Fickle February's TBR List

Hey Readers!

Want to know one of the easiest ways to combat literacy? Read! And read a TON! Whether you're helping your kiddos with their homework, are reading an interesting news article or internet piece, reading is one of the best ways to combat illiteracy.

Jumping in on that notion, here is my February TBR! Tomorrow I'll have a fun post about a new Book Battle I'm a part of.

Until Next Time,
XoXo

BrainyHeroine

Here's my TBR... yes it's crazy, but so am I!

• The Bear and the Nightengale and The Girl in the Tower (both by Katherine Arden!!)
• Hidden Figures
• Welcome to Nightvale (YES! The amazing podcast has a BOOK! Several actually)
• It Devours (By the WTNV peeps!)
• The Lost Sisterhood and Juliet (both by Anne Fortiner)
• Frog Music (From the author who brought you Room)
• Spindle Fire (in anticipation of April's stunning conclusion to this duology!)
• Queen of Hearts Trilogy
• Vassa in the Night
• My Lady Jane
• Reign of the Fallen
• The Immortalists
• Kulti
• Hound of the Baskervilles (look, I needed a dog book and this is the only kind I'm cool with!!)
• The Rule of Four
• The Determined Heart
• Let's Pretend This Never Happened and Furiously Happy (Jenny Lawson FTW)
• The Hamilton Affair (because everyone needs a kissy book club book)
• Cormoran Strike Trilogy (I've been trying to read these for ages!)

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

Failures, Feats, and February Goals

Afternoon All,

Sorry to have kept you waiting, but the last few weeks have been a bit challenging. For example, the weekend of the 24in48 Read-a-Thon I'd been so excited for? Yeah, my horrible brother in law came into town and it turned out to be grasping at the straws of time to get 24 hours of reading in. I was able to finish Z: A Novel of Zelda Fitsgerald by Therese Anne Fowler, which was wonderful as I've been watching Amazon's "Z:The Beginning of Everything", a truly magical show.

I'm not proud of how January ended, though my stats are pretty okay. 27 books consumed. 8 Audio books, 3 E-Books and 16 printed books. Of these books 2 were book club books, 2 were for LitsyAtoZ, with the rest filling the Book Riot and Pop Sugar reading challenges in various slots.

February will be a better month! On Litsy and Instagram I'm doing FeistyFeb and RiotGram pics, following the prompts and sharing them around! I'm also doubling down on my reading efforts. I need to do more of my LitsyAtoZ books, and zero in on the remaining challenge categories. Oh, and I still want to read some things for fun, and I kind of get side tracked when I just read for fun.

With February having just started my current listen is Caraval by Stephanie Garber, My current read is Vassa in the Night by Sarah Porter, Soonly I'll be starting Hidden Figures by Margot Lee Shetterly and The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead. My current book club read is Tulip Fever by Deborah Moggach .

Until next time,

XOXO
-BrainyHeroine

Just a Week of Books

Afternoon All,

This week we're going to keep things short and sweet. I've got a three day weekend, some great wine, and the time to just finish some books.

Completed for Challenges: 

• All the Ugly and Wonderful Things by Bryn Greenwood
• #LitsyAtoZ Book A
• America's First Daughter by Stephanie Dray and Laura Kamoie
• Read for my Historical Fiction Book Club

Books Read This Week

I can't quite decide whether or not these are for challenges or just for fun, but I'll list what categories they fall into anyway. 

• A Study in Charlotte by Brittany Cavallaro 
• The first in a series you've never read before
• The Wedding Shroud by Elisabeth Storrs
• Again, the first in a series you've never read before
• The Immortal Circus Book 1 by A.R. Kahler
• One last time, the first in a series you've never read before. 

Clearly this week I was in the mood for series/trilogies; I blame this on Kricket. 

In more exciting news I've got my books picked out selected for the 24in48 readathon next weekend, I'm so ready to just sit and consume and ignore the real world! I'll be reading the following books: 

1. The Book Jumper by Mechthild Glaser
2. History of Wolves by Emily Fridlund 
3. The Bear and the Nightengale by Katherine Arden
4. The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead

These also fall into challenge requirements! Next week I'll post up a more detailed readathon worthy blog post. 

I'm also going to be continuing The Other Einstein by Marie Benadict (yay book club!) And speaking of book clubs, I got my first book for my #CoverToCover group too! Click HERE to get the Goodreads page for it. (I don't want to spoil anything for my friends.)

Until next time, 

-BrainyHeroine

The Joy and Luck of a Book Club

Morning All,

Can we talk book clubs for a moment? I personally belong to two, one that I run and one that I participate in, and then I have a Book of the Month subscription which sort of counts. The club I run is a Historical Fiction book club that was born many years ago thanks to a course on the MOOC site Coursera. Our January book is America's First Daughter by Laura Kamoie and Stephanie Dray. The one that I just participate in is new and one of the Litsy Goes Postal groups (#CoverToCover). #CoverToCover is a little more mysterious, I get to read books selected by 12 other amazing women, write my thoughts in a notebook, send it off to the next person, and get the book and notebook I send out back sometime next year before the cycle starts again.

Now I know the BOTM subscription isn't actually a book club, but A LOT of the books I'm using for the #LitsyAtoZ challenge came from BOTM. Knowing that I have 12 mystery books coming to me means that someone may send me something to fill in a gap on any of these challenges is fascinating to me, and running a club means I get to steer the selection towards something I need if needed. Granted for the HF book club we vote on books, but I'm the one that puts up the selection. February's book is The Other Einstein by Marie Benedict, which I'm using as my "A book I was excited to buy but haven't read yet" book.

There's also just a magic about having a collection of people who are all reading and discussing the same books, especially when one of them is your absolute favorite. I like the conversations that I've had thanks to book clubs, and I love it when people say they hated the book. It is perfectly okay to not like the book! What book club decided that it wasn't?

When you've found your passion about something, regardless of what it is, you want to share it. Books take my breath away, give me far to many emotions, consume me, and sometimes annoy me; and yes I've read books I haven't liked or just couldn't get into, it happens to the best of us.

So find someone to talk to about the books you're reading. I'm sure you'll find it exhilarating and exciting when you see someone else light up the way you did, or when you get into a passionate or loud discussion about why the book was bad in your opinion. Find or create a book club, in person, online, through the mail even! You won't regret it.

TTFN
-BrainyHeroine