Token Female Gamer

The March Reading Challenge:

Stand-alone Books (3) (Finish a story in one single book)
Anthologies (3) (Test new authors by reading novella collections)
Trilogy (3) (Wrap a storyline with three books)
Read one whose order in the series matches your rank among your sibling

After I started the challenge of reading nine to ten books a month it became obvious rather quickly that buying them every month just wouldn’t work. Then along came the library to save my pocket book (and my shelf space!!) Actually the library is quite ingenious as I can go online and request books through their online catalog. Then when the book has arrived at my desired library they send me an email and I go pick it up.

Its all been so easy that I have been somewhat enthusiastic in ordering books from the library. But it also means I have far too many books that don’t fit into this months challenge. Meaning its doubtful I will actually complete it.

By no means does that mean I will not be reading!! Its time to get through this huge stack of library books that I just can’t bring myself to send back unread. Doubly important I manage this feat before the library sends goons after me to come collect.

Happy reading!

January was a rousing success! Read all ten of my books, plus three more, and a few manga thrown in for good measure!

I finished early in Jan, mainly because of the moving. Now I’m into February (three days in already), ten books in a paltry 28 days, and I cant even find my books. Oh they are here somewhere, in a box. Should have been more worried about Feb. Going to have to cram to finish this month. Oh well.

Read a book by the following:
1. A Favorite Author – Visions of Heat by Nalini Singh
2. An Author that is “new” to you – Shiver by Maggie Stiefvater
3. An Author you had given up before but willing to give a second chance – Vampire Academy by Richelle Mead
4. A GoodReads Author – Light my Fire by Katie MacAlister
5. An Author born/died in the same year as you – (1977) Hex by Rhiannon Lassiter
6. An Author whose first or last name starts with the initial of your first name – (D) Undead and Unreturnable by Mary Janice Davidson
7. An Author whose first or last name starts with the initial of your last name – (B) The Invisible Ring by Anne Bishop
8. A male Author – Darkly Dreaming Dexter by Jeff Lindsay
9. A female Author – Fire Study by Maria V. Snyder
10. With more than one Author (anthologies included). – The Green Man: Tales from the Mythic Forest Edited by Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling

November completed with flying colors (okay I actually finished the last page on the last the thirtieth, but I still finished!), its time for a brand new reading challenge in the wonderfully cold month of December! Should be interesting to see how much I actually get to reading with all the holidays and events this month is filled with.

So here are the rules for Dec ‘09:

December’s challenge is called To Be Read (TBR) Clean-up Challenge.
DURATION: Dec. 1, 2009 – Dec. 31, 2009

Here are the rules:
1. Pick 9 books from your current physical TBR pile (preferably books that have been there for quite some time). Also pick 6 more books as ‘alternate’ reads just in case.

Unlike previous challenges, once you put up this list, you CANNOT CHANGE it. However, you can drop down to an alternate book, if you really cannot finish a book that you have selected in your original list. Fair enough?

Excellent Challenge as my bookshelf is starting to overflow. Here are my picks (only the most cultured literary list to be found anywhere ~snort~):

Token Female Gamer’s favorite books »

Geeky Teen Girl Romance!

As a general rule I tend to pick up anything that involves the words ‘gamer’ and ‘girl’ (or various forms thereof). Those two words have been tough to find in the same paragraph, much less in the same sentence. Clearly the machines that drive capitalism have scented a new market as these words have been showing up together far more often.

Gamer Girl completely capitalizes on the newest trend in geekyness; girls play computer games too! The thing that rankles most about the whole ‘targeted market’ is that the book is merely a standard teen romance novel coated with a layer of geek.

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Its time for the November Challenge!

November’s Challenge is a hybrid version of the popular A-Z challenge format. This month’s challenge is called Characters Alphabet Parade Challenge.
I have divided the alphabet into 9 groups and your goal is to match characters from your chosen books whose first or last names start with one of the given letters.

1. A/B 2. C/D/E 3. F/G/H 4. I/J/K 5. L/M/N 6. O/P/Q 7. R/S/T 8. U/V/W 9. X/Y/Z

Token Female Gamer’s favorite books »

Definitely harder to find character names out of books I haven’t read, but after some juggling I managed an acceptable list to match. Looking forward to reading them all.
Now that I’m four months into this, I’m finding it easier and easier to finish the books on time. I finished the October list with two days to spare! =)

<3 TFG

Even though it might like to disguise this fact, Goodreads.com is still very much a social networking site. Oh it might hide its overall intention with books, but without a community to rate and discuss the books, it would be one very dry site indeed.

I recently joined a group – a far more actively social section of the site. Groups are essentially forums that link into the Goodreads database allowing for easy book linking and displaying. They provide a place to discuss and share about the group topic.

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It’s been two weeks and I can’t seem to get anything done for the site. I sit and sit and stare at the computer and play WoW. (Of course I’m still playing World of Warcraft!)

But really I can’t blame WoW for my lack of posting, because I was in full throttle WoW mode long before my writer’s block showed up. (In fact it’s taken me five days just to write this little blurb.)

I blame Sookie and Elf Porn.

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Like most things ‘online social’, I found out about this via email invitation. This sneaky invitational spam, propagated by well meaning friends and email contacts, is usually the first thing to be deleted; yet the avid reader in me just couldn’t ignore this. (That’s how they getcha!)

At first glance I though ‘oh no not another social obligation site’, but with not much digging it became apparent that Goodreads is indeed about books and not just a clever front for social networking. Oh sure people review books and everyone gets their two cents, people friend each other and even authors get a chance to promote their own books, but in the end the books stand for themselves.

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This last week an unexpected package came in the mail. Rather intrigued I shook it some. Not getting any identifying sounds I proceeded to open it; curiosity winning over caution.
(What a waste it would be to send me anything that requires caution.)

Opening it, I was greeted with two of my favorite items – Firefly and The Sabriel Trilogy.

These two somewhat dissimilar items I consider almost my bread and butter of geekdom. In fact we own multiple copies of each just so we can loan them out as much as possible.

This particular set I had loaned out to friends of friends over two years ago. I really hadn’t expected them back. I give these items freely knowing, as has happened quite a few times in the past, that we probably will not get them returned.

Now that I have my loaner set back its time to find new unsuspecting victims and convince them that their geekyness is not complete without having watched FireFly and read Sabriel.

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Token Female Gamer

Author: Shelly Mazzanoble
Release: September 2007

Book Website: Confessions of a Part-time Sorceress

Review

‘OMG! So, like should I like totally heal someone or something?’

That is where this book is taking D&D – into the depths of the florescent malls, the spawning pool of the brand-name crazy Valley Girl.

It inspires visions of D&D, one of the last bastions of Geekdom, being besieged by a vast horde of vapid Valley Girls – all stepping to the beat of the N’Sync drums, in their name brand shoes, brandishing their name brand bags.

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