The Crisis of X and the Curse of Netflix

Hello Internet,

As you may know I am participating in the #LitsyAtoZ book challenge in 2017, (to learn more about it check out some other posts like this one or this one.) The gist is 26 books, with the titles corresponding with a letter of the alphabet, and our English alphabet has some pretty weird letters; namely the letter X. X is weird and random and sounds like an E or a Z depending on how you say it or how something is spelled. However! I proved successful in my endeavor to find a book beginning with X, the lucky winner was/is Xanadu by John Mann. I was able to find a high quality copy for only a few bucks off of Thrift Books (which is amazeballs) and waited to receive my holy grail. First I got a Spanish edition of "Prisoner of Heaven" by Carlos Zafron, a truly fantastic novel I already own in English. After they corrected their error I did in fact get the book I'd ordered. With one very small exception, the title had changed. When ordered it was a lovely gold cover that bore the name XANADU by John Mann, and this is not what I got.

Turns out that Xanadu became the source material for the show on Netflix about Marco Polo and his adventures. Yay for the author, but it has left me in a pickle. Can I continue using this book because it can be found under the right letter? Do I find a new X book because the new title doesn't match? Silly as it seems I'm quite flustered by this. I feel like I could get away with it, in the manner that Starbucks gets away with having you pay for $5 worth of coffee, but giving you a cup that wasn't quite full because of "foam" or "whipped cream". Technically it was what you asked for and wanted, but you somehow still wound up gypped.

Thankfully I have time before I'll read my Marco Polo book, and maybe I'll replace it with a different X book, maybe this one will fit in somewhere else in the midst of all these challenges. Maybe I'll let it stay where X marked its spot in the first place.

Who really knows? The Shadow?

-BrainyHeroine

Books and Math

Good Afternoon All,

One thing that I have always loved about books is that they are decidedly un-mathy, unless you're reading a book about math. Since I was never very good at math, numbers and I just don't get along. However it occurred to me that these reading challenges are going to be a numbers game. By the end of next year I will have (hopefully) read between 84 and 108 books; 26 from the #LitsyAtoZ challenge + 40 from PopSugar's 2017 Challenge + 12 additional PS challenge books + 12 books for my Historical Fiction book club + 12 Book of the Month Club books + 6 to make the total nicely divisible by 12. All said and done it is 108 books, the minimum to meet the challenges will be 84. I'm still presuming that there will be some cross over as 9 books in a month is quite a bit. Though, when you factor that some of these books will be in audiobook format it seems more plausible somehow. I'm excited for this undertaking. I've bought a second book log to keep track of EVERYTHING I read and listen too next year, whilst keeping my TARDIS log for the challenges.

The more thought and preparation I'm putting into my Lit Goals for 2017 the more excited and nervous I'm getting. Help me along, won't you? Tell me what your favorite book is, or one you think would fit any of these challenges, or one that makes you happy, one that you think the world should read; I'd really love to know.

All the best,
Brainy Heroine