Category: Chatty

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April 2023 Wrap Up: I wasn’t here…

Posted on by Jennifer

~reading

How many books that I planned did I read?

Well, it turns out I didn’t do a TBR post for April apparently?? But as I recall I had about 4 books I was loosely planning to continue or start, and of those I finished one, started another (but might abandon it…), and have one listed to begin for a buddy read in May. In total though, I read 12 books somehow.

The Plan:

The Result:

Key for April: Green = finished, yellow = in progress, white = not started

The Magician’s Daughter might end up being a DNF for me. It’s not terrible, it’s just not that interesting to me. It’s not catching me at all. I don’t care at all about any of the characters or what they’re going through, and the magic is kind of interesting but not enough to make up for the rest. I have so many other books I want to read right now that I don’t feel like giving time to a meh one for me. We’ll see if I return to it (about halfway at the moment).

Besides that, as you can see, I went on a bit of a tear there! I read a ton of nonfiction graphic novels after seeing a list of them my library posted with a ton of interesting titles. I’d been considering re-reading Anne Frank’s diary now that I’m an adult, so when I saw there’s a graphic novel adaptation I was a bit nervous but also curious about how they would transfer it to this medium. Her writing is shockingly mature at times for such a young girl, but then again so were her circumstances.

Continue reading “April 2023 Wrap Up: I wasn’t here…” →
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2022 Year in Review, Part 2: Deep Stats from Storygraph & My Own Tracking

Posted on by Jennifer

Hey y’all! It’s a third of the way through 2023, so of course that means one thing: I should probably post the rest of my yearly review things from last year. xD I did part one already, which was looking at the wrap up stats given by Storygraph (referenced as SG through this post when I’m feeling lazy) and Goodreads, and had some of the basic things like number of books read, longest book, and so on.

This next batch is looking at the beautiful, amazing graphs that Storygraph hosts for each year, as well as information from my own tracking system that I enjoy looking at (primarily countries books are set in!)

“I’m a mood reader”

I most certainly am a mood reader, but I have managed to find ways to work with my moods and give some structure to my reading with monthly TBRs that are usually about 50% completed with the other 50% books I just decided to read during the month. xD

But what ARE my moods that I’m usually looking for? My top five are below, but note that books can have more than one mood (for example, it could be emotional and sad)

  • 51.7% of my books were emotional
  • 30.3% of my books were lighthearted
  • 29.6% of my books were adventurous
  • 27.5% of my books were funny
  • 24.8% of my books were reflective

This is pretty much the same as most years that I’ve tracked on SG. In fact, since 2019 it’s been that same order with lighthearted and adventurous sometimes switching places by a few books difference. But I’m pretty consistent it seems!

And my least commonly read book moods? Relaxing, inspiring, and challenging.

Continue reading “2022 Year in Review, Part 2: Deep Stats from Storygraph & My Own Tracking” →
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Spine Poetry: Recent Reads April 2023

Posted on by Jennifer

Hey y’all! Every now and then (more often “then” than “now”) I feel a bit loose and creative and slide into doing some poetry based on book titles. I’ve done a few of these before, though not for a while. I was reading some old ones and started getting excited to try it again. So here I am!

The selection this time is the last 5 books I finished. In this case, they’re almost all nonfiction, so I’m curious to see if that affects the difficulty in composing a poem or the tone of the result.

A Good Date

a pleasant diary:
we eat, practice adaptation
we talk, approach something
radical enlightenment
graphic four-legged loving
paradise


My Internal City of Learning

a pleasant town:
Buddha is life
death: enlightenment
approach loving everyone
practice adaptation
a Tibetan paradise

Continue reading “Spine Poetry: Recent Reads April 2023” →
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March 2023 Wrap Up: found my energy?!

Posted on by Jennifer

~reading

How many books that I planned did I read?

I planned 4 books in my first TBR, and then added nine more midway through the month in a frenzy. Of the original 4, I finished 3, and of the added nine I finished one, attempted one, and am in progress with one. Kind of all over the place!

In total? I read NINETEEN BOOKS WHAT THE F**K.

The Plan:

The Result:

Alright, I want to address Spinning Silver by Naomi Novik right away, because wow was that book just not able to capture me. I’d been avoiding reading it as I just had that feeling that it wouldn’t quite work despite sounding good on paper and enjoying some of the author’s other work. And I was correct. It jumped around between characters so quickly that I was never able to sink into any of them and was just annoyed to keep changing what I was thinking about. The story itself also just didn’t feel important or compelling to me. I got halfway through, slowly and painfully, and I’m just calling it: not for me.

A surprise winner, however, was A Witch’s Guide to Fake Dating a Demon! I don’t know a) how I missed hearing about it until a day before it published or b) how I still managed to be first on the waitlist for the library copy or c) why there’s so much witch-based romance novels in the last few years. However, it was extremely fun and spicy and I actually enjoyed it quite a lot. It reminded me a ton of the webcomic Brimstone and Roses that I loved, so it was great to have a novel of that, essentially. ^.^

Since there are so many here let me briefly summarize my thoughts on them:

👍 – sure / woo

  • The Karma Map
  • The Prince and the Dressmaker
  • Her Good Side
  • Good Talk
  • The Adventures of Amina Al-Sirafi
  • Teen Titans: Robin
  • Vampire Academy
  • Seven Percent of Ro Devereux
  • A Witch’s Guide to Fake Dating a Demon
  • The Art of Purring
  • Cat’s Café (#1)
  • One Cup at a Time (Cat’s Café #2)

👎 – meh / boo

  • Darling Girl
  • Have I Told You This Already?
  • Sorry, Bro
  • The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
  • Everyone Hates Kelsie Miller
  • Twelve Hours in Manhattan
  • Chloe and the Kaishao Boys

Review posted this month:

~stats

  • My reading was 16% nonfiction this month
  • My top genres were romance (7), young adult (6), and fantasy (5)!!
  • I mostly read books that were lighthearted, funny, or emotional
  • My average rating was 3.11
  • I traveled to England, India, and Philippines. In the United States I went to California (twice!), New York (twice!), Georgia, Pennsylvania, Montana, and Colorado.
Continue reading “March 2023 Wrap Up: found my energy?!” →
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In progress with SPINNING SILVER by Naomi Novik

Posted on by Jennifer

Spinning Silver by Naomi Novik

Current progress: 222/469 (47%)

Why did I start reading it?

I read her Temeraire series years ago and loved it! Admittedly, I wasn’t actually that excited to read this one because I had a feeling it wouldn’t totally hit right for me, but I had a Book of the Month credit to use or lose, so I got a copy of this book to try.

How is it going?

Alas… my initial impression was correct so far and I’m reaaaally struggling through this one right now. Right as I settle in with each character, I get dragged to a different one and totally lose the plot. I don’t care about any of them enough because I keep getting interrupted! It’s very annoying and 100% preventing me from sinking into it.

Posted in Chatty

Word Origins: all the football things

Posted on by Jennifer

Hey y’all! It’s about two months past the Super Bowl of American Football, and boy am I missing football. So to help curb my appetite for it, here’s a post of the origins of the word football (in both “soccer” and “American football” senses) and a whole bunch of related words that I learned are apparently just borrowed from things with COMPLETELY different meanings most of the time!

Origins of “football” (yes, both kinds)

When did it first get used?
1300s

What does it mean?
It’s first use just meant generally “an outside game where you kick a ball” and we have all really made it our own!

The reference to the ball used is like 1350s-ish so not long after it was officially named

“Soccer” as a meaning wasn’t until 1863!

And the American football meaning is in 1869.

That’s all well and good, but what I’m really interested with this is all the related-to-football words that have been dragged in from totally different words and repurposed.

What did it come from?
This is pretty unexciting. It literally came from the words foot and ball, since those were the main components of the game. 😅

All the other football words

Footer:
Used to mean: pedestrian (1600s)
but now it means: a kick at a football (1781)

Continue reading “Word Origins: all the football things” →
The shape of a coffee cup made up of black and brown words. There are steam lines coming off the top, too.
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Spot the Difference Game: Author Names on Book Covers

Posted on by Jennifer

Hey y’all! Not to get your hopes up with this title, as I do not expect this to be a common thing. xD But I saw one book cover as I was looking through NetGalley titles that stood out to me as being kind of a weird design choice. It was originally weird for a reason all it’s own, but then as I looked at all the other books on the page, it was clearly just weird overall.

So take a look at the list of books below and see if you can find the author name that stands out from the rest. Let me know your guess and why in the comments — then expand to see if we were looking at the same thing!

► Click here to see the “answer” that I was looking at!
    The book second from the left in the bottom row, titled My Darling Girl, has the author’s first name in lowercase, and second name in uppercase. That alone is weird — why mix?? — but literally every other book cover on this page has the author name in all capital letters! No wonder the lowercase caught my eye!

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My new reading goal, fueled by determined frustration!

Posted on by Jennifer

Alright y’all, I’ve abruptly gotten fed up with myself. I have all these books that I’ve been various degrees of excited about (from not at all to extremely) that are just taking up room on my shelves and NOT BEING READ! AUGH! It’s really starting to get to me — maybe as an early spring-cleaning frenzy is taking hold of me.

So my new abrupt reading goal for the foreseeable future is to read a bunch of books that I’ve actually spent money on. Then I can decide if I want to keep them, or get them off my shelves and make room for others! Gah! I’m running out of room, and if these are duds then I need them OUT!

So here begins my sudden change in TBR plans. 🙂 Although to be fair, my TBR this month is one I literally described as “slightly aimless” and I’ve completed 3 of the 4 books on that original list — AND the fourth book from that list is also on this one. xD

Book of the Month books that are gathering dust

Aardvark Book Club books that I had never heard of

Other books that I bought just to look at apparently

I’m ready to read with the fury and speed of a thousand suns!!!!

Posted in Chatty

Word Origins: Vampires, and vamps, and …lamias?

Posted on by Jennifer

Hey y’all! In honor of my comfort read mystery book that I posted about yesterday (Vampire Academy by Richelle Mead, by the way!) I’m doing a word origin post on vampire today. And I can’t believe I never thought of this before, to be honest, because it had quite a lot to dig into and learn!

Origins of “vampire”

When did it first get used?
1732, in French

What does it mean?
a “spectral being in a human body who maintains semblance of life by leaving the grave at night to suck the warm blood of the living as they sleep”

Or if you want to get a little loose with it, “night-walking, blood-gorged, plague-spreading undead corpses”

Continue reading “Word Origins: Vampires, and vamps, and …lamias?” →