

Knowing our earning capacity is useful for long-term planning purposes, yes. But it’s dangerous because this is exactly the kind of knowledge that will send me into a SPIRALING PIT OF NEVER-ENDING SPREADSHEETS. What if we spend X on Y and Z this year? What if we save A until July so we can B? What if we double down and Q R S all year so we can T before we U and V? Time = sucked.

Now let’s talk about books. It’s August. 2014 marches on. There are five more good reading months of the year. You have X days left to read, Y minutes of each day that you can devote to reading, during which you will likely fit Z books.

Which books will you choose?

I have crunched my own 2014 numbers and made a rough extrapolation of how many books are left for me in the back five of 2014. When I am writing book reviews, I will read 5 to 10 Required Reads a month and 1 to 3 Free Choice books in a month. When I am not writing book reviews, I read between 4 and 6 Free Choice books. Most months I listen to at least 5 audiobooks, whether I am reviewing or not.

I am largely free from reviewing in August and September. I will be reviewing in October, November and December.

This leaves me with 11-21 Free Choice reads for all. of. 2014.

This is a disturbingly low number! It makes me a little panicky (see: dangerous information) (see also: the similar perils of  long-term budgeting) For someone who has already read NINETY-FOUR BOOKS in the first 7 months of the year, how can I only have 10 left??? Has anyone even SEEN my TBR list? It will not be kept in check with a measly 2-5 books a month!

A saving grace – a grace that somewhat redeems the fault logic of my previous panicky statement – is that since I review new YA, my TBR stack occasionally overlaps with my Required Reading assignments. Phew.

The other saving grace is, of course, the humble audiobook. I’ve babbled about audiobooks so much this year because audio has become a significant part of my reading life. I listen to a lot of audio these days, yes, but audio is also where I do my fun reading. My “ooh, that sounds good” reading. My “I’ve been meaning to get around to this one” reading. My nostalgic re-reading. My books for adults reading. My new and shiny reading. It’s where I read like a consumer, a patron, a reader.

Sometimes I feel like I need a good excuse to read a book in print these days. If I only have time for a few each month, then the bar is set much higher. And now that I know just how pitifully small my print reading docket really is, I’m feeling even more precious about which books I choose to read.

It makes me panicky.

It makes me discerning – less likely to waste time on a book I find thin or predictable or otherwise of a lower quality than my time is worth.

It might also make me shy away from a longer read. A slower read. This is a shame, because while yes, the stats show I have XXX books left to read before 2015 (read: before I die) the way I spend my reading time and reading life is really mine. If I want to read more or differently, I can shift my time in that direction. At the same time, my reading life is more out of my hands than any chart or graph can show. There are books in my house that I’m not actively reading that I know I will gravitate toward finishing before the year is up without any particular effort of my own. I might have a life circumstance leaves me so busy that time spent free reading will be a long ago dream. I might have a life circumstance where I am bedded up with an illness or injury, where reading will be all I can do. If I want to, I can read more, but the universe will do some of that deciding for me.

All spreadsheets and reading kismet and the unpredictability of the universe aside? I am currently re-reading 1) The Magician King so I can read 2) The Magician’s Land, but in order to do so I had to put aside 3) The Name of the Wind temporarily, so I’ll probably pick that one up again, and also I’ve been re-reading 4) Game of Thrones for like ever so I’ll probably finish that one before the end of 2014, and I’ve also been reading 5) Still Writing at work and I made it through about half of 6) The Writing Life at some point as well, and I want to read 7) Isla and the Happily Ever After as soon as I can get my hands on it, so there, that’s seven out of maybe eleven. My back five will look a little like that, then, plus a boatload of audiobooks and a slew to review and that will be just fine, I guess.

Now excuse me, I have another superfluous spreadsheet to update.

read

Reading has been a little slow over the last week, which is to say I am no longer reading at quite the impressive manic pace. The last book I put to bed was Kristin Bailey’s Rise of the Arcane Fire. While my affections for sci-fi/fantasy have certainly grown deeper over the past few years… I am still steampunk skeptical. Maybe I need to read some really good, canonical steampunk? Anyway, Bailey’s book was the second in a kind of light, romantic steampunk series – I read the first installment last year. This sequel mostly takes place in sort of a Hogwarts-y Steampunk Academy, complete with rogue professors, evil intruders, and class wars. Quick fluff. Also: I really wanted our steampunk heroine to get with the obviously-wrong point of her obligatory love triangle. This isn’t unusual (I am, for the record, Team Peeta 4 Lyfe), but there really just wasn’t anything wrong with this other dude. He was the smarmy rich kid, sure, but of course he was a nice guy underneath! And she seemed to be digging him… Why can’t these YA ladies ever just go for the supposedly dark side? Maybe I’m not reading the right paranormal romances…

That’s a sentence I wish I hadn’t written.

The last audiobook I finished was Harriet the Spy, which I just freaking loved. I think I read it as a kid, but I must have been a hair too young because I’m sure I would have remembered Harriet. Good grief, what a protagonist. She has to be one of the least likeable little girls in literature, but oh, that just made me like her more. I have a thing for misunderstood characters. Harriet. Peeta. Literary underdogs! But I digress – this book was just amazing/ahead of its time/timeless, etc. Harriet M. Welsch, we will meet again.

 

reading

The last few months have been all about the audiobook for me. Audiobooks are my “fun reading” right now, and Overdrive is damn addictive. I’ve largely forsaken podcasts because I just can’t pry myself away from whatever it is I am listening to. Anyway, I finished Harriet and slid almost immediately into Meg Wolitzer’s The Uncoupling. I did finally read The Interestings earlier this year. I dug it, so before Harriet I listened to her 2008 book The Ten Year Nap. Dug that one too! The Uncoupling is about a suburban community of high school teachers and their children and their students – while putting on the school play, Lysistrata, all of the women and girls stop wanting to have sex. Relationship chaos ensues.

In terms of print books, I am trying mightily to whip through a stack of Required Reads before my vacation begins on Friday. It may be an impossible task, but there’s nothing I like more than breaking my back in the pursuit of torturously unreasonable self-imposed goals! Today I am reading Killer Instinct by S.E. Green. I completely remember when this book was purchased – “It’s Dexter the YA novel! With a teen girl sociopath!” This was years and years ago, and now here it is, on my desk to read. I think the power behind a Dexter comparison has faded over the years, but the pitch is pretty much spot on – stonehearted girl goes after evil people, also investigates a serial killer called The Decapitator. Good times. I am going to finish it tonight! Just watch me!!

to read

My next Required Reading book is Jennifer Brown’s Torn Away. The Hate List got decent reviews and buzz, but I didn’t read it. Books about school shootings don’t really do too much for me (except for Todd Strasser’s Give a Boy a Gun, which I read when I was 17, wrote a paper on it, and then won a college scholarship. Bam.) So I’m diving in completely blind. It’s what I like to do with my Required Reading books. I don’t read reviews. I don’t usually even read the back cover copy. I’m just going to read it next, that’s all I know.

I have a number of choices for my next audiobook selection. I started listening to A Brief History of Montmaray before being waylaid by The Uncoupling. Historical fic set in Europe is noooootttt really my thing, though. Also not really my thing: British narrators who don’t answer to the name Jim Dale. I’m not sure the audio will be able to hold my attention.

Don’t worry – I have back-ups. One audiobook I have on deck is B. J. Novak’s short story collection, One More Thing. I’ve heard mixed reviews (aka, a lot of of “eh”), but maybe it will be quick and fun on audio.

This small TBR is NOT to be confused with my Official Vacation Reading stack. I’ll be back later this week to answer all of your burning questions about EXACTLY what books I will be carting down to the beach. Excitement, excitement!

 

Greetings! I bring tidings of my crushing 48 hour book challenge defeat!

No, I did not crush the challenge with my reading superiority. It definitely crushed me. Did not complete, DNF, giant fail stamp.

But it was fun! Let me tell you what I did…

• I spent a little morning time in Westeros.
• I polished off two half-finished YA books.
• I started a third!
• I listened to all but TWENTY! MINUTES! of an audiobook (groan, groan, groan)
• I read on the train, at my Starbucks, at the bus stop, while washing dishes and folding laundry, in my bed, on the couch, in a bank lobby, in a shoe store, and on my back porch.

In total, I read about 580 pages. I spent 5 hours and 43 minutes listening to audio and the remaining 4 hours and 48 minutes reading print and ebooks. So I read for about 10 hours and 30 minutes.

Ah, where might have scraped up that extra hour and a half? I did work 9 to 2 on Friday, then sit on an alumni panel at my dear alma mater from 3 to 5:30 in the afternoon. I did squeeze in a little audio time in the morning while I did some of my more menial work tasks, but could I have squeezed more? I also came home from work and watched American Hustle instead of reading… oh my.

But I believe the more compelling factors leading to my failure related to two of life’s great joys – Food and Friends. On Friday, one of my very dearest librarian friends magically appeared on my afternoon panel. She no longer lives in town, so I just could not pass up the opportunity to have dinner with her. And have I mentioned my latest nutty, experimental diet? Well, we are doing Tim Ferriss’s Slow Carb diet, during which you skip all carbs, grains, sugars, and dairy during the week, but can eat WHATEVER YOU WANT on your cheat day. So while I envisioned a peaceful Saturday at home, reading and eating bonbons, I found myself traipsing around town in search of treats, and then over to our friends’ place for a Cheat Day Barbecue.

I’m alright with my decisions. Just look at these pastries! I did have a good time reading, though, and I will definitely participate in the future. Thanks again to MotherReader for putting all of this together! Here is a little bit about what I read…

Breakfast Served Anytime by Sarah Combs 

Read: 128 pages – Finished

Smart girl attends summer college program. Makes friends, talks about literature, learns about Kentucky. This is the kind of realism that Pre-Grad-School Jessica just adored. Now that I am Older and Wiser, I found the narration a little over the top and the plot a bit overstuffed, but other than that it was a lovely little thing.

 

When I Was the Greatest by Jason Reynolds 

Read: 240 pages – REALLYALMOSTFINISHED20MINUTESGAH

This is a book about being young in Brooklyn, about status and honor, about what loyalty, family, and friendship is really worth. It’s also just a little story about a couple of friends trying to crash their first real house party. Reynolds crams a lot of thematic content into a relatively simple plot-line without even a single didactic moment, which is completely admirable.

 

Like No Other by Una LaMarche

Read: ehhh about 150 pages, idk, my bookmark disappeared – Finished

I’ve been nursing this e-galley for over a month now. It wasn’t high on my priority list for this 48 Hour Book Challenge, but you know… sometimes you leave the book you are supposed to be reading in a place you are not and then you are stuck reading whatever is on your phone. Anyway, I thought it was appropriate for this year’s focus on diverse reads – this is a love story about two teens, one West Indian Black Boy, one Hasidic Jewish White Girl, with alternating POV chapters. This didn’t have the mood or narrative style of… oh… that other book about a star-crossed interracial teen romance, but it was otherwise a solid read. I really liked the ending – it was honest and bittersweet and really honored both protagonists as individuals rather than two halves of a romantic plotline.

 

Even in Paradise by Chelsey Philpot 

Read: 45 pages

The next on my Required Reading stack, and yet another Yes, This Book Is Just For You, Jessica kind of book. This time of the boarding school/rich families who live on islands variety. I put forty-five pages away yesterday afternoon and I am definitely hooked. Glad I can end my little read-a-thon with this one on deck!

 

A Game of Thrones by George R. R. Martin

Read: 23 pages

And what would any weekend of reading be without a little time spent in Westeros? I’ve been re-re-(re)-reading A Game of Thrones with my morning coffee. This weekend, Arya caught some cats and Catelyn Stark rode a mule up to the Eyrie to watch her sister breastfeed. Good times.

 

Last week I was thinking wistfully about all the books in my apartment that I never seem to have time to read. Books I’ve checked out and renewed a zillion times. Books on my Required Reading pile. Those darn delightful BEA galleys. I write from time to time about those months when I don’t want to read much and nothing pleases me, but there’s also THIS kind of month when I just want to read and read and read and just do nothing other than read. Maybe I just need a reading vacation, I thought. Or maybe just a weekend. Hey, what about that Reading Marathon Thingy that everyone was doing at some point when I was too busy with school to commit? What is that called again?

Well, googling Reading Marathon Weekend Thing Books Blog isn’t really helpful whatsoever. I gave up. Thank goodness Bookshelves of Doom shared a link, because, lo and behold, MotherReader’s 48-Hour Book Challenge is happening this very weekend! And I am going to participate!

I need my Sunday to A) write a slew of book reviews and B) restore my life to order for the coming week, so I started my 48-hours bright and early this morning. Before work and during my commute, I’ve already clocked 52 minutes of regular reading (Game of Thrones and Like No Other)  and an hour-fifteen on a new audiobook (When I Was the Greatest). Not too shabby. I’ll be squeezing in some audio when I can today, then devoting myself more fully to old-fashioned reading tonight and tomorrow. I feel as though I will be very happy to make it to 12 hours, if I even make it to 12 hours at all, but hey, the fun is in the striving, right? Right. Alright, I gotta go. Books. They are a’calling. See you in 48!

This post had me thinking about re-reads. I have a small cadre of books that I’ve read and re-read and re-read. When I talk about re-reading, I’m usually talking about the usual bunch – Lockhart, Dessen, Green, Naylor, Thomas, McCafferty. Harry Potter, of course, and a few other favorites. I occasionally revisit other books I’ve liked – especially if I can try it out in a different format – but it doesn’t happen very often. I usually stick to the same old re-reads.

Maybe it’s time to stir things up a bit. Here are some books I’ve thought about lately that I could re-read this year…

I posted about Donna Tartt’s The Secret History a few months ago but it has not left my mind. In fact, this book is starting to taunt me. Everyone is still talking GoldfinchGoldfinchGoldfinch, but those Goldfinch conversations quickly turn to The Secret History conversations (mostly because nobody I talk books with has actually *read* The Goldfinch yet…).

Also, I feel like every time I read a book I really love, I read an author interview revealing The Secret History as a major literary influence. The universe is pointing me toward a re-read.

Speaking of books I read to death in high school but haven’t touched in a few years, last week I checked out a copy of Judy Blume’s Summer Sisters.

Historically, I’ve had trouble convincing people this is a book of merit. It creates awkward situations. I leant out my ragged paperback copy in the tenth grade, eager to share this special treasure with a friend. She returned it a few days later. “I can’t finish it,” she said, red-cheeked and low-voiced. “It’s too weird. They’re like, lesbians!”

Anywaaaaaay, I’m a lesbian-sex-freak-pervert-reader. Moving on. I used to read this book every year, usually on vacation, at my grandpa’s house in Myrtle Beach. But it’s been awhile since I’ve been down south and awhile since I’ve read this book. My interest has been renewed because A) I’ve been thinking a lot about female friendships in general and B) I read an article where Lena Dunham cited the book as a major influence on that little HBO series called Girls. Which I think is amazing and is probably why I love Girls despite all sorts of logical reasons not to.

 

 

Speaking of What Jessica Is Doing on the Internet Instead of Being Productive, I’m a little bit obsessed with the lost Malaysian flight. I mean that with all the respect in the world toward the crew and passengers and I pray-pray-pray they are safe and sound, but look guys, I watched every season of LOST. This is freaking me out. It’s the same compulsion as the “Do I Have This Rare Disease?” Google Game – it’s horrifying, it’s terrible for the nerves, but it’s very difficult to stop clicking.

I keep tabs on NPR’s book coverage for work, so of course I clicked on the article titled “Malaysia Flight 370 and the World’s Attention.” I was hoping for the announcement of a memoir or an exposé or something juicy, but what I found was… Gary Paulsen’s The Hatchet. I read The Hatchet repeatedly in my 4^th and 5^th grade years. I also can’t stop refreshing the Malaysian Flight page on Reddit. This astute NPR writer sees right through my strange habits for what they are: anxiety-bait.

That being said, I still want to re-read The Hatchet.

 

And speaking of books I loved as a child, The Boy reminded me yesterday that Cheaper By the Dozen is available on Overdrive. One of my favorite books of all time, which I also haven’t read in forever, and decidedly less horrifying.

Or I could just read Game of Thrones again. If I start now, I could have the first three re-read by the time season four wraps and be ready to move on A Feast For Crows!

Let’s all pretend this is a rational course of action.