The Zen Leaf

Technique Review: Bullet Journal

Posted on October 23, 2015 by Thistle

Over the years, I’ve tried multiple kinds of to-do list tracking. Back when I was working full time, I used the Franklin Covey method, but it no longer worked once I was a stay at home mom with a much more fluid schedule. I tried various planners from big-box stores, never finding one I liked. I started keeping a to-do list on index cards, which kinda worked for short periods of time. I tried phone apps after I got an iPhone, but those were generally awful. I prefer paper for planning. So I settled into using a generic big-box planner combined with index cards and really just not keeping good track of my events and to-do list.

Enter bullet journaling. My friend Stephanie introduced me to the concept back in mid-August. I looked at the website and thought, maybe this would be okay. It wasn’t until I watched the short video that I was hooked. I went out and got a grid Moleskin to use and got to work.

At first, I thought this was just going to be a planner, but it became more than just a way to plan. Sure, it has that. An expanding index, daily/monthly calendars/plans, future planning, etc. But the variety of pages in my Moleskin grew. I have pages for my tarot spreads, pages listing my general and book wishlists, pages for our family book club selections and the boys’ schedules and the needed house repairs and my personal projects and blog stuff… It’s not a pretty way to journal. I’ve seen the pretty to-do books that people have, and I couldn’t do that. I’m not a scrapbookish kind of person. This is not meant to be pretty. It’s meant to be functional, efficient, customizable, and personal. This particular journal is my first, and I already have plans about the next one, things to change up to make the method work even better for me.

In fact, I love this method so much that I’ve branched out. I have my to-do list, but I now have two other bullet journals.

One replaced a “writing ideas” notebook that I’d had for over a decade and that needed replacing anyway. The bullet journal method works perfect for keeping together notes on various ideas and manuscripts, as well as any sort of submission tracking and mini-notes and drawings that I use for writing, etc. Adam? This is what the journal you gave me became: a place for my imagination to live. Thank you.

The second bullet journal is helping me on my wellness journey. I’ve struggled with how to approach food, fitness, the scale, and my weight over the last few months. I have a tendency toward hyper-focus on numbers, and disordered thinking when it comes to food, calories, and my weight. At the same time, I become very disordered on the other end of the spectrum, if I rid myself of numbers completely, and end up binging and mentally beating myself up. I need to find a happy in-between.

Since late September, Jason and I have been writing down our food every day. Not amounts, not calories or measurements or anything, just the food itself, and showing it to each other sans judgement. I’ve been keeping mine in a note on my phone, making a new one each day, and I’ve now moved this into the new food bullet journal. Having a running journal allows me to track multiple things – food patterns, exercise trends, particularly loved or satisfying foods/meals, how my mood/eating matches up to my hormone cycle, etc. It allows me to track when I’m eating well and when I’m eating emotionally, when I’m tempted to binge and when I’m falling apart mentally and when I’m just not hungry – all without numbers. And this is really helpful.

Neither of these two secondary bullet journals are what the program was designed for, but I think it speaks a lot for the method that I loved it enough to adapt it to other parts of my life. Jason is using it as well now. He’s always struggled with different kinds of planning/organization, and I don’t know if bullet journaling will work for him long-term, but for now it seems to help him in planning things like weekly meals and work stuff and notes for his own writing. It also helps us to both sit down at night together and figure out what we need to do the next day, which we were terrible at before. Plus, we both take our journals everywhere, so it’s easy to grab needed info or add something right away. It’s wonderful.

Seriously, I can’t recommend this technique enough. Take the time to watch the video at least. It’s awesome.

Posted in Wellness, Writing | Tagged health | 6 Comments

Wellness Wednesday #8: Glass Ball

Posted on October 21, 2015 by Thistle

When I was ten years old, my family moved across the country from South Carolina to Texas. For several months, while my parents looked for jobs and got on their feet from the move, we lived with my grandparents, and spent a lot of time semi-living with our other grandparents simply so that we wouldn’t dominate one set’s time/space (since all six of us were pretty much living in a single bedroom). During one of the visits to my other grandparents’ house, their dogs got a hold of one of my stuffed animals, a dog named Arfie that I’d gotten for my fourth birthday. I had no idea they’d found Arfie until I discovered him partially torn apart in my grandparent’s field.

The dogs had ripped Arfie’s nose off, but I found the plastic nose and brought it, and what was left of Arfie, back to the house. My grandmother, who is very good at sewing, stitched him all back up. Part of the line of stitching that made up Arfie’s mouth was crooked, and his facial shape was flatter than before (because I hadn’t bothered to gather the stuffing that had been lying beside him in the field). The latter isn’t really visible in photos, mostly because I don’t have any photos of Arfie in profile before the incident, but the stitching change is clear:

But it wasn’t the stitching that upset me. It was the shape of his face, altered, so that his expression was so different. It was the way his face went from friendly to sad, the way he had been permanently damaged and changed by the injury. Lying in one set of bunk beds in the room all six of us shared at my grandmother’s house, I would cry myself to sleep every night, thinking that I’d never be able to feel the same about my beloved friend again. Not that I would love him less, but that things would simply never be the same, no matter how hard we tried. They were irrevocably different.

So why tell you about this incident from 26 years ago about some stuffed animal of mine? Mostly because of the way it relates to the way I see myself before and after the trauma that caused my PTSD.

True Confessions
My trauma doesn’t sound like traditional trauma. I never underwent some major traumatic incident. Instead, after that cross-country move, I spent four years bullied, mostly friendless, terrified of the world, paranoid, broken. When, in sixth grade, a fellow classmate was accidentally shot and killed by another classmate with a gun they both thought was empty, I thought it was a lie. Peers, friends, bullies, teachers, school administrators – all in on this practical joke, trying to get me to believe something so awful so that when I did, I’d look like the worst kind of fool. It wasn’t until I saw it in the newspaper and attended the viewing that I fully believed it. Don’t get me wrong – I knew this was pure paranoia – but logic didn’t keep my brain from being terrified that They were waiting to strike out at me. (Notably, it was after relating this story that my counselor first put together the beginnings of a PTSD diagnosis.)

For years, I have seen my own life much the way I saw Arfie back then: irrevocably changed, broken, damaged, mauled; something less than before. Missing something that can never be retrieved. I viewed myself before that cross-country move as a solid glass sphere, dark semi-translucent blue, whole and healthy and undamaged. The move was like those dogs grabbing Arfie; the bullying that followed was like them ripping Arfie apart. Afterwards, I did my best to sew myself up, hold myself together, but I didn’t have all the materials needed, and even if I did, nothing was ever going to be the same again. I saw myself sheered in two, a clean slice off the glass ball, a break that could never be properly repaired.

One of my counselors – not the good one – told me that this was a “beautiful” image. It’s not. It’s a desperately sad and discouraging image, no matter how much I try to give myself the advice my mom gave me about Arfie back then. Just because something is damaged and changed, she said, doesn’t mean that it is any less. Maybe something can be more beautiful, more loved, for its imperfections and broken pieces. It’s advice that maybe, if I’d found a good counselor years ago, I could have internalized. Instead, the damage just got worse. Three months after my oldest son was born, the two halves of that glass ball were shattered into thousands of pieces. It was new trauma, rather than just a triggered renewal. And 18 months ago, the thousands of pieces that I’ve been trying to hold together in my hands were ground into dust, until there was absolutely nothing of me left. Until I was nothing but powder.

Maybe it’s a good thing. Maybe I can eventually become like a phoenix, rising from the ashes of a former life. Maybe one day, I can reemerge as a new glass ball, new and whole, rather than the imitation of one made up of disjointed pieces held together by the frailest bits of glue. This is the hope that my good counselor gave me over the last year. Of course, she’s up in Massachusetts, and I’ve yet to find someone I can really trust down here. I know that’s crucial to move forward. It just takes time. And everything is so much harder when you have nothing, not even pieces, left to hold onto.

*****
Dear younger Manda,

I am so sorry for your pain, for the things you struggled through and the things you missed out of fear. There’s is nothing I can do to make that better, and when I look at pictures of you before and after the slicing, it breaks my heart. It breaks my heart to see you withdraw, to see the light in your eyes die out. I don’t have any advice. I don’t know how this gets better. I’m just so sorry.

Love, modern-day Manda

Posted in Wellness | Tagged health, psychology, Wellness Wednesday | 5 Comments

Top Ten Bookish Wishes

Posted on October 20, 2015 by Thistle

The Book Genie has shown up on my doorstep and can grant me any book-related wishes I can think of. Yay! So what would be my top ten wishes, if this awesome thing happened?

1. I would like all the pretty bookshelves, please.

2. I’d like back a big chunk of the books I donated when I KonMari-ed my books the first time. I totally over-culled.

3. I want UK versions of all the Brandon Sanderson books, and I want the UK versions to be readily available in US stores going forward, for that matter! So pretty…

4. Speaking of which, I’d love to meet Brandon Sanderson, and take some of his classes, or attend one of his lectures…

5. An audio library would be nice, too. Most of my audiobooks come from the library, and are therefore not mine.

6. Ooh, maybe on those pretty bookshelves, I can have my own books! Published copies of my novels with pretty covers and my name on the spine!! 😀

7. A good book club would be nice. Especially if it involved good friends and good wine.

8. Perfect outdoor reading conditions year-round would also be great, including no mosquitoes, and a hammock.

9. I’d love to be able to read fluently in any language, so I can read books in their original text!

10. I’ve met a lot of my blogger friends, but I want to meet all the rest of them! Blog-hopping is the new Apparition. 😀

Bonus: I’d love to have back my original Zen Leaf blog, including all the non-review posts, the reviews I’ve lost since that time, and all the old comments. I was stupid to get rid of all that. Boo.

What would you wish for? Provided that the book genie isn’t completely flattened by my broad and painstaking wishes, ha!

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

Posted in Book Talk | Tagged lists | 4 Comments

Readathon: Elena Vanishing, by Elena and Clare Dunkle

Posted on October 19, 2015 by Thistle

Elena Dunkle developed anorexia as a teenager. This memoir, written with the help of her mother, Clare Dunkle, discusses her struggles with the disorder and her attempts to recover from it.

Recovery is a path, not a destination.

I haven’t had a lot of personal experience with anorexia. The only time I’ve ever been faced with it head on was in early college. There was a girl in my psychology classes who was very thin, so thin that her veins stood out distinctly on her thighs. I didn’t automatically assume she was anorexic, though. I grew up with extremely thin siblings, and that kind of thin was fairly normal for me. Other people whispered about it, but I didn’t. Then I saw her again the next semester, maybe six months after I’d last seen her. I was walking behind her on the way to the food court area, and was shocked. Her thighs were no bigger than her knee bones. There was so little muscle on her arms that she literally looked like a walking skeleton, elbow bones being the largest part of her arms. Her cheeks were just as hollow. This is not an exaggeration. I was completely shocked, but had never even spoken to the girl, and even then, I was too afraid to interfere. I didn’t know her. What right did I have to say anything?

I don’t know what happened to her, in the long run. I do know things changed, because I saw her a year later, and she was slightly chubby. I remember being so happy for her, and hoping that whatever had caused her to gain weight (therapy? medication? I had no idea.) would continue to keep her healthy.

Despite my lack of personal experience with anorexia, however, I do have a lot of experience with eating disorders in general. Because of this, it would be difficult to review this book in full, so I’m just going to bullet-review it:

This was an extremely candid look at the psychology behind eating disorders, while stating up front that this psychology will obviously vary from patient to patient. It also states plainly that the treatment of eating disorders is a rapidly evolving field, and new things are learned all the time about recovery.
This was also a book that didn’t sugarcoat anything. Elena Dunkle states that the reason she wanted to write this book was that all the books she’d read on eating disorders either glorified them or put too rosy a slant on recovery. She wanted something wholly honest out there, and chose her own experiences to express this. Very little is kept hidden. So to be upfront, trigger warning: eating disorders, self-harm, sexual assault, miscarriage, trauma.
I appreciated that while Dunkle’s inner voice kept yelling that she was fat, stupid, lazy, weak, etc, the focus was not on body image. I’m no expert on eating disorders, but I do know that there’s often a deeper psychology than obsession over body image. It’s more complex than that. That was very clear in Dunkle’s experience.
It was a slightly strange experience reading this book, because a friend of mine used to work with Clare Dunkle, and knew Elena. Much of this takes place in San Antonio, so those two things made this hit very close to home.
Furthering on that, I could see aspects of my own eating disorder (not anorexia, but what’s generally called “eating disorder, not otherwise specified”). A lot of the psychology was similar to my own, even though our trauma roots and methodologies are very different.
The book was very well written, with a very story-like feel despite it being nonfiction. The Dunkles preface the book with an explanation of how they changed small details to get across the narrative without giving away identifying details, and to make the story flow well without sacrificing truth. That’s a delicate balance, and it was well done.

Lastly, I’d like to say that despite my lack of personal experience with anorexia, I found the book informative and helpful. Generally, along my own path to wellness, I try to find different pieces of wisdom from many sources, and one of those is in books. This was a difficult book to read at times, for many reasons, but I felt it was important to continue. The quote I listed above came almost at the end, and it struck me with a pang. So simple, and so obvious, but not obvious, really, for many of us mired in mental illness, hoping for escape, hoping for the end of the road, and terrified that it will never be there. Those words are the ones I will keep most from this book, and the read, difficult as it was, was worth it just for them.

Posted in 2015, Adult, Prose | Tagged body image, food, health, nonfiction, psychology, readathon | 3 Comments

Sunday Coffee – Fifteen

Posted on October 18, 2015 by Thistle

Trigger warning: Skip to the paragraph after the first photo below if you don’t like words like “contractions” and “episiotomy.” I won’t get graphic here, but this WILL be about having a kid.

Fifteen years ago, I was recuperating in a hospital after a very long, very difficult delivery. I’d been in stop-start labor for four days, and I’d just learned a few important things about myself and childbirth. For starters, I don’t have contractions like other people; I have four-minute-long contractions at seven-minute intervals. This surprised the doctors all three times I had a kid. They always wanted me to wait until the contractions were five minutes apart. Not going to happen. Then there’s the whole “early labor is long, transition stage is short.” Nope. Takes under an hour to go from 0-7 cm, but hours – days – to get those last 3 cm open. Also, surprise surprise, that whole transition phase, with nausea and dizziness and blood pressure drops? Exactly like my monthly cycle. On the plus side, this means I never needed pain meds in labor, because I’d been going through “transition” every month for nearly a decade. On the negative side, WTF is wrong with my body that I’d been going through transition every few weeks for nearly a decade???

Needless to say, after four days and three nights in and out of the hospital, a random delivery doctor who ignored my birth plan and gave me an episiotomy without permission (and without even asking/telling me!), and the nurses keeping me awake because my son wanted 4-6 oz of milk every two hours from the moment he was born, I was exhausted. But, I got my first son out of the bargain.

Morrigan was born in the middle of the night on October 18, six days before his due date. Jason and I were young, ignorant new parents who had been married ten months and were completely unprepared for what was to follow. We had no idea that in the next three months, we’d move across the country, he would lose his job, and I would experience severe trauma. We had no idea that in the three months after that, we’d both be working temp jobs, I’d have to drop out of college two months before graduation, and we’d discover that no matter how long I tried, I physically cannot adapt to getting up with the babies in the night. I will never forget the day that Jason sat me down, when Morrigan was six months old, and begged me to let him get up at night, because we would all be happier that way. Spoiler: We were.

Parenthood is difficult – even more so when you’re young and have no idea what you’re doing – and those early days were rough. We didn’t always do things right, or well, and we made far more mistakes than I’m comfortable admitting. But here we are, fifteen years later, with a high school freshman excelling in band and going to his first homecoming dance and volunteering on the teen-time committee at the local library. And that is just mind-blowing.

Happy birthday, Morrigan!

Posted in Personal | Tagged Sunday Coffee | 4 Comments

Readathon: October 2015

Posted on October 16, 2015 by Thistle

Alright, alright, I’m signing up. I literally haven’t participated in Dewey’s 24-hr Readathon since October 2012, and after my last botched attempt to do any readathon, coupled with how much is on my schedule this particular weekend, I didn’t even attempt to sign up this time. Tomorrow, my oldest son has both a marching contest and a football game, and my cousin and I are hosting an autumn party in the evening, and a friend and I are supposed to watch a movie in the afternoon. Sunday is my oldest son’s birthday, and we’ll be hosting a birthday party that morning. In other words, I can’t stay up reading into the night, either.

But…I’ve barely read anything in the last two months, pretty much since the hasty speed-read through many books prior to my last botched readathon attempt. Back then, I said, “I imagine that if I ever manage to not fail at a readathon again, it’ll be because I get the urge to participate on the day itself, and not when signups begin!!” Well, it’s not the day, but the day before, and honestly, that’s close enough. Yes, I have a lot to do, but I also have a pile of books that all came in from the library, and I want them read and reviews drafted before NaNoWriMo season starts on November 1st. Plus, Reading Rainbow is now involved?? Squee!!

So this is it, my official sign-up. I’ll be adding to this post as I go along, with updates and mini-challenges and so on, rather than flooding your feed-readers with multiple posts. I’m really not sure how much I’ll get done, given the family schedule, but I’ll do my best!

Continue reading →

Posted in Book Talk | Tagged readathon | 13 Comments

Wellness Wednesday #7: Changing Perspective

Posted on October 14, 2015 by Thistle

Continuing last week’s theme: Perspective is an ever-changing thing, and it’s good to apply that truth not only to how we see our bodies, but the way we see our situations. In my case, I’ve been looking back a lot at my previous weight-loss journey. I’ve disparaged it quite a bit over the last few months, and it’s true that there were negative parts. Using shame to motivate. Impatience, especially after insomnia and injury slowed me way down. Over-training and under-eating at times due to impatience. Dissatisfaction with my met-goals and continually striving to do more instead of celebrating my achievements. At the same time, there was a lot of positive in my journey, and I need to acknowledge that, too.

I decided against weight loss surgery** and extreme diets. I chose to lose slow and steady. Yes, that made me impatient at times, but I usually curbed over-training and under-eating quickly, before they got out of hand.
My focus was on increasing the amount of produce in my diet, exercising regularly and consistently, sleeping more, listening to my body, and practicing moderation and balance. My goal was not to get skinny, but to look and feel more like myself, more comfortable in my own skin.
While I didn’t always succeed in loving my body, I did try for body positivity as early as the summer of 2011, when I wore shorts every day despite self-consciousness, in order to gain confidence. Exposure is my weapon of choice in the war against my body-hate, whether that means wearing a bikini at the pool all summer or posting publicly about scars/stretchmarks.

So no, I wasn’t always perfect, but what weight-loss journey is? I’ve heard of all-bad journeys. I knew a girl once who lost 160 lbs in nine months by exercising 5+ hours a day and eating under 1000 calories per day. By the end, she looked like a skeleton, and a sick skeleton at that. I didn’t do that to myself. My motivations and methods weren’t always great, but I at least tried to do things in a healthy, sustainable manner. Mine was a mixed journey, possibly balancing out more on the positive side than the negative. It’s time to stop disparaging it.

True Confessions
Truth: It’s way too easy to blame your past-self when bad things happen, but “easy” does not make it “right.” The chaos of the last eighteen months did not come solely from the negative aspects of my weight-loss journey. I can’t blame my old-self entirely, like I’ve been doing lately. Some of it was related to my mentality on my first journey, sure, but the rest was a perfect storm of many factors that crushed the little body positivity I’d managed to gather after decades of self-loathing.

Second truth: I never could see how thin I’d gotten, and that was a significant factor in how easy it was to regain weight. Last week, I said that 155 lbs looked fat when I was there, and it did. All the pictures of me in this post are within a pound or two of 155 lbs – right on the border between a healthy BMI (154 lbs) and overweight (155 lbs). I tried to see my progress, but all I could see was how much further I had to go, how much thinner I used to be (back in my late teens and early 20s). I saw back-fat and puffy arms and thick thighs. I saw scars and stretchmarks and loose skin folds. I didn’t see anything but imperfections.

When I recently went through my clothes KonMari style, I was struck by how TINY some of those clothes were. My favorite pair of jeans? How the heck did I fit into those, and comfortably at that? Some of those shirts look like they’d fit a ten year old. If I didn’t remember wearing them, if I didn’t have picture-proof, I wouldn’t believe they’d ever fit me!

The pictures, too, blow my mind. When I was looking at these in the moment, all I could see was the imperfections. I noticed my wide shoulders – that’s bone structure, silly! – but not the size of my waist. That sort of thing. I was too close to see the bigger (or smaller, really) picture. That whole forest-and-trees deal.

*****
Dear younger Manda,

Each time you don’t appreciate your successes, each time you don’t really see yourself honestly, you set yourself up to fall apart. Being happy with yourself does not equal being complacent. Acknowledge yourself. Learn from past mistakes. Stop the mental cycle. Only by stopping the mental cycle can you stop the physical one.

Love, modern-day Manda

**I am not making any negative statement about weight loss surgery here. It would not have been a healthy choice for me, but I know that it is a healthy (and necessary) choice for certain people and situations. Some of my very best friends have gone this route, and I completely respect, support, and agree with their decisions. I also know WLS isn’t an easy fix, nor am I implying that it would have been an easy fix for me. But at my age, and in my health, and in my situation, it would not have been a healthy choice, and I chose to go a different route, which I consider a positive aspect of my journey.

Posted in Wellness | Tagged body image, health, Wellness Wednesday | 2 Comments

Top Ten Authors to Work With

Posted on October 13, 2015 by Thistle

Technically, today’s topic is “author duos,” but I was struggling with the topic, and that made me think – hey, I’m a writer, and there are authors I’d LOVE to write a book with…so this is kinda like author duos, right? Because I wouldn’t want to write a book with just any author…and it would blow my mind to be paired with any of these people…

1. Brandon Sanderson, because he’s probably the most awesome writer I’ve ever known and not only do I love his books to pieces, he’d be fun to work with as well. Plus, he speaks about writing the way I think about writing. I know I could learn so much from him!

2, 3, 4. Speaking of “fun to work with,” let me add Maureen Johnson, Maggie Stiefvater, and Laini Taylor to the list. Actually, we can just make this a fantastic author quad.

5. Nail Gaiman, because while I don’t always love his books, I think he has an amazing imagination and would love to learn about the way he brings that imagination to the page.

6, 7. Lucy Knisley and Edward Gorey would both be awesome to work with on visual projects, whether it involves graphic novels or just illustrated novels. And yes, I know Gorey is dead and that’s a wish that can never come true.

8. Rainbow Rowell, and I’m not even sure why, but she seems like a great person to do a back-and-forth, two-perspective kind of book with.

9. Erin Morgenstern, mostly because I adore her writing and find her very inspirational.

10. Diana Wynne Jones, another wish that can never come true. Like Gaiman, I think this woman has an incredible imagination and I would love to understand more about, and become part of, those processes.

I know not all of my readers are writers, but if you were collaborating with an author – any author, living or dead – who would you pick?

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

Posted in Book Talk, Writing | Tagged lists | 3 Comments

The Hollow Boy, by Jonathan Stroud

Posted on October 12, 2015 by Thistle

Lockwood & Co. are still on the case(s), this time trying to contain one of the largest sources of supernatural outbreak since the Problem began. Only now, the team is disjointed. Business has been booming, the team is split up more often than they’d like, and they’re living in a pigsty with no time to clean. Enter Holly, a new assistant meant to field calls, set up appointments, clean house, and (in a pinch) come out on assignments with the others. With this newfound efficiency, however, Lucy (our narrator) feels shoved aside and discarded, unappreciated and patronized. This helps no one when it comes to the Problem.

I love these books. I’m so glad I stumbled upon the audio version of The Screaming Staircase, and only wish I’d been able to get my hands on audio versions of The Whispering Skull and this book. Audio or not, the book was fantastic. Captivating, dragging me along pleasantly, breaking me out of my reading malaise. It was awesome.

Doubly awesome was the set up of a longer arc in this book. I have no idea if this series has a planned end, or if it’s just going to keep going as long as people are reading it. Either way, this is the first time there seems to be a long-running series arc rather than individual book arcs (though of course it had that too). I’m excited to learn more about the Problem and about ghosts in general, and I hope that grows even more in further installments.

One more thing to note: These are middle-grade books, and I rarely read middle-grade because I’m well beyond the target audience and I find many of the tricks/writing styles too young for me. That is not the case with this series. The Screaming Staircase had me freaked out and in chills a few times (it was an excellent audiobook). The Whispering Skull wasn’t quite as good, though I admitted at the time this was probably my disappointment over not having an audio version, and it was still very good, not at all too young. The Hollow Boy was extremely creepy in places, flesh-crawlingly creepy, and none of these books have felt like they’ve been cut shallow or young for the audience. There’s a lot of very interesting psychology and philosophy and the things you’d find in older books, but still light enough to work for kids. It reminds me, in some ways, of Diana Wynne Jones’ style of making her books all-ages appropriate, and I really appreciate that. That’s hard to do, and Stroud does it very well. Thumbs up!

Reread via audiobook in May 2016: Emily Bevan reads the audio of this one, and just like with The Whispering Skull, I had to adjust to entirely new voices for all the characters. This is probably my least favorite of the audiobooks. It wasn’t bad, but the characters were different from how I hear them, much younger (especially George, who sounded about nine years old here).

Posted in 2015, 2016, Children's, Prose | Tagged atmospheric, audio, circus horror, dream-invader, favorite, memorable, reread, RIP-worthy, speculative | 2 Comments

Sunday Coffee – Sometimes, I just want spoilers.

Posted on October 11, 2015 by Thistle

Recently, I skimmed through a book. I can’t say I read it, even though I looked over every page and pretty much followed the plot. Reading it would have been excruciating. The writing, characterization, and plot “twists” were…um…awful. And no, I won’t say which book it is, because I have no intention of writing a semi-review lampooning a book I didn’t even fully read. The only reason I write this at all is because the entire time I was skimming it, I kept wishing I had a place to go online, some sort of book database, that outlined the whole plot for me, spoilers and all.

There’s a whole range of feelings on spoilers in the book world, from one extreme of wishing to know absolutely nothing about a book to the other extreme of wanting to know the whole plot before reading. I fall somewhere in the middle. Generally, I avoid major spoilers, but like to have a little bit of an idea what the book is about before beginning. Sometimes – like when I read Jane Eyre for the first time in my late 20s knowing absolutely nothing about the twists – it’s awesome to read a book spoiler-free. And sometimes, like with the book above, I wish wish wish there was a blog out there devoted to outlining entire plotlines.

I would love to have outlines of the fourth and fifth Song of Fire and Ice books, for instance, because I don’t actually want to read either – I just want to know what happens. There are books, like the one I skimmed this week, that have a somewhat-interesting story but the writing or characters drive me crazy. Sometimes a book is so portentous that I’m afraid to read forward, but still want to know what happens. Sometimes, I just want the damn spoilers!

Anyone else feel this way? Anyone?

Posted in Book Talk | Tagged Sunday Coffee | 9 Comments