Just the books ma'a,: justchris in 2017

I'm still here. Still quietly sitting in my corner reading books.

I'm going to try to do a little more this year. Starting with more than a single message to kick off my 2017 thread. Looking at my links to earlier 75 Book Challenge threads, it looks like this will be my ninth year.

My previous 75 Book Challenge threads:

2016

2015

2014

2013

2012

2011

2010

2009

Prospective look at 2017
Frankly, my schedule is already booked solid for the first quarter of 2017. I'll be starting up my second Arabic class and another racial healing series in mid-February--so that's 2 nights a week plus many extra hours of prep/homework, for 8 and 10 weeks respectively. Between now and then, I am packing in as much social time with friends as I can before I disappear into my many commitments. New Year's Eve party last night/this morning was the perfect opportunity to touch base with many of them and set up tentative future dates.

Plus, we're getting ready to transition to a new software platform at work in February. And my colleague is retiring in March. We're a small office--the Editor-in-Chief, me as Managing Editor, and the soon-to-depart Editorial Assistant. I am already working weekends just to try to catch up on routine tasks. I haven't yet made time to test the new system before we go live (and thus suggest improvements that will make life easier for me and our authors and reviewers). Pllus, our annual Editorial Board meeting is in March. Soon enough, I will be busy preparing for that. So much to do!

My tai chi friend brought me to an informal class of advanced students today. They work on their various weapons forms and the two-person sparring form. I would love to join them, but when? When? So I have made a tentative goal of clearing the decks sufficiently of work and other commitments so that I can attend this weekly practice starting in June or July.

And then there's the sewing and music. I want to get back into both. And maybe take a beading class and start working on that skill as well. Plus, learning to use the fancy new digital camera I got for Christmas a year ago. I'm down to my last batch of minor repairs that can be done by hand. So soon I will have to break out my old machine and see if I can make it work again. I was having so many troubles with it a couple years ago that now I am having a hard time getting back on that horse.

Then there's finishing the process of disentangling myself from now-ex. My goal is to get all of the household bills automatically paid out of his accounts instead of mine, and get my name off the mortgage and title of the house. I hope to get the financials sorted out and stop contributing to the house payment and bills by the end of Q1. Plus, there are a few household cleanup items that I have to finish. And some yard tasks I promised to do and herbs to transplant to my apartment. Those will have to wait until spring.

Last year was a time of transition, as I went from trying to salvage my decade-long relationship to putting on my own oxygen mask and getting out while trying to cause the least harm to myself and my now-ex. My goal for 2018 is to start working on a novel, so 2017 is for cleaning up various aspects of my life, simplifying, and making space for new creative endeavors. We'll see how all of that goes.

All of that, and I haven't even gotten to reading, reviewing, and LT.

For the last few years, I've tried to sign up for at least one group read or specific challenge. And I've gotten the necessary books, lined them all up, and proceeded to not follow the plan. At all. The only book that I started for a group read and managed to finish was Don Quijote, and of the 3 of us, I was the only one who seemed to continue on. And though I finished the book, I stopped posting messages as I went along.

I've tentatively signed up to be part of the Bible as Literature group, but realistically, I will mostly lurk and maybe read a little bit here and there. I've starred assorted interesting threads, both group and individual. Last year, I managed to stay tuned in for the first half of the year before really dropping off. That was real progress. I hope to do even better this year. We'll see how it goes.

In terms of general reading, as per usual the last few years, I want to work through my own books, and read books at a faster rate than I acquire them. I've managed to stay away from the library for a few years now. I still browse used bookstores pretty regularly, though. I also want to do a better job of reading books new to me, rather than endlessly in a rut rereading my favorite comfort books. Hopefully, the overall stress levels will continue to go down, and I will feel less need for comfort reading. I also would like to make a push to read more poetry and nonfiction.

Again, we'll see how all that goes. I do tend to follow the path of least resistance. That tends to be brain candy and popcorn.

And the books read in 2017:

In progress

January

1. High Sorcery by Andre Norton*

NF nonfiction (going to try harder this year)
P poetry (definitely need to expand)
~P text contains significant chunks of poetry

(edited to fix the year year--not caught up with this new-fangled year yet)

Following the lead of many others, I will finally sit down and list all the books acquired this year in one place (gulp!).

And also track any books I get rid of. I just went through something of a purge going from a house to a one-bedroom apartment. My fiction paperbacks now fit on 2 "media storage" shelves. My fiction hardcover and large paperbacks fit on one shelf and in one box (I am seeking a bookcase that will fit the minuscule remaining wallspace and fiction books). My nonfiction is in 3 large wooden bookcases, and stacked in a pile or two near them.

I am part of the group.
I love being part of the group.
I love the friendships bestowed upon my by dint of my membership of this wonderful fellowship.
I love that race and creed and gender and age and sexuality and nationality make absolutely no difference to our being a valued member of the group.

Thank you for also being part of the group.

Welcome back Chris and I look forward to your list of shame!

And some very basic stats. I'm not nearly the number cruncher compared to many others here. This will be my first time sitting down and looking at overall trends.

Total books read

2009 - 116
2010 -
2011 -
2012 -
2013 -
2014 -
2015 -
2016 -
2017 - 1 (running total)

Total new books read

2009 - 65
2010 -
2011 -
2012 -
2013 -
2014 -
2015 -
2016 -
2017 - 0 (running total)

Total of my own books read

2009 - 81
2010 -
2011 -
2012 -
2013 -
2014 -
2015 -
2016 -
2017 - 1 (running total)

Total reviews uploaded

2009 - 40
2010 -
2011 -
2012 -
2013 -
2014 -
2015 -
2016 -
2017 - 0 (running total)

And stealing from Roni:

Describe yourself: The Black Sheep

Describe how you feel: The Watcher's Mask

Describe where you currently live: Fire Touched

If you could go anywhere, where would you go?: A Dying Light in Corduba

Your favorite form of transportation: StarBridge

Your best friend is: Sisters of the Raven

You and your friends are: The Nine Tailors

What’s the weather like?: Cryoburn

You fear: False Colours

What is the best advice you have to give?: Heroics for Beginners

Thought for the day: Gaudy Night

How I would like to die: Long Hidden

My soul’s present condition: Uprooted

Halp! Typo in thread title--can it be fixed? Paging drneutron! That should be "ma'am" please! Thankyouverymuchinadvance.

>4 PaulCranswick: Ha! You sneaked in amidst my housekeeping. And another Happy New Year to you, Paul. Thanks again for the welcome.

No lists of shame here. I think? Which list in particular do you mean? I've never stepped back to look at any patterns, so it will be interesting to see.

Happy New Year! (dropping a star)



And I borrowed the meme from others. Looking forward to your numbers and to seeing you around more (maybe?) this year--you certainly have a full schedule.

Welcome back!

>8 ronincats: Love the star. Maybe this year I'll figure out how to embed pretty graphics like that.

>9 drneutron: Thanks for the welcome (as always).

Happy reading in 2017!
Love your meme, especially the transportation ;-)

>11 FAMeulstee: Thank you, Anita! Yeah, I like the transportation pick too. For awhile there, I had Star Guard as me and my friends--kinda a whole theme in the meme. But then I decided I liked ravens a little more.

At the end of last year, I decided to work my way through my Norton collection to decide whether I really wanted to keep all of them. So I started with her longest and most beloved series, the Witch World. The first book I finished this year, High Sorcery is tangentially related to the series, on the High Halleck side of the ocean.

Also, my lifelong habit has been to read myself to sleep. I have learned the hard way that reading new novels at bedtime is a Very Bad idea. So now I tend to either reread familiar stories that therefore aren't gripping past the point of exhaustion or short story collections that offer many more break points for me to stop and turn off the light. This book fulfilled both of these constraints that minimize the risk of me staying up way too late yet again.

Tangentially, I have always loved the cover by Steve Hickman, although it has nothing to do with any of the stories in the book. Not so much the female nudity (yawn, the usual SF/fantasy sexism on display--but it's a product of its times, 1970--I hear the apologists' cry already). But I very much enjoy all of the curves and spirals and how they intersect: the arms of the chair and draped fabric, the curve of the horns and the satyr-like leg, in addition to the curves of the feminine torso, the spirals of the hair, the circular pedestal, the colonnades in the background, etc. And I enjoy the study in red--all of the colors from the same palette range.

So, on to the book itself. Five stories, only "Ully the Piper" pertains to the Witch World, but all entail some degree of magic (and disability, I am just now realizing). The first, the novella "Wizard's World" (previously published and broken into 9 chapters) is very similar to the original Witch World in terms of plot: hunted man manages to flee his pursuers into another world where magic apparently works. In his own world, his esper talents made him a hated minority trying to escape genocide or slavery, but here they make him a person with the Power. He finds a woman being hunted and saves her, then joins forces with others to carve out a place for himself. Second, "Through the Needle's Eye" is set in the modern world. A disabled girl is drawn to a disabled old woman who is the last of a family famous for embroidery. The old woman's tragic past and mysterious future are tangled up with the devil's bargain (well, the other party is left unclear) made by the first of her line and the magical needles passed down from one talented woman to another through the generations. "By a Hair" is set in an unnamed location of eastern Europe(?) in the wake of WWII and the rise Stalinism and the Soviet Union. Politics and personal desire and old powers collide in the machinations of 4 people to devastating and unexplainable effect. Fourth, "Ully the Piper" features Ully, a disabled boy who can't participate in the spring dances with the other youth of their remote dale that escaped the ravages of war. The popular kids bully him and push his cart down the hill to get lost in the woods at night, where he happens upon a faery ring. Faery gifts, envy, greed, and the rewards for ill intent are all there in a classic folktale plot.

Finally, "Toys of Tamisan" (8 chapters) is a blend of science fiction and fantasy. This novella was expanded into the full-length novel Perilous Dreams 7 years later by the addition of 3 other sections following this part. It opens with a science fiction story of a bored, disabled rich man (former space explorer or other man of action) who at the urging of his oh-so-solicitous cousin buys a telepathic dreamer (an organic form of virtual reality) who specializes in action dreams for her clients. Challenged by her client's ennui, Tamisan decides to create a dream based on possible alternate trajectory of their city and planet if 3 critical decision points in history had gone differently. Stunned to find herself trapped within the dream world and apparently gifted with magical oracular power, she struggles to find her client and his cousin and free them all before any of them dies in a reality she can't control.

I still enjoy the stories after all these years. This book's a keeper.

Does anyone know how and where to report a touchstone problem? It is seriously annoying to constantly have to manually edit the touchstone for Witch World, because the default inevitably leads to Ender's Game. How is that even a match? Not inserting touchstones here because annoyed.

>7 justchris: I'll admit to clicking on the thread to see what the ma'a meant. We have a rugby player here called Ma'a Nonu, and I wondered.... But now I know ;)

happy new year, good luck with the stat collecting....I bet that is time consuming!

Eta: I usually just come back later when a touchstone is being touchy. Or is this something ingrained? Sorry!

>15 LovingLit: Sadly, no obscure word or name. Yep, the stats are taking a little while, which is why I am slow to fill in the numbers so far. I'm not committed enough to do an annual spreadsheet like Roni.

The touchstone for Witch World has been "touchy" for several months now--the default is Ender's Game, which isn't remotely close in terms of title or author name. And when I pull up the touchstone list, The Chronicles of Narnia by C. S. Lewis is second, with the actual book and author appearing as the third choice. So WTH? And also, extra work for me to have to manually fix it every time. Hence the desire to report this particularly egregious example...

I've started a replacement thread here:
https://www.librarything.com/topic/245950#

I can't live with the typo all year. And even with the new thread, I am not seeing a way to edit the title itself. Sigh.

Anyway, please direct future commentary to the new thread. May this thread sink below the waves into obscurity.