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

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

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