I do it wrong – part two

I don’t care if I pronounce character names correctly in my head. Sometimes I’m guessing correctly. If I think Myfanwy looks like Tiffany with an M, that’s what I’ll think when I read it. All the character names have a X or a Q randomly stuck in a series of letters? I’m making a guess and sticking to it the entire series. I do actually feel guilty when the story takes place in Scotland or Ireland and I know the names are based on something real, but if it’s attached to a mythological species, the pretend character can just as easily be a JoAnne.

Those maps that were the biggest expense in your book production? I acknowledge their existence and move on. I’m sorry you had to deal with an artist who expresses feelings instead of repressing them into ulcers like a regular person. That map is still not getting my attention. I’m sure it took two barking dog conference calls to decide if the coastline should be straight or pocked with inlets. Other readers will buy the poster sized map to make up for my indifference. It’s almost certainly connected to my absence of a sense of direction. I can’t even navigate subways. “I couldn’t figure out how to get to the other side of the platform and now I’m on Wall Street.” I’m far more interested in the actual journey via ley lines/dragon back/enchanted car/horse who hates shifters, than the route they took.

What I do love is a basic family tree. I will wade into fan forums for a simply drawn explanation of how the characters are related. Is there a Lorax for literary family trees?

I do it wrong

Websites collect data from users under the guise of improving the site based on user needs. It’s also to sell things to users, advertisers and the bottom feeders who buy existing data sets of user contact info. It is what it is. For data sets to be useful, assumptions are made about how a site is used. I’m the anomaly who throws off data by not using things as they were intended to be used. I do it wrong.

Goodreads is supposed to be a user created database of book reviews. Theoretically, it should help readers find new books to read. I use it as a master list of books I’ve read and a search list of books I’m hunting at the local used books store. Once I find a book on my ‘want to read’ list, I remove it from my Goodreads list. The data then thinks I’m not interested in that book even though it’s sitting on my IRL bookshelf. Or nightstand. Or car console. Pre-ordered books aren’t on any of my Goodreads lists either.

Shamefully, that’s not the worst way I disturb the stats that booksellers and authors pull from Goodreads. When I give my one to five star review of books I’ve read, I star based solely on how much I enjoyed reading the book. I don’t rate originality of plot, depth of characters or even the quality of the writing style. My stars are completely subjective pleasure indicators. I’m sorry, authors. Maybe if I’d been in a better headspace when I was reading your book it could have been different.

Let’s not even discuss the fact that I don’t add anything I’ve read on the free Kindle Unlimited trial to my Goodreads list of books I’ve read. Maybe I would feel differently about those e-books if I was shopping electronic versions of paper books, but nothing I’ve read on KU so far actually feels like a book. Fun to read? Yes. Book? Nope. Doing it wrong? Yes. Making it work for me? Definitely.

The Rook

When I read The Rook, it made my skin crawl. The book is creepy and fascinating while the sequel book is chaotic and satisfying. After the first trailer for the TV adaptation, I knew they were going to make it action-adventure. I’m still going to watch every last minute of it.

Sometimes, adaptations are very true to the original. Other times, the source is used a framework with the details changed to make relevant sociopolitical points. Much of the time, it feels like the TV production or movie were based on a five minute sales pitch of the book. I’m okay with all of these.

Never ask either of my older sons about LOTR movies. They will chew your ear off with complaints about book differences, especially omissions. I failed to teach them to embrace the joy of seeing something they love in one media adapted for other forms of entertainment.

Yes, I even love the trainwreck adaptations, like the Generation X nostalgia book that was sourced for a young adult movie crutched with endless narration. Most book inspired movies and television programs fall somewhere near that. They’re neither the same as the book nor original enough to be judged without the book. Once in a blue moon, a book is adapted for screen so beautifully that it is both a love letter to the book and something uniquely its own. That kind of perfection makes up for all the directors and editors who don’t read books.

The year is half over

I failed to post my book count at the end of May because IRL has been busy. Four of the children celebrated their birthdays. One of the children now has a driver’s license. There have been checkups and extra Doctor visits for sprained wrists and tick bites. Summer camp supplies were gathered, packed, used, scrubbed and set aside for the next week of a child away at camp. A tree fell and the plumbing malfunctioned. Receptions were attended. I marched in my very first parade. Rallies and protests are happening with increasing frequency. Life is busy.

The one year of reading is now half over and I have read 71 of my 100 book goal. I need more book suggestions. No zombies though. I like witches and vampires and fae and regular humans. I am not a fan of zombies.

I get unreasonably excited when books I like are adapted for other media. Like, this:

April Book Count

As of the end of April, I had read 49 books so far this year. Books that live in the upstairs hall on a couple of tiny bookshelves which are older than my children. My husband’s books are on a brand new, hand built bookcase in the basement. I am thrilled with this arrangement. He is confused.

A few months ago, the husband built a bookcase for the basement so that we could “have our books downstairs by the bedroom” and also upstairs in the living area. The day he finished the shelves, he put a pile of his books on one of the new basement shelves. We admired the bookcase together. “This was a fun project.” “They’re lovely shelves.”

The next day, while he was at work, I took all of his books from the upstairs bookcase and moved them to the shiny new bookcase in the basement. Then, I rearranged my shelves so that they didn’t have to be vertically double stacked to keep series and authors together. The husband came home and stared at the bookcases while fidgeting with his beard hair. “I don’t understand why our books need to be separated. Don’t you want some of your books upstairs and some of them easily accessible when you are reading in bed?”

I can’t imagine how I would choose if all the Seanan McGuire books should be up or down or if I should be sure they’re shelved with Jim Hines since they’re the same genre/publisher or a thousand other sorting options. Even if I could sort the books into two definable shelving categories, that isn’t the main reason I chose to shelve them as I did.

Doug’s book collection consists of almost every book he has ever owned. From the assigned reading from his high school years all the way up to the books that I have gifted him on holidays, his book collection is an IRL source page of his life. It’s a museum.

My shelves breathe. With the exception of the authors/books that I keep because I love them too much, I hold onto series only until the author claims it is completed. Then, they get traded for new-to-me books. My shelves are this moment in time. They are filled with the stories and ideas that are currently bouncing around my head.

I am not more or less sentimental about the books on my shelves than the husband is about his. They’re just different styles.

He still doesn’t understand.

March Book Count

I read 12 books in March to bring my 2018 total up to 37 books. While my biggest reading obstacle remains the inability to walk in a bookstore and buy the many, many books that interest me, it leads directly to the second largest obstacle. I spend hours wandering the local used books store in search of new things to read that I can buy with trade credit. A close third is the children are starting to hide their books to keep me from asking if I can trade it, but it’s the second obstacle that I want to put in focus.

After avoiding the romance section for my entire freaking life, I became the last human on Earth to learn that the romance section is so large it is broken down further into the book genre categories that include the ones I enjoy. Urban fantasy and paranormal romances? Sure. I’ll try.

As hoped, the books are largely true to their sub-genres. All goes according to the formula until after a grisly zombie battle or a terrifying ghost attack and the “romance” appears. While the main characters are still covered in gore from their fight, they go at it like rabbits. I’m not talking about a fade-to-black sex scene either. It’s vividly detailed with more foreplay than any IRL human being has the time or creativity to attempt.

This is all fine and good because the actual story is still fun and the sex scenes are the opposite of unpleasant. The sudden clarifying realization that all the women you know with tidy stacks of romance paperbacks are reading books with entire chapters of softcore porn requires more than a minute of mental processing. It’s a leap that begins with “but my grandmother” and ends up somewhere in the neighborhood of “you go, girl.”