When You're Reading to an Empty Room

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A Peek at Jeffe's TBR List

I'm in Denver this weekend, spending some time with family. Got to do shopping and wine-y lunch with my mom - something we haven't gotten do do in forever - and saw my stepdaughter, son-in-law and grandkids. Lovely weekend!
This week's topic is taking stock of those Mid-Year Milestones, in particular what are we reading right now and what's still in the TBR (To Be Read queue).

That last bit makes me laugh because - seriously? - my TBR is SO long I have no idea how many books are in it. Literally. I'd be afraid to total it up. I even have phases of the TBR. There's the books that I definitely want to read as soon as I can. There's the stuff I "have" to read - friends' books, stuff for critique, books for contests. There are books that I probably want to read, when the time is right. Books in this queue can have lingered there for years, even a decade or more. (My assistant Carien calls these TBR orphans and makes a concerted effort to pick up one at least once a month.) In between, is a more nebulous group of books that are ones that people have recommended to or outright given me. I really want a system of denoting WHY I have a certain book on my Kindle or stacked in my office. Or in my TBR armoire.

(The latter is a real thing. Were I at home, I'd take a photo of it and show you. But it's kind of scary, so maybe this is all for the best.)

My most-active TBR list is best encapsulated by the list on my "device," as opposed to the cloud, on my eReader. I just counted and there are 90 books there.

That should say something about the lower-priority piles.

eep.

All that said, I do keep a list of books read. I started doing that in 2013, as part of a concerted effort to get back into reading regularly and consistently. Writing tends to overtake my reading life, so I'm working to tip that balance back again. In 2013, I read 74 books and in 2014, I upped that to 130 books. So I set the more ambitious goal of 150 books for 2015, which means that now, at 45% through the year, I should be at 67 books read.

I'm at 51. Alas.

I can totally catch up though, right??

So, what am I reading? I'm 26% into The Faery Bride by Lisa Ann Verge, a recommendation from the lovely and talented Grace Draven. I'm kind of on a theme of researching Fantasy Romances and this is an old school one (originally published in the...80s? I can't tell. Maybe 90s. And now republished by the author). I think that next up will be Intisar Khanani's Thorn, which has triggered some talk in my circles that she brings a different take to princesses and fantasy. I'm also tempted to catch up with Nalini Singh's Psy/Changeling series, because the newest book, Shards of Hope, is getting such rave reviews. However, I trailed off on that series about... 3 books ago? So none of them are in my queue, which means I'd need to buy them.

You can no doubt detect the problem there!

 Most recently I read Amanda Palmer's The Art of Asking. Really loved it. I think all creative types - maybe everyone - should read it, too. My Goodreads review is here, if you're interested. If you've read it, you'll get this. If not, go read it.

Take the donuts, people!

How Reading as a Writer Is Different

This is our younger cat, Jackson, chewing on my wind chimes. You'll note the lengths he went to, to get to them.

I feel this way about books - can't wait to get them and then I chew them up.

With a book I love, I savor every bite, swallowing it down and carrying that warm, full feeling. Other books, I just chew and chew, masticating over why I don't like them - why some aspect is failing to work for me.

It's a curse, I tell you.

No, really.

This week's topic (suggested by one of my bordello mates, though a trigger one for me) is Reading Books as Writers: Do you read differently & close-reading techniques. See, I've always been a close reader. I'm blessed with an ability to concentrate that lets me shut out the rest of the world to focus on only what I'm doing and nothing else. This is a trait that annoyed my mother no end when I was a kid. But, over the course of my life, it's turned out to be a useful quality. My superpower, if you will. Hey, I can't rescue schoolchildren from perilously perched buses, but I test well.

It's something.

So, I'm one of those readers who pays a lot of attention. My early academic training has me following themes and symbolism, enjoying the layers the author weaves in. I love a puzzle of a story, assembling the various clues and inconsistencies. Unreliable narrators rock my little reader world. Nothing better than a writer who leaves a trail of bread crumbs and delivers a loaf of bread at the end.

However, this means I notice inconsistencies, too. When I was twelve, I made a list of mistakes and slips in Anne McCaffrey's Dragonriders of Pern series. I had this whole plan to send her a helpful letter, pointing them out. Now I'm glad I never did. Back then I didn't know they'd only annoy her, as writers have no way to fix published books.

I think this also makes me a good critique partner - or a really annoying one.

But, to answer the question of whether I read differently as a writer?

Yes. Yes, I do. And let me tell you - it's kind of a bummer.

So much of my mind now is geared to process the craft of writing, from point-of-view changes to scene structure to word choice to character arc, that I can't seem to entirely turn it off. Gone are the days when I could just enjoy a book for what it was. I'm always making mental notes, the critique part of my mind making little pencil-on-paper noises even after I've told it to shut up. I can kind of turn-it down, but if I start to wonder why something isn't working for me, that part of my brain promptly provides a list.

On the flip side, if I find a book that really does work for me, I am over the moon.

Still, there's one more aspect of being a writer that I believe may have forever diminished my joy in reading. It's a dirty little secret of fiction-writing that no author I've seen confesses to.

(Or, it's entirely possible that it's just me and now everyone will point and laugh.)

See, now that I'm writing my own stories - the ones like the kind I best loved to read - it's really super fun. Way more fun than I ever suspected it would be. It wasn't like this when I wrote nonfiction. But when I write a fiction piece, I get all wrapped up in the world and characters in the exact same way I used to as a reader. It's all the same transportive wonder and thrill - ONLY BETTER.

Yeah, that's right.

It's like I've found the über-drug and now nothing else gets me quite as high. Oh, I'll dabble in the others, especially for the social aspect. But when I need to mainline, I know where to find it.

Just leave me in my corner and walk away quietly.

Nothing to see here, folks. 

Where I've Traveled

By Kerry Schafer

"There is no Frigate like a Book

To take us Lands away,
Nor any Coursers like a Page
Of prancing Poetry – 
This Traverse may the poorest take       
Without oppress of Toll – 
How frugal is the Chariot
That bears a Human soul." ~Emily Dickinson

Why yes, I have been to Narnia. In fact, I traveled on the Dawntreader with Prince Caspian and the Pevensies, and saw all the strange lands they discovered. I met the White Witch and Aslan, saw the lamppost and the wardrobe, and tasted enchanted Turkish Delight. Dinesen showed me lions and giraffes in their natural habitat, and human beings out of theirs. Kipling took me into the jungles and villages of India. I climbed the Swiss Alps with Rudi in Banner In The Sky, and then hung out with Heidi and her grandfather, watching Spring come to the Swiss mountains. I've not only traveled the world, I've traveled in time. Dickens took me to Victorian London, and then to Paris during the revolution. I've experienced both world wars, lived in a concentration camp, and helped to build the bridge over the River Kwai. I traveled west with Lewis and Clark, met the last of the Mohicans, floated down a river with Huck Finn, and spent a lot of time with Laura and Mary Ingalls. It's highly probable that I know the streets and businesses of Avonlea better than the town where I grew up, so much time did I spend there with Anne, spelled with an E. As if this were not enough, I have wrinkled time with Meg and Charles Wallace, seen the giant worms on the planet Dune, and hung out with Arthur Dent and Ford Prefect in their weird and wonderful travels. As you probably already know, it doesn't cost much to be so well traveled. All you need to do is open a book.