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.

Marching into History; March's Reading Plan

Good Morning Happy Readers!

March is Women's History Month. March is a month with 31 days. Purim will begin on March 11, 2017. On March 12, 2017 we lose an hour of sleep to Daylight Savings Time, there is also a full moon that night. March 17 is St. Patrick's Day and is the day after my best friends birthday. Spring will begin on March 20, 2017. And today, March 1 is Ash Wednesday. Last month I read 17 books, in January I read 30. This month I am determined to read more, to focus that reading on my challenges, and to embrace the distraction of reading as sparingly as possible. With that in mind I have a plan.

For March, a month dedicated to Women's History, I will be reading the following:

• The Geek Feminist Revolution by Kameron Hurley
• Hidden Figures by Margot Lee Shetterly (Didn't manage to read this in February)
• Rise of the Rocket GIrls by Nathalia Holt
• Julie & Julia by Julie Powell
• The Shining Girls and Broken Monsters by Lauren Beukes
• The Accidental Empress and Sisi: Empress on Her Own by Alison Pataki
• Sisters in Law by Linda Hirshman
• When I was Puerto Rican and Almost a Woman by Esmeralda Santiago
• How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents and In The Time of Butterflies by Julia Alvarez
• Saffron Skies by Lesley Loko 
• The Wonder by Emma Donoghue
• The Miniaturist by Jessie Burton

All written by women, some written by women of color, some fiction, some non fiction, all framing history in one context or another. 

I'll get more specific with each as I read them; and I'll let you know what challenges they fit.

Until the next time. 

XoXo

BrainyHeroine

February is a Fickle Month

Happy Sunday All,

February, month two of 2017, 28 days of wintery bliss that somehow always goes by far to fast. February, the month where I don't feel like I accomplished as much as I wanted to regarding my reading goals. February, the month that distracted me like no other this year! Oh February, by Tuesday you will end, March will begin, and I have a plan; yes I have a plan to March straight into these reading challenges with vigor and coffee. So much coffee.

To date I've completed the following challenges:

BOOK RIOT READ HARDER
Read a book about books	The Book Jumper	Mechthild Glaser	384
Read a book published between 1900 and 1950	The Great Gatsby	F. Scott Fitzgerald	156
Read a book that is set more than 5000 miles from your location	Tulip Fever (Amsterdam)	Deborah Moggach	288
Read a book in which a character of color goes on a spiritual journey	Norwegian Wood	Haruki Murakami	296
Read a book published by a micro-press	Margaret The First	Danielle Dutton	176
POP SUGAR
A book of letters	The Private Letters of Countess Erzesbet Bathory	Kimberly Craft	142
An audio book	Caraval	Stephanie Garber	416
A book that's a story within a story	The Miniaturist	Jessie Burton	416
An espionage thriller	Bad Monkey	Matt Ruff	241
A book by an author who uses a pseudonym	The Silent Wife	A.S.A Harrison	326
A bestseller from a genre you don't normally read	How to fight presidents	Daniel O'Brien	272
A book involving travel	Passenger/Wayfarer (Time travel)	Alexandra Bracken	1018
A book that's published in 2017	The Possessions	Sarah Flannery Murphy	368
A book involving a mythical creature	The Bear and the Nightengale	Katherine Arden	336
A book you've read before that never fails to make you smile
A book with career advice	Getting an Academic Job in History	Dana Polanichka	112
A book with pictures	Vlad the Impaler: The Real Count Dracula	Enid A. Goldber & Norman Itzkowitz	128
The first in a series you haven't read before	Under Different Stars	Amy A Bartol	297
A book with an eccentric character	The Hundred Year Old Man Who Climbed Out of the Window and Disappeared	Jonas Jonasson & Rod Bradbury	396
A book you got from a used book sale	The Last Lecture	Randy Pausch & Jeffrey Zaslow	206
#LitsyAtoZ
Book A	All The Ugly and Wonderful Things	Bryn Greenwood	352
Book Z	Z: A Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald	Therese Ann Fowler	375

Moving on into March I'm realizing that I need to get focused again; books can be distracting, who would have known?

Since it seems that the area I'm lacking in the most at present is my #LitsyAtoZ books they're going to be my March focus. My plan is to read at least five books slated out for that challenge and one for each of the others. Seven challenge slated books, and then whatever else I want to read. Gotta love having that goal right? 

Until next time, 

XoXo 

BrainyHeroine

Catching Up and Checking In

Happy President's Day!

And on this celebratory day, (where it should be mandatory that the government give us free cake) I am thrilled to say I've completed my challenge list. No, I haven't completed my challenges, well not all of them at least, but I've finished the list for Popsugar and Read Harder so that I'll stop getting distracted with other books and then hope I can fit them in somewhere. Book distraction is a real thing, and it is a real issue for me. I'm a hopper, so at any given time I'm reading/listening to about four or five books. Truly, this is madness.

Since I've been off the last few days this has been my only goal. Now that I've reached said goal I can go through the process of crossing off the books I've read, updating my Goodreads page (which I suck at on a good day sometimes) and tallying up reading challenges. This will also let me move forward with written reviews of the book, more in-depth blog posts about reading, and hopefully I won't lose my damn mind along the way. February is almost over and I feel that in the shortest month of the year I've truly come up short on my reading goals, mainly due to life and reading distractions.

If you're interested, below is the master list I've come up with. I'm not posting what challenge they fit since I don't want complete and utter spoilers haha, but I think I've come up with a pretty impressive list. (NO REPEATS! That deserves a cake on merit alone!)

XoXo
BrainyHeroine

Title of Book	Author	Page Count
A Moment on the Edge	Elizabeth George	560
Accidental Empress	Alison Pataki	512
All The Bright Places	Jennifer Niven	378
All The Ugly and Wonderful Things	Bryn Greenwood	352
Almost a Woman	Esmeralda Santiago	336
Americanah	Chimamanda Mgozi Adichie	477
Antarctica	Claire Keegan	224
Bad Monkey	Matt Ruff	241
Bear, Otter & The Kid	T.J Klune	350
Behold the Dreamers	Imbolo Mbue	400
Bird Box	Josh Malerman	262
Boy Meets Boy	David Leviathan	226
Bridge of Spies: A True Story of the Cold War	Giles Whittell	303
Broken Monsters	Lauren Beukes	464
Caraval	Stephanie Garber	416
Catcher in the Rye	J.D. Salinger	288
City of Light City of Poison	Holly Tucker	336
Count of Monte Cristo (mentioned in Butterfly Garden)	Alexander Dumas	1276
Dark Matter	Blake Crouch	354
Eligible	Curtis Sittenfeld	512
Fallen Founder: The Life of Aaron Burr	Nancy Isenberg	560
Frankenstein	Mary Shelley	166
Getting an Academic Job in History	Dana Polanichka	112
Hard Luck: Harvey Haddix and the Greatest Game Ever Lost	Lew Freedman	210
Hidden Figures	Margot Lee Shetterly	373
How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents	Julia Alvarez	304
How to fight presidents	Daniel O'Brien	272
I Let You Go	Clare Mackintosh	384
January 1973: Watergate, Roe v. Wade, Vietnam, and the Month that Changed America Forever	James Robenalt	420
Johnathan Strange & Mr. Norell	Susannah Clarke	1006
Julie & Julia	Julie Powell	310
Katherine	Anya Seton	500
Life After Life	Kate Atkinson	531
Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk	Kathleen Rooney	287
Margaret The First	Danielle Dutton	176
Matilda	Roald Dahl	240
Missing, Presumed	Susie Steiner	369
Monstress	Marjorie M. Liu, Sana Takeda, Rus Wooton	202
Moongirl and Devil Dinosaur #1	Brandon Monclare, Amy Reeder, Natacha Bustos (illustrator)	24
My Lady Jane	Cynthia Hand, Brodi Ashton, & Jodi Meadows	512
My Name is Red	Orhan Pamuk & Erdag M. Goknar	417
Norwegian Wood	Haruki Murakami	296
Orange is the New Black	Piper Kerman	298
Passengar/Wayfarer	Alexandra Bracken	1018
Personal History	Katherine Grahm	642
Pleasantville	Attica Locke	433
Queen of the Night	Alexander Chee	576
Ready Player One	Ernest Cline	374
Rebecca	Daphne du Maurier	393
Rise of the Rocket Girls	Nathalia Holt	352
Saffron Skies	Lesley Loko	613
Seven Skeletons: The Evolution of the World's Most Famous Human Fossils	Lynda Pryne	288
Sisi: Empress On Her Own	Alison Pataki	464
Sisters In Law	Linda Hirshman	390
Swing Time	Zadie Smith	453
Tales of a Severed Head	Rachida Madani, Marilyn Hacker	176
The 19th Wife	David Ebershoff	530
The Bear and the Nightegale	Katherine Arden	336
The Book Jumper	Mechthild Glaser	384
The Case of Jack the Nipper	H.L. Stephens	328
The Couple Next Door	Shari Lapena	313
The Eyre Affair: Thursday Next #1	Jasper Fforde	374
The Geek Feminist Revolution	Kameron Hurley	288
The Ghost Bride	Yangsze Choo	368
The Girls	Emma Cline	368
The Great Gatsby	F. Scott Fitzgerald	156
The History of Wolves	Emily Fridlund	288
The Hundred Year Old Man Who Climbed Out of the Window and Disappeared	Jonas Jonasson & Rod Bradbury	396
The Inheritance Trilogy	N. K. Jemsin	1453
The Innovators: How a Group of Hackers, Geniuses and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution	Walter Issacson	528
The Invisible Man	Ralph Ellison	610
The Last Lecture	Randy Pausch & Jeffrey Zaslow	206
The Lonely Hearts Hotel	Heather O'Neill	400
The Lost Sisterhood	Anne Fortier	608
The Luckiest Girl Alive	Jessica Knoll	352
The Mercer Girls	Libbie Hawker	430
The Mermaids Daughter	Ann Claycomb	448
The Miniaturist	Jessie Burton	416
The Mists of Avalon	Marion Zimmer Bradley	1737
The Muse	Jessie Burton	416
The Nest	Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney	368
The Ocean at the End of the Lane	Neil Gaiman	256
The Possessions	Sarah Flannery Murphy	368
The Private Letters of Countess Erzesbet Bathory	Kimberly Craft	142
The Rooms	Lauren Oliver	320
The Sex Lives of Cannibals: Adrift in the Equatorial Pacific	J. Maarten Troost	272
The Shining Girls	Lauren Beukes	375
The Silent WIfe	A.S.A Harrison	326
The Star Touched Queen	Roshani Chokshi	342
THe Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet	David Mitchell	479
The Trespasser	Tana French	449
The Unraveling of Mercy Louis	Keija Parssinen	336
The Verdict	Nick Stone	512
The Virgin Cure	Ami McKay	356
Tulip Fever	Deborah Moggach	288
Under Different Stars	Amy A Bartol	297
Underground Railroad	Colson Whitehead	306
Vlad the Impaler: The Real Count Dracula	Enid A. Goldber & Norman Itzkowitz	128
What She Knew	Gilly McMillian	699
Xanadu	John Man	352
You Will Know Me	Meg Abbot	352
Z: A Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald	Therese Anne Fowler	384

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

First Week Whirlwind

Happy Sunday Morning! (Settle in with a coffee, this is a long one!)

As the first week of the new year came to a close yesterday I took a breath, looked at my Goodreads book challenge page, and realized that I'd read 10 books and listened to three. All within the first week of the year. So what did I read? I read everything!

Since I had both January 1st and January 2nd off from work, didn't have any chores or responsibilities needing attention, I was really able to start off with a bang, and by bang I mean 8 books fulfilling different challenge requirements.

• Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
• PopSugar's "A book that never fails to make you smile."
• I've been a fan of Frankenstein and his monster for ages; add in the amazing author that is Mary Shelley and I'll always fall for this book. 
• Vlad the Impaler: The Real Count Dracula by Enid Goldberg
• PopSugar's "A book with pictures" 
• One of the "Wicked History" books, this is a great introduction to the real Dracula. Definitely a pick for any young and budding historians. 
• Getting an Academic Job in History by Dana Polanichka 
• PopSugar's "A book with career advice"
• I'm a 25 year old graduate with a history degree, not only does this give out an excellent timeline of what to apply for when, it gives resources, interview questions, and a whole host of informative details. 
• The Silent Wife by A.S.A. Harrison
• PopSugar's "A book written by an author using a pseudonym" 
• Ugh, so this book had actually been on TBR for a while, I'd picked it up from a bargain bin and just hadn't gotten to it yet. Kind of wished I'd passed on it, the style of writing as interesting, the story was good, but it didn't have any of the anticipated "WOW" I was hoping for. 
• How to Fight Presidents: Defending Yourself Against the Badasses Who Ran This Country by Daniel O'Brien
• PopSugar's "A book from a genre you don't normally read" 
• I don't read comedy books! Okay, maybe a few pages in the bathroom but that is really about it. and as a historian I really hate funny books when it comes to history. O'Brien manages to keep historical accuracy while blending in the humor. 
• The Private Letters of Countess Erzsebet Bathory by Kimberly Craft
• PopSugar's "A book of letters" 
• This was a repeat, I'd read this orignally during my research for my capstone paper on Countess Bathory. (Side note she is one of my all consuming obsessions) This is a great insight to her mind.
• The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
• Book Riot's Read Harder "A bestseller published between 1900 and 1950" 
• Published in the roaring 1920's this timeless tale is one I often return to when I need to remember my humanity.
• The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman
• #LitsyAtoZ Letter "O" 
• Remember those haunting love story fairy tales you read when you were a kid? The kind where you didn't know what exactly you were reading but you knew they were special? Yeah, that's this. 

Also consumed this week: Victoria by Daisy Goldwin, The Kricket Series by Amy Bartol, and The Grownup by Gillian Flynn.

Currently Reading: All The Ugly and Wonderful Things by Bryn Greenwood, America's First Daughter by Stephanie Dray and Laura Kamoie, A Study in Charlotte: Charlotte Holmes #1 by Brittany Cavallaro and The Other Einstein by Marie Benedict.

Oh! Recently purchased: The Book Jumper by Mechthild Glaser (a book about books) and History of Wolves by Emily Fridlund (a debut novel).

I can't wait to keep listening and reading to all these amazing stories, but I'm giving myself the day off to just enjoy and relax. The pace and pressure of the last week was intense, but worth it! I'm also excited to start Litsty Goes Postal book club #CoverToCover book soon!

All the best and happy reading,
-BrainyHeroine