The List by Patricia Forde

Goooooood Morning Readers!!!

Day Two of my Birthday Week is all about The List by Patricia Forde, which happens to publish TODAY!!! While it is a middle grade book, yes I am a grown woman reading middle grade books, the concept of language and its importance in society is so profound, abstract, and intense, that The List does a great job of getting younger readers into that critical thinking space; hopefully it starts a discussion that never ends.

A quick synopsis...

In the city of Ark, speech is constrained to five hundred sanctioned words. Speak outside the approved lexicon and face banishment. The exceptions are the Wordsmith and his apprentice Letta, the keepers and archivists of all language in their post-apocalyptic, neo-medieval world. On the death of her master, Letta is suddenly promoted to Wordsmith, charged with collecting and saving words. But when she uncovers a sinister plan to suppress language and rob Ark's citizens of their power of speech, she realizes that it's up to her to save not only words, but culture itself. (Thanks Goodreads!)

Let that sink in for a moment. THIS GIRL IS RESPONSIBLE FOR SAVING LANGUAGE! Throughout history the right to speech, the access to speech, the very nature of speech, has been the stuff of wars! Cultures have lived and thrived based on their means of communication. And we have ALL been that person using primitive sign language and interpretive dance to find out where the bathroom is.

As I was reading The List I found myself having to wonder why the importance of language has never really been brought up in my circle. We're avid readers, intellectuals, and most of my friends are artists of some form, heck I'm married to a poet who proposed via poem. When I wrote my wedding vows, even when I write these blogs I subconsciously pick and choose the vernacular I use, the dialect and tone, even the syntax of a sentence to best convey the message I have.

Forde does a great job of blending some time periods and genres, this book is futuristic and medieval at the same time, and she does a good job giving us characters to root for. There are some plot issues, and one or two holes you can skirt around, but I think the biggest asset to this novel is Letta. The maturity she exhibits, as well as the urgency of her position aren't to be taken lightly. However there is the good risk that a lot of this book is going to be glanced over, or not even considered. "Everything is a risk. Life is a risk. We have to be what we are. Our souls are not like the soul of a fox. Hour hearts are not like the heart of a sparrow." - Marlo pg 86

The relationships in this book are bitter sweet, and the undying allegiance can be frightening to an over thinking adult like myself, but read The List, and ask yourself why language matters. I asked some of my friends, and their answers surprised me.

"Let's eat kids! Let's eat, kids! Punctuation saves lives." -B. Scott (Can you tell he's a teacher?)

"The written word lets you say what cannot be spoken." E. Savageau

"Language allows sharing and fosters relationships and (I hope) cooperation. It is how ideas spread." - L. Meyers

"The way we speak effects, and is effected by the way we think. It is expression but it is also neural programming." A. Estes

"We are all here because we believe in the power of communication based on love and trust." B. McBroom quoting the #WhyISign campaign.

"Language is important because it has the potential to open doors and close them. It can mean the difference between access or restriction in a modern, global, and competitive market." S. Bilquist 
(Seriously, I know some great teachers!)

"Language conventions provide the order and scaffold that allows for common understanding." S. Carpenter (See... GREAT teachers!)

Personally, I find that language is what finds us loved, freed, understood, and what gives us hope. If I can express to you my ambition, excitement, joy and love, language is what lets you understand me. I could go on forever about cultures and their languages, how some cultures don't have the same words for the same things, how some have words for emotions that can't be described any other way, but for now I'll leave  you with this, language matters.

Until next time....

XoXo
BrainyHeroine

Rainy Day's and ARCs

Good Morning Readers,

Today is a rainy, stay at home with a book and tea, kind of day. Sadly, I'm at work (or not so sadly, something has to pay for my massive book habit) and I'm desperately waiting for my next ARC!

ARCs, or Advanced Reader Copies, are books given to readers for review prior to publication. I'm thrilled to be getting one from Holly Tucker pretty soon, her first book infatuated me with the blending of history, mystery, science, faith, and narrative.

Oh! The other really amazing thing about ARCs is that people, bloggers, book sites, sales sites, book apps, etc, want you to write reviews! AND! Your girl has been tapped to be a book reviewer and mental health blogger for an up and coming indie mag. The first issue is publishing soon and I'm hoping to get my first review in for it, more to come on this later as things are still developing. If you want though, you can head on over to Jalapeno and subscribe to their updates for Scaffolding Magazine.

I'm excited for what is to come on this rainy day, the time spent reading tonight, and the three day weekend that will let me catch up on my book list posts! I promise, I've been keeping up on the books, just not the posts (sorry!). It's been a little crazy lately, and we're just in February!

XoXo
BrainyHeroine

The Insta List

Morning All,

Today is the last Wednesday of the ridiculous year of 2016; and last night I found a book challenge list on Instagram that blends in beautifully with all the other #LitGoals for 2017 and will be simple enough to incorporate. This is listed as the 2017 Reading Challenge: Reading for Fun: Put the oomph back in your reading life! (Do people lose the oomph? Is that a thing? Should I worry about that?) 

The challenges are as follows: 

• A book you chose for the cover
• A book with a reputation for being un-put-down-able
• A book set somewhere you've never been but would like to visit
• A book you've already read
• A juicy memoir
• A book about books or reading
• A book in a genre you usually avoid
• A book you don't want to admit you're dying to read
• A book in the backlist of a new favorite author 
• A book recommended by someone with great taste
• A book you were excited to buy or borrow but haven't read yet
• A book about a topic or subject you already love

Hmm... On second thought this may be tougher than I imagined, how do I pick ONE book I'm excited to read or borrow and haven't read? 

Can't wait to see how this one turns out! 

#TTYL

-BrainyHeroine

Decisions, Decisions

Happy New Year All!

To kick off this new year I am doing a book reading blitz. Between today and tomorrow I plan to read as many challenge books as I can! There are about 10 on my master list that are nice and short, unintentionally, yet this is making my blitz that much more doable.

The blitz had been planned for awhile, but the books kept bouncing around. Actually deciding what to read sometimes is hard! I am one of those who can simultaneously want to read any and everything, while still not being able find anything to read.

For the blitz I have chosen the shorter books on my list which will let me start off with a bang. Over the next couple of days I'm aiming to get through about 8 books; each meeting a different challenge requirement.

Am I insane? Yes. But this will also be great practice for the 24in48 January Read-a-thon later this month. (Check it out and sign up!)

Happy Reading!
-BrainyHeroine

Book Riot's 2017 Read Harder Challenge!

I'm crazy excited for this one! When I saw the categories for this years challenge I knew that it would actually be difficult for me to do. I love my "book ruts", I read what I like and I know I tend to like a limited scope of books. The beauty of this challenge though is that in order to complete it I have no choice but to expand my horizons, bookishly speaking.

The list is as follows:

• Read a book about sports
• Read a debut novel
• Read a book about books
• Read a book set in Central or South America written by a Central or South American author
• Read a book by an immigrant or with a central immigration narrative
• Read an all-ages comic
• Read a book published between 1900 and 1950
• Read a travel memoir
• Read a book you've read before
• Read a book that is set within 100 miles of your location
• Read a book that is set more than 5000 miles from your location
• Read a fantasy novel
• Read a nonfiction book about technology
• Read a book about war
• Read a YA or middle grade novel by an author who identifies as LGBTQ+
• Read a book that has been banned or frequently challenged in your country
• Read a classic by an author of color
• Read a superhero comic with a female lead
• Read a book in which a character of color goes on a spiritual journey.
• Read an LGBTQ+ romance novel. 
• Read a book published by a micropress
• Read a collection of stories by a woman
• Read a collection of poetry in translation on a theme other than love
• Read a book wherein all point-of-view characters are people of color

See what I mean? 

-BrainyHeroine

Going Postal for the New Year!

Good Morning All,

I am ridiculously excited to be a part of a Litsy Goes Postal group. 13 books, 13 months, 13 people. I can't wait to get each book, see if I have similar tastes to anyone, see if my mind is opened to something new. Perhaps one or two of these books will even fall into a challenge category! How serendipitous would that be? I'm sending out one of my very favorite classics, one that I've been obsessed with since I first read it as a kid. There is something to be said for sending a classic, and I do hope that this group of readers gets my love of the book. I so easily fall for literary monsters, I see love stories where most see horror, and the monster in the book is never the monster the author meant it to be. I'll chronicle my postal readings here, but keep them vague, or send a link to their GoodReads page. I'm so excited to start the new year!

XoXo
BrainyHeroine

The PopSugar 2017 Reading Challenge List

For those of you wanting to do this one yourself, I'd recomend reading the fantastic article about it first over on PopSugar! For those of you familiar with the challenge, or want a copy of the list to follow along with, then here you go!

The List

• A book recommended by a librarian (school, public, etc)
• A book that's been on your TBR list for way to long
• A book of letters 
• An audiobook
• A book by a person of color
• A book with one of the four seasons in the title
• A book that is a story within a story
• A book with multiple authors
• An espionage thriller
• A book with a cat on the cover
• A book by an author who uses a pseudonym
• A best seller from a genre you don't normally read
• A book by or about a person who has a disability
• A book involving travel
• A book with a subtitle 
• A book that's published in 2017
• A book involving a mythical creature
• A book you've read before that never fails to make you smile
• A book about food
• A book with career advice
• A book from a nonhuman perspective
• A steampunk novel
• A book with a red spine
• A book set in the wilderness
• A book you loved as a child
• A book by an author from a country you've never visited
• A book with a title that's a character's name
• A novel set during wartime 
• A book with an unreliable narrator
• A book with pictures
• A book where the main character is a different ethnicity than you
• A book about an interesting woman
• A book set in two different time periods
• A book with a month or day of the week in the title 
• A book set in a hotel
• A book written by someone you admire
• A book that's becoming a movie in 2017
• A book set around a holiday other than Christmas
• The first book in a series you haven't read before
• A book you bought on a trip

Advanced (12 bonus books!)

• A book recommended by an author you love
• A bestseller from 2016
• A book with a family- member term in the title
• A book that takes place over a character's life span
• A book about an immigrant or refugee 
• A book from a genre/subgenre that you've never heard of
• A book with an eccentric character
• A book that's more than 800 pages
• A book you got from a used book sale
• A book that's been mentioned in another book
• A book about a difficult topic
• A book based on mythology

Challenge(s) Accepted

Hello there,

You seem to have stumbled across my book blog, either by accident or by following a link from somewhere. Thank you for stopping in! I'm so excited to share Lit Goals with you and to blather on about #LitGoals2017. This is all such a passion project, something that will be fun, make a great log of the books I've read in 2017, and the place to track my progress for the reading challenges I've accepted. Last year I accepted two reading challenges and had them both finished by March, I added a third and was done with it by August. I am an avid reader and listener of audiobooks. Yes! AUDIOBOOKS COUNT AS BOOKS. Some may disagree however and they are allowed too. I am so thrilled to explain this coming year's challenges and I encourage you to participate in them! They'll be great fun and sometimes you just need that extra motivation to read a book.

Oh, you're probably wondering who I am. That's an easy one. I'm Ami Rebecca, a native to Las Vegas, NV. I graduated from Nevada State College in 2015 with a BA in History and a concentration in Pre-Law. I'm married to my amazing husband who is currently in a Ph.D. program at UNLV for Radiochemistry. (He wants to save the planet.) Presently I am not in school, but have goals to obtain my masters and Ph.D. in History, focusing on the Habsburg Monarchy, Medieval Spain and Hungary, and Erzsebet Bathory. When they said find a niche I took them quite literally. I don't have kids, but I do have a cat, and during the day I work for a law firm helping the disabled. Reading has always been a passion of mine. I was that kid who got in trouble for it, always did the reading for class, and knew every librarian by name. There is something soothing about books, the way that you can find the one you need, the way they find you, they're truly magical. Many of those historic moments in my life, many of those big decisions can be traced directly back to the books I've read.

As an avid reader I've accepted many book challenges over the past few years. There is only one I didn't finish, but that was because the book was creepy and giving me nightmares. I'll get back to it someday. The particular book challenges I'm following in 2017 are simple. The first is the #LitsyAtoZ challenge created by fellow Litsian BookishMarginalia (if you Litsy, follow her and join the challenge! If you're on Litsy follow me too! BrainyHeroine). The rules are simple, she had three veins you could choose from, either alphabetically read books by author's last name, book title, or both. I've chosen to go the route of A to Z book titles. I'm looking forward to branching out and reading more non-fiction and even reading fiction books I normally wouldn't think twice about. Challenges are about expanding ones horizons after all.

The second challenge that I'm doing is one I've done before, it is the PopSugar 2017 challenge. The rules for this one are simpler, just read one of everything on the list. For those who are quick readers they even have an additional 12 items! That would equate to one book a week, but there are people who can do it. 

The last challenge I'm doing is the Goodreads Shelf Challenge, an easy peasy numbers game. I'm going to tell Goodreads a number of books I plan to read, and then by the end of the year I should hopefully have read that many. The challenge there is remembering to log them in, and as a bonus challenge to myself I'm going to start reviewing the books I've marked as "Read."

It is going to be an exciting year of reading, and yes there will be some cross over between challenges, there isn't any rule saying that there can't be. If you're curious about the #LitsyAtoZ books I'll be reading fear not, a list is posted (right under the header, you can't miss it; once I read a book I'll delete it from the list) and you can search the Card Catalog on the side bar for #LitsyAtoZ. posts and book posts. I'll also be posting my Book of the Month Club choices, my Audible of the month choice, and what I'm currently reading, letting you all stay in the loop! (Side note, if you'd like to stay in the loop even faster you can submit your email address in the side bar and get an alert with each posting!) You can also follow my Litstagram on Instagram and my Goodreads page as well.

Have any questions? Want a review of a book? Want me to read and review your book? Email me at literaturegoals@gmail.com and I'll be more than happy to strike up a conversation about books!

Happy Reading!