January 2018 Recap

Wanna know how I started off my year? By breaking my wrist while ice-skating in a country where I didn’t speak the language! Yay!

But seriously, though travelling with a cast made everything harder, it was totally worth it. I had an amazing time with my best friend and I miss her so much already.  I also got to go to Norway which has been a dream of mine for a long while… okay it was just the airport but even that was gorgeous. I can’t wait to travel again.

Advertisements

Book Review: The Fifth Season

Title: The Fifth Season

Author: N. K. Jemisin

Series: The Broken Earth Trilogy #1

Genre: Fantasy

Publisher: Orbit

Release Date: August 4th, 2015

Rating: ★★★★½

This is the way the world ends. Again.

Three terrible things happen in a single day. Essun, a woman living an ordinary life in a small town, comes home to find that her husband has brutally murdered their son and kidnapped their daughter. Meanwhile, mighty Sanze — the world-spanning empire whose innovations have been civilization’s bedrock for a thousand years — collapses as most of its citizens are murdered to serve a madman’s vengeance. And worst of all, across the heart of the vast continent known as the Stillness, a great red rift has been been torn into the heart of the earth, spewing ash enough to darken the sky for years. Or centuries.

Now Essun must pursue the wreckage of her family through a deadly, dying land. Without sunlight, clean water, or arable land, and with limited stockpiles of supplies, there will be war all across the Stillness: a battle royale of nations not for power or territory, but simply for the basic resources necessary to get through the long dark night. Essun does not care if the world falls apart around her. She’ll break it herself, if she must, to save her daughter.

Today I’m going to talk about this under-the-radar book, you’ve surely haven’t heard of it. I mean, it’s not like this trilogy has won two consecutive Hugos and is a favorite to win a third. Jemisin is toootally not considered one of the best voices in fantasy at the moment.

Surprise! This book is really good. Objectively, it’s some of the best fantasy I have ever read.

WWW Wednesday #2

Hi guys! I’m back with my second take of WWW. Classes started for this week, so I haven’t even opened a book in the last few days. This semester is going to be so hectic. I’ve made enough progress to warrant an update though.

So, in case you don’t know: WWW Wednesday is a weekly meme originally hosted by  MizB at A Daily Rhythm, and now found at Taking on a World of Words. It is made up of three questions (or Ws) are:

What are you currently reading?
What did you recently finish reading?
What do you think you’ll read next?

So let’s dive in.

Top 18 Books I Want to Read in 2018

There are a ton of books I want to get to this year… my ever-expanding TBR is a looking at me. These, though, are the ones I want to make a priority. I’m terrible with new releases but I managed to find 8 that I really want to get to. Add to that the backlist books I’ve been swearing I’ll get to for a while… Most of these are standalones or the first book in a series, because I have so many of those they’re getting their own post. I hope I can look back on this list at the end of the year and not end up an utter failure.

Reading and Writing Goals for 2018

‘Tis time to set goals for this year.

I’m famously bad at keeping my New Year’s resolutions. I’m the typical person that manages to walk/eat healthily/write for about a week before things go back to the way they were. That doesn’t mean I don’t manage to set goals for myself and follow them through. I do write/eat healthily nearly everyday; it’s just the time of the year when I started doing those things wasn’t anywhere near January. For me, the wish to change has to come from somewhere else than a new year.

That is why these are all goal that have been over due for a time. Some I’ve already started even. I just want to put them all down to hold myself accountable, and maybe commiserate a bit with some of you that struggle with the same things.

1. Read more from ownvoices authors

Last year I wasn’t as mindful as I could have been when it came to reading from marginalized voices. By the end of the year, I picked up many writers of color and found amazing books as a result. So yeah, this year I’ll definitely make the effort to seek out ownvoices authors in the genres that I love.

2. Read less books by US authors

Honestly I think the discussion of diversity in the book community kind of falls short regarding non-English books (I mean this a whole, not individual bloggers btw). I want to change that when it comes to my own reading. I often just refrain from picking books just because they’re translated, but it’s dumb because right now the translation is the only way I could access those stories. And I can read in Spanish soo… Yeah, this will be the year of me reading less American authors.

3. Take my time while reading

I don’t want to rush through books like I did last year. If a book took me more than five or four day to finish, I would start getting really frustrated. It wasn’t even the book’s fault! So I just want to read when I want, and I know that I’ll come across books I won’t be able to put down. With the others, I just want to be okay taking my time.

4. Finish the series I start

I have a shelf on Goodreads specifically for the series I want to finish… and, oh boy, they’re a lot.

5. Get more into poetry

I want to read a lot more poetry this year. I read some contemporary this year and really enjoyed it! I do have to say, the simplistic-Kaur style is kind of not for me, but I am interested into the awesome stuff that is being published. I also want to read more classical stuff. I have a collected edition of Yeats’ poetry and I’ve loved what I have read from it so far. I don’t know… I just want to get lost in words this year.

 

1. Not stop

I still think it’s a miracle that I’ve written nearly everyday for the last two years. I’m so bad at, like, keeping up habits that I just thought this writing thing would fizzle out. Seven books later, my worst year is that it could still happen. So yeah, let’s hope it won’t.

2. Get myself a critique partner

I feel ready to have someone actually read my books. It’s hard to think of my stories objectively, so having a person who could read over them and actually tell me what works hahah it would be a lifesaver. Also I’m terrified because no one has gone near my books yet.

3. Tighten my prose

While writing, this is probably the aspect I neglect the most. Although my last novel has given me a lot of room to experiment, sometime I feel like I’m writing on auto-pilot, just getting through character beats and plot points. When I first started writing, words were amazing on themselves, I was as in love with them as with the story. I hope I can return to that.

4. Write what scares me

This is kind of one of those goal I’m technically already doing. Writing my current novel has been such a challenge. I feel like I’m learning to write all over again because it is so different from everything I’ve written before. Structurally, character-wise, plot-wise, I feel lost and can’t stop second guessing myself. But I want to keep doing it, because it’s going to make a better writer. So yeah, break out of my comfort zone.

5. Get into more poetry

This one ties in with 3 & 4. I’ve made some terrible attempts at poetry before, but they were fun. Again, I want fall in love with words once more, and what is poetry but words at their most exposed. And whenever I’ve tried to write it, I feel like I don’t know enough about poetry (so that’s another reason why I want to read more). Like I’m just not smart enough for it.

Fuck that, I’m going to try regardless.