Ye Grande Olde TBR(e) Challenge Update

It is not December already. I refuse to accept that it is December. Take a hike, December, we don’t want your type around here!

I started November with 249 unread books sitting around my house. And I ended with … *drumroll* … 238! Negative numbers, hooray! Even without counting the purge I did this month, I’d still only be at a +2. I’ve been good. :) Although not so good at reading out of my TBR pile, thanks to work-related business and a bunch of books coming in for me at the library.

…anyways, let’s take a look at the breakdown:

Neutral books – Read, but don’t affect the TBR pile

Audiobooks - Dragon Champion by E. E. Knight (review coming soon) - The Lace Reader by Brunonia Barry (review coming soon) – Graceling by Kristin Cashore – Fire by Kristin Cashore (review coming soon)
Read but not owned – Who Hates Whom by Bob Harris – Her Fearful Symmetry by Audrey Niffenegger – Jack of Fables, Vol. 6: The Big Book of War by Bill Willingham – Alcatraz Versus the Knights of Crystallia by Brandon Sanderson (review coming soon)
Re-reads - Knife of Dreams by Robert Jordan – Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J. K. Rowling

Changes to the TBR pile

Cleared from my TBR pile (huzzah!) – The Gathering Storm by Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson – All Together Dead by Charlaine Harris (review coming soon)
Added to, then promptly cleared from my TBR pile (um… huzzah?) None this month.
Other removals from my TBR pile (meh?) All of those listed in this post, plus Wideacre by Philippa Gregory (13 total.)
Added to my TBR pile (shame!) – The Lacuna by Barbara Kingsolver – The Witch’s Trinity by Erika Mailman (Literate Housewife’s fault) – The Knife of Never Letting Go by Patrick Ness (Lots of people have loved it, but we’ll split fault amongst Nymeth, Chris, and Bart) – Dry Store Room No. 1: The Secret Life of the Natural History Museum by Richard Fortey
Other Non-TBR Book Acquisitions - Forever Favorite Crochet by Better Homes and Gardens - Party!: Easy Recipes for Fingerfood and Party Drinks by Fran Warde – Classic Cocktails From Around the World by Allan Gage – The Art of the Cocktail by Ben Reed – The Big Book of Cocktails: 365 Mouthwatering Mixes, Shakers and Shots by Brian Lucas – Cocktail Bible: Classic and Contemporary Cocktails for Every Occasion I am a huge sucker for cookbooks, particularly bartending recipes. And then Bookcloseouts goes and has a cookbook sale… But, in my defense, at least one of those isn’t a real acquisition – it’s going to be my contribution to the office holiday gift swap. (Probably the last one.)

140. The Gathering Storm by Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson (2009)
The Wheel of Time, Book 12

Length: 784 pages
Genre: Epic Fantasy

Started: 12 November 2009
Finished: 22 November 2009

Where did it come from? From the publishers for review.
Why do I have it? I don’t talk about it a lot, since I read them all long before I started reviewing/blogging, but The Wheel of Time is the series that got me permanently hooked on fantasy as an adult. After 11 books and a prequel, these characters are like family, so how could I not want to find out what happens to them, especially now that there’s an end in sight?
How long has it been on my TBR pile? Since 28 October 2009.
Verdict? TOTALLY FRAKKING AWESOME. (So: keeper.)

It’s taken twelve books
to get here; I can’t sum up
in seventeen words.

***No spoilers for this book, but there may be incidental spoilers for earlier books.***

Happy Sunday, all!

I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving, or if you celebrated it a month ago, or don’t celebrate it at all, I hope you had a wonderful last week in November! My week’s been lovely, full of family and friends I haven’t seen in a long time and delicious food and only one small fire (tip: don’t put candied sweet potatoes under the broiler unless you really want your kitchen to smell like a campfire.)

I’ve spent a large chunk of my non-family-bonding “free” time this week grading term papers, but I have managed to get a fair amount of reading done. I polished off Alcatraz Versus the Knights of Crystallia by Brandon Sanderson, and All Together Dead by Charlaine Harris this week, both of which were solid fun if not hugely socks-knocking, and got about 50 pages into The Lacuna by Barbara Kingsolver, which is good so far but not at all what I was expecting. I’ve also listened to most of Fire by Kristin Cashore, which I’ll almost certainly finish up on my drive home from my parents’ this afternoon. Queued up after that is Leviathan by Scott Westerfeld, but I might give the audiobooks a break and just spend the rest of the drive singing loudly (and off-key).
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On an unrelated subject, I’ve got a question for my readers… how do you keep track of comments that you leave (or do you at all?) I’ve been using Commentful, which I liked well enough – every time I left a comment somewhere, I hit the little bookmarklet on my menu bar, and it would record the URL and number of comments. I could then go look at my watchlist, which would check when new comments were added after mine, and highlight sites where there had been responses. Great in theory, but it was kind of unreliable, and now their server has been down for over a week, so I’m at loose ends. Are there other sites that do something similar?

In theory I could subscribe to comments by e-mail, but a) not every site has that, and b) I think I would find that kind of intrusive – I like to know about reply comments on my schedule, not on the e-mail server’s schedule. As an interim measure I’ve been starring posts in my feed reader, but then I have to go back and check each one for new comments manually, which is a pain. There’s got to be a better way to do it. So tell me, readers: How do you track your comments around the blogging world?

139. The Lace Reader by Brunonia Barry (2008)

Read By: Alyssa Bresnahan
Length: 11h 40m (400 pages)

Genre: Somewhere between Literary Fiction and Mystery.

Started: 13 November 2009
Finished: 17 November 2009

Where did it come from? The library.
Why do I have it? The Lace Reader was one of the books that I remember getting major blog buzz not long after I started blogging myself, and it’s been on my radar ever since.

Death in the family
reveals secrets that Towner
didn’t know were there.

138. Jack of Fables, Vol. 6: The Big Book of War by Bill Willingham, Matthew Sturges, Tony Akins, Russ Braun, José Marzán Jr., Dan Green (2009)
Jack of Fables, Volume 6

Read my reviews of:
- the main Fables volumes
- Jack of Fables, Vol. 1: The (Nearly) Great Escape
- Jack of Fables, Vol. 2: Jack of Hearts
- Jack of Fables, Vol. 3: The Bad Prince
- Jack of Fables, Vol. 4: Americana
- Jack of Fables, Vol. 5: Turning Pages

Length: 128 pages
Genre: Graphic Novel, Fantasy

Started: 14 November 2009
Finished: 14 November 2009

Where did it come from? The library.
Why do I have it? A new Fables fix in whatever form is always welcome.

You’ve got to be in
dire straits if you’d let Jack
lead your whole army.

137. Graceling by Kristin Cashore (2008)
Graceling, Book 1

Read By: David Baker and a full cast
Length: 12h 30min (480 pages)

Genre: Young Adult; Fantasy

Started: 02 November 2009
Finished: 12 November 2009

Where did it come from? The library.
Why do I have it? I like young adult fantasy in general, and the wave of “OMGyouhavetoreadthis”-ness from my fellow book bloggers was pretty convincing, but I’ll give Darla’s review the nod for tipping me over the edge.

Make fun of her eyes
and she’ll kick your ass. But she’ll
feel bad about it.

Happy Sunday, all!

It’s been a pretty lazy weekend around here – the first in a while (and the last until the end of the semester) with no grading or other work responsibilities. (It’s been lovely.)

I spent yesterday morning running errands, and yesterday afternoon and this morning finishing The Gathering Storm, the newest Wheel of Time book by Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson. And, let me just say: AWESOME. It was fantastic, it was well worth waiting for, it reminded me why I love this series so much, and MAN, it made me wish that I had someone around to discuss it with. (And by discuss, I kind of mean jump up and down and go, “EEEEEeeeeEEE! Wasn’t that awesome when _________!? And when _________?? I know! EEee!!”) A few of my friends have read some of the WoT books (and I’ve managed to get a few more started on the series recently), but the only person I know in real life who’s read all 11 books is my dad, and he hasn’t even started the new one yet. Normally I will blather on about books to whoever will pretend to listen, but in this case I still hold out hope that I’ll manage to convert one of the holdouts into finally reading the series, so I can’t even blather on to them for fear of spoilers. So it looks I’m going to have to wait for my fangirl squealing, at least until my dad reads it.

Unless anyone out there is a WoT fan and wants to jump up and down and “squeee!” with me?

Anyhow, the rest of today is going to be dedicated to writing reviews (I’ve still got a moderate backlog that I’d like to clear up by the end of the month), and maybe doing some baking – I’ve got a recipe for Vegan Apple Cider Cupcakes that I want to try out while it’s still appropriately apple-cider-y weather.

What about you, readers? Big plans for the remainder of the weekend? Already prepping for the upcoming holidays? Read something awesome recently and need a place to vent your “Squeee!”-ing about it? Let’s hear it. :)

136. Her Fearful Symmetry by Audrey Niffenegger (2009)

Length: 406 pages

Genre: It’s a ghost story, but it’s not really Horror or Fantasy; there are Unspeakable Dark Secrets that people are keeping, but it’s not really a mystery. General Fiction, I guess, for lack of something better.

Started: 09 November 2009
Finished: 11 November 2009

Where did it come from? The library.
Why do I have it? I loved The Time Traveler’s Wife, and a number of lucky-ducks who got an ARC said it was great, so I had to request it.

It’s a ghost story,
twin story, and mystery
all wrapped up in one.

(These haikus would be
most appropriate as a
palindrome, but… no.)

120. The Magicians by Lev Grossman (2009)

Read By: Mark Bramhall
Length: 17h 25m (416 pages)

Genre: Technically Fantasy, but may be closer to General Fiction in a fantasy setting.

Started: 21 September 2009
Finished: 06 October 2009

Where did it come from? From the publishers for review.
Why do I have it? There was a lot of pre-publication buzz about how this was the best thing to hit adult fantasy since ever, and OMG it’s like grown-up Harry Potter, etc., so of course I wanted to read it.

Harry Potter goes
to college, and fights the Dread
Dark Lord of Ennui.

135. Who Hates Whom: Well-Armed Fanatics, Intractable Conflicts, and Various Things Blowing Up: A Woefully Incomplete Guide by Bob Harris (2007)

Length: 218 pages

Genre: Non-Fiction

Started: 04 November 2009
Finished: 07 November 2009

Where did it come from? The library.
Why do I have it? I read Harris’s first book, Prisoner of Trebekistan, several years ago and thought it was wonderful, hilarious, and surprisingly moving, so he’s got carte blanche now.

Well, I know for sure
where I’m not going on my
next big vacation.