The Zen Leaf

Wellness Wednesday #3: Choosing Happiness

Posted on September 16, 2015 by Thistle

In the spring of 1999, a professor came to my French course to advertise that summer’s abroad program in Bourges. I loved the idea, but my boyfriend objected, and I discovered I could only get financial aid in the form of a loan. Reluctantly, I let the idea drop. A couple months later, the professor came again. I saw pictures of Bourges and fell in love. Despite my boyfriend’s protests, I took out a loan and signed up to go. Not long after, I was on my way to France.

It was the best decision I’ve ever made in my entire life.

If I had to pin down the happiest, freest, most life-affirming part of my personal history, those six weeks in France would be it. In that time, I lived solely for myself. I surrounded myself with things and people and places I loved. I had adventures and romances. I left my old, worn-out, dysfunctional relationship while I was there, and I met my future husband over email through a mutual friend. I spent a hushed night in a couchette with a Venetian who didn’t speak a word of English (we communicated in broken French). I ate tons of chocolate croissants and jars of yogurt and plates of fries. I laughed so much that my stomach hurt, walked miles over cobblestones daily, and cut short the hair I’d kept long for too many years at my ex’s urging.

I have no regrets about the spur of the moment decision I made to join last-minute the program in Bourges. It may not have been practical, and other people were unhappy about it, but the decision made me happy. That was my only criteria. Everything else screamed no. My happiness screamed yes. For once, I listened to my heart.

True Confessions
That decision was the first I can ever remember making purely on the basis of what would make me happy. I was twenty years old. Furthermore, very few decisions I’ve made in the sixteen years since have been rooted primarily – much less solely – in happiness.

This has really only come to my attention recently. I’m used to making practical decisions, or ones based on necessity, or based on the best outcome for everyone else, or based on how people will judge me for it. My happiness rarely weighs in. But therapy and recent decisions have made me evaluate why I do the things I do.

Why did I choose paralegal studies? Because it was a career that wouldn’t make me feel embarrassed or inferior to admit to. WRONG. Why did I lose over 100 lbs? Because I could feel the weight of others’ judgement. WRONG. Why did I keep going to a therapist for two months when her office made me deeply uneasy and didn’t help a bit? Because I didn’t want to hurt her feelings by leaving. WRONG. Why do I refuse to self-publish? Because people would think I’m not a “real” writer if I do. WRONG. And so on.

I have a lot of decisions to make about my future right now. I dropped my paralegal course and my current therapist, and need to find new directions in both those areas. I need to decide about going back to school, and what to study, and how to move forward with my writing. I need to figure out how to balance weight loss and loving myself. But I don’t want to make any of these decisions the way I used to. I want my personal happiness, peace, and enjoyment to be a big part of that decision-making process.

*****
Dear younger Manda,

You are an extremely practical, sensible person, and I applaud you for taking a more cautious, less Gryffindor-ish approach to life. Rushed, thoughtless decisions generally make for a lot of pain and regrets. Sometimes, however, you overthink things. Sometimes, it’s okay to just let go and do things that you suspect you will love. Perhaps allow your heart to have more say in your decisions. It’s okay to have some regrets. Without them, you’ll just end up having regrets for not doing things you wished you’d done.

Love, modern-day Manda
PS – Go to Bourges.

Posted in Wellness | Tagged psychology, Wellness Wednesday | 11 Comments

Top Ten “In Spite of the Cover” Books

Posted on September 15, 2015 by Thistle

We’re always taught never to judge a book by its cover, but nearly everyone does. If we didn’t, there wouldn’t be whole divisions of employees at publishing companies carefully crafting book covers to appeal to specific markets. All you have to do is look at the Twilight-esque versions of Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights in the YA section of bookstores to know that cover art is important for marketing. We are influenced by what these books look like – and sometimes, really great books get rejected because the covers turn us off. Today, I want to talk about the best of them, books that should be read despite awful covers.

(Note: Please don’t take any of the following as snarky, rude commentary. I say this all in a lovingly playful teasing manner, because I adore each and every one of these books, and their covers.)

– Genre-Cheesy: Think about all those books out there that miss out on a more general market due to extremely cheesy genre marketing. Examples:

1. Warbreaker by Brandon Sanderson – What is up with the 80’s porn-star vomiting rainbows? I’ll take the British version of the book, thank you very much.

2. Howl’s Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones – I can see how some cover versions of this would appeal to children, but there has got to be a better way to portray the spirit of this book that would reach a larger readership!

3. the Parasol Protectorate series by Gail Carriger – I thought these covers were for the mass market versions only, but no. They’re just that cheesy. Even though I had solid recommendations from people I trusted, I still almost didn’t read them, and avoided them for years.

– Nondescript: It’s like some artists just can’t come up with an idea, and say f-this, let’s just put some words there and hope people will buy it. Examples:

4. Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke – This book is full to the brim of amazing imagery and that’s its cover??

5. The Casual Vacancy by JK Rowling – Considering all the resources Rowling has and all the faith that the publishing industry has put into her, I have to wonder if she specifically asked for nondescript here.

– Wrong Story: Sometimes I see a cover, then read a book, then wonder WTF was going on with that cover, because it seems like it’s advertising an entirely different plot… Example:

6. Return of the Native by Thomas Hardy – There are plenty of different covers for this one, of course, but the one I first got my hands on was this one. The story does not have a turkey in it. Or hunters. Or pretty much anything that’s in this picture. I kinda think they just chose a generic classic painting to slap on a classic novel…

– Wrong Genre: Ever pick up a book that you think you’ll like from the cover, only to discover it was in an entirely different genre than you expected? This is like that, only reversed. Examples:

7. Crossed Wires by Rosy Thornton – This cover looks like straight-out chick-lit. The story isn’t in any way like chick-lit. It’s subtle and literary and deals with hard issues and is a fantastic cultural portrayal of two different kinds of lives in Britain. I mourn for this cover because it turns so many readers off. Boo!

8. Rowan the Strange by Julie Hearn – If I had not been assigned to read this book, I never would have picked it up. I expected RL Stine paranormal cheesiness. But instead, it’s psychological war drama. And fantastic.

– Ugly: Of course, everyone has a different definition of ugly, and what appeals to one person might not to another. But there are still some books that I desperately wish had more appealing covers! Examples:

9. Germinal by Emile Zola – Yes, I know, the story is about coal miners, and this cover is appropriate. But the drudgery of it just doesn’t do Zola justice! The book isn’t a drudge! It’s exciting and shocking and riveting and beautiful and tear-jerking, and this cover does not say any of those things!

10. The Giver by Lois Lowry – I avoided this book for years because of the cover. I would have never guessed from it the mystery, the fear, the elegance of world-building that’s in here. I understand the cover, but man it’s ugly…

(Again, please remember that I’m totally being facetious here. Totally not making fun of anyone or any book!!)

What are some of your favorite books with awful covers, or at very least, covers you wish could be redesigned?

Top Ten Tuesday is hosted by The Broke and the Bookish.

Posted in Book Talk | Tagged lists | 8 Comments

The Girl at Midnight, by Melissa Grey (audio)

Posted on September 14, 2015 by Thistle

Echo has been raised by Avicen, a race of bird-like creatures living outside human society. Though raised by them, Echo is not fully accepted, since she’s human, and so she’s willing to work to gain their respect. She agrees to go after a weapon the Avicen can use against the Drakharin (dragon-like creatures) in their centuries-old war. Unfortunately, she ends up on a deadly scavenger hunt with an unlikely set of tentative allies. (This is a terrible summary. GoodReads does better.)

I’m not sure where I heard of this book, but I grabbed up the audio version months ago with the intention of saving it for RIP season. By the time I tentatively hit “play” on September 1st, I was pretty sure this book and I were not going to get along. I worried that it would be too surface-level for me, when I’ve been wanting thicker fantasy this season. However, I was hooked right away, and found myself racing through the book and (again) desperately wishing the sequel was out already.

The elements in this book aren’t exactly brand new. This is not a criticism – let me make that clear right away. In fact, I marvel at how the author turned so many commonly used fictional elements (scavenger hunt, teenage orphan, magical races at war, a legend most people don’t believe in, misfits, prejudice based on looks/race, living in a library, etc) into something so unique and beautiful. I loved the writing, the characters, the various ways in which love manifests itself, the friendships (longstanding and unlikely), the fact that killing isn’t glorified (and is actively un-glorified), and so much more.

I found myself thinking quite often of Laini Taylor’s Daughter of Smoke and Bones series, which is one of my all time favorite YA fantasy series. Many of the elements are the same – human raised by a magical race in a war with another race, star-crossed love, a secret behind the human’s existence, a band of unlikely allies…etc. After I finished this book, in fact, I saw that 1) Daughter of Smoke and Bone is referred to in the GoodReads description, and 2) a lot of people criticize the book for being too similar to it, as if this is just a recycled, inferior version. I’ll say flat-out that I disagree with these criticisms, though I agree the comparison is apt. Yes, the two books are similar, but are unique enough that they can both be good without trying to out-rank each other. Both deserve to be read. That’s all I’m going to say about that.

This was my third RIP books so far, and man I’m having a good RIP season! This one is fantastic. Highly recommended, especially on audio!

Performance: The audiobook was narrated by Julia Whalen. It was my first experience with Whalen, and she did a wonderful job. I loved all the voices she chose, each of them fitting the characters’ personalities perfectly. I hope she does the sequel, too, because I will definitely be getting that one on audio!

Posted in 2015, 2017, Prose, Young Adult | Tagged atmospheric, audio, LGBTQIA, reread, RIP-worthy, speculative | 6 Comments

Sunday Coffee – Bountiful

Posted on September 13, 2015 by Thistle

That’s a new coffee mug I’m holding, one of many wonderful things I received this week. Cool story:

The San Antonio Public Library system has summer reading programs every summer. I didn’t know until recently that there was not just a program for kids, but one for teens and one for adults. How many books required for the adult program? Four. Any four books you want to read. Easiest contest ever, right? So sure, I entered. I figured that whatever prize – if I happened to win – would be mostly library swag, like rubber bracelets and library pencils and maybe a t-shirt. I’d forgotten about the prize drawing altogether by the time I got the phone call on Wednesday afternoon telling me I’d won.

Now, I didn’t get all that excited, to be honest. I kinda wondered if I was the only person to enter at my branch. I know a couple librarians and have been told in the past that adult entries are sparse-to-nil. So really, I may have been the only entrant. Either way, winning is fun! Especially when your prize pack isn’t just library swag. Sure, there was a library t-shirt, but there was also a gift card to Half Price Books, a coffee mug, headphones, a Fiesta medal (San Antonio tradition), and an awesome bag (just in time for NaNoWriMo prep!). Ironically, my oldest son heard that I’d won and told me that “the library guy” (no idea who that is) told him the adult prize pack was “really lame.” Methinks the child has no idea what library budgets are like, because this was well and truly beyond anything I expected!

But that’s not all! That same day – Wednesday afternoon was kinda awesome, making up for a kinda horrid morning – a package arrived for me. I’d known Jason had bought something for me, but I never expected what was inside: THE RAVEN CYCLE TAROT DECK FROM MAGGIE STIEFVATER!!!!! So of course, the very first thing I did after ripping off the plastic covering was to go digging for the Eight of Swords.

The Eight of Swords is my card. The Ryder-Waite description doesn’t do much for me – bad news, conflict, censure. Meh. This card chose me (much like a wand chooses the wizard!) after I acquired the Medieval Scapini deck. The picture to the right is of the Scapini Eight of Swords. I don’t see this as bad news or conflict. I call this the blindness card. It’s a card of paralysis – making your own prison. Because really, the imprisoned figure is held by bars so far apart that he could simply walk away, and yet, he refuses to look up. He keeps himself imprisoned.

As I said before, this is my card. I am the master at paralysis and self-imprisonment. Example: “I have four submission-condition novels that I’d like to start sending to agents. But I don’t know if I should send them all out to different agents, because what if more than one agent likes a different novel and wants to acquire? But if I only focus on one novel, maybe that one will never get chosen, and I’ll just get discouraged. And even if I do focus on only one, maybe I should only send to a couple agents and wait to hear back, because if I don’t hear back, I can’t send the other novels out to other agents in the meantime, and…” You get the picture. I can talk my way in circles over food, jobs, exercise, even which book to pick up next. It reminds me of a quote from my favorite band: “Paint myself into a corner. I really like the color.” Yeah.

So you can see why I went immediately for the Eight of Swords in this Raven Cycle deck. I needed to know. And the moment I found it, I let out an audible gasp. Not only does Stiefvater also treat this card as paralysis and self-blinding behavior, the way I’ve always viewed it, but the image includes a left hand/arm with a tattooed infinity sign on the wrist. And where, my friends, have we seen that before? Oh yeah!

I am in love.

The rest of the deck is just as beautiful. And each card has a long explanation actually tied to the art, which makes learning tarot about a thousand times easier! Fantastic gift. Totally made my Wednesday.

Lastly, while it’s not a “thing,” I am so happy to have the first cool front of the season come through. This morning, it actually got into the 60s! It feels so very beautiful, and looks it, too:

I might just have to start taking my laptop and coffee out to the porch on Sundays to do my blogging if the weather is this marvelous!

Posted in Book Talk | Tagged Sunday Coffee, tarot | 17 Comments

KonMari, Parts III & IV: Paper & Komono

Posted on September 11, 2015 by Thistle

After a couple weeks of silence, the Great Tidy-My-Life Project continues. A couple reasons for the silence:

First, paper is waaaaay too boring for its own post. There was paper. It went into piles. Some piles got filed away, others recycled. Nothing much to see there.

Second, there’s that whole sprained ankle thing. Yeah. Kinda slows you down.

Third, komono (miscellaneous) is a huge category. It basically involves everything that isn’t clothes, books, paper, or sentimental items. This also means a much harder category to tidy, for me, because many items belong to the whole family rather than to me individually. Plus, some things have to be treated like paper (keep what you need) and others like clothes/books (keep what brings you joy).

First on the list was CDs, DVDs, and video games. I sorted through these before anyone else, putting them all on the living room floor and only re-shelving the ones that brought me joy. Then the boys went through them and pulled out their joy-bringers, and Jason followed them. In the end, another bag for Half Price Books – including a half-dozen newly-culled books from me, plus the boys’ culled books- netted us another $60. Woot!

The rest of komono was very piecemeal. Makeup and skincare? Check. Electronics? Check. Office supplies? Check. Bedding and towels? Check. Exercise stuff? Check. Food and kitchenware? Check. Purse and desk stuff? Check. And on and on and on, until we had boxes and boxes to sell/donate and ginormous bags to dispose of. This was only the part that made it into photo. (Note little Gavroche for size perspective!)

We didn’t follow all the rules, I admit. There is plenty of komono in our disorganized, mostly-unpacked garage: holiday stuff, tools, things left behind by the previous owner, car stuff, yard stuff, outdoor toys, etc. But the garage, laden with boxes waiting for their date with the once-weekly recycling truck, would be a bit of a hazard on a sprained ankle. Not to mention, triple-digit heat does not a pleasant garage make. Not to mention, most items are too messy or bulky to drag inside. So the garage, against the rules or no, shall undergo its tidying sometime in the future.

Still, ignoring the garage, we did great work. Our kitchen is finally organized. We know what needs replacing. We know what we do/don’t own, and where it all belongs. And all the spare change (which, admittedly, came mostly from old coin collecting)? Another $25 in the bank. So far. Boom.

And, while it’s not quite KonMari, we also used this time to chop down a dead tree in our backyard. Under the previous ownership, it had been struck by lightning, and was a huge hazard. Brush pickup for our neighborhood is this month, so it was perfect timing. Eventually, this sitting stump will make a lovely outdoor area when we have the time to spruce it up!

Posted in Book Talk, Wellness | Tagged KonMari | 5 Comments

Emmy & Oliver, by Robin Benway

Posted on September 10, 2015 by Thistle

Emmy and Oliver are next door neighbors and best friends, until the day in second grade when Oliver’s father kidnaps him. Ten years later, Oliver is back at home and his father is on the run. No one quite knows what to do or how to act.

This was an interesting story, but honestly, the book was just kind of so-so for me. Some of the writing and characterization didn’t work for me, and I wanted a much thicker, deeper exploration of the psychology. I don’t have much to say beyond that. It wasn’t a bad book, and it wasn’t a great book, and I often think that sort of in-between is the hardest kind of book to write about!!

Posted in 2015, Prose, Young Adult | Tagged LGBTQIA, mini-review, psychology | 5 Comments

Wellness Wednesday #2: Contradictions and Changes

Posted on September 9, 2015 by Thistle

It has been a loooong week. The short version: My chiropractor adjusted my ankle (very painful) so that it could heal quicker. Later, I managed to re-wrench it (thank you kitten for crawling under my feet!). Later, I did something I ought not to have done (more on this in a bit), which made the situation worse. Later, I saw my primary care doctor about an unrelated issue, and he told me that I’ll need to stay off this ankle for 6-8 weeks, not 1-2 as the urgent care clinic told me. Sigh. In better news, the doc also cut my anti-anxiety medicine in half, and I follow up in a month to see if I can get off it completely. Most of the sources of my extreme anxiety this past year are no longer issues, so I would prefer to get healthy through good nutrition, fitness, and therapy, rather than medication. Thankfully, my therapist and doctor both agree this is a good plan. So that was this week.

True Confessions
I have two confessions this week. The first: I am really, really bad at taking it easy on myself. I push too hard. As in one day last week, when I thought, “Oh, it’s been almost a week and a half since I messed up this ankle. Maybe I can just do some light jogging on it around my living room while I watch TV! I’ll be gentle and go very slow.” None of you need to remind me what a bad idea this was. I know. Believe me, I know.

I really need to take care of myself right now, and I’m trying to learn how to do that better. Which means no exercise except some very light 10-min walking sessions recommended to keep the ankle healing properly, and some upper body strength training that I can do seated. In order to keep myself from going insane on two months near-bed-rest, I’m switching focus to nutrition. My body really likes a mostly-paleo diet (and no, I don’t in any way believe that cavemen ate this way), but it’s a super time-intensive way of eating and I’d had to give it up before because study, boys-home-for-the-summer, moving-across-the-country, dealing-with-PTSD, and exercise all took too much time. Now that I’m not taking any classes, the boys are in school, I’m no longer moving, and I’m not allowed to exercise, I can spend a lot of time in the kitchen, listening to audiobooks while I cook! (Not fun, but hey, it’s better than sitting around doing nothing!)

Second confession: I am really uncomfortable with my body right now. In the ten months that I’ve been on various medications, I’ve gained roughly 35-40 lbs. Not all of those pounds can be blamed on stress and medication – certainly chocolate and wine had something to do with it – but my doctor informed me that what I’ve gained is pretty “par for the course” on these meds. Another reason to get off them! I’m officially obese, edging up on numbers I haven’t seen since four years ago. And I’m not happy with that.

So why is this a confession? Because society bombards me with certain messages that I find contradictory and frustrating, and which make me nervous to admit my discomfort. How can I be body-positive and want to lose weight at the same time? How can I claim to love my body if I want to be thinner? Or, contrarily, how can I claim to love my body if I’ve treated it in a way that caused it to be obese in the first place? If I really loved my body, I’d lose this weight as fast as possible, by any means necessary. If I really loved my body, I’d refuse to lose weight just to prove I’m body-positive. If I really loved my body–

STOP! JUST STOP!!!!!

Here’s the deal: It’s okay for me to love my body – or to be learning to love my body – while at the same time wanting to improve my body. It’s okay to be uncomfortable in my skin, and to try to lessen that discomfort both by learning to accept myself and by working toward a body I’m more comfortable in. One has nothing to do with the other. It’s like Molly Galbraith says on Day 28 of her Love Your Body Challenge (highly recommended, btw): “I am perfect, just as I am. And I could use a little improvement.”

I am learning to love myself – to dress in clothes that make me feel fantastic, to make silly faces at myself in the mirror, to pamper my skin with cocoa butter lotion, to write positive messages to myself on my white board, etc. Things that show myself love completely unrelated to the size of my body. It’s a long, slow process and there are days it feels like I’ve gone nowhere at all, despite working on this for two years at this point.

But loving myself doesn’t mean accepting my current self to the point of refusing to change that self, any more than it means forcing changes on myself that I might not even want. Loving myself means being kind to myself. Forgiving myself for my frequent missteps. Loving my body when I gain weight and when I lose it. Loving myself for being who I am, and for having the courage to stand up and say that I can be body-positive and want to weigh less than I do right now. To love myself means to be happy with who I am right now, rather than waiting until I reach a particular goal – but it does not mean that I cannot have goals, or a desire to change. It means accepting myself now, and in the past, and in the future, regardless of what I hope to achieve or do/don’t achieve or have/haven’t achieved.

*****
Dear younger Manda,

Go to therapy. Please. I know you think it’s stupid, but really, it’s not. And if you don’t go, you’ll end up like me – stuck in your mid-thirties with nearly three decades of baggage to carry around and deal with. And that sucks. I’m still hoping to be much better off by the time I have my first buzzard party*, but you’ll be much happier in your 20s and 30s if you take care of yourself right now instead of waiting. Really. So please, go to therapy. Please, please, pretty please.

Love, modern-day Manda

*A buzzard party is my family’s tradition for 40th birthdays. They’re themed with buzzard- and death-related things (see above graveyard cake). We even have a buzzard pinata. It’s frickin’ awesome and I’m so looking forward to mine!

Posted in Wellness | Tagged body image, food, health, Wellness Wednesday | 14 Comments

Best Second-Chance Books

Posted on September 8, 2015 by Thistle

In The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, Marie Kondo says that the time to read a book is the moment we acquire it (or become interested in it, I suppose, for those of us who do not really acquire unread books). If the book remains unread, it will most often become never-read. I’m not sure this is true 100% of the time in book-blogger-land, but I really like the philosophy of reading a book the moment we decide we want to, rather than letting it wait. Sometimes, letting it wait can be a bad thing. For example, I wanted to read Let It Snow back in 2009, but received my copy a few days after Christmas. I saved it for the following December, and by then, I’d grown tired of that genre and didn’t enjoy it nears as much as I would have when I first received it. Boo.

Sometimes, however, I think it is useful to wait to read a book when the time becomes right. One of the longest-standing unread books on my shelf is Brandon Sanderson’s Words of Radiance. Its been on my shelf for 18 months, and will remain there, unread, until I am mentally in the right place to read it. I know this is a book I will want to read – a continuation of a series I love by one of my favorite authors – and so I am comfortable waiting. Sometimes, waiting for the right time to read a book can turn a lukewarm experience into a magnificent one.

This is often the case for me when it comes to second chances. Sometimes, I’ll read a book and abandon it partway in, only to return to it later and discover that it clicks with me on the second (or third, or tenth) try. Today, I want to talk about the best of these second-change books!

1. Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman – Years ago, when I first started trying out Gaiman, I came across books I liked and books I disliked. Neverwhere opened with a scene that turned me off, so I put it aside unread. A friend convinced me to try it again earlier this year, and I ended up loving it. Not my favorite Gaiman, but still worth the read.

2. Chocolat by Joanne Harris – Tried to read this one once, couldn’t get into it, decided to watch the movie instead. Then I loved the movie, and later went back to the book. After the movie, the book was much easier to read for some reason, or perhaps it was just the right time. Loved it!

3. The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson – I actually read this one all the way through the first time, after seeing the 1999 movie The Haunting, and I disliked it because I thought it was copying all the tropes of the genre. I didn’t know anything. I didn’t realize it was a classic, that Jackson pretty much invented those tropes. Going back with more knowledge later made this one into a winner.

4. Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen – I’m not the hugest Austen fan, and I’d read too many of her books the year that I tried to read Northanger Abbey. I gave it up, but later watched the film version with a book club. It was so much fun that I tried the book again, and after I’d spent some time away from Austen, it was a much better read. Ended up being one of the two Austen books I actually love!

5. Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke – My review of this book tells the long story of why, when, and how I tried and retried this one. I am so thankful to have given this one a second chance. It’s become one of my favorite books ever. I loved the audio, I loved the mini-series, and I can’t wait to get my hands on a print copy to read again!

6. The Raven Boys by Maggie Stiefvater – Oh the difference audio can make. This one fascinated me years ago, but I couldn’t get into it. After some twitter-persuasion, I tried it again on audio, and fell so much in love that I spent all of last fall listening and relistening to the series.

7. Howl’s Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones – For years, a friend tried to get me to read this one. I kept trying, and never made it past the first page. I have no idea what impelled me to try and try and try again. Then, in early 2012, after a string of failed audiobooks, I gave this one a final chance on audio, and fell instantly in love. What didn’t work in print worked perfectly in my ears, and I ended up listening to this one a half-dozen times before I could put it aside. Really.

What are your experiences with second-chance books? Do you ever go back and try something again? Is there ever a “right time” and “wrong time” to read a book?

Posted in Book Talk | Tagged lists | 8 Comments

The Shadow Cabinet, by Maureen Johnson

Posted on September 7, 2015 by Thistle

Before I even start this review, I have to say one very important thing:

THERE’S A FOURTH BOOK ARE YOU KIDDING ME WTF I THOUGHT THIS WAS A TRILOGY HOW LONG DO I HAVE TO WAIT FOR BOOK 4??!??!?

Okay, now that that’s out of my system…

The Shadow Cabinet is the third in what I truly thought was a trilogy, starting with The Name of the Star and following with The Madness Underneath. I’m not going to talk about plot at all, because that would equal series spoilers, and already my review of the second book is hidden away because of spoilers-like-mad. Instead, I’m going to focus on my reactions to this book, and this series.

The Name of the Star: Loved it. Loved it so much. One of my very favorite Johnson books. Loved it on reread, too. Awesome.

The Madness Underneath: Eh. Not as good. The book description felt misleading and some of the plots and character-changes felt very out of the blue. Maybe it would have felt better had I not just reread the first book before diving into this one. In any case, it didn’t quite live up to the first, though I still enjoyed it enough to want to finish the trilogy.

The Shadow Cabinet: I didn’t reread the previous two books in preparation, but that was no trouble. Johnson did an excellent job catching me up. The book gobbled me up instantly – and I don’t mean that I gobbled it. I mean that I was absolutely unable to escape it, and plan to give myself a little break before I read anything for a bit. Whew, what a ride! This book made the second book so much better (something that often happens with third books, I feel!). It had much more of the spirit of the first book, and all the differing plots started coming together. Loved it. Until…until…WTF THERE’S A FOURTH BOOK GAH!!! Okay. I still loved the book, but really? I have to wait for a fourth? Why didn’t anyone warn me?? Sigh. *starts eagerly stalking goodreads for release date and title and cover art*

Posted in 2015, Prose, Young Adult | Tagged divinity, POC, RIP-worthy, speculative, WTF moments | 2 Comments

Sunday Coffee – On Pre-scheduling

Posted on September 6, 2015 by Thistle

Back when I first started blogging, I would draft posts whenever they came to me, and publish them whenever I finished drafting. It didn’t matter if it was morning or evening, if I’d already posted that day, or if I hadn’t posted for weeks. As my awareness increased and my focus narrowed, this changed. I began drafting posts and scheduling them. I spaced them out so that there weren’t too many days in a row with posts, and made sure to alternate reviews and other kinds of posts. I chose to schedule for the mornings, which seemed the best time to reach my audience.

I think there are pros and cons to both of these methods, and I’m not here to advocate one or the other. For me, pre-scheduling quickly got out of control. Back then, I was reading so quickly that I had weeks of reviews lined up. By the time I posted about a book, I was no longer as excited as when I’d read it and drafted the review. Having a few days or even a week pre-scheduled was okay, but having months ahead lined up made me feel anxious and boxed in. It left no wiggle-room for meandering, spur-of-the-moment posts. And I like rambling!!

When I disappeared from the blog world and created my private book journal, I returned to my original way of posting. When I finished a book, I immediately posted a review – any time of day, with reviews coming as seldom or often as the books themselves. If I took a few days to review, I’d at least make a draft to coordinate with the date/time of finishing the book. That way, there was no delay between when I read something and when it was dated on the blog.

On reopening The Zen Leaf, my intentions were to find a comfortable middle ground. I could pre-schedule date-specific posts like Top Ten Tuesday. I’d pre-draft reviews and schedule them for the next available morning. On Sundays, I’d have a leisurely cup of coffee and write whatever came to mind. This worked well – until the move. Knowing I’d have little computer time in June/July, I pre-scheduled tons of posts, including Sunday Coffee posts. My reading levels doubled, as they often do in the summer, until mid-August, when I was startled by the realization that I’d fallen into some really bad habits again. I felt constrained by several weeks of pre-scheduled posts.

Time to dial it back a bit. Time to return to a more leisurely kind of blogging that doesn’t involve several dozen drafts lined up (maybe just a few!). Time to share my excitement about books while I’m still excited, and time to write about other stuff when that stuff occurs to me. Time to remember to give myself breathing room. Time to find balance between posting willy-nilly and boxing myself into a pre-scheduled timetable. Time to live in the moment, rather than the future.

Posted in Book Talk | Tagged Sunday Coffee | 8 Comments