I finished the year on a strong note with six real books (yay!) – pretty impressive considering all of the holiday prep (decorating, shopping, baking) I also did in my spare time. This brings me to a grand total of 59 books, or 118% over my goal of 50.

I had so much fun doing the Real Book challenge that I plan on participating again in 2015, and am also adding a few new reading challenges to my roster. See you next year, y’all!

Breathers: A Zombie’s Lament by S.G. Browne (2009)

 

This was a pretty slow month, real book-wise: I only read two of the suckers. There was also a children’s book in the mix (Edgar and the Tattle-Tale Heart) as well as one DNF (Lucy Lied), neither of which I included since it feels a little too much like cheating. Seeing as I’ve already passed my goal for the year, there’s no need to fudge the numbers anyhow! (wink, wink)

To Find a Mountain by Dani Amore (2014); reviewew coming soon

 

The bad news: I only read three “real” books this month.

The good news: I’ve already surpassed my revised goal by one whole book!

That, and I have a bunch of physical books for review slated to arrive soon (including The Walled City, which I’m super-excited about!), so November is sure to be a busier month, real book-wise.

The Truth About Alice by Jennifer Mathieu (2014); review coming soon

 

I read four whole “real” books this month! I know, I know; so sad. But I was sick for the good part of two weeks, preoccupied with VeganMoFo, and doting on two foster dogs who were soon on their way home. Full plate, I had one. Still 11 books ahead of schedule though. 50 books, I will beat you yet. As in next month.

By the by, if you have a chance to read The Underground Girls of Kabul? DO IT! It’s easily one of the best books of 2014.

Camp Utopia and the Forgiveness Diet by Jenny Ruden (2014); review coming soon

 

All nine of my reads this month were “real” books; this puts me at 44 for the year, which means I surpassed my original goal of 39 books. Yay me! Since I already bumped up my total goal to 101, I decided to increase my Real Books goal to an even 50. Still ahead of the game, yo!

The Secrets of Life and Death by Rebecca Alexander (2014); review coming soon

 

Just two real books to speak of this month. I know, so sad! I have a stack of ’em lined up for review in August, though, so I’m sure to do better this month!

Umbral Volume 1 by Antony Johnston, Christopher Mitten, John Rauch, and Jordan Boyd (2014); reviewed here

 

Six books down, with just six more to go! I might have to raise my goal, like I did with my Goodreads challenge. (Hint: it was 78.)

fwiw, The Ugly Princess and City of Stairs are both pretty awesome. Do check ’em out of you’re a fan of a) feminist fairy tales or b) dark fantasy with epic world-building.

Four books down in May, with just 12 more to go for the year!

The Shadow Year by Hannah Richell (2014); review coming soon

 

I only read three “real” books this month but, in my defense, I committed to reviewing a bunch of books through Library Thing, all of which were ebooks. Plus Peedee’s blood work came back wonky, he was diagnosed with cancer, and then he had his chest cracked open to remove said cancer, all in less than three weeks, so there’s also that. But he’s going to be okay! We think.

I’m totally looking forward to putting April behind me, is what I’m saying.

This month’s reads:

Parable of the Sower (Earthseed, #1) by Octavia Butler (1993); review coming soon

With a little help from my shiny new book jar (container, but hopefully I’ll upgrade soon!), this month I plowed through seven “real” books (and nine ebooks, but who’s counting? Oh that’s right ME!)

According to Goodreads, this puts me 27% over my goal. Good thing, since I’ll probably get less reading done once the weather starts to warm up. I’ve got dogs to walk, fallen branches to pick up, and a burned brush pile to sift through. (Now that we’ve finally hit the bottom, we found a ton of junk the old homeowners dumped in it. I KNOW RIGHT.) Chores, ugh.

Except for the dog walking. I love those little buggers.

This month’s reads:

Masque of the Red Death (Masque of the Red Death #1) by Bethany Griffin (2012); reviewed coming soon!

 

So the bad news is that I only read five “real” books this month, down from eight in January. The good news? I still read more books in total. They just happened to be ebooks! That’s okay, though, I’m still ahead of the game as far as the 2014 Read Book Challenge is concerned. 15%, yo!

Also this month: I started a book jar and added (extensively!) to my original list of hope-to-read books.

This month’s reads:

Joss Whedon and Religion: Essays on an Angry Atheist’s Explorations of the Sacred edited by Anthony R. Mills, John W. Morehead, and J. Ryan Parker (2013); review coming soon!

 

Hey everybody, I made a thing! Specifically, a book jar thing!

(Technically it’s a plastic food canister, but whatever. Next time I’m out and about, I’ll pick up something fancier. A fish bowl, maybe? I briefly considered using my Kill Bill lunch box, but then you can’t see all the pretty book titles inside.)

My book pile’s gotten so big – and its owner, so indecisive – that I finally decided to give ye ole book jar a try. The idea is simple: just write the names of a bunch of books you’d like to read on scraps of paper and, when it comes time to start a new title, draw one at random. I’ve been thinking about this for some time now – ever since I first spotted a book jar on (where else?) tumblr – and Sunday night finally provided the push I needed. I must have spent twenty minutes standing at my bookcase (and not one of the larger ones in the library – rather, the mini shelves in my bedroom!) poring over books, scrutinizing synopses on back covers, in a very slow and angst-ridden attempt to choose a new read. (I finally settled on The Edible Woman by Margaret Atwood. So much Atwood, so little time!) So the book jar it is. Unless I have a book in need of review, then it gets bumped to the front of the line.

Anyone care to guess how many slips of paper I ended up with? 50? 75? Try 115! I surprised myself, actually. I made four trips to the paper cutter before I was done; each time I underestimated how many more slips I’d need. And that’s not 115 books, either; I included series on the same slip, so there are way more than just 115 titles in that jar. Even at my current pace, it’ll take years to get through them all. I can’t believe how big my to-read pile has gotten!

After I was done combing through my own library, I had a few slips left, so I finished them off with books from my wishlist. When I pull those I grant myself permission to buy another book. Luckily, there’s a rarity – just six out of over a hundred.

Of course, this all begs the question as to how I’ll replenish the jar in the future. Add a new book every time I subtract one? Power through half the jar and then refill it? Read most of them? All of them? Add to it once a year, or as desired? SO MANY CHOICES! (Which is funny considering that’s what led me here.)

After the jump: my brand-spanking new to-read list. I guess this also qualifies as my new 2014 Real Book Challenge list, though some of these are electronic books (designated (e) a the end of the entry). My goal of 39 books is in fate’s hands now.

Well, that and mathematics.

(More below the fold…)

So the first month of the 2014 Real Book Challenge has officially drawn to a close, and I’m proud to say that I read a grand total of eight books during this stretch, all of them “real.” According to Goodreads, I’m 6 books (or 14%) ahead of schedule. (I suspect this buffer will be rather handy come summer!)

I was afraid that my numbers would be down, on accounta I finally began fostering this month – after years of wanting to and months of waiting for my application to go through (the holidays, yo!) – and they were initially; our first foster, a pony of a dog, is silly and friendly and quite the handful. But I quickly learned that he doesn’t so much want to play with you as he wants you to watch him play with a toy. (Not big on sharing, this one.) As it turned out, we spent many an afternoon relaxing in bed or chilling on the couch, his ginormous head resting in my lap as I devoured a book – and he, roughly half of our dog toys, in rapid succession. It’s a good thing we stocked up over Christmas!

So here’s the rundown:

I especially enjoyed Feed (Deadline was a bit of a letdown), The New Hunger, and Not a Drop to Drink. And before you judge me for Suicide Girls, just know that it was a cent on Amazon and I COULD NOT RESIST! (The verdict? About what you’d expect.) For those keeping score, Suicide Girls is also the only title not on my original list.

So it’s kind of funny that I decided to join the “Real” Book Challenge this year, since one of my resolutions is to make better use of my Kindle. I’ve been resisting for years – psychologically, I just haven’t been able to make the leap – but reality is forcing my hand, as it so often does: I just don’t have much space left in which to cram more books! Even stacked in double rows, my bookshelves are just about packed full. Also, I feel bad about using all that paper, even as I chase down every company and nonprofit which dares to send me unsolicited junk mail. I’ve been assuaging that guilt by buying used whenever possible, but even this strategy has its limits. (See: my previous point about lack of space.)

This year I set a goal of 78 books on Goodreads (three more than 2013’s goal, but eight less than I actually read; it works out to about a book and a half a week), and I figure that at least half of these will be physical copies; maybe more if I can keep one of my other resolutions, not to buy any new books until I get a handle on my existing book pile. (Yeah right!) So my goal for the Real Book Challenge is 39 physical books, landing me smack dab in the “Real Book Aficionado” tier. Personally I think I’m more of a Hoarder, but I guess we’ll see how things go.

This isn’t a definitive list of what I hope to read; more of a rough outline. So far this year I’ve already read Invincible Summer: An Anthology, Volume 1, by Nicole Georges, as well as Feed, the first book in Mira Grant’s Newsflesh trilogy; I’m also well into the first book on the list below, The Carvings Collection.

The first four items are actually books I accepted for review, so I’m locked into those. I also hope to finish up the Newsflesh series, and at least begin The Lunar Chronicles, Tankborn, Masque of the Red Death, and Dualed – though if I finish any of them, it’ll probably be on the Kindle, since I currently only own the first book in each series. I didn’t include them here, but I’d also very much like to dive into the ginormous piles of Margaret Atwood, Joanna Russ, and Anne McCaffrey books I’ve amassed.

There are also a ton of graphic novels on my list: Firefly, The Runaways, Marvel’s The Dark Tower and The Stand series. Maybe Joe Hill’s Locke & Key and 28 Days Later, too. I should really put off buying those until I finish the rest of my two shelves of comics. Yes? (No!)

I’ll be posting updates at the end of every month if you’d like to follow along. Better yet, join me!: You can find instructions and further details here. The cutoff for signup is December 1, 2014, so you’ve got plenty of time to mull it over.