My Brain on Books XIII

I am reading for The Office of Letters and Lights the folks who bring us NaNoWriMo today as I love what they are doing for literacy with their Young Writer's Programs and because I've participated in NaNo every year since 2004 and will again next month and would like to give something back if only kudos and link love.  I'm putting this plug at the top in hopes some who stop by will check out their site and see all the great things they do to foster love of reading and writing and story in kids. If you happen to be doing NaNo this year you can find me there as joywrite

This post will be organized like a blog inside a blog with recent updates stacked atop previous ones. I may be posting some updates on Twitter @Joystory and the Joystory fb fanpage. But this is where I do anything more than a line or two.  Including mini-challenges unless required to have a separate post..   


Be sure to scroll to bottom of this post for advice on how to ward off those scary nap attacks. You won't be sorry.

An Ode to Our Dewey
by Joy Renee

Under the leaves your spirit lives.
Every page we turn whispers your name,
Reminding us of all your legacy gives
To every reader and cheerleader,
Every hub host, event organizer, 
And mini-challenge creator,
As well as every angel and gift donor.
This thing you created gives us hope,
A community that helps us cope
With the frets and fears and stresses
That block and press us.
Energized now with the joy
Of sharing and caring and playing,
Cheering and giving and winning
And with the power of story
To transform and inform us,
We will the next day
Reenter the fray
With a bolstered trust
In the Spirit of Community
And the Love that weaves
The web of its Unity
While under all the leaves
Your spirit sings our names.

  

Get Carried Away -- Open a Book

moar literary kittehs

3:00 AM -- I just spent the last hour writing the Ode to Dewey above.  I should have published the 2AM update first.  Now I must take those meds and there very well may be no further updates.

2:00 AM -- And again I go hours without an update.  Nothing much to add I guess.  Still reading The Return.  Unlikely to be moving on to anything else.

I'm closing in on the time I have to take my night meds as I can't push them much further off schedule.  But once I take the Trazadone I'm on borrowed time.  It could be 30 minutes or two hours but eventually I won't be able to keep my eyes open and before that my vision will blur too much to read anyway.

I miss the me that could stay up 24hours.  But too much is riding on the med and sleep schedule.  Mood stabilization is the key to everything I want and dream for my future.

7:00 PM -- I keep forgetting to come update.  Too focused on the books.

After posting the 10AM update, I spent most of an hour looking up the number of pages for each of the titles in that list.  I just learned this is something I need to make as much a part of my initial notes as Title, Author and date of my review.  I have been surprised several time lately when opening a book to start reading 3 or 4 days before my review is due only to discover it is over 350 pages.  Which would be OK if I didn't have any other commitments on my agenda for those days but that is seldom true.

After completing that task I set out to open the three NF PDF and getting view preferences set--font size, line width etc.  I made the mistake of trying something I never had before in the options--auto scroll.  Turned out that doesn't work for me. With my vision issues it just doesn't do to have the words in motion.  But I couldn't figure out how to stop it.  I'd also somehow set it on a view that made touching the screen on my touch screen Windows 8 Aspire cause it to zoom several hundred percent instead of move the page and I couldn't figure out how to turn that off either.  Finally I just closed Adobe and reopened and it had returned to default.

With each of the three NF (see list below) I spent a little time reading before I moved on.  So it was after noon before I started reading the final pages of the book I reviewed last week, Her Dear and Loving Husband, and my guess at how many pages were left was off by more than half.  I think it must have been at least 50.  It is so hard to tell with some ebooks.  I was reading that one on my netbook because that is the one I first opened it on so that I could take it to dentist and counselor appointments and to read in bed.

After I finished it, about 4:30 I think, I was headed to update this post but took a detour to open the next book first, The Return by Melissa Douthit, which I thought would be a quick task and wasn't because: 1) opening Kindle for PC is never quick and 2) it wasn't in my Kindle library and 3) it wasn't in my Calibre library and 4) it wasn't in any of the folders I store downloaded ARCS in.  It finally dawned on me that I must have forgotten to download the email attachment.  Probably because I didn't want to wait for Kindle for PC to open at the moment I first found the email and then didn't put it in a task list either.

So I downloaded it and opened it in Kindle for PC which was already open.  But then I read for over an hour first.  I wanted to see how fast the story from Books 1 and 2 of this trilogy returned to me.  Not as fast as I'd like.  I participated in the tour for Book 2,  The Firelight of Maalda,  nearly two years ago.  And at that time was given Book 1, The Legend of the Raie’Chaelia,  as well as two prequel shorts.  I'm now wishing I'd had time to reread or even just scan through those approximately 600 pages.  But there's barely been time for the must dos lately.

And I just spent as long on this update, if not longer, than I typically spend on my daily posts.  Time just bleeds away.

10:00 AM -- My book list for today is primarily ARCs.  I have 10 blog tours between now and Thanksgiving:

300p The Return by Melissa Douthit -- October 21
334p The Thunderbird Conspiracy by R. K. Price -- October 30
366p Ghosts of Lost Eagle -- November 4
185 p Sinnerman by Jonathan M. Cook -- November 7
401p The Three Sisters by Bryan Taylore -- November 12
242p Blood Drama by Christopher Meeks -- November 15
200p Head Games by Erika Rummel -- November 19
84p Journey to Galumphagos By Seth Eisner -- November 21
107p With Friends Like These by L. Hunter Cassells -- November 25
335p Woman on Top by Deborah Schwartz -- November 27

Those are all fiction and if I finish The Return, I'll look for the three shortest ones in the list next rather than go in order.  I know Journey to Galumphagos is one of them as it is a kid's chapter book.  The idea is to get ahead a bit as starting in November my tour dates fall twice a week and I'm having a hard enough time getting them read at the pace of one a week.

For a change of pace I will also dip into these three NF:

Complexity and the Arrow of Time by (multiple authors) --  a collaboration of scientists, philosophers and theologians exploring the concepts of Complexity Theory.  a NetGalley ARC
My AWAI Copywriting course Installment 1 (of 13)  but hoping to finish 1 and begin 2.
The Marshall Plan for Novel Writing by Evan Marshall which came bundled with my review copy of his new writer's software based on it.  I would like to spend some time reading it while contemplating my NaNo novel which I need to get cracking on the prep work starting tomorrow!

Every single one of those are ebooks.  As is the one I'm actually going to begin with:

The last 20 or so pages of Her Dear and Loving Husband by Meredith Allard  which I didn't quite finish before I had to put up my review a week ago and move on to the next scheduled tour book.

9:30 AM -- Oopsie!  My imagination is so vivid sometimes it substitutes for reality.

It was so cold when the alarm went off at ten to five that I decided to stay in bed and read with the netbook on battery as I'd taken it to bed with me so it was right there.  There was enough battery left to read until the heat kicked on at 6.

But I guess I took that vivid image of myself doing it in my dreams instead of doing it.  This is the first time I missed the kickoff of the read-a-thon. :(

Now need food, tea, and meds before I get started.

And I just discovered that this didn't go live at five like I set it to.  Wonder of that has anything to do with opening it up again in edit to have it ready for update when I got up.

5:00 AM [I have this scheduled to go live at five.  But if this bracketed paragraph is still here I don't have my eyes unglued enough to check in yet.  I will be here soon as I can.]