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.
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
You know that nasty illness that’s been going around and lasts forever. Well I got it. I can’t breath through my nose and I’m hacking up a lung every five minutes.
And we are moving (IRL) at the end of the month. So I’m trying desperately to pack everything but the computers and the TV and have an Internet connection set up before I move. Important stuff.
But being sick and packing dont mix well, and for some stupid reason I can’t make myself get extra sleep because I might miss a raid. Plus we got the second season of Chuck on DVD, so I really can’t convince myself to sleep.
Professor Layton returns to us in this fabulous continuation of his puzzle solving and crime busting adventures. And he certainly doesn’t disappoint, with a mysterious murder, a stolen box, and a town shrouded in mystery.
Love, redemption and curiosity fulfilled await us at the end of the journey and it is well worth the effort.
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~):
The outside of the house we live in is being painted, which means there is a huge mess of scaffolding covering the entire front. This includes our front stairs with five feet of clearance, and two treacherous low hanging bars to duck underneath.
Its the second bar that got me. Jumped me while I was just minding my own business, walking up the stairs to my front door and WHAM!
Once resigned to the fact that PUGs are necessary and need to be suffered, finding them becomes the challenge.
Sadly in World of Warcraft the Looking for Group function is horrible. It is incredibly limited and hardly anyone seems to use it.
On my server the big alternative is the trade channel. This channel is only available while inside a major city. Since it is literally the only channel that gets used with any frequency everyone joins it, the good, the bad, and the ugly. Imagine every PUG experience rolled into one very overused channel. It’s awful and I avoid it as much as possible.
Overall finding PUGs is not that easy, especially if you are a damage (DPS) class, as they tend to be a dime a dozen. Either you sit in town reading through agonizing trade chat, or you join the severely limited in game Looking for Group feature.
One of the suggestions that I got from my WoW raiding 101 write up was that I hadn’t mentioned anything about PUGs and how those should affect peoples class role choices.
PUG – Acronym for the phrase ‘pick up group’ – meaning to play as a team with random people.
Pick up groups are something most aspiring raiders will have to deal with, especially in World of Warcraft as it is today. Unless of course gifted with a very dedicated set of friends to play with, or part of a large guild that has enough daily active members to provide frequent group and raid buddies.
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.
