2018: a Resolution, a Revolution, and a Revelation

Hey Readers,

The bulk of this was written a few nights ago when I was exhausted, sad, and letting myself have emotions. The portion after my signature was written just before posting. Starting tomorrow I will be posting what I'm reading, and if something is particularly amazing, I'll review it. I will at least indicate if it meets one of the below mentioned challenges. Happy New Year readers. 

Sorry to have been so absent the last few weeks, I got a bit turned around with how quickly everything's flown by this month. This year really. It felt like just last week I was making a post about a book club and suddenly, it's the end of the month. You know how you get lost in a book? The sort of lost where you feel like Alice falling down the rabbit hole, heels over head, spinning around, then suddenly blinking and realizing you've lost so much time between the pages of a book that you forgot what day it was; that's how I've felt for much of this year.

This blog started as a project, something to do in my down time, and a fun way to record what I've read over the past year. I was so ambitious and ready to write these epic and amazing posts where I detailed everything I loved and loathed about the book, I'd have all these hyperlinks to everything I'd referenced and I'd make notes about what book fit what challenge and feel so accomplished for checking something off my list. And then my dad died. And I don't think I really read anything for a while, not the same way at least.

To say that I got distracted would be dishonest and an understatement. I went numb. Making sure my mother was okay, maintaining my job, trying to put on this happy face and keep commitments to publishers who really didn't even know who I was. Reading lost the sparkle for a while, and it is barely coming back going into the new year. Everyone always makes these grand resolutions that no one ever really keeps, and I so desperately wanted this blog, this project to save me from what was really going on around me, to save me from what was really going on inside my head.

My mother moved in with me in October, and I got my own office/reading room/library/study that I absolutely love. For a second I thought that I could get back on track, catch up with what I wanted my posts to be, have them become something special again. That's never happened, but I like to think that with the new year, all of it will come back. The spark, the sparkle, the everything. I know it won't, but aren't resolutions really all about pretending?

I know that in 2018 I will read books, and I know that there will be times when I simply can't, or when I'm reading just to save myself even only for a moment; I probably won't stick with a single reading challenge, just like this past year, but I'm putting the effort into making the lists because it feels like a more attainable goal that way. Sort of like a vision board that eventually becomes a dart board.

2018 won't be the year that fixes everything, it won't be a better year than 2017, but it will be a different and new year. I'm going to be a different and new reader. I just hope that we can all stay around for the ride.

XoXo
BrainyHeroine

P.S. I did still plan for the Pop Sugar challenge, the Book Riot Read Harder Challenge, a Litsy challenge for fans of My Favorite Murder (still missing books endorsed by Karen and Georgia!) and the Planner Girl Book Club bingo challenge. Tomorrow I'll set a goal on Goodreads, and start reading again.

Wanna Join a Book Club?

Yes Readers,

Today is a day of several posts. And spreadsheets, so many spreadsheets.

I host a book club through Facebook that was born out of the Plagues, Witches and War: The Worlds of Historical Fiction - Coursera group, created many moons ago by people who had taken this excellent MOOC. It is hands down one of the best you can take, particularly if you're an avid reader or history buff.

This year, I stopped hosting discussions in March after my father died. I've only recently decided to restart them, but I needed them to change.

Instead of doing one book a month, we're doing one every six weeks. Hopefully this eliminates the issue of not having enough time to read the selections. I've also gone ahead and chosen all nine books for the year, which helps alleviate stress on my end because the previous method of choosing involved polls and voting and a crap load of effort on my end. I'm keeping the discussion questions, though I may not do quite as many, and I am keeping the I Liked and the I Hated threads, because not every reader is going to love every element of every book, and sometimes people like the unexpected aspects of a novel.

Below are the books, discussion dates, and page counts, and I'd love for anyone to join! I can easily add you to the group on FB, but I'll figure out how to make the discussions work in the blogspace or Litsy.

XoXo
BrainyHeroine

Title	Author	Page Count	Discussion Dates
Tulip Fever	Deborah Moggach	288	Jan. 8-14, 2018
The Hamiton Affair	Elizabeth Cobbs	408	Feb. 19-25, 2018
Whispers of the Moon Moth	Lindsay Jayne Ashford	352	Apr. 2-7, 2018
Before We Were Yours	Lisa Wingate	352	May 14-19, 2018
Butterfly Island	Corina Bomann	446	June 25-30, 2018
The Essex Serpent	Sarah Perry	422	Aug. 6-12, 2018
Lincoln in the Bardo	George Saunders	343	Sept. 17-23, 2018
The Witches of New York	Ami McKay	560	Oct. 29 - Nov. 4, 2018
The Cottingley Secret	Hazel Gaynor	383	Dec. 10-15, 2018

And the Winners Are...

Happy Sunday Readers!!

This past week the Pop Sugar 2018 Reading Challenge came out!! Yay! So I've spent the week assembling titles just like last December. 

The winners are...

Book Title	Author
White Oleander	Janet Fitch
American Fire: Love, Arson, and Life in a Vanishing Land	Monica Hesse
Legendary (Caraval #2)	Stephanie Garber
The Palace Job (Rouges of the Republic #1)	Patrick Weekes
The Ice Princess (Fjallbacka #1)	Camilla Lackberg
Whisper of the Moon Moth	Lindsay Jayne Ashford
Butterfly Island	Corina Bomann
4:50 From Paddington	Agatha Christie
Perfume: The Story of a Murderer	Patrick Suskind
H is for Hawk	Helen Macdonald
The Cuckoo's Calling (Cormoran Strike #1)	Robert Galbraith  (J.K. Rowling)
Of Fire and Stars	Audrey Coulthurst
Les Liaisons Dangereuses	Pierre-Ambroise  Choderlos De Laclos
The Star Touched Queen	Roshani Chokshi
Geek Girls Unite: How Fangirls, Bookworms, Indie Chicks, and Other Misfits are Taking Over the World	Leslie Simon
Furiously Happy	Jenny Lawson
Fingersmith	Sarah Waters
Welcome to Nightvale	Joseph Fink &  Jeffrey Cranor
Kulti	Marianne Zapata
Freud's Mistress	Karen Mack
Bellman & Black	Diane Setterfield
Smilla's Sense of Snow	Peter Hoeg
Passenger	Alexandra Bracken
The Mists of Avalon	Marion Zimmer Bradley
The Girl From Everywhere	Heidi Heilig
All the Birds in the Sky	Charlie Jane Anders
Beyond Our Stars	Marie Langager
Valley of the Dolls	Jacqueline Susann
The Halloween Tree	Ray Bradbury
White Bodies	Jane Robins
People of the Book	Geraldine Brooks
Second Life (Reese Witherspoon)	S.j. Watson
The Phantom Tollbooth	Norton Juster &  Jules Feiffer
The Case for Jamie (A Charlotte Holmes Novel)	Brittany Cavallaro
Dark Matter	Blake Crouch
The Miseducation of Cameron Post	Emily M. Danforth
January 1973: Watergate, Roe v. Wade, Vietnam, and the Month that Changed America Forever	James Robenalt
Cloud Atlas	David Mitchell
The Library at Mount Char	Scott Hawkins
2015 A Trillogy : Queen of Hearts	Colleen Oakes
The Women	TC Boyle
Nexus	Ramez Naam
The Sacred Lies of Minnow Bly	Stephanie Oakes
Celtic Gods and Heroes	Marie-Louise Sjoestedt
The Peach Keeper	Sarah Addison Allen
Alice in Quantumland: An Allegory of Quantum Physics	Robert Gilmore
The Witches of New York	Ami McKay
Atomic Accidents: A History of Nuclear Meltdowns and Disasters: From the Ozark Mountains to Fukushima	James Mahaffrey
Red Clocks	Leni Zumas
The Last Painting of Sarah de Vos	Dominic Smith

Until Next Time, 

XoXo

BrainyHeroine