I’ve completed my reading goal for the year! I set my goal on Goodreads back on January 1, 2014. This year I shot for 70 books, which I wrapped up in a mad rush during the last two weeks of the year. One interesting thing I’ve discovered since finishing my undergraduate (with all the general education and other random classes attached) is that I willingly read a lot more non-fiction than I used to. Case in point: In 2012 out of my 75 books, 4 were “for fun” non-fiction. This year, I’m split even at 35/35. I think it’s a...
I’ve completed my reading goal for the year! I set my goal on Goodreads back on January 1, 2013. This year I’d lowered it to 50 books, hoping to use my extra time and tackle more classics. I’m not sure how well I accomplished that, but I did pass my goal with a final count of 63/50. Not all of these books were published in 2013, but below is a list of my favorites from my reading list this year. 1. The Knife of Never Letting Go – Patrick Ness Young Adult fiction. Huckleberry Finn meets Firefly. Fantastically written. Though the...
When I was preparing my manuscript for my magical beta readers, I decided to give it a complete read-through in the most merciless way possible. If I expected them to read a 90,000 word novel for me, I wanted to at least make sure they weren’t tripping over typos! There are three ways you can listen to your text: By reading it out loud to yourself (or, even better, with an audience), by asking someone else to read it to you, or by employing a robot. I’ve done the first two before and they work well. However, people sometimes read...
Last year I used Goodreads to set a goal of 100 books in 2011, and I made it! This year I gave myself a bit of slack and aimed for 75 books. I wanted to focus more on non-fiction, but… didn’t quite do as well as I would have liked. Non-fiction and I are still learning how to get along. Out of my 75 books, I present: My best reads of 2012! (more…)
Wrote this while I was abroad, but I didn’t get the chance to take it to Tolkien’s grave. Thought I’d share anyway. Dear Dr. Tolkien, I wanted to thank you for changing my life. When I was a little girl, my dad would read your books to me and my siblings. He read them three times to us, when I was eight, and again when I was twelve, and again when I was fourteen. When I was twelve I prayed for Frodo after he was stabbed. Later I remember running to the book and turning to the passage in the...
