Wheee!

Today is a good day, and I feel verbose. There's no point in feeling verbose if you can't talk, so here's a random blog post all about how happy I'm feeling.

That and other things, by the way.

I have 624... or whatever... books on my GoodReads to-read list.

This is a really scary number. I've officially passed the "100-books-past-500-books" point. I think once you pass that, there is very little chance you'll get below 500 ever again. Ever. Each book leads to another fifteen books. Each person you know might have loved or hated a certain book... and then you have to read that book yourself, to find out why.

Since I have... 5 books to read and little time in which to accomplish the feat (we leave Sydney, and a great deal of books behind, at 8am on the 16th), I've made a plan.

I'll be reading a few books, prioritizing others, and setting lots of time limits in order to accomplish it. Vitamin-R, a new Mac application my wonderful daddy bought for me, will be helping. A lot.

Reading is going well. It's really strange/comforting to be taking notes while I read. For some reason, I feel a lot better about the fact that I might actually remember what I'm reading. On the other hand, I'm using up my notebook, and I can't carry around a notebook and a book and a pen around all the time.

This will have to be figured out. Even if my handwriting sucks, I tend to prefer handwriting to typing when I'm reading. It's more... simple, especially when I'm reading on a screen. Writing, on the other hand, is much simpler when I'm typing. I'm faster that way.[397 words

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I feel really bouncy for absolutely no reason, and my head hurts a bit from trying to remember all the books I'm going to simply have to read now.

Does anyone else get this? It should be universal, I suffer from it so much. I have allusions to a billion different writers and books running around my head, along with a very, very certain-sure feeling that I simply have to read Ulysses now.

Back to How To Read Literature Like a Professor, Macbeth, and The Witch of Portobello! Wish me luck. Perhaps I might even start one of the last two tonight!

—

But I promised updates:

April 22^nd (for me… for the rest of the world it will be April 21^st at ten AM, to April 22^nd at ten AM), I'll be participating in You'll Love This One!'s group Toppler.

The point of a toppler is to read books that are already on your shelves. To facilitate reading, there are certain awards which you can receive, from the most ridiculous to the most interesting.

For example, in the February Toppler (theme: classics), one award was for reading a book written during or before 1^st century BC. In April (theme: read books you've wanted to for quite some time), one award is for reading a book in a new way. I have a fantastic idea for how I'm going to read The Old Man and the Sea, by Ernest Hemingway. I won't say a word now, though.

The fact that it's on a Sunday, that I told my dad the toppler would be on the 21^st, and the idea that this particular one is of a 24-hour variety (thus necessitating a loong day spent at home) makes my parents wonder, yet again, exactly from whose side of the family I descend. It doesn't bother me. I'm going to enjoy myself with Wuthering Heights, The Sun Also Rises, The Old Man and the Sea, and as much of Ulysses as I can.

The motivation for choosing these particular books is because of the awards. Otherwise, I'd be reading The Absentee, And Then There Were None, etc, which are for another challenge (which finishes June 30^th, and which I've read only 2/13 books for. Lovely, eh?). It's all planned out, particularly how I'll actually (hopefully) sleep in on Saturday.

And I'll be blogging during my break times— about a great deal of things, probably, including how tired I am. It will be very interesting, for posterity, to find out what on earth I was thinking at 17.

Books

Some of the first memories I have of reading are in my parents' bedroom in St. Louis, 'reading' books like Are You My Mother? And Oink! The truth is, I'd memorized them. But I was so proud of myself, knowing how to read at three or four or however old I was.

At eight I was reading all sorts of books from our book cases— we'd started ordering books from Scholastic Inc., for homeschooling, and we got boxes of books before the schoolyear started.

It was… amazing, how many books came. I loved reading. I'd go to the library and read there too.

At ten I started reading animal books. I'm talking 'how to train your dog books,' or 'rabbit care' books. I read about gerbils. I read about budgies, cockatoos, cats, horses… most of the books being from the adult section of the library.

At fourteen though, interest in reading started dimming. I couldn't find books to interest me (looking back on that I wonder how). Though I was still reading, it was nowhere near the book or so a week/month I had been reading before.

I had hit a slump. I didn't notice this slump— I was doing school, having projects (I always had projects, whether it was running an adoptable on PonyIsland.net or creating a breeding system for a creature I'd just designed), watching TV and surfing the internet (PonyIsland.Net was an obsession of a sort, and probably amounted for more than a bit of my non-reading).

At fifteen, I started having 'required reading.' In the first two weeks of school, I read the Iliad and Shogun (James Clavell), and lost interest in reading for quite some time. In fact, I was so burned out from Shogun (it was… okay. And I read it in three days. 1200 pages in three days.)

I think I read about 20 books in 2010— some of them I've reread since then (Sex, Time, and Power I read October 2011).

One of the best books of 2010 was The Importance of Being Earnest. Yes, it's a play. It's bound in hardcopy. It counts as a book.

In December 2010, though, my cousin Ioana re-introduced me to GoodReads. A friend had sent me a link to it years ago, but I couldn't understand the system at the time, and I think it was much uglier than it is now.

And with the 2011 reading challenge came the idea: 

Can I read 100 books in a year?

I decided to.

I started reading Cișmigiu & Co., a Romanian novel about a young man in highschool in the 1940s. It took me a month to finish the two-part book (the volume also contained another novel by Grigore Băjenaru, Bună Dimineața, Baieti!, which is about being a young schoolteacher), but in the end I managed it.

And then I started reading in earnest. 100 books that year meant about two books a week. 

Until May, I was behind schedule. I read three books in January (two of which were more like 100 pages than actual books), one in February, and finished Cismigiu & Co in March. In April I finished Bună Dimineața, Baieti!

And while we were on the road to Boston for the Religious Olympics (which I won, thus saving my parents a lot of money for what was the best summer camp week ever).

I read 9 books in April (including getting conned into reading The Beach by my dad.)

In May I hated Grapes of Wrath and loved East of Eden, devoured Water for Elephants in time to go see the movie (which was lovely). I discovered Russian novels and raced through Crime and Punishment in three days.

I read Graceling, which is a young adult novel about two people who are graced with a certain strength. The protagonist is graced with Killing, and she meets Po, who's graced with Fighting. The concept of rings in this book was what made it memorable.

I read Nicholas Sparks from May until June, read War and Peace from May to June (marking the first "I'm sick of saying I'm still reading this book so I'm going to finish it" read). I loved Anna Karenina, cried over Gone With the Wind (again), and went into July with The Taming of Lord Astor, which had an interesting instance of dresses making men think a certain way.

July also marked reading The Idiot and The Brothers Karamazov, both by Dostoevsky. I read The Book Thief, which was… amazing.

Other highlights of the year were reading Ubersleep and Kurt Vonnegut. I read a lot of Lois Lowry in August, gave up on One Day, and adored Juliet and A Comedy of Errors.

I managed to finish Middlemarch, which was another "I'm sick of saying I'm still reading this…" book, and Steve Jobs, which was… interesting.

Some of the best books of this year included The Phantom of the Opera, which made me laugh out loud. Room haunted me.

At some point during July, when I'd caught up to schedule, I decided to read 150 books. And then contemplated 175.

But that didn't happen. So I left the goal off for 2012.

And that promptly fell through the roof. In the first two weeks, I found a storage of Judith McNaught novels— romance (only one of the most captivating genres ever)— and devoured 17 books in 15 days.

Clearly, there was a way to read three hundred books or more on this trip.

And it's been great so far.

I'm at a total of 24 books this year, and it's only Day 29!

Battle of the Brains

I do. I really do. If I see something about a book I want to read it.

But I can't read it. I can't read it because I have to write and if I don't write the entire frame of the world will collapse.

At least, that's what my studious left brain thinks. You know, the brain that says, "Hey! You put it on the to-do list, and now it must be finished!"

My right brain thinks, "EH, we'll get it all done. Don't worry about it! LIVE! ENJOY! READ!"

"No."

"Yes."

"No."

"Yes."

And the right brain usually wins out in the end...

OR... worse... I spend all day surfing the internet because my right brain gives up convincing my left brain to read and just says, "Hey, do whatever."

And my left brain does the same thing.

So I do whatever.

The list of books I want to read grows, meanwhile, and I start thinking,

"But I want to read this too! And that! AND... since I've managed to read 18 books this year, it should be completely and totally possible to keep this insane goal going! Why not read 366 books?"

Then left brain comes in and says, "Listen. You are 20,000 words behind schedule. That means you don't have time, NOT that everything's good and you can keep reading insane amounts of books."

So what does my mind say after this battle of the brains?

You've got time. You can make up all that writing by the end of January... you can read 13 more books... you can get up to speed in Les Trois Mousquetaires... you can do the impossible. But you can't also, so don't get your hopes up.


BUT DON'T WORRY! IT'S IMPOSSIBLE, BUT YOU CAN DO IT!




So. If I actually get to 140,616 words and 31 books by January 31st...

You'll know that I've lost against myself again.

You'll also have irrefutable proof that I'm a machine.

A machiiiine!

Falling Apart

I just lost this entire post.

It is a lovely feeling in a way... a very sad feeling in others. So I'm rewriting it all very quickly with a couple of notes on the side.

Crazy internet. ^_^

The gist of it?

I'm behind in everything except reading. The reason is because I started reading romances.

The catch-up plan is to do it slowly. The logical priorities are Writing, Learning, and Reading. The emotional priorities are Reading, Learning and Writing. The emotional priorities always win out.

I'm 20k behind, a few books ahead (okay, a lot), and behind on learning.

BUT I shall prevail.

Please don't expect any new Riddle Rose chapters-- I'll be editing Chapters 1-8 because I've gotten a few new ideas and I don't want to reveal new chapters without explaining or foreshadowing those ideas. Hopefully within a month I'll have new chapters up again. At least 2 weeks though, because of the editing.

Pirate Prince will probably get a few new chapters within the month. Hopefully.

At the moment I'm focusing on getting a few Paa'nik stories out of my head. (I should change the spelling of that to Paanik, as it's more accurate, but I like the look of Paa'nik more, and I can always change my grammar rules.) So no short stories either. Sorry again... but I have cool things on my mind and those always win out. My self-discipline is not good in creative endeavors.

I had a talk with my mom that setting high goals and not achieving them has a way of undermining your self-consciousness. I don't doubt that, but I'm starting to wonder when that undermining starts. I've been not-accomplishing for years, and either I finish it or decide I don't care about the goal any more. Maybe that's the exception, eh?

ANYWAY... expect real content soon. ^_^

Addiction

I get addicted to things.

 Sometimes I'm addicted to an artist, at other times it's a particular song. These are the harmless addictions, the ones that don't really hurt anything but my ear drums (and really… my headphones are never turned up loud, so even that pain is minimal).

In NaNo'08 I was addicted to Kiss Me, by Sixpence None the Richer. It's one of the awesomest songs in the universe, and spawned a story idea based on it. That story's still waiting. Doesn't seem so smart now as it did then. But Kiss Me always gives me a floaty feeling, as if everything is going well. I listened to that song… a thousand times? It was a good time.

I often get addicted to artists. Some people don't have one or two good songs— some people have an albumful of good songs. I've gotten addicted to ABBA (more than once), Mircea Vintilă (just… an awesome Romanian artist), The Beatles, Elvis (for a time), Buddy Holly (when I was five I'd put on his Greatest Hits CD and go to #5, Everyday), Taylor Swift… There's many others (including contemporary people), but I can make an entire post out of that alone.

All these artists will fade away for a time, and I can't bear to listen to them… but then I rediscover them. Especially Mircea Vintilă. I think it's because he's Romanian.

But I also get addicted to other things… things that aren't so easy to get out of sometimes.

Two are the most important:

1) Finding books to read. I have an iPod Touch. On this I have the FreeBooks app. This app has the benefit of offering about 20,000 books from pre-1923. It includes Jane Austen, Louisa May Alcott, Lucy Maud Montgomery, Andrew Lang, Jack London… etc.

EVERY TIME I go to search for a book, or browse the categories, I end up downloading many more books than I counted on. Things like Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. (Really?) Or Cicero's Orations (Unfortunately I haven't learned Latin yet. It's on the list.) Or Pinocchio. Or the Aenid.

I don't get these books because I have to read them (though I often do feel that I have to), but because I feel like they'd be interesting. My take on classics is that if they're classics… they're good. Of course, some classics like Catcher in the Rye absolutely suck, but for the most part they're all wonderful. (I'll make a post about awesome books later though.)

And every time I open up FreeBooks or GoodReads or whatever, I see these books, and I think, "Oh, goodness, I want to read this too! But this one's awesome as well! And the title of this one is interesting… and this is Dickens, and I want to read all Dickens' books… here's a book originally in French, so I'll want to read that, and then I really should find Don Quijote. Ah, here's Pinocchio! I should learn Italian so I can read Pinocchio too. WHY IS THERE NO TIME?"

2) Challenges. Yeah. Anyone who knows me off Write Write & Write knows that I will take practically any challenge you offer up. Later I'll figure out I can't really use it for anything, so then I'll say, "Listen, I changed my mind on this." But most challenges I do take, and then it becomes this entire fiasco trying to figure out how all this stuff is going to fit into just one month.

It also includes figuring out how on EARTH I'm going to: 

• write a 50k novel 
• while rewriting another novel 
• while writing 31 short stories 
• and 31 dictionary entries 
• as well as reading 12-13 books (so a third of a book a day)
• while reviewing 4 of them
• not to mention reading one book in French 
• and starting Don Quijote 
• also updating Write Your World with 500 words a day
• and adding a chapter a week to WeBooks for Riddle Rose.
• Learn physics and psychology and math

These are the goals for just January, by the way. I'm probably going to have to fix this 365 short story gig… it's getting insane.

SO… do you guys have any addictions? I bet yours are probably more interesting than mine, and don't make your head hurt to think about them.

Turning 17

Turning 17 is an interesting phenomenon. While 16 is widely celebrated in America, and 18 is celebrated in Romania (as well as 14, but that's another story), I like 17. For one thing, it's a prime number. For another thing, the numeral 7 is probably one of the most elegant. And I like it. For another thing, 'seventeen' has more syllables than any other year from one to sixteen, and from eighteen to twenty. And many other things I could mention but don't want to clog up the post with.

I'll be posting all the details of what we saw on Noi6, because it's a bit more public and that one needs views too, and focus on more writerly/readerly things here, because no one goes on an Around the World blog to read about my word count and book total.

The Liebster Blog Award

Lemme start off by saying I have no idea what the Liebster blog award is.

But it was a wonderful birthday present, from Coffee of The Land of Man-Eating Fairies. THANK YOU!

Receiving the award meant finding out what it is.

The Liebster Blog Award is awarded by bloggers to other bloggers whose blogs have 200 followers or less. (I think I have... 0. 0 is also a beautiful and elegant number.)

The rules ARE:


1. Thank your Liebster Blog Award presenter on your blog.

2. Link back to the blogger who presented the award to you.

3. Copy and paste the blog award on your blog.

4. Present the Liebster Blog Award to 3-5 blogs of 200 followers or less who you feel deserve to be noticed.

5. Let them know they have been chosen, by leaving a comment at their blog.


Now, let me also start off by saying I don't exactly follow blogs. In fact, I never read them.
THAT IS NOT TO SAY that I do not have friends who blog. I do. Here they are. They're all writing related. You may hate me or love me because of it. XD

Kaedekit's Thoughts of a Paper Dragon hasn't got too many posts yet, but she's doing MilWordy. Instant win and instant follow. There are not enough people doing MilWordy in this world.

Katie G's MilWordy & Beyond is also about MilWordy. It hasn't started yet, though, so there's only an introductory post. BUT THAT'S OKAY! I only had one post once... and it was a terrible one. Katie's is a good one. It explains things. Mine didn't.

Bouchra Rebiai's Pink, Purple, and Fuchsia is awesome. For one thing, Bouchra (Boosh-rah) sets insane goals... just like me! For another thing, her blog is bright pink. Now, I like pink. And, she's been doing the Day Zero Project for about... 14 months. So... instant triple win. She's not doing MilWordy. She's studying her ... ICGSE's or some other strange acronym.

The Thoughts


Seventeen doesn't feel much different from sixteen, with the exception of the fact that instead of being in a plane this year, I was on my feet. I'll have the details of the things we did on Noi6, but suffice it to say that it was an AMAZING birthday.

But I've also got a couple of thoughts on what I want to do with the next year... more personal wise than writing goals:

1. Stop drinking carbonated drinks. In the two months since we left home, we have drunk more soda than we have in the past year. It needs to stop.
2. Start working out. I haven't done anything since we left, and I'm starting to wonder if my muscles remember what a split is or not any more. They definitely don't remember push ups.
3. Count to ten before yelling at any one. Unless there's a rhinoceros charging them and they won't move... this means that before calling peoples' attention to things... I count to ten. This will hopefully stop me from being such a terrorist to people I know well.

And that's it! Three, simple, easy things that I'll be able to remember.

Also:

1. Don't have more than 7 things on the to-do list for one day. This, of course, doesn't include things I haven't finished from days before. ^_-

The End of 2011

2011 is ending, and that means that I am making New Year's Resolutions. Pluralized by a lot. I'm taking on the http://DayZeroProject.com , which means that I'll be able to plan things out to my heart's content.


Of course, there are a couple of things that need to be finished in 2011: reading, for one-- I'm not about to lose the GoodReads challenge because of having to do a lot of things.


I'm also going to have 365 dares on http://WritingDares.blogspot.com before Dec 31st.


And I'm going to finish writing the Blood Feud; Riddle Rose is delegated to January 2012-- I'm not about to overload my schedule more than it has to be.


I also have to finish a spreadsheet for MilWordy, preferably before Christmas. It's going to have a looong list of challenges, books, and a word count spreadsheet.


Yeah... I don't know what I'm thinking either.


Anyway, what this means for the blog is that it's going to have a lot more updates.


For one thing, I'll be posting 1 book review here a week, as well as weekly updates (or more) on my progress in each goal. I'll also be revamping the Writing Schedule for 2012, and the Reading Schedule for 2012 will be created.


As well as a lot of other things.


Stay tuned...


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