Tea and Tomes

Back of the Book: Combining the best of fantasy traditions with her own unique vision, Sarah Ash brings to dazzling life a new saga filled with epic adventure and unforgettable characters--set in a world teeming with political intruige, astounding magic, and passion both dark and light.

Raised by his protective mother in the sunny clime of the south, Gavril Andar knows nothing of his father—-or the ominous legacy that awaits him. But now the man who ruled the wintry kingdom of Azhkendir, a man infused with the burning blood of the dragon-warrior known as Drakhaoul--has been murdered by his enemies.

Expected to avenge his father's death--and still his unquiet ghost-- Gavril soon learns that becoming Drakhaon means not only ascending to the throne of Azhkendir but slowly changing into a being of extraordinary power and might. A being that must be replenished with the blood of innocents in order to survive...

( Thoughts: )

It's been nice to have a job again for these past two weeks. But after tomorrow's over, I'll only have a week left before being unemployed again. I'm both looking forward to it and not.

Looking forward to it, because I've been on a serious reading kick lately, and having to work for 8 hours a day puts a limit on the hours in which I can curl up with a good book. Not looking forward to it, because it'll mean no money again, and a very short deadline in which to find another job.

I am grateful to have this job, though. It came at the perfect time. I'll have just enough money from it to pay this month's rent, buy my medications, buy next month's bus pass, and pay about $100 on my debt. It came right when I needed it.

I'm keeping my fingers crossed that another job will come along soon after this one finishes. Blogging's not pulling in enough money to pay the bills yet, after all!

Not so much an interlude from reading in general but a break between reading some heavier volumes. I only today came into possession of the books from Erin Hunter's Warrior series that I haven't yet read, and so since I can read those books pretty quickly, I think they're going to take priority over books like The Selfless Gene and the next book in The Guardian Cycle.

I know, I'm a sucker for YA novels. And while I have my problems with that series, it keeps the right blend of fantasy elements and wild cats to keep me reading. I'm always surprised, though, by how disturbing those books can be. Character death all over the place, sometimes very graphic death, and this is the stuff that intended for kids and young adults to enjoy. Realistic, but it even causes me to recoil sometimes. (The death of Tigerstar, for example. I rarely meet people who have active imaginations and who've read these books that don't feel some internal roiling sensation when they think about him being disembowled and dying nine times in a row.)

Shouldn't take me too long to get through them, and since I got e-book copies, I'll still end up reading other books in the meantime. E-books get read on my laptop, after all, and I have other hardcopies of books that I can take with me out of the apartment to read at work or on the bus. So it's not like YA books are going to dominate the next month of blog posts or anything.

Writing novels on your cell phone can apparently get you a lot of money and readership.

If you're in Japan, that is. I somehow don't think that sort of thing would catch on as quickly in North America. While it's a novel concept (if you'll excuse the pun), it seems to be the equivalent to posting things on FictionPress. And often that's viewed here as great for beginners but nobody will ever take it seriously.

Which is a shame, because I've actually read some wonderful novel-length pieces of original fiction on FictionPress.

Maybe it's just that here, Posting fiction online is viewed as only a short step beyond posting angsty teen poetry. Most writers start in their teens, after all, especially the ones who'll post their work online.

And most websites set up to host amateur fiction will claim first publishing rights, which makes it hard to take good amateur fiction and submit it for publication elsewhere. Short of hosting your fiction on your own website and doing some hard-core advertising for yourself, you're not going to build up much of a readership that will convince publishers to look at you and still be able to get yourself published.

I too have swum the murky waters of FictionPress. The second downside to such sites is that the good stuff is like a needle in a haystack.

Or to put it more aptly, a diamond in a shithole, if you'll pardon my use of language. The crap tends to overflow quite often. Bad spelling, lousy punctuation, and people claiming, "It's not for school, so I don't care about grammar and syntax." Even if you're good at what you do, that's the image you have to fight against, because you're lumped in with all the others who think that way.

There are success stories, of course. But they're few and far between, and often consist of someone gaining a fan following and then having some new and unseen project snatched up by publishing companies rather than something they've already put online.

But best of luck to the online writers anyway. Most of the authors we know and love started off that way, or something similar, maybe by having short stories appear in school papers before the Internet took off the way it has.

We all start out small. And sometimes, like the girl who's studying for her high school entrance exams and who wrote a book that has grossed over half a million US dollars, we grow up to be big.

I told you all it wouldn't take me long to finish the sequel!

I don't really have much to say about this one, not that I didn't say in the earlier commentary for Too Young to Die. The protagonist in this book has switched from Melissa to her best friend Jory, which was probably for the best given how Melissa dies at the end of this book.

Someone has to die, after all. It's a Lurlene McDaniel novel.

I forgot to mention a more few staple traits in her books. The protagonist nearly always has a friend who's more boy-crazy and fashion-conscience than she is, there's always some internal debate about whether or not to have sex (but in the end the protagonist makes the "right choice" and abstains), and the protagonist muses about God at least once per novel.

One of these days I'm going to put pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard) and write a few novels that use the same formula, only switch things around a little. Maybe make one of the characters gay (I have yet to see a gay character in one of her books) or make somebody's religion something other than Christian. Just so that such a novel actually exists.

Ahem, yes, all ranting aside...

I recently took a look at my old reading records (I keep a spreadsheet of the books I read in a given year), and it looks like 2005 was my best year thus far, with me having read 85 books. (Keep in mind that I only started keeping these records in 2005, so that doesn't mean that 85 books is the most I've ever read in a single calendar year.) I think I'd like to beat that record this year. I won't list a specific number, but I will try to get more than 85 books read by the end of December 2010. I've got plenty of books that need reading, after all, and until I find steady employment again, plenty of time to read them in.

And when I do find steady employment again, I'll keep making time to read. I posted recently about how I sometimes find myself reading more when I have other things to do, like work, since I can read on the bus there and back, as well as on my breaks and my lunch. Depending on how long the bus commute is and how long my work shift is, I could have 2 hours a day, 5 days a week, with nothing else to do but read.

Sounds like heaven to me!

Back of the book: On the day the world ends...
...Mau is on his way home from the Boys' Island. Soon he will be a man.

And then the wave comes -- a huge wave, dragging black night behind it and bringing a schooner which sails over and through the island rainforest.

The village has gone.

The Nation as it was has gone.

Now there's just Mau, who wears barely anything, a trouserman girl who wears far too much, and an awful lot of big misunderstandings.

Wise, witty, and filled with Terry Pratchett's inimitable comic satire, this is a terrific adventure that -- quite literally -- turns the world upside down.

( Thoughts: )

I admit, I've been doing precious little reading lately. It seems like everything in conspiring to make me put the books down instead of picking them up. Cooking, cleaning, helping out friends... Not that I'm complaining about having to help friends in need or cook good meals for myself and for R, but I admit I'd love to have a spare day in which I do nothing but sit around and read. Or at least some scheduled time to do nothing but sit around and read.

This is one of the things I miss most about having a job. (Besides the paycheques, I mean.) Even if I couldn't read while I'm on the clock, I'd have my breaks and my lunch, 15 or 30 minutes where I could read a book. I'd read on the bus to and from work, too, and depending on where my job was in relation to my apartment, that could be anywhere between 10 minutes and half an hour each way. Because I wasn't doing anything else that immediately needed doing or could be done, I'd read, and I'd get through a lot of books quickly that way.

But now that I'm unemployed and at home, I am, strangely, finding that I have less time to read because there's more at hand that I can do that should be done. It's one thing to not worry about washing dishes while you're sitting on a bus going to or coming from work. It's another thing to ignore the dishes that need washing when they're only two rooms away. I should be doing housework then. I have no real excuse not to.

It's sad when I want a job again so that I can have more free time. People who disparage stay-at-home mothers for being too lazy to go out and get a job don't know what they're talking about. Keeping a house is hard work, and usually thankless. A house is expected to be kept clean, so when it is, nobody says boo. Things are just how they should be, so why should any special thanks be given? But when it's messy, oh, that's when the excrement hits the rotating blades, so to speak.

R isn't like that much, thankfully. He has his moments, as we all do, but he's careful to show his thanks. He's appreciative when he finds out that I washed two loads of dishes in a day, even if the reason I washed two today is because I didn't wash any yesterday. But he knows I did something, and made this small place a little better.

And I have to admit, I don't find housework as onerous as I used to, now that I'm doing it more often.

I just wish I could read while washing dishes. I don't count audiobooks as "books read", so it doesn't count if I listen to a chapter or two of something while washing or dusting. No, I could books read as "books read", and that's the way it'll keep being until I lose so much eyesight that I have to rely on audiobooks all the time!

I'll have a little time to read more today, though. I'm going uptown to meet my mother for lunch (10 minutes reading on the bus, 20 minutes reading while I wait for her lunch break to start, 10 minutes reading on the bus home), so I'll have that little series of breaks to enjoy a good book in. I think I'll start Terry Pratchett's Nation, since the other book I'm currently reading is an e-book, and I don't fancy carting my laptop around with me.

And now, to enjoy a hot cup of tea! (Like anybody's surprised!)

Back of the book: The heroes of Valdemar are the Heralds, an ancient order trained to be emissaries, spies, judges, diplomats, scouts, councelors, and even warriors. But they are more than just protectors of the kingdom. Chosen from all across the land, from all walks of life, and at all ages, these unusual individuals are Gifted withablities beyond those of normal men and women. These are Mindspeakers, FarSeers, Empaths, ForeSeers, Firestarters, FarSpeakers, and other who are uniquely suited to protecting their realm. Sought and Chosen by mysterious horselike Companions, they are bonded for life to these telepathic, enigmatic creatures. With their Companions, the Hralds of Valdemar ride patrol throughout the kingdom, protecting the peace and, when necessary, defending their land and monarch.

Now, sixteen authors join Mercedes Lackey, adding their own adventurous touch to the heroes of this well-loved fantasy realm.

( Thoughts: )

I wonder sometimes why there have to be so many interesting books at my fingertips. Honestly, to get through my reading backlog will probably take me years, and that's assuming that I don't get slack and just reread a few old books for old time's sake. There are over 100 books on my bookshelf that need reading, and I don't even want to think of how many are at the library that are just begging me to open them up and absorb what they have to tell me.

Sometimes I wish I could stay unemployed but still have steady income coming in from somewhere, enough to get me by, simply so that I can spend my days reading enjoyably.

Right now, I've come across a copy of Good Book, by David Plotz, which is calling to me. But I still need to finish Changing the World, and Knitting Yarns and Spinning Tales. Neither of those books will take long for me to finish, admittedly, but I want to start this new one so badly that I'm almost tempted to have another "book per room" thing going on, breaking up my reading according to which room of the apartment I'm in at the time.

But while that way leads to more books being read at a time, it also leads to them being read slower. I've done this in the past, and I actually get less read this way. The books take longer to read, and while I may finish a few within days of each other, if I total them up it ends up being fewer books than if I'd just read one straight through.

Maybe I should do more in-debt reviews of books. Maybe then people will pay me to review their books, and I can actually make my living by reading.

Yes, and while I'm dreaming, I'd also like a pony. No, make that a Companion. I'm still on a Mercedes Lackey kick, after all. A Companion would be so much better than a pony.

Maybe it's a good thing that I can't visit the library as often as I'd like. If it were up to me, I'd spend just about every day there! But getting there, especially in the winter, is such a pain that I limit trips. At least by limiting my visits there I can't talk myself into getting out just one more interesting book, oh, well, maybe two more interesting books... You see the problem?

But talking about a thing never accomplished it. I'll go back to my books now, and perhaps put on another cup of tea. The temperature's dropping, and we're supposed to get a lot of snow and very high winds over the weekend, so anything warm is welcome right now.