Zoë's 2016 Challenge, Part 2

Well, I think it's just about time for a new thread! Hopefully there will be more reading progress in the second half of the year than the first.

Books Read

January
1. Shadows of Self by Brandon Sanderson
2. The Tyrant's Daughter by J.C. Carleson
3. A Complicated Kindness by Miriam Toews
4. Everything, Everything by Nicola Yoon
5. I Am Nujood, Age 10 and Divorced by Nujood Ali
6. Money Hungry by Sharon Flake
7. The Skin I'm In by Sharon Flake
8. Doll Bones by Holly Black
9. Bernie Sanders: In His Own Words by Chamois Holschuh (ed.)
10. The Iron Trial by Holly Black and Cassandra Clare

February
11. The Copper Gauntlet by Holly Black and Cassandra Clare
12. Black Boy White School by Brian F. Walker
13. $2 a Day: Living on Almost Nothing in America by Kathryn J. Edin and H. Luke Shaefer
14. Bernie by Ted Rall
15. The Tail of Emily Windsnap by Liz Kessler
16. George by Alex Gino

March
17. Moon Called by Patricia Briggs
18. Stars Above by Marissa Meyer

April
19. Doing Good Better by William MacAskill
20. The Bands of Mourning by Brandon Sanderson

May
21. Ophelia and the Marvelous Boy by Karen Foxlee
22. Cast in Shadow by Michelle Sagara
23. Cast in Courtlight by Michelle Sagara
24. Oneonta Then and Now by Mark Simonson

June
25. Foiled by Jane Yolen and Mike Cavallero (illustrator)
26. Redefining Realness by Janet Mock
27. Every Heart a Doorway by Seanan McGuire

July
28. The Princess Diaries by Meg Cabot
29. Princess in the Spotlight by Meg Cabot

August
30. 40 Days of Dating by Timothy Goodman and Jessica Walsh
31. *His Majesty's Dragon by Naomi Novik
32. Princess in Love by Meg Cabot

September
33. The Bronze Key by Holly Black and Cassandra Clare

October
34. Swindle by Gordon Korman
35. $10,000,000 Marriage Proposal by James Patterson and Hilary Liftin
36. The Golden Age of King Midas (Penn Museum)
37. The Roommate Situation by Zoe X. Rider
38. His Roommate's Pleasure by Lana McGregor

November
39. The List by Siobhan Vivian
40. Blame It on the Mistletoe by Eli Easton
41. Miss Kane's Christmas by Caroline Mickelson

December
42. Three Christmas Wishes by Sheila Roberts
43. Bound by Kira Saito

Acquisitions

Reading Books - Purchased New
1. The Speech
2. Bernie Sanders: In His Own Words
3. The Bands of Mourning
4. Bernie
5. No One Left to Lie to
6. Moon Called
7. Blood Bound
8. Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City
9. The Skin We Speak: Thoughts on Language and Culture in the Classroom
10. Understanding Mass Incarceration
11. Our Kids
12. Oneonta (Then and Now)
13. The Math Myth: And Other STEM Delusions
14. Chronicles of Old New York
15. 97 Orchard Street, New York
16. New York's Lower East Side: Gateway to America
17. Final Report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada: Summary
18. North American Indians: A Very Short Introduction
19. The City of Rainbows: A Tale from Ancient Sumer
20. $10,000,000 Marriage Proposal
21. Unsubscribe

Reading Books - Purchased Used
1. Sidetracked
2. The Divide
3. 102 Minutes: The Untold Story of the Fight to Survive inside the Twin Towers
4. 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus
5. Hudson River from New York City to Albany
6. Educating Esme
7. Cast in Secret
8. African Voices
9. Promises I Can Keep

Reading Books - Purchased Super Cheap

Reading Books - Free
1. For White Folks Who Teach in the Hood... and the Rest of Y'All Too
2. Redefining Realness

E-books - Purchased

Other
1. Music of Morocco from the Library of Congress

Academic and Professional Books
1. Hemerologies of Assyrian and Babylonian Scholars
2. Battling the Gods: Atheism in the Ancient World
3. Mesopotamian Divination Texts: Conversing with the Gods
4. Mathematics in Ancient Egypt: A Contextual History
5. The Religion of the Etruscans
6. The Circulation of Astronomical Knowledge in the Ancient World (free)
7. Byzantium Viewed by the Arabs (used)
8. A Concise History of Byzantium (used)
9. The King of Infinite Space: Euclid and His Elements
10. An Introduction to the Early Development of Mathematics
11.
12.
13.
14.
15.
16.
17.
18.
19.
20.
21.
22.
23. Ecce Romani I B
24. Ecce Romani II B
25. Key Issues for Education Researchers
26. How Languages are Learned
27. The Schooled Society
28. Feel-Bad Education
29. The Etruscans: A Very Short Introduction
30. Mathematics, Pedagogy, and Secondary Teacher Education
31. The Scholarship of Teaching and Learning in Academic Careers
32. The Golden Age of King Midas
33. Luwian Civilization: The Missing Link in the Aegean Bronze Age
34. Arameans, Chaldeans, and Arabs in Babylonia and Palestine in the First Millennium B.C.
35. Assessing Biblical and Classical Sources for the Reconstruction of Persian Influence, History and Culture
36. Astronomical Diaries and Related Texts from Babylonia: Volume VII
37. Die Lebermodelle Aus Boğazköy
38. Five-Minute Mathematics
39. Galois Theory for Beginners: A Historical Perspective
40. From Egypt to Babylon
41. Greco-Egyptian Interactions
42. The Adventure of the Human Intellect
43. Mathematical Expeditions
44. Mathematics in Historical Context

Books in Progress that I Didn't Read Last Month But Mean to Finish Eventually

Started 2016
Understanding Mass Incarceration (p. 63 of 234)
Organize Now! A Week-by-Week Action Plan for a Happier, Healthier Life by Jennifer Ford Berry (47% done; p. 104 of 226)
The Speech by Bernie Sanders (p. 72 of 255)
Our Kids: The American Dream in Crisis by Robert D. Putnam (p. 32 of 277)
Cast in Secret (12%)
Humans of New York: Stories (p. 39 of 428)
North American Indians: A Very Short Introduction (p. 14 of 130)
So You've Been Publicly Shamed (p. 84 of 282)
Report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (p. 114 of 395)
Throne of Jade (p. 178 of 398)
Missoula (63%)
Weapons of Math Destruction (p. 42 of 218)

Started 2015
Discussion in the College Classroom
Whistling Vivaldi (p. 121 of 219)
On Course (p. 110 of 315)
Mathematical Mindsets
Possessing the Secret of Joy by Alice Walker (70% done, p. 207 of 316)

Books in Progress That I May or May Not Finish Eventually

Started 2016
The Kite Runner (21% done; p. 81 of 402)
Blood Bound (p. 54 of 292)
Slim by Design (29%)
Growing Up Amish (30%)
Smarter Faster Better (6%)

Monthly Goals and Progress

This is something that I've been silently tracking throughout the year, updating the post near the top of my thread without comment. In addition to the actual goals that I never achieve, I've been keeping track of progress through books that I'm in the middle of and basically all the reading that I do each month. This is where I look when I want to put together my monthly summary of books started, finished, and continued.

June

Finish:
Redefining Realness by Janet Mock (p. 193 of 258)

Make progress on all of:
Possessing the Secret of Joy by Alice Walker (70% done, p. 207 of 316)
The Speech by Bernie Sanders (p. 72 of 255)
The Math Myth by Andrew Hacker (p. 34 of 204)
Discussion in the College Classroom by Jay Howard
Whistling Vivaldi by Claude Steele (p. 121 of 219)

Make progress on two of:
Mathematical Mindsets by Jo Boaler (p. 21 of 277)
On Course by James Lang
Our Kids: The American Dream in Crisis by Robert D. Putnam (p. 32 of 277)
Organize Now! A Week-by-Week Action Plan for a Happier, Healthier Life by Jennifer Ford Berry (47% done; p. 104 of 226)
Understanding Mass Incarceration by James Kilgore (p. 63 of 234)

June in progress
Completed Foiled
Completed Redefining Realness
Completed Every Heart a Doorway
Report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (p. 53 of 395)
Missoula (49%)
Humans of New York: Stories (p. 24 of 428)
Cast in Secret (12%)
So You've Been Publicly Shamed (p. 75 of 282)
Slim by Design (25%)

July in progress
Completed The Princess Diaries
Completed Princess in the Spotlight
Slim by Design (29%)
Missoula (61%)
Report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (p. 109 of 395)
Humans of New York: Stories (p. 39 of 428)
The Golden Age of King Midas (p. 28 of 79)
North American Indians: A Very Short Introduction (p. 14 of 130)
So You've Been Publicly Shamed (p. 84 of 282)
40 Days of Dating (p. 184 of 301)
Princess in Love (37%)

August in progress
Completed 40 Days of Dating
Completed His Majesty's Dragon
Completed Princess in Love
The Golden Age of King Midas (p. 49 of 79)
Throne of Jade (p. 159 of 398)
Spark Joy (p. 110 of 282)
My Name is Seepeetza (p. 49 of 126)

September in progress
Completed The Bronze Key
Spark Joy (p. 145 of 282)
The Math Myth (p. 50 of 204)
Weapons of Math Destruction (p. 24 of 218)
Swindle (64%)
Report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (p. 114 of 395)

October in progress
Completed Swindle
Completed $10,000,000 Marriage Proposal
Completed The Golden Age of King Midas
Completed The Roommate Situation
Completed His Roommate's Pleasure
Throne of Jade (p. 178 of 398)
Spark Joy (p. 196 of 282)
Missoula (63%)
Weapons of Math Destruction (p. 42 of 218)
Smarter Faster Better (6%)
Growing Up Amish (30%)
The Math Myth (p. 65 of 204)
My Name is Seepeetza (p. 59 of 126)
The List (p. 83 of 332)

November in progress
Completed The List
Completed Blame it on the Mistletoe
Completed Miss Kane's Christmas
The Math Myth (p. 70 of 204)
My Name is Seepeetza (p. 75 of 126)
Spark Joy (p. 206 of 282)
Hillbilly Elegy (p. 146 of 261)

December in progress
Completed Three Christmas Wishes
Completed Bound
The Productivity Project (less than 14%)
Punished? (less than or equal to 5%)

Series and Authors That I Plan to Continue With

Released 2016
The Bands of Mourning by Brandon Sanderson
Calamity by Brandon Sanderson
Stars Above by Marissa Meyer
Lady Midnight by Cassandra Clare
League of Dragons by Naomi Novik
To the Bright Edge of the World by Eowyn Ivey
The Illegal by Lawrence Hill
White Sand, Volume 1 by Brandon Sanderson
Alcatraz Versus the Dark Talent by Brandon Sanderson
The Bronze Key by Holly Black and Cassandra Clare

Coming 2016
Heartless by Marissa Meyer

Coming 2017
The Gift of Power by Tamora Pierce

Series that I'm reading
Mercy Thompson by Patricia Briggs (on #2 of 9)
The Princess Diaries by Meg Cabot (on #4)
The Chronicles of Elantra by Michelle Sagara (on #3)

Previously-released books by authors I like
Mistborn: The Hero of Ages by Brandon Sanderson
The Way of Kings and Words of Radiance by Brandon Sanderson
Prudence by Gail Carriger
Manners and Mutiny by Gail Carriger
Terrier trilogy by Tamora Pierce
The Water Knife by Paolo Bacigalupi
The Doubt Factory by Paolo Bacigalupi
Daughter of Smoke and Bone by Laini Taylor
Uprooted by Naomi Novik
Lair of Dreams (Diviners) by Libba Bray
A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms by George R. R. Martin

*Waves* Hi Zoe!

>5 Ape: Hi!

Hi Zoe!

Happy New Thread, Zoe!

Happy new thread!

Hi Zoe! Finally all caught up with you :)

It was great to meet you and Mark on Monday. Next time, I'm not letting The Wayne sit in between us, so we can chat more!

Good luck with the move this summer!

Zoe, just jumping in here to say I've put some updated info on our meetup thread. FYI

Happy new thread, Zoe.

Happy new one, Zoe!

Happy new thread, Zoe!

Happy new thread, Zoe!

Happy new thread Zoe and have a lovely weekend.

Hi, Zoe. Happy new thread. It was nice to see you and Mark last week.

Thank you all for the new thread greetings! And I'm sorry I've been absent for a while. We just moved (partially) to a new city, so we were dealing with an empty apartment. It's still mostly empty of furniture, but at least it's now livable.

>10 katiekrug: It was great to meet you too! We'll definitely have more chatting in the future.

And I'm still amazed that Wayne's work and Mark's work turned out to be somehow connected.

I've decided to do my month-end reading update a bit early, since I'll be busy at the actual end of the month (visiting my family in Canada, and also having an LT meetup!).

My goal/lesson for this month is to be happy with what I'm actually reading and focus less on what I've finished. It was one of those months when I finished only three books, but started six others. Hopefully I'll finish all six of them eventually, but maybe I won't. Even if I don't, though, I can still appreciate what I've read of them so far.

This newfound appreciation for partially-read books is strengthened by an experience I had this past week: someone had posted on FB about a controversial news article (someone arguing that there was no value to teaching math), and I had actually started reading book by the guy being discussed in the article. I've read only 34 pages so far, a small fraction of the total. But that fraction was still enough to allow me to participate in the discussion in a much, much more informed way than I could have otherwise. So, yay for reading 34 pages of a book.

June Summary

Books Finished:



Books Started, To Be Continued:



Ahhh, so many good books that I want to read.

Sources of completed books:
2 library paper book loans
1 free paper book acquired new this year

Oof tackling the TRC report and Missoula at the same time. You're far braver than I am.

>21 MickyFine: Yeah, it may not have been the best idea. But both were timely. And I'm planning to read the TRC report very, very slowly anyway; I only read 20 pages this month, so it will take a couple of years at this rate.

Missoula I was planning to read at a regular pace, but I did have to put it down about halfway through to read something lighter. Hopefully I'll finish it next month.

>22 _Zoe_: I was going to read the TRC in chunks but then realized I was just putting it off for whatever else I had checked out from the library so I've switched it into single-read mode. I'm almost a third of the way through it now. \o/

>23 MickyFine: That's great progress! I may have to follow your approach in the end if I find myself putting it off too much. I think my 20 pages consisted of two 10-page sessions, when really I should try to pick it up at least weekly.

ETA: You inspired me to read a bit more just now, so I'm now at 28 pages. Maybe I'll finish within a year after all.

I paused to look for current news (I remembered reading about some ongoing lawsuit related to the Survivor statements just this past week), and instead came across this Heritage Minute that's well worth the time to watch.

>24 _Zoe_: I love Heritage Minutes and that one packs a serious punch. There may have been sniffling. I also just made the choice to put down the report for a bit on my coffee break as I've reached the section on abuse and I think I need to read that one at home where I won't freak people out with crying.

But back to Heritage Minutes, they've released a couple other new ones recently. One on Treaties and one about Viola Desmond.

>24 _Zoe_: - Did you know that this new Heritage Minute was written by author Joseph Boyden? I heard him interviewed recently about this.

>25 MickyFine: Thanks for those links! I'm embarrassed to say that I had never even heard of Viola Desmond before.

Thank you too for the encouragement to push on with the TRC report at a more reasonable pace. I'm still inching along, now at 43 pages. I'm glad that I've finished with the introduction about the commission activities and am now into the history section. But I can only imagine how brutal it's going to get as I continue; it's bad enough reading about the children being forcibly taken from their homes and families.

>26 jessibud2: I did see that! I've somehow never read anything by Joseph Boyden, though I have The Orenda sitting in my TBR pile. I should really read Three Day Road as well; it just never appealed to me because of the more modern setting (at least, modern from my ancient-history perspective). But one of the most shocking things about the TRC report so far was how recently all of these horrible things happened, so I probably should pay more attention to 20th-century history too.

?27 - I have also never read anything by Boyden although I have heard him speak and interviewed many times. I know many people who have read his works (and The Orenda won Canada Reads in a few years ago) and they all say how powerful it is. But also how graphic the violence is and for that reason alone, I will not read them. I just don't do well with violence and that is just my conscious choice.

Here is a link to the most recent interview, in which he talks about the Heritage Minute and his new book, as well as other stuff. The interviewer is new to CBC and her voice kind of annoys me, but as always, Boyden is terrific

http://www.cbc.ca/radio/candy/the-candy-palmater-show-for-june-21-2016-1.3644156...

>27 _Zoe_: I didn't know anything about Viola Desmond either prior to watching that Heritage Minute.

The only Boyden I've read is Three Day Road for a Can Lit course during my undergrad. I absolutely loved it so I definitely push for reading that one. I haven't read anything by him since. I tried Through Black Spruce several years ago but just couldn't get into it and ditched it.

>28 jessibud2: Hmm, I'm also not a fan of violence, but I think I'll give Boyden a try anyway. Thanks for that link!

>29 MickyFine: My basic idea is that I'll read The Orenda first because it's equally highly-rated and I'm more interested in that time period, and then I'll be so impressed by Boyden's writing that I'll pick up Three Day Road as well.

Working through the TRC report has made me think that I should do so much more Canadian reading. (But history-focused Canadian reading, including historical fiction, not just contemporary literary fiction that I don't actually enjoy.)

>30 _Zoe_: I have guilt over my lack of Canadiana reading pretty regularly. I've assuaged it this year by working my way through the Anne of Green Gables books. :D

Hi Zoe. Good luck accomplishing all you set forth regarding book goals! Every time I make a list of the books I intend to read, I stray, making me realize that I am a reader who simply randomly chooses books.

>31 MickyFine: That sounds like a good plan! I've somehow only read the first two Anne books.

>32 Whisper1: Thank you, Linda! I find that I have exactly the same problem with lists. I do better if I leave myself a bit of choice. For this month I'm not listing any reading goals at all, I'm just going to focus on tracking progress through my multiple current reads.

I haven't gotten a lot of reading done this weekend, but it's been good in other ways. Nora is visiting Toronto, and we had a relatively large LT meetup with eight people. Here are a few pictures:







We met for brunch at By the Way Café, where I had a delicious french toast sandwich containing apples and brie, with a cup of fresh fruit on the side. Then we went to BMV, an excellent used/remaindered bookstore where I purchased seven books, and Seeker's Books, where we were subjected to the strange conspiracy theories of the cashier while browsing and where I purchased one book. After that we ended up at Snakes and Lattes, a board game café where we played Word on the Street, Codenames, and Mysterium. Then we rushed over to Bakka-Phoenix, a bookstore specializing in science fiction and fantasy, where we had 20 minutes to browse before closing. At that point Nora, Mark, and I were the only ones left; we had a dinner of pierogies at Future Bakery and then went down to the Randolph Theatre to see Songbuster, an improv musical that was part of the Toronto Fringe Festival.

Other weekend activities including catching up with an old friend, going to the beach and walking along the boardwalk, having a family barbecue to celebrate my sister's being called to the bar, and playing board games with my family. Nora has had a much more intensive weekend of sightseeing that's exhausting just to read about.

Glad you had such a fantastic weekend, Zoe! Great pictures!

In between playing hostess to a friend who came to stay with me for the long weekend, I finished the Summary Report! I am now giving myself permission to read fluffy things for a while. :D

Great descriptions and photos of the meet up, Zoë!

Zoe, I just posted on the meetup thread but I can't believe we totally forgot about the Toronto sign at City Hall. Did you see it? It's such an icon and fun to take photos sitting in the letters

>34 MickyFine: Thanks, Micky! I'm super impressed that you manage to finish the whole report so quickly. Are you planning to do any follow-up reading on the broader topic? One of my first thoughts was that I really need to read more about Aboriginal people in general. But that's still a ways off for me, since I'm only on p. 57 of the report.

>35 kidzdoc: Thanks! I thought of you while doing the write-up. "Darryl always says something about the tasty food that he had, so I should be sure to mention that too."

>36 jessibud2: Not to worry! I met up with Nora again for dinner last night, and we stopped at the Toronto sign first. I think Nora had actually been there already (she's a much better Toronto tourist than I am), but I hadn't. Here I am in the first O:

>37 _Zoe_: - Excellent! I'm surprised it seems so empty of people. The last time I went there to actually photograph the sign, there were so many people around, it was nearly impossible to get a decent shot of it. It's cool, isn't it?

:-)

>38 jessibud2: Heh, and here I was thinking that it seemed pretty crowded! I had to wait in line to sit in that O. But I guess weekday work hours are less crowded than other times.

>37 _Zoe_: I might at some point do some further reading on the topic. We'll see what comes through during my ordering (the joys of being a non-fiction collections librarian :P). I am lucky in that we get a lot of professional development on this topic at my library through internal training. We just had a full morning session on historic trauma a couple weeks ago that was really interesting.

The Toronto sign is great. I went for a pic standing in front of the sign rather sitting in one of the letters when I was there for a conference last year. :)

>40 MickyFine: It's great that your work provides all that training. I hope I'll be able to live and work in Canada again eventually.

Meanwhile I just came across this article about Iqaluit in my FB newsfeed, and it provided yet another example of the horrible treatment of Aboriginal people by Canadian authorities.

It was at this former trading point, Arnaquq-Baril says, that an incident occurred that helps explain how so many Inuit – the northern indigenous people who make up the bulk of Canada’s Arctic population – went from their nomadic lifestyles to settling in this unlikely city, in one of the planet’s harshest climates.

A friend’s grandfather had stopped in at the trading post, leaving his dogs and sled outside with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP). As he haggled inside, gunshots rang out. He ran outside to find his dogs dead. “He tried to tell the RCMP that his family was across the bay and now he had no way of getting to them,” she says.

The man’s story is common: many Inuit say they were trapped in permanent settlements after their dogs, their only means of transport, were killed by police. The RCMP claims some dogs were lawfully destroyed over concerns about public health and safety; many Inuit say it was to urbanise them.

>41 _Zoe_: So heartbreaking.

>3 _Zoe_: Great photos! Wish I could have come up.

>42 MickyFine: Yup :(

>43 rosylibrarian: Me too! Maybe next time :)

My Kindle copy of Cast in Secret is due at the library today, and I tried to renew it, and it looks like the library somehow doesn't have the Kindle edition anymore—just EPUB and PDF. This is very annoying. And it seems to extend to the whole series, not just the single book. The NYPL doesn't even have paper copies, so reading may be postponed until August, when I'll be upstate—they do have the book at the library there.

Instead, I started reading The Princess Diaries for my fluffy bedtime read, after getting through 26 more pages of the Truth and Reconciliation report during the day.

ETA: For my future reference, I should note that 12% of Cast in Secret puts me at the beginning of Chapter 3, in case I forget by the time I have a paper copy in hand more than a month from now.

Another Kindle issue: when I renew library books, my place sometimes gets lost even though it's supposed to keep track of where I was. This happened with Possessing the Secret of Joy. But after jumping ahead to where I was (40%), and then reading a bit (to 70%) and going through another renewal, the latest download shows my previous place (40%). So I wonder whether it doesn't work when there are multiple copies of the ebook in the system. It's a very irritating failure in any case, but on the bright side, it provided some additional motivation to track where I am in my reading at all times, and I've found that very satisfying.

I had this brief moment of being like "you can get Kindle ebooks from the library????" and then realized you use NYPL. Up here in Canuck-land Kindles won't work with library ebooks. Ever. The number of conversations I had to have with library customers when I worked on the public services side of things explaining that this had nothing to do with the library and everything to do with Amazon and Kindle was high.

>46 MickyFine: Yeah, I'm pretty sure Amazon.com and its related infrastructure is the thing I'll miss most if I ever manage to move back to Canada. Adobe Digital Editions drove me crazy when I briefly tried using a Kobo many years ago; Amazon makes everything so much easier. Except when they lose my spot in the book.

>47 _Zoe_: This is the upside to using a tablet. You can load everything right into the app without ever having to touch ADE. Since OverDrive made some changes a couple years ago, you don't even need an Adobe ID anymore. Such a smooth borrowing process now.

>48 MickyFine: Hmm, I'll have to give it another try at some point; not needing to use ADE is a huge selling point. I think my iPad is heavier than I'd really prefer for general reading, but it may be worthwhile for those books that aren't available on Kindle for whatever reason. (Or that were available on Kindle but mysteriously went away... grrr.)

I've had no trouble with Adobe Digital Editions. Though I hate BlueFire with a passion.

>50 The_Hibernator: I'm glad to hear another person say that ADE is fine now. I've never even heard of BlueFire; I had to look it up to see what it was (and I'm not sure I fully understand even now).



28. The Princess Diaries by Meg Cabot



I had to take a break from my heavy, depressing reads to read something light and fluffy. It's interesting to consider how much my list of completed reads differs from the way I actually spend my reading time.

This book was sort of like a blast from the past, even though I hadn't actually read it before—I basically didn't read YA in high school, when this came out, then I started again in university. (I watched the movie ages ago, but I don't really remember it.) Still, this was definitely written during my high school years, which I appreciated—if I hadn't been a teenager at that time, I might just have found the book dated. An attractive guy is referred to as a Baldwin, à la Clueless; celebrity discussion includes Leonardo DiCaprio in Titanic (though that's dismissed as "so 1998"); phone calls don't go through when someone is spending too much time on the internet.

The basic point of the book is that Mia turns out to be a princess and next in line for the throne of a small European country; she was born out of wedlock and her father always planned to have a legitimate heir, until he had testicular cancer and that was the end of that. Mia has been raised as a "normal" girl (if normal is living with an artist mother in Greenwich Village and going to school with rich people in the Upper East Side), and the book is written in the form of journal entries in a normal speaking voice, which is part of what makes it so readable.

There were various teen elements that occasionally annoyed me, like the idea of being obsessed with a hot classmate who you've never actually had a conversation with. And the names sometimes seemed like over-the-top caricatures: Mia's friends are Lilly Moscowitz (super-smart daughter of wealthy Jewish doctors), Shameeka, Ling Su, and Tina Hakim Baba. I couldn't figure out why "Hakim Baba" sounded so off to me, but looking on Wikipedia it seems like Baba isn't really a Middle Eastern surname (though it is used in Turkey, and it's used as an honorific in some places). So that name seems more "Arabian Nights" than anything else, while Hakim is more like a first name. For interest, here's a 2013 list of the 100 most powerful Arab women to give a sense of what sort of last names might be more typical.

But of course, I didn't read this for its serious and accurate representation of other cultures. I wanted something light and fun, and the book succeeded at that. I see that it's grown into a very long series over the years, and I expect I'll pick up the second one before too long. I always struggle to find fluffy fun books with an interesting premise, and this book served my purposes very well.

>51 _Zoe_: Amazingly enough I did read some of these as a teen (I basically jumped from children's lit to adult stuff with nothing between) and I remember giggling a lot.

Given that you like Cabot's style, if you want some slightly more grown-up fluff, I love the Heather Wells mystery series she writes. :D

>52 MickyFine: Thanks for that recommendation! I'll have to check those out after I finish with the Princess Diaries (I don't yet know whether finishing means actually reading all the books or just feeling ready to move on, but I'm reading the second one right now).

I was at a conference all last week, so very little reading was done. But I did spend an exorbitant amount of money on book purchases, so that's something.... I think I've bought enough now that I won't get anything else for my 10-year Thingaversary five days from now.

Most of my purchases were academic, but I did find a copy of Cast in Secret at a used bookstore, so at least I won't have to abandon that one partway through. I got a response from the library or Overdrive or someone saying that Amazon sometimes pulls Kindle editions of books for whatever reason, but they'll look into it. It's a bit disconcerting to know that it may not be possible to renew any given book because it could just disappear from the system at any time.

And when I returned from the conference I had two books from Linda waiting for me. I'm constantly amazed by her generosity and selflessness. Even within a week of major surgery, when I commented casually on her thread that I had been hit by a couple of book bullets, her first thought was to send the books out to me immediately!

>53 _Zoe_: You should try being on the purchasing side of things for library ebooks. Sooooo frustrating.

Have a wonderful week Zoe.

>54 MickyFine: I can only imagine!

>55 GeezLouise: Thank you! I hope you have a wonderful week as well.

29. Princess in the Spotlight by Meg Cabot



I actually enjoyed this one more than the first, probably because Mia's crush is now someone she actually knows, rather than a personality-less jock admired from a distance. The series continues to be fun and readable, so I'll definitely be reading on.

I've been continuing with my heavier reading as well, and I'm now on p. 101 of the Truth and Reconciliation Report. Its given me the sense that I ultimately need to take action somehow, instead of just reading. But I'm not sure what that action could entail.

>57 _Zoe_: First, I'm glad you're still enjoying your time with Mia. :)

Second, there's a bunch of calls to action in the latter sections of the TRC report that might be helpful for you on that front.

>58 MickyFine: I'm looking forward to that part! I initially thought I'd be much more interested in the history than the calls to action, but the history is pretty good motivation for going further.

Meanwhile, during the conference last week I bought North American Indians: A Very Short Introduction at a museum gift shop, and I'm hoping it will provide me with a slightly broader background to the topic. Unfortunately my preliminary impression is that "North" in the title is a bit of a misnomer—the preface remarks that "there are 364 federally recognized Indian tribes in the United States, on which this introduction focuses". Still, I think it will be helpful.

So far this month I've completed two books and read parts of nine others. No wonder I never seem to get anywhere.

As long as you're enjoying them all, that's all that matters. :)

Have a lovely week Zoe.

>61 MickyFine: I like that attitude :). My favourite current read is actually a book bullet from you, 40 Days of Dating. (Well, I think the TRC report will end up with a higher rating, but it's hard to call that one my favourite in the same way.) I do have a couple of current reads that are at risk of going unfinished, but on the whole they're all pretty good.

>62 GeezLouise: Thank you, Rae! I always appreciate your cheerful greetings :)

>63 _Zoe_: Nice! Glad the BB is working for you. :)

Have a wonderful weekend Zoe.

July Summary

Books Finished:


Books Continued:


Books Started, To Be Continued:


Sources of Completed Books:
2 library ebook loans

Total Progress on Books Read Partially This Month:
Slim by Design (29%, was 25%)
Missoula (61%, was 49%)
Report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (p. 109 of 395, was p. 53)
Humans of New York: Stories (p. 39 of 428, was p. 24)
The Golden Age of King Midas (p. 28 of 79, newly started)
North American Indians: A Very Short Introduction (p. 14 of 130, newly started)
So You've Been Publicly Shamed (p. 84 of 282, was p. 75)
40 Days of Dating (p. 182 of 301, newly started)
Princess in Love (37%, newly started)

Well, it was another slow reading month, but it also included parts of three trips, a couple of nights of houseguests, and moving-related stuff. So there's that. I can easily imagine an alternate world in which I finished both Princess in Love and 40 Days of Dating. The latter is the book that I'm currently most absorbed in, while the former is my Kindle read for whenever I'm out and about (or sometimes at home when I'm just tired).

I'm happy with the progress that I made on the Truth and Reconciliation Report; it's slow but steady.

There are a couple of books that I'm at risk of not finishing: Slim by Design has become a bit of a struggle, and So You've Been Publicly Shamed is fine but not particularly compelling. Progress on both of those was dangerously slow.

I'm not worried about Humans of New York: Stories; progress there was also slow, but it's the kind of book that's intended just to be picked up for five minutes at a time, so I'll get through it eventually.

One other book that is at risk of going incomplete is Cast in Secret, the only book that I read part of in June but didn't read at all in July. Part of that is because of the issue with the Kindle edition disappearing from the library (which I've since rectified by purchasing a paper copy), but it's not the sort of book that I should really have needed to renew anyway. Still, I think I'm already invested enough in the characters from the first two books of the series that I'll continue this one eventually.

The Golden Age of King Midas is a very short exhibition catalogue (which means lots of pictures) that should be pretty easy to finish eventually. And I think as I read more of the TRC report, I'll be encouraged to pick up North American Indians again as well.

Finally, I would have liked to read more of Missoula, but it's been in competition with the TRC report for my depressing book of choice. I think I'm far enough along that I won't want to abandon it, though, especially because it's by an author I enjoy. I am finding that Missoula is a bit slower-going than some of his other books—there are a lot of different characters and a heavy reliance on quotations from court records etc.—but it's definitely worth the effort.

Meanwhile, I've just arrived in Columbus for a conference. I'm planning to meet up with Foggi and any other interested LT-ers: https://www.librarything.com/topic/227979

>67 _Zoe_: Given all the RL stuff going on that's some impressive amounts of reading progress. :)

>69 MickyFine: Thank you for the support :)

I survived the conference and just got back home, but I'm suddenly feeling too exhausted even to go out and get groceries. It was a great conference overall, just very tiring. That's partially just par for the course with conferences (so much going on in such a short time), and I think it was compounded by the fact that I was sharing a room to save money, which meant there was more evening talking and less quiet time than might have been ideal. I didn't get a lot of reading done.

But I did manage to meet Foggi yesterday, yay! I'm stealing her version of the photo:



My work friend came along with us to dinner. There was an amusing moment beforehand when said work friend asked, "So, what's your friend's name?"—a perfectly normal question!—and I responded, "Uh, I'm not 100% sure, but...."

I love LT friendships.

Also at the conference, I acquired many books and only had to pay for some of them.

So far this summer, I've met for the first time two LTers in my top 10 "Members with your books" list. Foggi is #2 and Faith is #7.

I don't think I ever appear on anyone's MWYB because I have too many unrelated sub-collections.

>70 _Zoe_: Oh man, post-conference exhaustion is the worst. You have my sympathies.

>71 _Zoe_: I just checked. No one I know from LT makes my list of MWYB. We'll just pretend you do though. :D

>72 MickyFine: If I keep copying your reads at my current rate, maybe I'll get there eventually!

The fridge currently contains expired yogurt and expired milk, plus some granola that I put there just because it's so hot in the apartment. There are bagels in the freezer. I wonder if I can really put off shopping until tomorrow. I already ate two of the bagels for lunch.

>73 _Zoe_: Time to order delivery?

>71 _Zoe_: Interesting! I have only met one person from my "MWYB" module - Mary (bell7) is #38 on my list.

My #1 is Leahbird, whom I have *almost* met on multiple occasions but it has never worked out. The only other person I know on my list is beserene.

You've had this thread for going on two months and I haven't yet commented... though I've been lurking along. Yay for meetups! I'd assumed that I'd never met a MWYB but checking just now it turns out that I did, in passing at a Philadelphia meetup a few years ago.

>74 MickyFine: Hehe, I ended up remembering that I had some mini applesauces that I had bought as snacks for the conference, so I ate three of those and a granola bar and one more bagel for dinner. But I think I'll get delivery for lunch today....

Meanwhile, I'm almost done 40 Days of Dating; the actually story has ended and there are just 20 pages of filler left, mostly random thoughts about dating from their friends. I sometimes hate the ends of books.

>75 norabelle414: Now I want to go through my whole list more thoroughly and see who I know.

1. My ex-boyfriend, who didn't really read before meeting me, and stopped maintaining the account afterward, so his books are practically a subset of mine.
2. foggidawn
7. dk_phoenix
14. bell7
30. norabelle414

There are also various other 75-ers or people who I know from the site but haven't met in person.

>77 _Zoe_: Yeah that section of the book isn't really up to the quality of the rest of it. I'd love to see how our reactions compare though. I got super invested in their relationship and I appreciated the insight into the fallout that followed the project.

>78 MickyFine: Okay, I think I'll start writing my review now and update it when I really get to the end:



30. 40 Days of Dating by Timothy Goodman and Jessica Walsh



This is a non-fiction account of two friends who were both having issues with dating, and decided to set out on a 40-day experiment in which they'd date each other and meticulously document every detail of the experience. The idea was that this would give them new insights and help them overcome their dating problems. The problems basically broke down along typical gender roles: Tim went on lots of dates with lots of different women but never wanted to commit, while Jessie tended to get fully committed very quickly and had recently had her heart broken.

When I first read the descriptions of these people, I thought they were complete opposites and it would never work. But it didn't take long to get absorbed in the story (as told by their daily journal entries) and hope that they would someone end up together after all. The great thing about this book compared to other books is that with non-fiction, you actually don't know how it's going to end; I felt compelled to read on to find out what would happen next. In a novel with this topic, the outcome would be pretty much a foregone conclusion, but here there was a lot of suspense.

I'm glad I came across this book in Micky's thread, because it's not the kind of thing I would have picked up on my own; I found the design a bit of a turn-off even though the content is really interesting. Both of the authors are designers, so it's not surprising that they would focus on the book as a physical product, but it made for somewhat awkward reading at times. It's relatively large and heavy, and the text in the main part of the book is landscape rather than portrait in orientation, so you have to hold the book sideways. Plus the two accounts run in parallel down the pages, which means that there's sometimes more than one incomplete sentence on the same page, necessitating a bit of flipping back and forth.

On the other hand, the authors' careers and lifestyles were also interesting in themselves; I live in the same city as them, but my experience of it is very different. I'm not involved in the art scene and I'm not a late-night person, so it was interesting to hear about their work projects and gallery-hopping and how much time they spent in bars. I feel like this is a representation of a more typical New York lifestyle, complete with a move to Williamsburg at one point.

I'm glad I read this book; it held my attention more than the other books I've been reading lately, so that was good. And I see that the authors have a new blog/project about acts of kindness, so I may look at that as well.

>79 _Zoe_: Your reaction was pretty similar to mine. I know they sold the film rights for the project and I think it would be interesting to see if Hollywood would alter how the project ended.

Also I didn't know about the new blog. I'll have to check it out!

>80 MickyFine: Yeah, I'd be interested in seeing the movie version, even though I don't usually watch movies.

I'll also be curious about what happens with the ending. I almost feel like this belongs in a spoiler tag because Hollywood usually only changes the ending in one direction!

Meanwhile, after enjoying Every Heart a Doorway earlier this year, I purchased Rosemary and Rue at a used bookstore in Columbus last week. And when I catalogued it, I realized I already own a copy, purchased only a year and a half ago. It's been a long time since I did that—oops!

I was also looking at last year's reading and realized that I'm technically even farther behind pace than I was then. But partially that's because I read a lot of tiny German books last year, which I'm now tempted to reread. Also, this fall should be far less crazy and stressful than last fall, so I expect that my reading pace will at least not get any worse. Maybe I'll even finish some of my many books in progress one day....

>81 _Zoe_: Weirdly my numbers are up this year despite moving and starting a new job. But I've read a few more graphic novels and novellas this year, so I think it padded my numbers.

Have a lovely weekend Zoe.

Jealous of your meetup Zoe! I used to travel a good deal more than I do now, and I wish I had the opportunity to meet people like I used to! All I really do is go down to Iowa every once in a while. And I'm not sure there is anybody in Iowa to meet? I could be wrong. :)

>84 The_Hibernator: I'll just have to visit you eventually! :D

I was just thinking how great it is to have LT friends wherever I happen to go. It makes conference trips to random locations much more enjoyable.

31. *His Majesty's Dragon by Naomi Novik

While everyone else has been rereading Harry Potter, I decided to start a reread of the Temeraire books since the last one was just recently released. I've found in the past that I appreciated the new book more when I did a full reread in advance, even though it's no longer a trivial undertaking for the ninth book. This is the third time I've read His Majesty's Dragon, and it's extremely rare for me to read a book that many times. Childhood books are one thing, but this may be the only adult book that I've read so often. The other two reads were in March 2010 and July 2012.

I still really enjoyed this book, and it was nice to revisit some familiar characters. I feel like my reading speed has been off lately, so I'm hoping that some time with old favourite novels will get me back up to speed.

I haven't decided yet if I want to read the whole series straight through or space it out between other books; I'd like to continue making progress on some of the books that I'm currently in the middle of, but I also want to get to the new Temeraire book before the end of the year. So we'll see.

>83 GeezLouise: Oops, I somehow missed this post! Thank you, and I hope you're having a good weekend too!

32. Princess in Love by Meg Cabot

This was my subway book while I was reading 40 Days of Dating at home, since the latter was pretty heavy and awkward to hold. Princess in Love served that purpose admirably; it's easy to pick up and read for a few minutes without losing the thread of the plot, and before I knew it I was halfway done. But I wasn't overly engaged; I never felt like I needed to continue reading at home. I have a strong dislike for Mia's supposed "best friend", Lilly, and there was a moment when Mia said she'd happily commit herself for life to the hot new guy at school, obviously having learned nothing from her experience with Josh in the first book.

Still, I decided yesterday that I should finish this book before getting too caught up in the Temeraire series and forgetting it entirely, and I did enjoy the second half more than the first. Mia is still fun to read about, so I'm planning to continue on with the fourth book at some point.

I also felt like I read the second half faster than the first half, in terms of reading speed and not just spacing, and I think that was thanks to the Temeraire reread just before. These books are probably more enjoyable when consumed quickly.

All this talk about meeting "members with your books" made me look up mine... I've met Nora (19) and Linda (Whisper1). Foggi is my #1 MWYB (weighted), and a few other 75ers that I haven't met in person show up there as well. Oddly, Zoe, you're not showing up on mine, but maybe weighted/raw is making a difference or the categories that I told the algorithm not to include.

Funny, that I am on so many people's lists!

I seem to recall that the "use in connections" collection checkmark works only in one direction: so I can generate my MWYB list based on the collection(s) that I consider most significant (in this case, books that I've actually read in the past ten years), but other people's MWYB are generated based on every book I've catalogued. Since that includes long several children's series that I've kept (according to my tag mirror, I'm all about the Sweet Valley, Nancy Drew, and Babysitter's Little Sister), as well as lots of obscure ancient history/classics and math, my library is deemed not particularly similar to anyone else's even when our reading tastes overlap a lot.

>91 _Zoe_: Yes, that was what I was trying to think of. I did something similar to you, too, taking out "Graphic Novels and Manga" and "School Books" from "use in connections." I'd given myself a project of reading 100 volumes of manga one summer, and while I wanted to keep track of what I read, I didn't want the relative obscurity of one series in that collection to "skew" my weighted MWYB list to the 20 volumes in that series rather than, say, 200 fantasy books that both foggi and I have read.

I don't recognize a single soul on my MWYB list. Not sure why.

I prefer Seanan McGuire's InCryptid series starting with Discount Armageddon to the October Daye series (Rosemary and Rue). I think it has more of a sense of humor and charm. Daye is pretty dark and depressing.

90: It's not surprising, really, since you flood everyone else's libraries with your book bullets all the time. :P

It's interesting how much variety there is in the extent to which MWYB reflects actual connections. I wonder why this is.

August Summary

Books Finished:


Books Continued:


Books Started, To Be Continued:


Sources of completed books:
1 library paper book loan
1 reread from my shelves
1 library ebook loan

Total progress on books read partially in August:
The Golden Age of King Midas (p. 49 of 79)
Throne of Jade (p. 159 of 398)
Spark Joy (p. 110 of 282)
My Name is Seepeetza (p. 49 of 126)

In-Progress books from July that I didn't read at all in August but still plan to finish eventually:
Missoula (61%)
Report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (p. 109 of 395)
Humans of New York: Stories (p. 39 of 428)
North American Indians: A Very Short Introduction (p. 14 of 130)
So You've Been Publicly Shamed (p. 84 of 282)

In-Progress books from July that I didn't read at all in August and have my doubts about ever finishing:
Slim by Design (29%)

Well, the month got off to a good start; I finished two of the four books that I'd started last month and made progress on one other.

And then I spent the second half of the month focused on moving and preparing for the new semester, and trying to get as much paperwork as possible off my plate. This was moderately successful, in that the move has happened and the semester has started and I probably have health insurance. I've submitted the reimbursement forms for summer conference travel, and mailed a certified letter requesting cancellation of my NYC gym membership, and obtained a new campus parking sticker to put on my car. In other words, there are no immediate fires to put out, but I'm still behind on emails and haven't done much reading lately.

Meanwhile, I seem to have a mysterious leak in one of my tires; I was at the car dealership just last week for the annual inspection and they weren't able to find any problems, but the air pressure light has come on again already. Bleh.

>96 _Zoe_: Yay for reading and real life progress! Hope school is treating you ok so far. :)

One of my tires last summer regularly needed air but I think it just wasn't properly sealed on the rim because it hasn't been a problem this summer since I put the tires back on.

>97 MickyFine: Same thing happened to us. We thought we needed a new tire. MrMorphy brought it in to be replaced and the tire was fine. It just needed to be adjusted on the rim.

>96 _Zoe_: moving and preparing for the new semester
You would be excused if you had accomplished absolutely nothing else.

You moved again??

Morphy and I tend to like the same genres and authors, but within those categories, our tastes are often orthogonal. I like Incryptids, but find the Toby Daye series much deeper and richer.

>97 MickyFine: >98 Morphidae: Thank you for giving me hope about the tires! I really don't need another expense right now. I have an appointment at the car dealership this morning, so hopefully some minor adjustments will suffice. Otherwise I'd be really tempted to have them put on the snow tires a bit early, even though I know that would be stupid.

>99 qebo: I like that attitude :)

>100 jessibud2: It was one big extended move. We got the new apartment in May, but we didn't move out of the old apartment until the end of August. It definitely seems like this has been going on forever!

>101 ronincats: I'll probably end up reading both eventually. For now, Rosemary and Rue is the one that I have on my shelf thanks to the fates of the used bookstore, but I'll probably pick up Discount Armageddon too if I ever see it for the right price.

Yay, they were actually able to find and fix the tire problem (a valve stem) and it was even covered under warranty, so I paid $0.

No reading progress to report, but I did win an ER book a few days ago—Weapons of Math Destruction: How Big Data Increases Inequality and Threatens Democracy. Then I came across an interesting article based on the book in my FB newsfeed today, so I may actually be in the right frame of mind to read it when it arrives.

Glad the tire fix was pretty simple and free. :)

Have a great long weekend, Zoe!

>104 MickyFine: Me too! I hope you have a great long weekend as well.

My sister is coming to visit, and this will be her second visit in three weeks. There are advantages to moving closer and closer to Canada :D.

Meanwhile, I met up with Judy and Jim for a final lunch in Manhattan on the day I moved out; here's the photo that I stole from Judy's thread as evidence:

Ahhh, I just got to the new apartment and found that the movers reassembled the Expedit incorrectly, so that the unfinished bottom is on the side (they thought it could just be randomly rotated 90 degrees, but it should really only be bearing weight in one direction). This will hinder the weekend's unpacking.

Boo. I hope the unpacking goes smoother from here on out.

Yup, me too.

Wishing you better luck for the rest of unpacking!

Thank you all! The moving company gave us $200 in compensation, which seems very generous and should easily cover the cost of a handyman and a drill. This isn't quite the same as having a shelving unit that's ready to unpack into, but I'm still satisfied. We asked our landlord to recommend a handyman, and he said he'll come by and look at the Expedit today, so possibly he'll actually reassemble it himself?

Meanwhile, I was out of town at a workshop from Wednesday evening until last night, so I didn't have time for unpacking anyway. The workshop was excellent, and I'm now exhausted.

Maybe I'll get some reading done one day.

I've always found moving tough on the reading; at the end of a day of unpacking the only thing I'm capable of is vegging in front of the TV for a bit. Get settled and the books will still be there. :)

Well, I almost finished a book. I'm 98% done with The Bronze Key, and I hate it so much that I don't even want to continue (but of course I will, because I'm not going to set it aside so close to the end).

For the most part, the book was fairly unremarkable, but the ending is just infuriating. It's like they want to use shock value to make up for bad writing and a weak plot.

My general position is that if you're going to kill off a main character, you should do it in a meaningful way; it should be the result of significant decisions, not just the consequence of multiple acts of stupidity. (Why did the Masters decide to set up a dangerous "test" that isolated students at a time when they knew there was a spy in their midst? Why did Alma and Anastasia have Call and Aaron deal with Jennifer the same night that everything else happened, when they were already drained and Call was in the infirmary? Why couldn't they just wait until the next night, when the boys wouldn't have been missed and it wouldn't have been "necessary" to send Tamara off alone? Why did they fall so easily for Alex's trick, and why did Call continue walking along with him even after he realized something was off? Why did Alma turn on Call so immediately, and blame him for putting chaos into a dead body, when *she* was the one training him to do all this weird chaos stuff and pushing him to try it in a rush without enough preparation? Why were the Masters 100% willing to blame Call for everything, even when they already knew that there was someone else in the school trying to kill him? The whole plot was just garbage, and I don't think the emotional impact of killing off a beloved character at the end makes up for it in any way. I also don't think it's even appropriate to kill off major characters so casually in a Middle Grade book. The whole thing was just blech.

I tend to think of Cassandra Clare as writing fluffy page-turners while Holly Black's books are somewhat more substantial and better-written, but in this case I feel like they got the worst of both worlds. The world and characters don't feel fully fleshed-out (literally the only thing that students at this school do in their free time is hang out in a room with hot tubs, movies, and candy), but it wasn't quite compelling as fluff either.

33. The Bronze Key by Holly Black and Cassandra Clare





And it's done! My comments are above. I had put in a hold request for this book before it was even available, so I figured I should read it when it came in, but I struggled to finish it in time. Fortunately putting my Kindle into airplane mode was actually effective at preventing the book from going away, so I could have the extra day I needed.

All throughout I was expecting it to be a three-star read, but the ending really ruined it.

At least I finished one book in September!

Edit: One of my friends complained that I rated the book one star on GoodReads without writing a review, so I ended up writing a final review after all:

The majority of this book was merely mediocre. Characters behaved in dumb ways and drifted along without much agency in terms of actually driving the plot, while whatever they did manage to accomplish was done thanks to unbelievable coincidence (yes, I’m sure the Masters would wait to dismiss you from a meeting until right after they’ve described the exact process for overcoming multiple security features, and I’m sure you’ll be able to randomly guess someone’s password with minimal effort….)

The basic plot is that there’s a spy in the Magisterium trying to kill Call. We find this out at the beginning when he receives a note purportedly from a friend asking him to meet in a particular location, but when he gets there he nearly meets his death instead. The stupidity begins right there: as the Masters begin to investigate, Call decides that he’ll just refrain from mentioning that note—i.e., the key piece of evidence for the whole thing. He wouldn’t want anyone to know that he was “stood up”. Um, okay.

The Masters themselves are just as stupid. The majority of the book is spent with Tamora and Aaron keeping a close eye on Call, basically not letting him out of their sight even when he’s sleeping. So the Masters decide, even knowing that there’s a murderous spy in their midst, that they’ll organize a “test” that requires every student to go off on their own into a dangerous situation. Sheer brilliance. And it goes downhill from there.

So obviously there’s only one way to redeem a mediocre book: resort to cheap tricks! If horrible things happen to one of the protagonists at the end, you score points for emotional impact. And if you manufacture a cliffhanger situation, obviously people will feel compelled to read on. So what if the cliffhanger came out of the blue and depended on at least one character behaving in a completely uncharacteristic way? Too bad, so sad. And this is how the book declined in my view from merely okay to oh-god-do-I-really-have-to-finish-the-last-2%-when-I’d-much-rather-throw-it-across-the-room.

And now for a couple of spoilers, in order of increasing importance:

1. WTF Alma. I don’t even know how she went from “Yay, Chaos magic” to “OMG you’re so evil” in the blink of an eye. She was all in favour of using Chaos magic to knock people unconscious. She had even brought in a dead body and was literally in the process of training Call to reanimate and converse with dead people when he accidentally… reanimated a dead person as a zombie under his control. Which is of course completely unacceptable and in no way an understandable mistake when being trained in a closely-related task by someone who doesn’t really know what they’re doing.

2. And of course I couldn’t skip over the major event of the book: Aaron’s death. My basic theory about killing off key characters in the middle of a series (or anywhere, really) is that their deaths should be meaningful. They should die doing something worthwhile and deliberate. That was definitely not the case here; Call and Aaron fell for a stupid trick in a situation that could have been easily avoided. (Was it really necessary to deal with the dead body on a night when they were already almost totally drained of magic, and when Call was in the infirmary where he would be missed? Was it really necessary to give up on the guiding principle of the *whole book*, which was that they should stick together? Was it really necessary to run out alone on the word of one individual when they knew there was someone out to kill them? Etc.)

I understand that Aaron needs to be out of the picture in order for Call and Tamara to get together at the end of the series, but this was a really bad way to do it (and convenience shouldn’t be the primary plot driver anyway). Also, I don’t think suddenly killing off protagonists is really appropriate in a Middle Grade novel to begin with; I pity any children who happen to read this.

As for me, I admit that I’d like to find out how the series is resolved, but I simultaneously have zero desire to waste any more time on it. I’ve never really been one for skimming, but I think that may be what’s called for here.

Dear Friend.

You are the queen of meet ups! How wonderful that you meet so many wonderful LT folk. This is truly an amazing, magical group. Last December when having a very frustrating day of plane delays (three in all), I finally had a plane that would get me somewhere near my family in Ohio. As I was waiting, and posting on facebook, lo and behold Carolyn from Boston was two gates over. We had a quick 1/2 hour conversation wherein we packed as much as possible into our marvelous time together.

When fate/luck was in the air, I knew that my final plane of the night would be on time and everything would go well.

>114 Whisper1: How fortuitous!

>114 Whisper1: That is a great story!

I hope we'll manage to have another meetup before too long :)

One of my friends complained on GR that I had given a one-star rating without a review, so I wrote a real review for The Bronze Key after all, and added it to >113 _Zoe_:

>116 _Zoe_: Yes, Zoe, it would be great to see you again. I love your bubbly smile!

>118 Whisper1: I often think how fortunate I am to know you! You always have something positive to say in any situation.

Speaking of the need for a positive outlook, it's time to report my September reading, and I only finished one book....

September Summary

Books Finished:


Books Continued:


Books Started, to be Continued:


Sources of completed books:
1 library ebook loan

Total progress on books read partially in September:
Spark Joy (p. 145 of 282)
The Math Myth (p. 40 of 204)
Weapons of Math Destruction (p. 24 of 218)
Swindle (64%)
Report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (p. 114 of 395)

In-progress books from August that I didn't read at all in September but still plan to finish eventually:
The Golden Age of King Midas (p. 49 of 79)
Throne of Jade (p. 159 of 398)
My Name is Seepeetza (p. 49 of 126)

34. Swindle by Gordon Korman



Gordon Korman was one of my favourite childhood authors, so I sometimes pick up his newer books when I'm looking for something light (which unfortunately seems to be all the time now). I approach them with a lot more skepticism now than I did in the past, after being really disgusted with his recent novel Ungifted and its ridiculous stereotypes of gifted students. And there was a bit of that stereotyping here: the computer genius girl has basically never had a friend in her life until the protagonist, Griffin, invites her to be part of his latest scheme. But Korman does have a way of creating crazy situations that work out nicely in the end, and by the time I came to the end of this book I found myself feeling satisfied and thinking about reading the next book at some point. This is a perfectly good standalone, but it also seems to have developed into a seven-book series....

Happy October Zoe!

Happy October to you too!

(Ahhh, I can't believe it's October already! Where does the time go?)

35. $10,000,000 Marriage Proposal by James Patterson and Hilary Liftin



I've been having trouble focusing on any sort of reading lately (yesterday I read parts of five different books), so I resolved to pick up basically the shortest and lightest page-turner I could find: one of James Patterson's new "Bookshots", which promise to be "Lightning-fast stories—Novels you can devour in a few hours—Impossible to stop reading". I've never read anything by James Patterson before, but my impression is that he generally writes easy-reading novels with very short chapters, and this basically takes that to an extreme.

Most of his Bookshots seem to be either thrillers or contemporary romance, neither of which is my favourite genre, but this one at least had a strange enough premise to be intriguing: as the title suggests, it's a concept like a reality show, but without the television part. And the book accomplished its purpose, in that I actually managed to finish a whole novel, no matter how short. In the beginning I found it better than expected, while the ending seemed rushed and somewhat disjointed, so it was an average read overall. I'm happy to have read it, and I'm hopeful that getting some "practice" in faster reading will increase my reading speed overall as I move on to other books. I wish I were a generally fast reader who could finish a whole normal-length book in a couple of hours, but sadly I am not; I'm too inclined to go back and re-read sentences multiple times out of fear of missing a single word. So I'm glad that these tiny books exist, and I suspect I'll read more of them in the future.

>123 _Zoe_: Oh James Patterson. I was so annoyed with him for publishing a true crime book this year as I had to order a bunch of copies for work as a lot of his readers will pick up anything with his name on it. This is particularly painful for the ebook copies as the library price for his books are crazy (~$125 for a copy).

My professional rant aside, glad you enjoyed your read!

>124 MickyFine: My mother always complains about having to order so many James Pattersons for the library where she works! Apparently they have a newly-enforced policy where they need to have X copies for every Y holds, so they have to buy way more than they need for their permanent collection even though they'll mostly get weeded out the next year.

>125 _Zoe_: We maintain a 5:1 holds ratio for all our collection types at my library so I understand her pain. For super in-demand titles I know we lease copies rather than buying them, which makes the costs a little bit lower. Depends on what your book vendor lets you do.

>126 MickyFine: Libraries can LEASE books?????
*brain explodes*

>113 _Zoe_: How disappointing! The first two books were entertaining although not stellar, so it's sad to see such sloppy plotting at this point. Now I have to decide if I'm going to read it when the library finally gets it.

Did your shelf unit get fixed? How goes the unpacking?

>127 norabelle414: Yeah, I don't entirely understand how it works (it doesn't really come up for non-fiction books) but my library does it for some of our Hits to Go books (i.e. super popular books that have no renewals or holds).

>126 MickyFine: I think for whatever reason they're now leasing fewer books than before (possibly none?), while the ideal holds:copies ratio has just started being strictly enforced, so the result is many more purchases of short-lived bestsellers.

>128 ronincats: I seem to be very much in the minority with my opinion of that one, so I'd say you should give it a try anyway. I'd be curious to hear what you think.

The shelf unit hasn't yet been reassembled, which means that unpacking is basically stalled. But the new apartment is so much larger than the old one that it's perfectly livable in the meantime. We had some other, more pressing furniture issues to deal with first: we bought a dining room table, but the top was wobbly, so we had to call up the furniture store and have them come back to put in the missing washers. And we abandoned our full-sized mattress in NYC (7 years old, but still perfectly comfortable) and bought a queen mattress here; I decided that for the first time in my life I would *not* buy the cheapest mattress possible, and so of course the new mattress hurt my back when I've never had trouble with any other mattresses. We had been told that Serta had a 120-day comfort trial, but it turned out that we could only exchange it for another Serta mattress, so that was annoying. But at least we now have a new mattress that seems acceptable, even if it wouldn't have been my first choice. My takeaway is that plain cheap mattresses are best.

So the reconstruction of the Expedit is now at the top of our furniture to-do list, anyway. Hopefully it will happen before too long.

In order to get back on track with my reading, I should try to finish a book every three days or so. Fortunately I have many books in progress, so this doesn't mean I'd actually need to read full books that quickly. Here are some ideas and targets for the rest of the month:

Oct. 14: The Golden Age of King Midas (p. 49 of 79)
Oct. 17: My Name is Seepeetza (p. 49 of 126)
Oct. 20: Throne of Jade (p. 178 of 398)
Oct. 23: Spark Joy (p. 185 of 282)
Oct. 26: Growing Up Amish (26%)
Oct. 29: Missoula (63%)

>130 _Zoe_:, Yes, I've had good luck with the plain, cheap mattress I bought several years ago.

On the topic of James Patterson, I've read a couple/few of his books. I find myself swept up in them in the beginning but they usually fall flat by the end. They're good for getting huge chunks of pages read per day, but they aren't really memorable or noteworthy. *Shrug*

Good luck with the rest of the challenge! I've given up all hope on finishing 75 books this year, but at least I'll hit the 50 mark soon.

>131 _Zoe_: I read (and reviewed) Growing up Amish several years ago because the author is local.

>133 Ape: Yup, that seems about right based on my very limited experience. My theory is that getting huge chunks of pages read per day will get me back into the habit of reading faster, so that my reading speed will be increased when I move on to meatier books as well. I think it does have at least some effect.

To be clear, I have zero hope of actually reaching 75 books; I just like to come up with hypothetical scenarios that might allow that to happen. I already failed to reach yesterday's target of finishing a book, both because I was tired and because I don't even know where my scheduled short books are right now. Even getting to 50 would be a stretch at my current pace. The only possible saving grace is all those partially-read books that I might finish eventually....

>134 qebo: Ah, maybe that's where I heard about it in the first place. I'll have to ask you more about your thoughts once I get to the end of it.

As long as you are getting what you want out of books - enjoyment, education, distraction, satisfaction of checking off lists - that's what's important.

>136 Morphidae: I'm just glad that Katherine inspired me to track books in progress, which I now do in obsessive detail (in >3 _Zoe_:). That gives me the satisfaction of recording my reading even when I don't manage to finish anything.

And I seem to have no shortage of distraction at the moment with or without reading, heh.

On a more serious note, that comment made me realize that my life is actually full of all of those things—enjoyment, education, distraction, the satisfaction of checking off lists—even when many of them aren't coming from books at the moment. Teaching a new course (on a topic that I haven't looked at in almost 10 years!) is extremely time-consuming, but also very rewarding, enjoyable, educational, etc. And I'm checking things off on my larger life list (my 101 in 1001), so that's good.

But I do plan to finish a book today as well :P

Hi Zoe wishing you a lovely week.

New courses require an inordinate investment of time, Zoe, as you well know. Try to find a little time for some lighter reading.

>138 GeezLouise: Wishing you a lovely week as well!

>139 ronincats: I actually did manage to get in some lighter reading this week! It's been interesting to see my reading habits change so dramatically based on how much mental energy I have to spare—I'm reading some genres and authors that I had always dismissed before.

36. The Golden Age of King Midas

This is a tiny exhibition catalogue for an exhibit that I believe is still going on at the Penn Museum. They've since come out with a larger (and more expensive) version, but this is the $5, 79-page edition. It contains some interesting information and some pretty pictures of artifacts, but I would have liked to see more integration between those two parts. Most of the photos aren't accompanied by even a single sentence of text. Still, given the length and the price, I can't really complain; it was worth the minimal time and money that it took to read.

37. The Roommate Situation by Zoe X. Rider

I'm pretty sure I initially clicked on this book in my GoodReads feed because of the author's name, but the premise sounded intriguing enough that I downloaded the sample on my Kindle, and after enjoying the long sample I ended up purchasing the book itself. (I can see that those Kindle samples may lead to a dangerous habit of ebook purchasing.)

Shane is in his first year of college, and his roommate Derek has a side business making leather products, including wallets and belts but also bondage gear. Shane's parents are super-controlling and won't let him take his guitar to school with him, so he's looking to make a bit of extra money to purchase a new one, and somehow comes up with the idea of helping Derek out with his business by modelling some of his products. So one thing leads to another, and pretty soon they're falling for each other. It was really cute and sweet, even if there were more sex scenes than I usually appreciate in my books (theory: m/m sex scenes are somehow less bothersome because they don't have that unpalatable aspect of women as sex objects?). I felt really old at the beginning, because there was something awkward about reading sex scenes between students the age of the students I teach myself, but eventually I just got caught up in the story and stopped worrying about it.

The one plot issue that bothered me a bit was what Derek saw in Shane: Derek is an upper-year student who basically has his life together, doing well in school, earning money from his own business, etc., while Shane is a freshman who's completely helpless and dependent on his parents for everything. Derek is constantly advising him about how to deal with life at a basic level (stand up to his parents and switch to a major he actually likes, etc.). But the story is told from Shane's perspective, so I guess it's more important that Derek is an appealing character. Anyway, I still enjoyed the story and was sorry for it to end.

38. His Roommate's Pleasure by Lana McGregor

You know when you finish a book and then look for something exactly like it because you're not quite ready to leave the story? That's basically what happened here. The plot of this book is similar to the last, in that it involves two male college roommates who start having sex. In this case, it begins when one of them accidentally comes across the other's porn collection while printing something from his computer. It turns out to be kinky gay porn, which he appreciates, and his roommate comes in and literally catches him with his hand down his pants. So since they like the same porn, they decide to try acting it out.

As its pretty much guaranteed when trying to replicate a previous read, I didn't like this one nearly as much as the first. The start of their relationship was too transactional rather than based on an initial attraction, and that made all the sex scenes much less interesting—I don't particularly care about sex for the sake of sex. Also, it was more focused on the S&M part of BDSM rather than just the B of the previous book, which made it much less appealing.

Still, it was short enough to keep my attention through to the end—I almost didn't count it because it's only 84 pages long, until I realized that I had just counted the 79-page exhibition catalogue, and I have so many partially-read books that I'm not worried about artificially inflating my numbers. Anyway, books that hold my attention through to the end are rare enough these days that it deserves a decent rating, and it had a satisfying ending.

Another effect of Kindle reading: I don't think I would ever read a physical book that had this cover.

One of the big reasons romance readers are such huge ebook adopters: no judgement over covers. :)

Are those abs or aliens tearing their way out of his torso? o.o

>144 MickyFine: It's surprising how much of a difference it makes!

>145 Ape: Hehe, a good question. Also, entirely unrelated: Your recent read of The Girl With All the Gifts made me think that I should reread it, and then approximately a week later I came across it at an outlet mall for 60% off (I read a library copy last time). So it's now been purchased and I may or may not actually do that reread in the near-ish future.

October update time! I'm excited about because I actually did some reading. Not that I finished enough books to be on target, but at least I read parts of lots of stuff.

Books finished:


Books continued:


Books started, to be continued:


Sources of completed books:
1 library ebook loan
2 paper books purchased this year
2 ebooks purchased this year

Total progress on books partially read this month:
Throne of Jade (p. 178 of 398, was p. 159)
Spark Joy (p. 196 of 282, was p. 145)
Missoula (63%, was 61%)
Weapons of Math Destruction (p. 42 of 218, was p. 24)
Smarter Faster Better (6%, newly started)
Growing Up Amish (30%, newly started)
The Math Myth (p. 65 of 204, was p. 50)
My Name is Seepeetza (p. 59 of 126, was p. 49)
The List (p. 83 of 332, newly started)

So, lots of creeping along in books in progress, but I'm happy that I haven't abandoned them entirely. Slow and steady and all that.

I'm always so impressed at people who can read multiple books at once. I'm a one at a time girl for the most part. Although with Missoula I could understand needing another book to switch out with it.

>148 MickyFine: I don't generally read more than one novel at a time. The exception is if there's one that's dragging a bit but I'm not quite ready to abandon it (My Name is Seepeetza), or if I'm tired and want something even lighter and fluffier (e.g., James Patterson/romance/YA instead of Throne of Jade at the moment).

146: Outlet malls are kind of the best for new books. We have one nearby (and by that, I mean a couple cities away...) that sells new books for $2-$5. My sister and I have vowed to stop in every time we are in the area. I also like that I may have influenced you to buy a book you've already read. I feel so...powerful.... :P

I've also always been a 1-book-at-a-time type of person, although I did enjoy having a book of short stories to dip into this year, so maybe I'm slowly converting. I don't think I could do anything other than short stories though...

Looks like you had a good reading month to me!

>150 Ape: Hehe. We'll see if I actually get around to reading it again anytime soon!

>151 The_Hibernator: Yup! The number of books I've picked up in November has been significantly lower, but I think I'm on pace to actually finish one (Hillbilly Elegy) that's neither super short nor super fluffy, so that would be excellent progress. I did finish one lighter book earlier in the month that I haven't yet reviewed, but I'll get around to it eventually.

I've found that I'm doing more reading tracking on GoodReads these days. I always thought it seemed silly to keep track of reading progress through books that I hadn't yet finished, but as I'm finishing fewer and fewer books, the appeal is increasing :P. I like having a convenient system set up for commenting on books as I go, even if the length of the comments is extremely restricted (400 characters, or fewer than three tweets).

Meanwhile, I've started to think about reading priorities for next year. I'd like to read books in the following categories:
1. Books by Black authors (an ongoing project)
2. Books by or about Indigenous North Americans (a project that started with the Truth and Reconciliation report, which I still have to finish)
3. Books that shed light on politics or current events (including books like Hillbilly Elegy about groups of people whose lives are different from my own)
4. Books about education and/or math
5. New (or new-to-me) books by authors I enjoy
6. Fluffy fun

Possibly there should also be a category for books like Spark Joy that encourage me to make positive changes in my own life, but I haven't figured out what to call that yet. And I may need a positive counterpart to the politics/current events category.

I'm posting these here because I'm probably not going to do the Category Challenge next year—my current thread in that group is abandoned—and so this is the place to plan all my reading.

>154 The_Hibernator: You are a brave lady, Zoe, planning a year of reading that includes significant amounts of reading about maths. I loved my school time but I would have relished it all the more without the calculus and the algebra.

Hey Zoe! That's some pretty cool reading plans you have. I, also, plan to read some politics to understand more about what's going on in our country right now. If you are interested, I'm trying to make a group read of some or all of the 6 books that New York Times suggested for understanding the populist movement that led to Trump's win. Hillbilly Elegy is one of the books on the list. Check it out on my thread or on the group read organizational thread if you're interested. :)

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone! Just a day late....

>153 PaulCranswick: Hi Paul! It's nice to see you here. I think my math reading will probably tend more toward the side of social/educational issues rather than specific content. For example, two books that I'm currently in the middle of are Weapons of Math Destruction, about the downside of big data, and The Math Myth, about the failings of a math curriculum that forces everyone to take courses like Precalculus for no good reason.

>154 The_Hibernator: That list sounds amazing! I'd definitely like to participate. I suspect that I won't actually end up finishing all the books (particularly the two that are longer than 400 pages, White Trash and The Unwinding), but I can at least get started and follow along with the discussions. Listen, Liberal was already on my TBR list anyway, and I keep seeing Strangers in Their Own Land show up in my GoodReads feed.

>155 ronincats: I'm definitely hoping to get some good reading done this weekend! I finished one novella en route to visit my in-laws, and hopefully the trip back will be similar....

39. The List by Siobhan Vivian

I finished this YA novel a couple of weeks ago, and some of the details have already faded from my mind. The premise is that each year at this high school, someone posts a list of the prettiest and ugliest girl in each grade. The novel tells the stories of these eight girls in the week between the posting of the list and the homecoming dance.

Eight protagonists is a pretty high number in a book of this length, but I was quickly impressed by how compelling they were, and for the most part I enjoyed this book more than expected. It was only the ending that was a bit of a disappointment: many of the storylines were barely resolved, and I didn't really appreciate the fact that one of the "ugly" girls sort of turned into the villain of the story. Still, I'm satisfied with the time spent reading this book.

40. Blame it on the Mistletoe by Eli Easton

This is a cute m/m romance novella about two college housemates who end up falling in love. One is a popular jock who's been trying to find more time for his studies, and one is a super-genius somewhat lacking in social skills. The characters are adorable and I really enjoyed the story, fully expecting to give it four stars until the epilogue sort of annoyed me.

I'm not particularly familiar with romance novels and their tropes, but I had read vaguely about the difference between "happily ever after" and "happily for now". Apparently "happily for now" is often deemed insufficient, and there's a need to impose a "happily ever after" even if it's sort of ridiculous in the context of the story. So it wasn't enough that these two college students ended up together; there needed to be a proposal one year later. They were 20 and 22. And it wasn't even a happy romantic proposal; the response was basically, "Ahhh, this is way too soon but I guess I'll go for it." And given that super-young marriages are way more likely to end in divorce, this did nothing to convince me that their relationship was now more "permanent" than it would have been if they were merely in a long-term relationship.

But I did enjoy the rest of the epilogue, where we got to hear a bit about their first year together and see Fielding's first meeting with Mick's conservative parents.

Beyond this particular book, I want to talk about a recent revelation: novellas! I never really read novellas prior to getting a Kindle. Possibly this is because I was never a big fan of short stories, or possibly it's because novellas in paper format tend to be combined two or three to a book, in which case I feel like I'm still committing to the full book and might as well have one continuous story. The one exception I can remember of novellas that I really loved is Laini Taylor's Lips Touch: Three Times.

Anyway, I've recently discovered the concept of reading standalone novellas on my Kindle. Since I'm a very slow reader, this has been an exciting discovery for me. Basically it means that when I need a break in my more serious reading for some lighter fluff, I can choose lighter fluff that I'll actually get through relatively quickly—which is how light fluff should be. I never tended to read romance novels (with the exception of Georgette Heyer), partially because I felt like the stories didn't have enough depth to sustain their length (which, again, is partially a consequence of my slow reading speed). With novellas, there doesn't need to be as much depth, and I can just appreciate the story for what it is.

So, this is a good thing. Also, I've managed to overcome my conviction that I should only count books of a certain length toward my 75; looking at my list of how many books I've read but not finished, I just have no concerns that I'm overstating my reading. This most recent read was less than 100 pages long (probably more like 85), but I don't have a problem with that.

>158 _Zoe_: revelation: novellas!
Perfect. You read serious books so very seriously; surely intensity and thoroughness should be multipliers.
>152 _Zoe_: My RL book group will probably read Hillbilly Elegy this year. Not sure when; we've all produced individual lists, and someone else is responsible for organizing them for the group.

>159 qebo: I'd like to learn how to read books less seriously. I often find myself rereading the same passage to make sure I haven't missed anything, and I'd like to just have believe that I've absorbed enough.

November Reading Summary

Books finished:


Books continued:


Books started, to be continued:


Sources of completed books:
1 paper book purchased in a previous year
1 ebook purchased this year
1 free ebook acquired this year

Total progress of books read partially this month:
The Math Myth (p. 70 of 204, was p. 65)
My Name is Seepeetza (p. 75 of 126, was p. 59)
Spark Joy (p. 206 of 282, was p. 196)
Hillbilly Elegy (p. 146 of 261, newly started)

So, those books in progress are just inching along. But at least some of them are inching....

On the other hand—
In-Progress books from October that I didn't read at all in November but still plan to finish eventually:
Throne of Jade (p. 178 of 398) - no idea why I haven't felt like reading this
Missoula (63%)
Weapons of Math Destruction (p. 42 of 218)

In-Progress books from October that I didn't read at all in November and have doubts about ever finishing:
Smarter Faster Better (6%)
Growing Up Amish (30%)

The good news is that I've basically finished teaching new material for the semester. Now there are just review sessions, tests, exams, and a lot of grading. I'm hoping I'll be able to recover from this semester more quickly than I recovered from the last ones—it hasn't been as exhausting as my first semester of teaching, and I don't have a wedding overlapping with exam grading like last time, so I'm optimistic.

41. Miss Kane's Christmas by Caroline Mickelson



Continuing my recent super-fluff reading, I wanted some holiday lightness to read over Thanksgiving while everyone else was watching 4+ Hallmark movies per day, and this free Kindle novella fit the bill. It was basically what you'd expect from a free book—badly edited and somewhat uneven—but I read through it really quickly, which is always a big plus for me.

The basic premise is that Santa Claus' daughter has been sent in disguise as a nanny to a family with two young children headed by a widower father. The father wants to protect his children from disappointment in life by essentially preventing them from getting too excited about anything, and he's particularly Grinchy when it comes to Christmas. He's even gotten to the point of drafting a book encouraging other parents to forego Christmas merriment as well, so Carol Kane has to intervene before he ruins Christmas for children everywhere. And of course they end up falling in love.

Warning: some pretty minimal spoilers; I'm sure you can see where this is going already.

I enjoyed the plot of the first two-thirds or so, where Carol is being a good cheerful nanny and bringing joy back into the children's lives. The father eventually has a revelation or two, and realizes that his children are actually much happier and that he's in love with Carol too. He embraces the Christmas spirit, at least from a utilitarian standpoint. But for Carol that's not enough: the fact that he doesn't actually believe in Santa makes the relationship a non-starter for her, so she prepares to leave and everyone is sad, et cetera et cetera. This whole part could have been avoided if she had just presented him with evidence rather than expecting him to believe in Santa because she said so, so that was a bit annoying.

But eventually he actually flies in a sleigh pulled by reindeer, after which point he can't really doubt anymore, and they all live happily ever after. I'm not sure why they couldn't jump straight to the irrefutable evidence and skip the whole mopey middle.

I realized I would probably read more books by this author if they were also free, but I'm not sure I'm ready to pay money for them at the moment.

Hi Zoe. I've been away from LT for awhile. I'm spending a bit off time today to visit threads, and of course, yours is a special one. I hope all is well and that you are enjoying teaching. All good wishes for a wonderful holiday!

Hope you enjoy Hillbilly Elegy. I'll be reading it next year as part of a group read. 🙂 I'll watch for your thoughts.

>163 Whisper1: Thank you for stopping by, Linda! I'm very far behind on threads myself. I've actually been following other people's reading more closely on GoodReads these days. I hope you're doing well yourself and have a very happy holiday seasons!

>164 The_Hibernator: I'm definitely enjoying it so far. I've been posting occasional comments as on go on GR; I'll copy them here:

p. 11 - "This book was initially on my radar because of its GR Choice nomination, or maybe its ranking on the GR most popular books of the year list. But it was the outcome of Tuesday's election that led me to pick it up immediately. I started reading a sample on my Kindle, then decided I'd rather read it in paper since it's not a throwaway novel. By the time I'd gone out to buy it, I didn't have much time left to read."

p. 30 - "I should read more memoirs, because I always seem to enjoy them—at least as long as I'm interested in the general topic. I already feel like I've learned a lot from this book and I'm only 30 pages in."

p. 39 - "After starting this book on my Kindle, I have a new appreciation for the physical characteristics of paper book: the crisp text, the thick pages, the generous margins, even the font that somehow isn't as generic-seeming as usual."

p. page 51 - "I just noticed that this is the #1 bestselling book on Amazon right now. (And #3 is the not-yet-released Our Revolution by Bernie Sanders, which I'd also like to read.)

I'm still enjoying this book, and I'm optimistic that it will be one of the few that I actually read straight through to the end without (many) interruptions for other books." (Well, that one's already been proven wrong, but I still expect to finish it relatively quickly.)

p. 80 - "I had slowed down a bit this week, both because I was really busy and because the content of this latest chapter was a bit difficult. The author's mother has gone into a downward spiral of violence and alcohol abuse, and his life has deteriorated along with it. But I'm optimistic that the next chapter will be better; he's gone to live with grandparents and is encountering the wider world with a visit to his uncle."

p. 93 - "Vance just brought up some statistics about how regular church-goers tend to be happier, healthier, wealthier, etc. I wish there were some secular equivalent to the church community. I'm not even Christian, but many good things in my life have taken place in churches: Brownies, Girl Scouts, volunteering at a soup kitchen. Can these community spaces not exist without the religious element?"

p. 104 - "I'm really enjoying this book, and have started to consider whether it would be reasonable to vote for it in the GR Choice Awards if it's the only book I've read in its category (I expect to finish it within the week, especially with Thanksgiving break coming up). I've read far too few of the nominees overall, since it's been a slow reading year for me. Hopefully next year will be less busy and more peaceful." (I didn't end up finishing the book in time to vote.)

p. 115 - "Back on track with this one after a break for some fluff. More difficult events for Vance's family in this chapter, including his mother's complete descent into narcotics addiction and her admission to a treatment facility. Again, this is not the most pleasant reading material, but at least I know that the author himself will ultimately attain some sort of happy ending."

p. 146 - "As this memoir gets to Vance's teenage years, he's becoming more aware of society around him. I appreciate the fact that he's now discussing issues like the perception of welfare by working people who are struggling to get by.

From p. 139: "I could never understand why our lives felt like a struggle while those living off of government largesse enjoyed trinkets that I only dreamed about.""

Also, this quote from the book: “I remember watching an episode of The West Wing about education in America, which the majority of people rightfully believe is the key to opportunity. In it, the fictional president debates whether he should push school vouchers (giving public money to schoolchildren so that they escape failing public schools) or instead focus exclusively on fixing those same failing schools. That debate is important, of course—for a long time, much of my failing school district qualified for vouchers—but it was striking that in an entire discussion about why poor kids struggled in school, the emphasis rested entirely on public institutions. As a teacher at my old high school told me recently, “They want us to be shepherds to these kids. But no one wants to talk about the fact that many of them are raised by wolves.”

>165 _Zoe_: Can these community spaces not exist without the religious element?
These community spaces are funded by the congregation, which needs... some sort of regular sustained group gathering and cohesion. This may not have to be "religious", but it probably has to be meaningful, and I dunno what another model might be. I doubt that happier / healthier / wealthier is a consequence of religious belief; I'd suspect it's more a consequence of a supportive social network. Kind of a problem in the modern world, because the "none" category, of people who are atheists or not particularly devoted to a set of beliefs, is growing.

>166 qebo: I wonder if it could be a group of people focused on making the world better in a non-religious way. I've seen so many people expressing concern about how to do that in the wake of the election, and it seems like an issue that they might care about enough to meet and discuss on a regular basis. I agree with you that the happier/healthier/wealthier is related to the social network rather than the religious belief, and so it seems strange that that type of social network can't be replicated without the religious element.

>167 _Zoe_: making the world better in a non-religious way
That's harder to do. It's more task-oriented for one thing, forces participants into action which is a much higher bar than attending church. What's happening here in the wake of the election is several glimmerings of groups focused on specific issues, with local organizations and institutions sometimes involved.

>168 qebo: Well, I think there's still a difference between talking about how to do something and actually doing it. Talking doesn't automatically imply action, though it encourages it. Groups like Pantsuit Nation are focused on generally standing up against discrimination etc., not on one particular issue.

>169 _Zoe_: standing up against discrimination
But that is an issue, more general than some, more specific than others.

Talking doesn't automatically imply action
It is highly uncomfortable to simply be among task-oriented people; they understandably get annoyed when work needs to be done and volunteers are not forthcoming.

For those of Christian extraction who are not actually Christian in belief, such as myself, the classic congregations to join are Quakers and Unitarian Universalists. I've had several friends who joined UU when the kids were young, then unjoined once the kids got old enough to prefer other activities. I've tried both, but invariably found the ratio of amorphous socializing to effective action is too high for my taste. I prefer a more flexible situation of getting involved in issue-oriented groups that don't meet so relentlessly frequently, but where I gradually get to know individual people. The trouble is this is more difficult to piece together, especially for new arrivals to a city.

>170 qebo: Your last paragraph ties in to the point I was trying to make: there's an element of church teaching that focuses on how to be a good person, and many churches have some concern with social justice—running soup kitchens etc.—but people who gather in a common belief about how the world should be aren't necessarily particularly task-oriented. They learn and listen and try to incorporate the teachings into their own lives to some extent, but they also socialize with other like-minded people. None of that needs to be explicitly religious.

I've actually noticed that a lot of the worthwhile events in Oneonta are associated with the Unitarian Universalist church, and there's certainly some appeal there—but I'd prefer something that just didn't have the religious focus at all.

>171 _Zoe_: None of that needs to be explicitly religious.
Nope, it doesn't, but it still comes with a lotta trappings of group cohesion. (Have you looked into Ethical Culture?) Some people like this. Some people don't. Some atheists are keenly interested in non-belief as the cohesion factor, and there is for example this: https://foundationbeyondbelief.org/ . Many people want to make the world a better place, but differ on exactly what this means, so cafeteria-style joining becomes simpler: issue A and issue B, but not issue C. I'm not sure how this got to being an argument?

It may be that more churches will become less explicitly Christian. Certainly around here, and we've got a hefty Bible Belt contingent, I know people associated with standard Christian congregations whose actual beliefs, so far as I can tell, don't greatly differ from mine except they have more of a spiritual component or a tangible image of God. The Christian part gets stripped down to the golden rule plus tradition. I didn't grow up with the tradition and I'm unfamiliar with the rituals and the language, so for me they cause anxiety rather than provide comfort.

>170 qebo: Interesting discussion. I'm afraid we undervalue the 'social lubricant' of amorphous socializing, as you titled it. It can be difficult for me sometimes, but more difficult to find a venue where that can take place with a feeling of safety (light on the religion and behavioral criticism). On the other hand, we do quite a bit of it here, behind the safety of our screens.

I often watch or read 'cozy' mysteries, many of which take place in small towns. The town itself becomes a social entity, if only in fantasy. For many of us, a workplace serves that purpose, but for those of us who are retired, like me, or work from home, like you, or work mainly with a younger generation, like my sister and Zoe, it might be hard to establish that social community without something like a church.

What about Rotary, Lion's Club, or other overtly service oriented organizations? Anything in your areas that might do? My sister seems to have found a group through her crafts activities, although I don't know how many share her political views, and how strenuous a selection process she goes through when making a new contact.

This is a very interesting discussion, though I don't have much more to add on the subject which hasn't been already said. It is not surprising that people who belong to a cohesive social group like a church are happier and healthier - and those things increase wealth by decreasing loss of work due to depression and ill-health. I don't think a group would necessarily have to be religious for it to work that way, but the problem is that religion is the most efficient way to get a group like that to cohere. People can be united in a common cause, say protesting a pipeline going across a Native Reservation, but such a cause disperses as soon as hope is gone or good news is brought. And, anyway, the point of religion is supposed to be the morals (i.e. helping each other out...even though this doesn't always happen in churches), whereas the point in protesting a pipeline is not necessarily to help those around you.

>171 _Zoe_: I'd check the UU church out anyway - go to a service or two, check out their particular structure. I left a UU church because there wasn't any/enough religion/spirituality involved. Lovely people but it was all about activism. It differs from church to church (and minister to minister.)

Ahhh, so tired. I keep thinking that I'll get back to this interesting discussion once I have more energy—hopefully this weekend!

On the bright side, classes are done for the semester. Now I just have a couple of review sessions and the final exams, plus grading. It was a good semester overall, and I'm glad that I taught Precalculus for the first time, but I'm looking forward to having no new preps in the spring.

>177 _Zoe_: interesting discussion
Relevant:
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/12/the-cure-for-post-election-...

Wouldn't it be nice if 2017 was a year of peace and goodwill.
A year where people set aside their religious and racial differences.
A year where intolerance is given short shrift.
A year where hatred is replaced by, at the very least, respect.
A year where those in need are not looked upon as a burden but as a blessing.
A year where the commonality of man and woman rises up against those who would seek to subvert and divide.
A year without bombs, or shootings, or beheadings, or rape, or abuse, or spite.

2017.

Festive Greetings and a few wishes from Malaysia!

This is the Christmas tree at the end of the Pacific Beach Pier here in San Diego, a Christmas tradition.

To all my friends here at Library Thing, I want you to know how much I value you and how much I wish you a very happy holiday, whatever one you celebrate, and the very best of New Years!

Happy holidays to all! And thank you in particular to Paul and Roni for digging up my neglected thread. The hoped-for post-semester energy hasn't materialized yet, but at least I have a bit more time to rest now.

Looking forward to your continued company in 2017.
Happy New Year, Zoe

A bit late, but here's the link to my new thread: https://www.librarything.com/topic/246514

I didn't quite finish up my December reporting either; maybe I'll get to that eventually, or maybe not.