2015 Challenges

I love a good challenge!

Last week I was thinking I'd sign up for a solid half dozen or more challenges to really give myself a kick in the butt. Then I reflected on how much time it was going to take to organize all of that, time I could better spend reading and reviewing the HUGE NUMBER of books I've requested for review in January and February (seriously, I have a ton of reviews coming up guys!).

I've decided to stick with just a few challenges right now, and if I stay on top of them, and find other challenges that appeal, I'll add them as I go.

A to Z - L (2014)

I'm doing the A to Z Blogging Challenge this year. The basic idea is to blog nearly daily with each day representing a different letter of the alphabet. My entries will be short and book-related.  

L is for...

Literary Fiction!

When fiction doesn't fit a genre, it tends to be categorized as mainstream. I usually think of it was literary - or simply literature. These are books that make for good book reports in school, that are often about the message or the journey rather than where you're going to end up. It's about beautiful language and dazzling linguistic artistry, often (but not always) prized above a thrilling plot. (And this isn't to say these things are valued in genre fiction either, because they are and I think genre fiction takes a bad rap on some fronts because it's entertainment as well as art).

These are the books that get grants to be written, that receive big literary prizes and that tend to make good book club books as long your book club doesn't mind being occasionally pretentious (and does actually read and discuss books).

I've read some excellent literary fiction - I majored in English so it wasn't optional. I also love nineteenth century novels, and I tend to mentally lump these into the same category, because there's a certain linguistic elegance to even those that were considered pulpy and 'genre' at the time they were written.

I find that literary fiction is never my go-to. These are usually the books that I think I should read rather than the ones I pick up for enjoyment.  

Basically, I guess all my A-Z blogging so far is leading me to underline the pleasure I find in reading, and the emphasis I put on entertainment over enlightenment.   

A to Z - K (2014)

I'm doing the A to Z Blogging Challenge this year. The basic idea is to blog nearly daily with each day representing a different letter of the alphabet. My entries will be short and book-related.  

K is for...

Kindness!

This is more about blogging book reviews than about books specifically. Tonight I visited a bookstore and I noticed several books on the shelves in hardcover and fancy paperbacks that I have had the opportunity to review recently or that I have upcoming. It put a little spring in my step, I'll admit. 

So today I want to acknowledge the *kindness* of the authors and publishers who have generously shared ARCs and review copies with me. I realize that it's all part and parcel of the marketing process, getting the word out about these books and such, but I hugely appreciate the opportunity each book provides.

That's all for today!

A to Z - J (2014)

I'm doing the A to Z Blogging Challenge this year. The basic idea is to blog nearly daily with each day representing a different letter of the alphabet. My entries will be short and book-related.  

I do realize that I'm a day late here (and two for I) but I've decided that I'm just going to catch-up and carry on. It's that or give up on the month and I didn't actually expect to make it this far in the first place. 

J is for...

Jim Butcher!

When I started reading Urban Fantasy, my first authors were all women - Patricia Briggs and Karen Chance come to mind. I loved their books, and have stuck with their series. It didn't take long for me to trip over Jim Butcher's name as one of the more significant authors in the genre.  

The Dresden Files is easily on my "top ten series to follow" list. This was the first series I read with a male perspective, and I really appreciated how that set it apart from the typical kick-ass female urban fantasy novel. Even more than this, I love how Dresden's world has evolved over the course of the series. I have never felt as though his story rotated around a romantic entanglement, nor that the stakes have had to escalate infinitely to keep things interesting. Dresden's work as a wizard-for-hire is not exactly atypical of the genre, but I think is leveraged to excellent effect. His career choice provides all kinds of interesting plot opportunities and doesn't become a side note after the first book or two.

Butcher has also written epic fantasy, but I haven't read any of these yet. I imagine they're also incredibly fun and engaging!

Are you a Butcher fan?  Did you ever watch the short-livedDresden Files television series?  

A to Z - I (2014)

I'm doing the A to Z Blogging Challenge this year. The basic idea is to blog nearly daily with each day representing a different letter of the alphabet. My entries will be short and book-related.  

I is for...

Intrigue!

One of the first online retailers I used for ebooks was Harlequin. They have a ton of imprints - some of them are the short, cheap, disposable books you spy on shelves of grocery and drug stores. Others are books that you would never expect are published by Harlequin - no scantily clad, embracing men and women on the covers!

I'm a fan of both varieties, but I want to focus on one of the shorter imprints  - Intrigue. This series features some mystery, usually involving an officer of the law, that often requires someone to be protected while trying to solve the case.

I like these for a couple reasons - one is that I can usually read on in a couple hours. I know I'll get a happy ending at the end because that's a requirement of the imprint, which means I can also expect good to triumph over evil - yay!  I also like that these have some kind of actual conflict built in - whatever the central crime plot is, I'm guaranteed something more threatening in the book than miscommunication or previous prejudices blocking romance.  

I don't quite want to call these books junk food but they're definitely like a reading snack!  And thank goodness for ebooks, because my poor house would be overrun if I had to have all these in physical copies....

A to Z - H (2014)

I'm doing the A to Z Blogging Challenge this year. The basic idea is to blog nearly daily with each day representing a different letter of the alphabet. My entries will be short and book-related.  

H is for...

Hope!

While I can get by without a happily ever after, or happy for now, ending, I always need some hope. Give me an uplifting ending, one that ends on a positive rather than on crushing defeat, depression or death. Don't make me think the characters have no chance at survival, at happiness, at resolving their issues in the future. Give them hope! 

This is part of my problem with 'literary,' serious or any novel that's more about the journey than the destination. I want both to be good. I don't want to shut the book and be crying sad tears, to feel emotionally crushed. I read fiction books for pleasure, and I want them to ultimately be pleasant.

I can appreciate a beautiful story, and I've read my share of sad, heartwrenching books. But I always have to make myself pick them up - these are never impulse-read books.

Maybe I'm just a superficial reader?  If so, I'm okay with it. I'll take happily superficial over miserably enlightened when it comes to my books any day.  ;)

A to Z - G (2014)

I'm doing the A to Z Blogging Challenge this year. The basic idea is to blog nearly daily with each day representing a different letter of the alphabet. My entries will be short and book-related.  

G is for...

Genre!

I wanted to take today to address genre directly and generally. Anyone who reads is familiar with major genres - bookstores and libraries use them to sort books into categories to make them easier to find (and sell, I imagine). Roughly, if you love mysteries, you might like other mysteries (rather than other random authors with a similar last name, for example), so it's useful to have all the mysteries together.  

So there's a couple of problems with genre today. One is that so many books cross-genre, and the other is the popularity of sub-genres.

The latter problem first:  one of my favourite genres is urban fantasy. This is a specific category within fantasy books that features a modern, usually pseudo-contemporary setting with elements of the supernatural/magic alongside the mundane of our world. There's a sense of the familiar mingling with the mysteriously, magically unfamiliar.  

There is a *lot* of urban fantasy on the market right now, and at brick-and-mortar stores, it's all piled in with fantasy, so I have to sift through to find anything new. (And don't get me started on the issue of series and whether those are stocked in their entirety or not!)

Romance is another genre with a lot of sub-genres - contemporary, historical, medical, mystery, etc., etc..  Now, it would be a lot of work to try to split out all of these, but I feel that for the browsing public, wouldn't it be nice if some of the larger sub-genres were given shelf-space together?

Now, books that cross-genre. These are also quite common and I hate trying to find them in the bookstore. The biggest one that I run into are urban fantasy novels with a romantic plot. Inevitably I find them in romance in one store and in fantasy in another, and it drives me batty! I have to imagine that publishers market these books as a specific genre, can we not all agree to abide by that, at the very least?  

Do you find current genre labels satisfying? Do you love bookstores and hate trying to find specific books/genres in them?   I have the most luck now just wandering into a general section and grabbing anything that looks pretty, regardless of genre. 

A to Z - F (2014)

I'm doing the A to Z Blogging Challenge this year. The basic idea is to blog nearly daily with each day representing a different letter of the alphabet. My entries will be short and book-related.  

F is for...

Fantasy!

As a kid, probably ten years-old or so, the first genre I ventured into when I shifted from the children's section of my local library into the 'adults' section (there was no young adult section at that time!) was fantasy. I picked up The Elf Queen of Shannara by Terry Brooks, used it for a school book report, and never looked back.

One of the things I liked about fantasy novels at that time was that they were thick. If I received one as a gift, it could last a couple days. When my parents gave me Wizard's First Rule by Terry Goodkind for a birthday, my mom was sure it would take me a week to get through it.  

Ha.

I still love fantasy, for so much more than that sense of childhood nostalgia. I love fantasy because it can be shallow and deep, simple and complex, epic and silly, romantic and terrifying, with a mystery or two, with good friends and terrible enemies forced to work together. There can be an element of magic, of stealth, danger and fun. So many limitless possibilities and all outside my own realm of possibility - though of course elements usually ring quite true.

There's something about a band of adventurers coming together to venture forth or a thief double-crossing their guild or a mage summoning some big spell that just gets my imagination going.

Urban fantasy, which will be my 'u' post later this month, is easily my favourite sub-genre at present, and has been for a number of years. 

Do you love fantasy? Have a favourite author, or a series recommendation?  

I haven't been watching Game of Thrones - I can't watch until the kids are in bed and there are too many other things right now that claim those precious evening hours (I'm looking at you multiplayer video games!), but I hear great things. Are there other fantasy series I should check out?

A to Z - E (2014)

I'm doing the A to Z Blogging Challenge this year. The basic idea is to blog nearly daily with each day representing a different letter of the alphabet. My entries will be short and book-related.  

E is for...

Epilogues!

What role does an epilogue fill in a story for you? 

I've read epilogues recently that were used in very different ways and I wanted to reflect quickly on that.

In one case, the epilogue provided a jump into the future, to allow the reader to enjoy the characters' happily ever after. True, it gave me an opportunity to see the couple as a happy unit, unfettered by the conflict of the book. It also gave a glimpse of what their married life would include -children, careers, etc..

In the other case, the epilogue gave a post-climactic battle wrap-up, highlighting who survived with what wounds, and giving a sense of hope that moving forward the heroes had a plan for success.

Obviously these reflect different genres, and also a difference between a standalone novel and a series novel. That said, I was satisfied by neither epilogue. Either the future was glossed, any remaining points of tension smoothed over to create an upbeat final note for the novel OR the book came to a rush of a close and the epilogue was used to quickly pull all the threads together and hook the reader in for the next book.

This isn't to stay that epilogues aren't useful, and that they can't provide satisfying closure to a story. Just that my recent encounters with them have been not entirely positive.  

How do you feel about epilogues? Great way to provide closure or too often used in place of addressing all those dangling threads?

What about prologues? 

A to Z - D (2014)

I'm doing the A to Z Blogging Challenge this year. The basic idea is to blog nearly daily with each day representing a different letter of the alphabet. My entries will be short and book-related.  

D is for...

Demons!

I love urban fantasy, and I'll probably write an entire post on it later this month so I'm going to steer away from commenting on it as a genre. Demons are an important staple of the genre. While vampires, werewolves and angels tend to get a lot of attention, demons fill a significant catch-all category, much like faeries.

There's so much variety in demons. I'm reading City of Bones by Cassandra Clare right now and it features a demon that's massive, disgusting, very otherworldly with a physical and an ethereal presence. Then I pick up the Hollow series by Kim Harrison (which I really need to catch up on!) and we've got a whole new set of demons. Karen Chance's Cassandra Palmer series has some completely human-esque demons, but they have extra powers. 

I think that unlike the specific categories, demons (and faeries, but today is 'd' :P ) don't have quite so many expectations placed on them as a 'type'. I find that sometimes it's really just used in place of 'monster.' And isn't that interesting, because I think if you through out the word monster, you're distancing readers from your 'creature' - a monster is clearly other... while a humanoid demon who is charming, eloquent, bipedal... that could be you or me!  We can relate!

A to Z - C (2014)

I'm doing the A to Z Blogging Challenge this year. The basic idea is to blog nearly daily with each day representing a different letter of the alphabet. My entries will be short and book-related.  

C is for...

Collections.

Specifically, collections of short stories. Years ago, I always associated short stories with school. Because outside of some teachable point, I didn't really see the point in a short story. I wanted longer stories wherein more 'stuff' happened. 

Sophisticated point of view, right?

A few years ago I picked up one of the "Mammoth Book of" collections, and therein discovered that short story collections were a great way to 'meet' new authors. Then I picked up one of the recent urban fantasy collections, and it was an opportunity to visit with some of my favourite characters in an episodic format - usually a short case handled by one of the many urban fantasy private detectives or enforcers or what-have-you.

I'm still not sure I could pick up a more literary style collection without having flashbacks to essay-writing and 'unpacking' meaning and so forth, but I can certainly see the value in these collections now.

What's your experience been with short story collections? Do they drive you nuts? Leave you wanting more? Or can they be fulfilling in their own way?

A - Z - B (2014)

I'm doing the A to Z Blogging Challenge this year. The basic idea is to blog nearly daily with each day representing a different letter of the alphabet. My entries will be short and book-related.  

B is for...

Billionaires.

Just a quick rant, but why are so many heroes in romantic novels extremely wealthy? I understand that money can be a limiting factor for romance (in that a significant amount of money is required to finance some of the grander romantic gestures), but surely it's plausible to write about a successful businessman who doesn't own small islands and a fleet of private planes?

Billionaires are the 'worst' of the bunch because their wealth goes beyond ridiculous. Why do we accept so many in our fiction when it's such an exclusive club in reality? Perhaps the bigger question is how much should reality infringe on romantic fiction....

I find that Harlequin romances are the 'worst offenders' for billionaire romances. Are these just romantic escapism as its most extreme or what?

A to Z - A (2014)

I'm doing the A to Z Blogging Challenge this year. The basic idea is to blog nearly daily with each day representing a different letter of the alphabet. My entries will be short and book-related.  

A is for...

Antagonist!

If you've read my reviews, you know how important it is to me that I'm able to connect with one or more of the main characters. I need to understand them, care about them, preferably find some way to relate to them so I can empathize and invest in their situation.

So what about the antagonist? 

Well, lately, a lot of the books I've read have been more about personal struggle than a clear villain. And those that have had them - I'm thinking of you Full-Blood Half-Breed - have had antagonists that I want to root for, to some degree. When I'm able to empathize with the villain, I know I'm guaranteed an emotional and exciting story.

Antagonists have to be motivated by something that I can comprehend, that seems logical even if I don't agree with it on a moral/ethical level. If I can at least see their point-of-view while disagreeing with their methods, then there's so much more tension in the book.

Who are your favourite literary antagonists? 

Sunday Update - March 30, 2014

Every other Sunday I post a general news post. These might preview things I'm planning for the two weeks following (such as a new feature - On My Mind), they might reflect on books I'm looking forward to, or that I've recently heard of and want to discuss.  

I'm hooking into: 

This is a meme hosted by the Caffeinated Book Reviewer wherein everyone gets to share their news for the week. It's a great opportunity to see what's happening out there in the blogosphere, so go check out some other Sunday Posters!

Today's post is going to have a few sections:

1. What Happened?

2. COYER - March E-reader Clean-Out

3. DNF Reviews

4. Currently...

5. Year-Long Challenge Update

6. March Site Stats

7. Blogging A-Z?

Sunday Update (3)

Every other Sunday I'll be posting a general news post. These might preview things I'm planning for the two weeks following (such as a new feature - On My Mind), they might reflect on books I'm looking forward to, or that I've recently heard of and want to discuss.  

I'm hooking into: 

This is a meme hosted by the Caffeinated Book Reviewer wherein everyone gets to share their news for the week. It's a great opportunity to see what's happening out there in the blogosphere, so go check out some other Sunday Posters!

Today's post is going to have a few sections:

1. COYER - March E-reader Clean-Out

2. February Site Stats

3. Currently...

4. Year-Long Challenges Update

Blogging/Reading Challenges for 2014

I really want to reach out into the blogging community and meet people - there's some truly fabulous folks reviewing books!

So, part of my effort is going to be to join some of the ongoing blog challenges!  

First up:

The 2014 Rewind Challenge !

This is hosted by Coffee Bean Bookshelf, a blog I just recently discovered and really enjoy! I love Bree's voice, and I'll definitely be following her blog in the future. I also love some fo the features she has going, and they may inspire some new features here! 

Anyways, the 2014 Rewind Challenge is all about clearing out some of your TBR shelf.

I have huge TBR shelves - not including the books in my husband's collection that I want to pick up, I'm sitting at about 75 physical books, and maybe another 75 ebooks, not including review copies.  

I'd like to power through 40 of these books already sitting on my shelves this year - 20 from each pile would be fantastic!

Second:

2014 Monthly Key Word Reading Challenge

Hosted by Bookmark to Blog, I like the interpretative quality of this one. Every month there's a new set of keywords to choose from, and you need to read a book with one of those words in the title. The twist is that you have a bit of leeway - a book with the word 'cake' in the title would be okay for the keyword food. I'll be curious to see what other people come up, and to see if there's any overlap or connection between what everyone selects as their book that month.

January's words are "Angel, Secret, Clock, Black, Day, Wild" and I think have a "Secrets" book coming up later this month, so I've already got a plan for this month!  

Are you participating in either of these challenges? What are your goals/book for January? Which other challenges should I be joining? Do you have a favourite?