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

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

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

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