Posted on

WWW Wednesday: 27 March 2019

Thanks Howling Libraries for your Wednesday meme post!

WWW Wednesday is a bookish meme hosted by Taking on a World of Words where they revived it after its former host MizB at A Daily Rhythm. To participate you answer the 3 W’s (on Wednesday):

  1. What are you currently reading?
  2. What did you recently finish reading?
  3. What do you think you’ll read next?

And of course I’ll link back to the host (click the link above) as well as link back to the blogger I first saw participating in this (the link to Howling Libraries). Finally I’ll post my link back to me on the host’s page! Yeah, go networking! Should you decide to participate then that’s what ya do. 😀

via GIPHY

Okay this week you’ll have to forgive me for the repetitive info but that’s life. In addition to this meme, I’ll be doing the meme Shelf Control hosted by BookShelf Fantasies. (Click HERE for my last week’s Shelf Control.) Thank you! Let’s get started with WWW Wednesday.

WWW Wednesday: Q1

What am I currently reading?

25266688

The Honours by Tim Clare is the most recent I’ve started. I’m reading the Kindle edition and am 34% through it. Tim Clare is a podcaster, author, poet, comedian, and dad I listen to on a regular basis. This is the first I’ve read of his and I’m enjoying it so far. He’s a talented writer, he definitely shows instead of telling although I’m the kind of reader that doesn’t want EVERYTHING described to me. I like to get a sense of the surroundings but I’m really more concerned with the story itself. That said, I’m digging this and will certainly keep reading. I expect to finish this month. Also, he has a new book, The Ice House, coming out in May. So I want to enjoy this (hopefully) and be ready in time to pre-order The Ice House.

26114130

Everfair by Nisi Shawl is a book I’ve been reading for a while now and I’m still reading it on account it’s been a bad two weeks of reading. I really just want to be done with it but it doesn’t deserve to be DNF’d at this point, at this point. If I went back to before I was 3/4 of the way through I might DNF it after all. She’s a talented writer but I don’t think this is an interesting story. I wish she would focus in on more of the meat and potatoes of the story. Each chapter is set in the future, near or far, it varies. The chapters also follow different characters. These changes in perspective are not clear, I wish there was a little more direction as to who we’re reading and why. The characters in my opinion aren’t very well fleshed out either. This will be finished this month.

17737025

Another book I’ve been reading for a little while, and will continue to take my time with, is My Age of Anxiety by Scott Stossel. This is a non-fiction book about, you guessed it, anxiety. I’m not very far into this book but already I can see it’s very well researched and thorough (and with itty bitty print which means this book is even longer than it looks). I’ll finish this book in April. In the meantime I look forward to all that I’ll learn.

WWW Wednesday: Q2

What did I recently finish reading?

A fellow blogger’s post! Lol. Last week and this week so far have been pretty busy outside of the bookish world so I haven’t finished any books. Expect that to change for the next WWW Wednesday! I’ll have Everfair done by next week and who knows, I’ll aim my reading goals high.

WWW Wednesday: Q3

What do I think I’ll read next?

The Voyage of the Basilisk (Memoirs of Lady Trent #3) by Marie Brennan

21893608

Cool cover right? This will be next, as soon as I finish Everfair. You might know I finished Book 2, The Tropic of Serpents, last month. Click HERE to read my review and see how I enjoyed it. I look forward to discovering new dragons with Lady Trent. Since finishing The Tropic of Serpents I’ve learned a little more about the author Marie Brennan. I’ve added some more of her books – she’s a prolific writer it seems – to my TBR and look forward to getting to know her better.

The Book of Phoenix (Who Fears Death 0.1#) by Nnedi Okorafor

23281789

Check out my post March Plans for more on my history with this book. Then return here and read that since that post I started this book, sort of. Immediately I realized I’VE ALREADY READ THIS. I’VE ALREADY READ THIS! I think it was a couple years ago and I do not remember where I found this book but I do know I really enjoyed it. It seems only fair and right then that I read it again, something I do not do. So this book will be started before March ends. Started again because this last start did not count once I remembered I’d read this already. This book is magical futurism and a prequel to the World Fantasy-award winning novel, Who Fears Death. You know I will be reading that one too. Hats off to Nnedi Okorafor for her talented works. Do not mistake my poor memory for a bad book.

Lastly, as I mentioned in Here’s What’s Up: Rediscovering Books I will be slowly working my way through The Greek Poets: Homer to the Present. Just a little at a time and that will start in this next line up.

6360868

Okay, what do you think? You reading or have read any of these? Have you read any of these authors? What’s your WWW Wednesday?

Thanks so much for stopping by and reading! Check out my Spring 2019 TBR and comment there if you’re interested in any of those books.

You can also see my 2019 TBR, that should give you a good idea of what we may or may not have in common. Who knows, you might find that you want to stay posted with what I’m reading and talking about.

Have a great Wednesday everyone!

Posted on

Give ‘Em Some Credit

via GIPHY

Part of blogging is being a part of the blogging community. You browse, you read, you like, you comment, at least you should. Whether you’re a book blogger or other sort, this is just part of what you do.

It’s come to my attention however that many of us bloggers and/or blog readers aren’t so good at this. Morgana’s post Book Bloggers Made Me Buy It got me thinking about this. Too often people visit blogs and read them but never “like” let alone comment. Maybe you’ve done this (certainly I have) without meaning to. I’m not always in a position to comment and sometimes it’s late and I fall asleep before remembering to like. Or maybe you’ve done it on purpose because you didn’t like what you read. Such instances as the latter don’t count for what I’m talking about here, I’m referring to – and fellow bloggers are also – the posts you DO like. And I’m not so much telling you what to do if you do or don’t like a post, consider this a “consider this” moment.

via GIPHY

Sometimes it’s intimidating to comment. Maybe you feel silly because you don’t know what to say. Whatever your reason, consider that that blogger will probably smile just to know you liked what they read. We want to interact with people. We want to know what you think. Even if you just hit “like” and then tell me you liked it (redundant you think), that means a lot. In addition to showing other readers our blog has other readers (:D) your comment might give others the courage or the little extra push to leave a comment themselves.

via GIPHY

While hop-skipping around the world of book bloggers on WordPress I found Morgana’s Book Box, as noted at the top of this post. In addition to that one (that really got me on this topic) I also took interest in a relevant and related post The Art of Surviving As A Book Blogger, I think you will also find it interesting. Props Morgana for bringing this topic to the forefront.

Now just what these bloggers think about my long comments – hopefully they don’t cringe 😉 – we’ll see. But I shared with them that I plan to recognize the people, blogs, podcasts, booktubers that I follow and have found books through, among other things. Since you might know I’ve been talking about this it only makes sense I’d get all excited talking about it with other folks. In fact I’ve already started. When I added another book – Angelfall – to my 2019 TBR, one I found in January but thanks to Morgana’s review I pushed it up, I linked back to her review saying as much as I am here. 😀 Scroll down my TBR to find the link to her review.

What do you think? Do you want to comment more now? Did this get you thinking about your comments or lack thereof? Are you a blogger and do you give ’em some credit? Will you now?

via GIPHY

Posted on

Do You DNF?

via GIPHY

This post is happening because I’m in the midst of whether or not to DNF? Do you DNF? It’s not really grammatically correct to ask do you “do not finish” or “did not finish”, but that’s the beauty of language and this age of everyone loves acronyms. LOL. But really, do you DNF? I don’t.

I’m not against it, I mean I’ve done it a few times, on purpose. (If I didn’t do it on purpose I don’t count it unless I pick up the book (so to speak) and say yeah I’m not going to read you after all.) It’s hard for me to give up on a book, even if I’m not enjoying it. That really doesn’t make sense, do I really have time to read something I don’t like? After all, there are literally tens of thousands of books, plus, to be discovered by my brain and yours. There are 196 books on my Goodreads want-to-read shelf, and I promise you that list will grow because that list doesn’t include every sequel or installment in series I’ve found and have yet to learn I like.

If I find a new author and I like their work then I’m going to see what else they’ve written. I’m probably going to follow them if I like them a lot. So in the case of Patricia McKillip, I have a lot of back reading to do. No I don’t read every book by every author I enjoy but it’s possible that I could (in theory). Every year hundreds, thousands of new books are published, many are debuts. That means more authors and series to add to my list. Unless I learn how to read a book a day, it’s safe to say I’ll never get to every book I might want to read out there.

So it is I keep asking myself, do you DNF? AHHHHHH! It’s so hard! Even after everything I just said about all the books out there, when I’m reading a book I feel like I HAVE to finish it. There’s a stain in my mind when I see those books I said OMG I can’t do this. What if it got better after I quit? But what if it never did? What if the ending kind of makes it worth it? Then just read the ending. But where exactly is the ending?

My great aunt and I had lunch the other day and we talked about this DNF. Do you DNF my dear aunt? Her answer wasn’t yes or no, but in summary it was yes. She will flip forward a dozen or so pages and if it gets better, great, if it doesn’t she skips to the end and reads the ending. At the very least, you gotta know how it ends right? She agreed, why spend time reading something you don’t like?

via GIPHY

DNF Lists

When I searched Goodreads’ lists for “DNF” I got 15 results, not all relevant. The top of the list was “The Most Begun ‘Read But Unfinished’ (Initiated) Book Ever” with 2,334 books in the list. The list was created in July 2008, has 653 likes, and 12,383 people voted on the list. The description states that this list is not about books being bad, just really difficult to finish. The book at the top of the list is Catch 22 #1 by Joseph Heller. Next is The Lord of the Rings series. There’s Ulysses, Moby Dick, Wuthering Heights, Pride and Prejudice, Great Expectations, Dracula, The Catcher in the Rye, A Brief History of Time, 1984, Jane Eyre, Frankenstein, Interview with the Vampire (love that movie), Eat Pray Love, The Great Gatsby, The Origin of Species, and I’m skipping a lot of books on the first page. Little Women, The Time Traveler’s Wife (another great movie), The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (my dad read this to us when I was kid before bed we’d gather and listen), American Gods, Gulliver’s Travels, and book number #100 on this first page is The Red Badge of Courage.

via GIPHY

There are 24 pages total. Granted this spans 10 1/2 years of people voting and adding books, I’m leaning towards surprise there’s not more! Perhaps I don’t understand the severity of 24 pages of about 100 books… On page 24 we find Portrait of a Killer – Jack the Ripper, Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants #1, The Hate You Give (strange as it has a 4.55 star average rating, though I haven’t read or seen it), The Lost City of Z, To the Ends of the Earth, and so many more as I only picked out some titles that sounded familiar to me. While I’m more than curious to scan over some of the other pages, I do not have the time. Do you DNF any of these?

Another list is titled “Books Not On My Shelves That I’ve Started But Could Not/Did Not Finish”. Their description is ” Books not gripping enough or interesting enough to be worth finishing–or adding to a DNF shelf.” There are 68 books and 30 voters, started April 2012. Not so many here especially given almost seven years. The first is On the Road by Jack Kerouac, the second is Catch 22 (again), and the last is Inside Outside by Philip Jose Farmer.

There’s a “DNF” list, “Sorry Couldn’t Finish Reading”, “Books We DNFed In 2015”, “Books you have abandoned this year in 2018”, “Books I Decided Not to Finish”, “Books We DNFed in 2016”, “First Half Good, Last Half Disappointing/Bad”, and many more. A lot of these don’t have many voters, the first list I mentioned was the only one that passed 1,000 books or 1,000 voters.

DNF Posts

Then of course there are plenty of blog posts dedicated to DNFed books and the topic of DNF. One blogger, at Sophie’s Corner, writes how she has a hard time DNFing books. It seems we all come back to the fact that there is so little time and so much to do. She created a list of criteria she’s going to use going forward. One such set of criteria I haven’t considered is triggers and explicit content. Do you DNF books for these reasons? I would but I haven’t picked up a lot of books trigger me in this way. I’ve read some gruesome books and taken interest in them but most of the time I don’t read a lot of that. I don’t read horror. But if I happened to pick up something and the blurb didn’t forewarn me so-to-speak but the story bothered me, I think that this is quick reason to DNF.

Book Steff is another blogger who finds it difficult to DNF books. I’m finding more and more that it’s common for people to find this difficult to do. She has a 100 page limit before she’ll DNF a book, more if it’s a chunkster as they call books 450 pages or more in the bookish world. (Of course it could be 500 plus pages depending who you talk to.) She emphasizes that you should allow yourself to put a book down that just doesn’t fit you. Don’t be ashamed. Interesting angle…

The biggest reason I even think about DNFing a book is because I can’t get into it, I just don’t care what happens in this story or to the characters. The reason I even finish those books is because I can’t stand to not finish a book. But it does frustrate me to get to the end of a book and never forge any connection with the characters or the story. If I’m halfway through a book and I still feel like I’m reading something for school, something assigned to me, I get anxious and pick up another book. I will seriously read other books but come to that one again and again reading pages just because I feel I have to and hope I don’t regret it.

While I’ve not run into a lot of books like this – I’ve found some blurbs and reading samples – I will absolutely DNF a book with loads of spelling mistakes (lack of editing) and overall unprofessional writing. If the story reads like seven year old wrote it but an adult did, I’m not going there. Now we’re into a whole other topic…back to do you DNF…

via GIPHY

I could go on, there’s much more, so many more bloggers and lists and reasons for DNFing. Maybe we’ll revisit this in the future, but for now I’m going to leave this here. So what do you say, should we create some DNF criteria this year? What do you DNF & why? Or why is it hard for you to DNF?

via GIPHY