Actually, the new semester doesn’t so much loom as exist. ‘Cause it technically begins today. Only my class is Monday-only, so I get a week’s reprieve. (Although on seeing that the syllabus is 46 pages long and the professor expects us to read it all…I kind of want to drop already. I won’t, but…dang. Guess I need to put it on my iPad and read it over the next few days. Blargh…) Not sure how much I’m going to be able to dedicate to my classwork, since I’m still working full-time, which is a new experience for me. Eventually, they’re going to hire someone else, so I can can cut back to part-time, but who knows when that’ll be.
Obviously, the presence of school work on top of all that work work should lead me to become even more ludicrously lacking in my blogging. But I’m hoping to prevent that.
One way I’m gonna do that is by posting more book reviews. Like, of almost every book I read. (Not counting, y’know, manga and stuff. ‘Cause that would start getting silly, given how much of it I read.) In order to give me a little more direction than “oh, that looks interesting!” or “how can I resist a book with the words ‘transvestite’ and ‘Achilles’ in the title?” (no, not making that up), I’m going to take part in the Book Riot Read Harder Challenge this year. Some of the genres are definitely new to me. (I thought “a book about sports” was new to me, but then I realized that kendo is a sport, and I’ve read the entire manga of Bamboo Blade, not to mention that martial arts in general count as a sport, and I’ve read the entire manga of Ranma 1/2 (which is a lot of reading, btw, ’cause it runs 36 volumes!) so that one won’t be too difficult to fill. Probably.) In picking the books for the challenge, I plan on leaning towards LBGTQ+, people of color, Latinos and women, but I won’t be above listing a book I read for class even though it’s written by a straight white guy. (C’mon, one of the 24 categories is “set within 100 miles of your location” and I’m taking a course on local history! It’d be silly not to list one of my school books for that one.)
I’ve already started making a list on Amazon of all the possible books I might use, so I don’t forget them. (Rather, I clicked on their suggestions for LBGTQ+ YA/MG authors, and Latin American novels, and found so many that looked interesting that I had to start a list. (A lot of them will work for a number of other categories. Unsurprisingly, the LBGTQ+ authored YA/MG book list contained a lot of debut novels, for example.) Some of them I don’t need to list to remember. Though I’m wondering just how one defines a “Spiritual Journey.” Suppose The Journey to the West would count? I’ve been wanting to read that for years…though maybe only in an abridged format, what with the full thing being about 1500 pages long…)
I’m going to cheat(?) and use the book I’m reading now as the first one for the challenge (#8, not #1), even though I hadn’t read the list of challenges when I started reading it. (But I did start reading it this year! In fact, I read one of my Christmas present books before it. So I guess I should probably write a review of that, too, huh?) I’m most of the way through it, so hopefully I can get a review written up by next week at the latest. (Knowing me, there will be some delay between finishing it and actually writing the review…) Things like “a book you’ve read before” (#9) and “a fantasy novel” (#12) will be hard to decide on just because there’s so much to choose from. (Though maybe that book that’s already on its way here from Amazon should count as my list’s fantasy novel rather than being counted as my list’s LBGTQ+ romance novel (#20), since it’s set in a fantasy variant of the Victorian era. Then again, some of YA/MG novels were also fantasies…) A few of them (#s 7 and 18 especially) I’ve already got something in mind, though I’ll have to borrow both books from family members. Oh, speaking of borrowing, I plan to borrow as many of these books as possible from the university library, in order to spare my house extra clutter. Um, and I suppose to spare my wallet, but that’s secondary. I’ll definitely be getting Kindle editions in many cases, too; they don’t take up any extra space. (Though normally I don’t like reading things electronically if I have a choice.) #21 may be difficult, ’cause I’m not sure what qualifies as a “micropress” or how to find the books published by one. (Though I’ve found some good suggestions already…)
Anyway, I’d like to say “oh, and I’m gonna get back to writing the weekly myths, too,” but I can’t feel honest about saying that. I’d like to get back to writing those, but…any promises I make would be based on a total lack of information. I don’t know how things are gonna go even this week, let alone next week after I start going to class again. On the other hand, I may have written enough Velvet Goldmine fanfic now to get the worst of the urge dealt with, so maybe I won’t be spending quite so much time obsessing over that movie. (That reminds me; I need to re-write my review of it, because it’s a bloody awful, ignorant review…)
If it looks like I might be posting pretty regularly, maybe I can even un-sticky the “semi-hiatus” post…
We're All Mad Here! 