Currently Reading: 24 March to 06 April 2019

Currently Reading

- The Sophists by W.K.C. Guthrie (02%)

- Cranford by Elizabeth Gaskell (17%)
- The Priory of the Orange Tree by Samantha Shannon (05%)

- Queer Magic by Tomás Prower (14%)

- Hunting Prince Dracula by Kerri Maniscalco (12%)

- IT by Stephen King (25%)

- Journey to the West by Wu Cheng'en (24%)

- The Original Illustrated Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (39%)

* * *

This most recent weekend was wonderful. We went on an adventure in Lancaster, PA and I stumbled across a glorious bookstore called Dogstar Books and I found a ton of stunning old books, like a full collection of Charles Dickens books that I wanted with a passion that I didn't have money for...they do buy used books as well, and not just antiquarian stuff from what I can tell of what I bought. I got mostly newer printed books. One is a classic though....does that count?

I also bought two new manga for myself while I was at Zenkaikon over the weekend. I picked up Sacred #1 by Lizbeth Jimenez and Seven Deadly Sins #3 by Nakaba Suzuki. Sacred was okay. She definitely needs an editor before publishing new volumes, to catch all of the spelling errors. The story, though strange, was decent. I'm going to post a review on it soon. 

I didn't get much in the way of writing done this month. I'm saving it for April's Camp NaNo. 

Got a brilliant tote from BooksandTea on Discord. It's a quote from Samantha Shannon's The Mime Order series. I've read all but the short story and I loved it. When I saw it up online, I wanted it very much. 

Keeping with the new tradition, it seems, I will write up the list of all of the books I acquired this month of March: 

- Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler

- They Both Die at the End by Adam Silvera

- My Hero Academia #4 by Kohei Horikoshi

- Queer Magic by Tomás Prower

- A Question of Holmes by Brittany Cavallaro

- A Discovery of Witches by Deborah Harkness

- Shadow of Night by Deborah Harkness

- The Book of Life by Deborah Harkness

- Girls of Paper and Fire by Natasha Ngan

- The Night Tiger by Yangsze Choo

- Archenemies by Marissa Meyer

- Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi

- The Priory of the Orange Tree by Samantha Shannon

- The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas

- Dragon Pearl by Yoon Ha Lee

- A Frozen Heart by Elizabeth Rudnik

- Sacred by Lizbeth Jimenez

- Seven Deadly Sins #3 by Nakaba Suzuki

- Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf

- The Boy of the Painted Cave by Justin Denzel

- Solomon's Puzzle by Loris Nebbia

- Peter Pan by J.M. Barrie

- The Bride's Kimono by Sujata Massey

- Russian: A Self-Teaching Guide by Kathryn Szczepanska

- Russian Practice Book by Nina Wieda

- The Sophists by W.K.C. Guthrie

- The Gods of the Egyptians v1 by E.A. Wallis Budge

- The Gods of the Egyptians v2 by E.A. Wallis Budge

- Geek Love by Katherine Dunn

2019 Quarterly Review - First Quarter

Like last year, I set up a series of goals for myself for 2019. As the first quarter (January-March) has recently ended, I figured it would be a good plan to go over the goals and see how well I'm doing toward my reading and writing plans for the year. I'll list each goal individually and my progress and thoughts on the goal. 

1. Meet/Exceed my Goodreads Goal of 50 - So far, I am at 31/50 at the posting of this update. 18 or so books ahead of schedule. Something tells me if I keep going at the pace I am, I will definitely meet this challenge before July. I'm doing well. There haven't been all that many books that I didn't like, and only a small handful that I loved. My favorite so far of 2019, and the number 1 book on my top favorites list is going to be Renegades by Marissa Meyer. 

2. Review all of the books I read - This one is an easy goal to accomplish. There were a few repeat reviews, because I read too many of the same series in a row (Assassination Classroom by Yusei Matsui, lol I read like 8 of them in a single afternoon), but they were all reviewed on both my personal blog and on Goodreads. 31/31 reviewed so far for 2019. 

3. Read IT by Stephen King - Another one that's going well. I have made it to the quarterly goal (p289, exactly 1/4 of the way) into this book and I am going to be continuing from 290 to 578 in the second quarter of the month. It's definitely an interesting read...

4. Enter and Win Camp NaNo/NaNoWriMo - Technically void right now, as the two camps take place in the second and third quarters, and NaNoWriMo proper is in the fourth quarter. This will be better done up come next quarter's review when at least one of the camp's has passed. 

5. Stick to my book-buying restriction - This one has been a big fat failure. I probably should have actually settled on a restriction that I wanted. First it was I could only buy a book for every five that I read, which put me at 5 books total so far for 2019. Then I was like "how about just the number of lines available on the page?" That does increase the amount of books I can buy, but I didn't stick to that either in January when I bought like 40. I'll do better in the next quarter. 

6. Publish (by any means) at least 2 stories - This is another goal that's not quite ready to go yet. I'm working on stories that are nearly ready for publication to sites like AO3 and/or FanFiction/FictionPress. More to tell in the next quarter. I may look through my older things and see if anything is ready to go up soon with a little editing. 

Hopefully, April-June will be a better review than January-March. Haha I will work on finding a book-buying restriction (not ban) that I can actually stick to during April. 

T5W: Collectibles on Bookshelves

For this week's T5W they have us talking about collectibles on our shelves. I used to be firmly in the camp of only books on my bookshelves. Lucky for me I've gotten over that. Now on my bookshelf I have a ton of things. My manga shelf has Funkos all over it and my miscellaneous shelf has well, a large collection of things from cups to figures of magicians to the cremated remains of my cat. 

I really don't keep much else on the shelves....so....I guess that's about it? Enjoy this picture of my Funkos collection. A small selection (Annie from AoT, Blue-Eyes White Dragon, and Haruhi Fujioka) aren't visible...but they are on the shelf.