Birdbrain(ed) Book Blog

The Sunday Salon (Feb. 20)

I almost didn’t do a Sunday Salon post this week, because I didn’t feel like I had anything to talk about. I have nothing to complain about, after giving myself permission to have a life away from blogs and social media. I feel much more relaxed this week (sort of) than I did last week, or ever for the past couple of weeks. Of course, I still worry about things– who doesn’t?– but I don’t feel stressed, which I think is the important part.

I just realized I haven’t been paying any attention whatsoever to my reading challenges for the past month, so I guess that means I’m quitting them. Whoops?

My 23rd birthday is this Friday! It’s my first birthday as a no-longer-in-college person, which I guess is exciting. I remember thinking last year that I was going to do something interesting and new in my next. Not one of those “I spent a year living on top of an elephant” kind of things, but something interesting to ME.

Since I’m hoping to go abroad to teach English later this year, I think that counts as the something new and interesting. Right? Right.

Books read this week:
21. Sandman Slim – Richard Kadrey [rating: TBD] e
22. The Great Perhaps – Joe Meno [rating: TBD] e

Books reviewed this week:
14. Cat in the Mirror – Mary Stolz [rating: Borrow it]
15. Thirteenth Child – Patricia C. Wrede [rating: Borrow it] e
18. The Red Necklace – Sally Gardner [rating: Borrow it]

Currently reading:
I’m still slowly making my way through The Whitechapel Horrors, but I’m also going to start Madre by Liza Bakewell, because she’s coming to a bookstore near-ish to me on Saturday and I think I’m going to go see her. About 63% sure I’m going on Saturday, anyway. Maybe more like 56% sure.

In My Mailbox (16)

In My Mailbox is a weekly meme hosted by The Story Siren (who was inspired by Alea of Pop Culture Junkie‘s This Week in Books). Basically you just post about new books that came into your house over the past week, whether in the mail or by getting them at the library or by buying them in a store. Capiche?

Contest win:

Bought/Downloaded:

Sponsors

See that ad in the top left corner? Yup, it’s still of sponsor Kevin Gerard, author of the Conor and the Crossworlds books, a YA fantasy adventure series! It’ll be up there for another two months or so, but don’t forget to check out the website now if you’re interested.

The Sunday Salon (Feb. 6)

Being unemployed and any classes to distract me, I’ve been spending all of my time sitting indoors reading books or surfing the web. In fact, the only time I’ve been outside in the past month– besides the Disney trip– has been to check the mail. Which is maybe once a week! That’s pretty terrible, and it doesn’t make me feel like I’m making the best use of my time.

I’ve been trying to think up free things for me to do outside of my apartment, but most of them (like sitting in the park and reading) require better weather than what we’ve currently got going on. However, after updating Albuquerque’s events page on LibraryThing, I’ve realized that there are a lot of free-to-the-public book events going around in my town, and that I could possibly go to them!

But there’s an issue– all of the authors that are having book events here in the next few months are ones that I haven’t heard of before or they’re doing events for new books of theirs, books I haven’t read yet. Which brings me to my question: do you think I should go to the book events anyway? What I’m worried about is a) being pressured into spending money on books I don’t want to buy, b) being a weirdo who doesn’t have a book to get signed, doesn’t know anything about the author, and who doesn’t want to buy a book, and c) offending the author(s) and being shunned at every other book event from there onward.

On the one hand, it’d be fun to go and meet new authors and be more active in the local book community, and if I never went to an event for an unknown author I’d only go to, like, one event a year (Albuquerque isn’t real important for a big-name-author’s publicity tour, apparently). On the other hand, I’m not sure if it’s worth even going if I haven’t at least read ONE book by the author at the event.

Do you go to book events knowing nothing about the book and/or the author? Or do you just stick to events for authors you’re already familiar with?

Books read this week:
14. Cat in the Mirror – Mary Stolz [rating: TBD]
15. Thirteenth Child – Patricia C. Wrede [rating: TBD] e
16. Postmortem – Laurel Saville [rating: TBD] R
17. Skating to Antarctica – Jenny Diski [rating: Buy it]
18. The Red necklace – Sally Gardner [rating: Borrow it]

Books reviewed this week:
04. Walt Disney’s Way – New Word City [rating: Bin it]
05. The Boxcar Children’s Mysteries #1 – Gertrude Chandler Warner [rating: Borrow it]
08. Daddy Long Legs – Jean Webster [rating: Buy it]
10. Scrapped Princess: A Tale of Destiny – Ichiro Sakaki [rating: Borrow it]

Currently reading:
Back to The Whitechapel Horrors! I, er, lost it for a bit, but after cleaning up some of my book stacks I’ve found it again and am ready to continue onward in the Sherlock Holmes vs. Jack the Ripper epic.

In My Mailbox (14)

In My Mailbox is a weekly meme hosted by The Story Siren (who was inspired by Alea of Pop Culture Junkie‘s This Week in Books). Basically you just post about new books that came into your house over the past week, whether in the mail or by getting them at the library or by buying them in a store. Capiche?

For review:

Bought/Downloaded:

Sponsors

I sold my first ad space! Exciting, right? Well, I think it is! Big welcome and thanks to new sponsor Kevin Gerard, author of the Conor and the Crossworlds books, a YA fantasy adventure series! Mr Gerard’s ad can be seen in the top left sidebar, and it’ll be up there for the next three months or so.

I’ve also decided to add another affiliate program alongside my usual Amazon one: BookDepository.com! I know not everyone can order stuff from Amazon, and that shipping worldwide is much cheaper through BD. I’m hoping that having another option available will be beneficial to all my subscribers who are outside the US (or who just hate Amazon).

The Sunday Salon (Jan. 23)

I’m feeling a bit sick today, so I’ve spent most of it in my bed reading. To use my bedside lamp I have to switch my clock’s plug out for the lamp’s plug, which means I don’t know the time unless I can motivate myself enough to get out of bed and check the computer’s clock. I’m not a big self-motivator when I’m ill, so for most of the day I had no idea what time it was.

Surprisingly, I liked it! Not knowing the exact time means I wasn’t thinking “oh, it’s taking me so long to read this book,” or “it’s been three hours since I last checked my email,” or “I’ve wasted forty-five minutes painting my nails.” Normally I’m quite obsessed with time, you see– I think it’s a by-product of having been in school so much, where I needed to know exact times and dates so I didn’t miss a class or something. It’s gotten so bad that even when I’m on vacation (or just unemployed, as I am now) I’m constantly checking the time, asking what time it is, and calculating how much time I have left in a day before I need to go to bed so I’ll sleep enough hours before waking myself back up at a certain time so I don’t “waste” the whole day sleeping. And so on.

I didn’t realize it before, but doing that’s exhausting. Simply unplugging the clock has made me SO much more relaxed than I normally am over the course of a day. Today I’ve just been doing whatever I want, without worrying about the hours ticking by, and it’s been great.

Eventually, whenever I get a job, I’m going to have to plug the clock back in and worry about time again. But for now I think I’m going to leave it unplugged for a bit. It’s made my reading so much more enjoyable, because I’m not worrying about how many pages I have to read within a certain amount of hours in order to finish a book “on time.” I’m no longer worrying about how long it’s taking me to finish a book. I’m just enjoying the book!

I’m hoping that I can take this feeling with me whenever I go back into “clock world,” and that I can keep myself from worrying overmuch about how fast or not I’m reading a certain book, or how many books I’m reading a week/month/year/whatever. Because, really, that’s a pretty silly thing to worry about.

Do you worry about how you use your time? Do you worry about how fast you read books? How do you keep from going overboard with time management?

Books read this week:

• Brain Jack – Brian Falker [rating: TBD] e
• Scrapped Princess: A tale of Destiny – Ichiro Sakaki [rating: TBD]

Books reviewed this week:

• The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms – N.K. Jemisin [rating: Buy it] e
• Lockdown: Escape from Furnace 1 – Alexander Gordon Smith [rating: Borrow it] e
• Heidi – Johanna Spyri [rating: Borrow it] e

Currently reading:
Jackaroo by Cynthia Voigt. I’m a little more than halfway through now, and it’s AMAZING. I could barely tear myself away from it to write this post!

In My Mailbox (12)

In My Mailbox is a weekly meme hosted by The Story Siren (who was inspired by Alea of Pop Culture Junkie‘s This Week in Books). Basically you just post about new books that came into your house over the past week, whether in the mail or by getting them at the library or by buying them in a store. Capiche?

No books in the mail this week, although I did download a lot (like, 50+) public domain books from Project Gutenberg this week. Mostly I grabbed them from the detective fiction shelf, which has a lot of interesting authors I’ve never heard of before. I’m most excited about the Raffles books, though, because I’ve been meaning to read them for a while now.

The Sunday Salon (January 2)

So it’s that time where I make a list of things I’m going to try to achieve in the course of the year, and where I look back at 2010′s resolutions and see if I did what I wanted to do. Huzzah! First, a look back at 2010′s goals: Continue reading »