#reader fail

[skyfall8600]

I have made a great mistake. I’ve naturally spiralled back into my hunger games phase, and have been reading non stop fanfics of Peeta/Katniss. To the point where I’m on page 230 on Ao3.

Now you might be wondering why is this bad?

I decided to re-read the books and now my brain can’t remember what was in the fanfics and what was in the actual book 😭😂

[ayearofnewbooks]

June: American Gods

I’ve said it before, and it will always be true: I adore Neil Gaiman. With Showtime adapting this book as a series, I went ahead and bought my next new book from my favorite bookstore in the whole world (Full Circle Bookstore, OKC). It was a loooooooong read, but June’s first book was American Gods, by Neil Gaiman. 

Because I’m a fast reader, I love long books - something to fill up reading time, that I can spend days and days enjoying. I like when my Kindle tells me it will take longer than 4 hours to read something; the dream is 24 hours to read it. 

This book is about one of my niche book loves - gods in a modern world. Specifically, gods in America. It was published in 2001, 4 years before Anansi Boys, which I just loved. I was excited and could not wait to get into this book. 

But... (I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry)...I hated it. 

I did not want to hate this book, I wanted to love it, to rave about it and recommend it to everyone I know. Instead, I struggled and slogged through this book. I found it difficult and hard to follow, the plot nonsensical and meandering. You know how about a third of the way into a book you know what the main story is, and a general idea of the direction of the story? I couldn’t figure that out until the last quarter of the book, and that’s being generous. It was maybe in the last 100 pages. 

There were a lot of reasons. I had high expectations for this book, so I was probably bound for at least a little disappointment. I read the 10th anniversary edition, the “author’s preferred text.” It is, according to the author’s own note, “about 12,000 words longer than the one that won all the awards.” Not to second guess Neil Gaiman (Neil, I love you, I’m sorry I didn’t like this book, I really wanted to!), but I’m willing to bet that the trimmed down version is better. Or better for me. The thing that really kills me about this book is that there are bits and pieces of this it that I loved, but it was the whole that I hated. I’m going to give you a really, really long favorite quote at the end. 

If you love and adore this book and want to beat me with it because I didn’t appreciate it, I understand! Whenever someone doesn’t like The Night Circus my blood BOILS! But as much as I wanted to like it, it was nothing but a relief when I finally finished the damn thing. I literally got up and put it right on the shelf when I was done, because I didn’t want to look at it anymore. 

In some note somewhere in this giant book, Gaiman says something about people either loving or hating this book - he’s right. 

(But I’m still sorry Neil. I love everything else of your’s I’ve ever read! The Ocean at the End of the Lane is life changing, Stardust is beautiful, and Good Omens is a gift.)

Why did I choose this book? Neil. F*cking. Gaiman.  Would I read this again? Please, God, no.  Who would I recommend this to? I honestly don’t even know. Maybe this is your perfect book, maybe I’m a moron for hating it! Favorite quote: “I can believe things that are true and things that aren't true and I can believe things where nobody knows if they're true or not. I can believe in Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny and the Beatles and Marilyn Monroe and Elvis and Mister Ed. Listen - I believe that people are perfectable, that knowledge is infinite, that the world is run by secret banking cartels and is visited by aliens on a regular basis, nice ones that look like wrinkled lemurs and bad ones who mutilate cattle and want our water and our women. I believe that the future sucks and I believe that the future rocks and I believe that one day White Buffalo Woman is going to come back and kick everyone's ass. I believe that all men are just overgrown boys with deep problems communicating and that the decline in good sex in America is coincident with the decline in drive-in movie theaters from state to state. I believe that all politicians are unprincipled crooks and I still believe that they are better than the alternative. I believe that California is going to sink into the sea when the big one comes, while Florida is going to dissolve into madness and alligators and toxic waste. I believe that antibacterial soap is destroying our resistance to dirt and disease so that one day we'll all be wiped out by the common cold like martians in War of the Worlds. I believe that the greatest poets of the last century were Edith Sitwell and Don Marquis, that jade is dried dragon sperm, and that thousands of years ago in a former life I was a one-armed Siberian shaman. I believe that mankind's destiny lies in the stars. I believe that candy really did taste better when I was a kid, that it's aerodynamically impossible for a bumble bee to fly, that light is a wave and a particle, that there's a cat in a box somewhere who's alive and dead at the same time (although if they don't ever open the box to feed it it'll eventually just be two different kinds of dead), and that there are stars in the universe billions of years older than the universe itself. I believe in a personal god who cares about me and worries and oversees everything I do. I believe in an impersonal god who set the universe in motion and went off to hang with her girlfriends and doesn't even know that I'm alive. I believe in an empty and godless universe of causal chaos, background noise, and sheer blind luck. I believe that anyone who says sex is overrated just hasn't done it properly. I believe that anyone who claims to know what's going on will lie about the little things too. I believe in absolute honesty and sensible social lies. I believe in a woman's right to choose, a baby's right to live, that while all human life is sacred there's nothing wrong with the death penalty if you can trust the legal system implicitly, and that no one but a moron would ever trust the legal system. I believe that life is a game, that life is a cruel joke, and that life is what happens when you're alive and that you might as well lie back and enjoy it.”

[ayearofnewbooks]

February Issues

So at this point in the year, things went sideways.

I started reading Codex Born, the sequel to Libriomancer, and found out 2 days later I was pregnant (February 12) . This was a deeply wanted pregnancy and we were so happy! I was too excited and nervous to concentrate on a book.

At the 5-6ish week mark (February 23), we discovered that the pregnancy was ectopic. Unfortunately, since it happened so early and my symptoms came on so suddenly and intensely, they didn’t catch it in time - my right Fallopian tube burst in the ER. I was rushed to another hospital and had emergency surgery. It’s not an exaggeration to say that I almost died. Thanks to a wonderful surgical team and 4 units of blood, I’m okay. You can read more about that here.

When my husband went home to back a bag for me (I was in the hospital for about 4 days), he put Codex Born in there; it made sense, I have a book with me everywhere I go. But I was so anemic and wrung out that I didn’t read, at all, in the hospital. If nothing else describes how bad off I was, that should do it.

When we got home, nothing about the book appealed to me. I’m writing this in October, and I tried in August to read it again, but only managed to get about 75 pages in.

During my recovery, I did read 3 new books, but then I retreated into the Modern Witch series by Debora Geary - they’re light, simple, and full of happy endings. Like all good gentle fiction, they don’t challenge you, they just comfort. It’s like eating cotton candy, sweet and simple.

After that, I jumped back in, but I’m not going to attempt Codex Born again this year; 2 failed readings is enough for me.

[charamchadoo]

it only occurred to me recently that fiona is to baz as bellatrix was to draco

i always imagined fiona, well, not like bellatrix :)) #fail