Sunday Salon: A bit of Sharing

I was going to post today about how tired I am of winter…but then, as you probably know, there has been a huge conversation around book bloggers starting with plagiarism and now going to the fact of unrealistic expectations. The thought that we are Super Women (or Men) and can do 5 posts a week, not just reviews, do great at work, have a Pinterest worthy house…is just too much! On this I would suggest you read Andi’s post (she is great by the way) on how this is just not right.

As I mentioned on Twitter, I feel very lucky as a relative young blogger to see examples like Andi or Trish (visit her here)  Examples of wonderful bloggers that are witty, entertaining, share a bit of their lives and are perfectly ok with saying: you know what? I am not perfect. But still, the pressure can add up. You want to have more readers and more page views and more galleys and be able to say that you read that book before it was officially out…so you strain yourself and post, and post…and then life catches up, you can’t post for a while and for sure, your next post will be: I’m sorry I haven’t posted in a while, but you know, life. We shouldn’t be sorry about this, and yet we are. I think we feel guilty mostly with ourselves and then a crazy circle starts.

Today a lot of my favorite bloggers are talking truths, about themselves and about book blogging life. And so I figure I would add some of mine too.

1.  I don’t do a lot of personal posts. For a while it was because I felt I had nothing “interesting” to say and because in general I am a bit hesitant to open up. Now I am wondering more and more often about doing so.
2.  I did open a new blog about PhD life, but I am trying very hard for it not to become a venting site, since there are already a lot of them. I want it to be a place where people thinking of doing a science PhD can get a bit more ideas of what it can be.
3. That being said, I am happy with my life outside the lab, but in the past months I have cried so much due to the lab. Project has hit some walls, and the PI is not happy and hence…I am getting frustrated.
4. I come from a country that has so many beauty pageants it would be an understatement to say that image is quite important…and so I have huge image issues. I still have some stress acne and since my body doesn’t fit a mold, it is very often that I feel simply ugly. Oh Trish had the most wonderful post about this and I want to take a moment to thank her for that. I try hard to improve my self-image every day, but it is a struggle.
5. Besides my figure I doubt myself about my usage of English (or French since my institute is francophone). I started my blogs in English because I wanted to reach a wider audience, but you have no idea the amount of time it takes me to write a single post, and to check it over and over…and when I miss a mistake it can haunt me for days.
6. I am addicted to checking my stats, even when I keep telling myself is not productive…I still do it.
7. I don’t have kids yet…but I will be honest with you, I am terrified about being pregnant. Not being a mom, I had to raise my brothers when my mom died…no, the pregnancy is what scares me the most.
8. While I try to act like I don’t care, it does affect me a lot the fact that a lot of people don’t like me at my lab...I know I am not easy to like, and I am happy for the people who have taken the time to know me, but in IRL, these “colleagues” just find me annoying and to tell you the truth, it hurts.
9. Very often I feel that all the work I do at the lab passes unappreciated by my boss.
10. I hate people seeing me cry because I don’t want them to think I am not strong enough…even though that is exactly why I am crying.

I am going to stop there. In part because it is getting harder to write this stuff and in part because I am sure you get the point. We are all humans, we are all fragile and we all have things going on besides our blogs. We cannot nor should we be perfect as bloggers or as humans. Let’s keep blogging because we like it, because it is a fun community to be part of. Let’s reach for help when we need it and let’s not forget to give credit where credit is due.

Have a lovely week!

Sunday Salon: Reading with music

Do you guys reading while listening to music? I do. Not always, but mostly when I am alone. I've realized over the years that I cannot concentrate if things are too quite and this applies both to when I am studying or just reading for pleasure.

 

Off course it cannot be any sound in the background. It all starts to when I used to live with my brothers, very noisy little fellas. They where always more active and loud that I ever was, so I got used to doing my homework or reading to their games and fights. When I first had to study with them around, the silence around was just distracting!

 

Now that I live with A, I don't always have music while I work or read, if he is in the room. Now, he is not loud, sometimes it will be just the sound of his keyboard. But today he had to go to the lab and I was trying to read and the house was so quite I just couldn't concentrate for more than a couple of lines... 

As I am writing this post I am listening to the Indie Rock post at Grooveshark. The only thing that I cannot use as background to read are podcasts. If the TV is on I can zone out and into my book or work; same if A is playing...well except when he plays Starcraft, the voice asking for minerals drives me crazy, even though our characters do something pretty similar when we are playing WoW and...oh wait, I just went out of topic, sorry, where was I? oh yeah, so I am listening to my music and even if songs that I love come up and usually I would start signing to them, they don't distract me. 

What is very interesting (to me at least) is that later, when I will revisit a certain book in my head it will pop up with the music I was listening too and I love this type of fusion of senses, don't you?

Tell me about your reading, do you need music or complete silence? any music in particular?

 

Listening to: The Only Thing I Know by Gotye

Sunday Salon: Getting ready for September

Ok, ok, so September is already here but I was away on vacation so bear with me. This is going to be a very busy month, both in my reading life and my personal life, so I figured I will tell you a bit about it.

First off, we have the Readers Imbibing Peril IX. You can check my sing post here and there you will also find the titles I plan to read. This gives me my first September read: The Haunting of Hill House. My dearest Andi from Estella Society is hosting the readalong. I will also have to at least tackle on of the books from my list. Since the R.I.P Challenge coincided with the Read-a-Thon in October I am not überly nervous about managing my reading for this challenge, but still, I cannot leave the 4 books for October only.

Now, September is also NetGalley Month, an event hosted by Tay at Chicks that Read. For this event I want to read and review the following books: Sudden Light, Mademoiselle both coming out on September 30 and maybe The French Executioner, but this is a maybe, since I have a bit more time for it. Right now my NG ratio is 62.5% and that's with Sudden Light already reviewed. I would love to increase my ratio, but since I am certainly not lacking books to read, I won't be asking anymore books from NG until October probably.

This is also the month for A More Diverse Universe or Diversiverse, an event organized by Aarti from Booklust.

For those who have not heard about #Diversiverse before, it's a very simple challenge. For those of you who have participated in the past, it's even easier this year. The criteria are as follows:

Read and review one book

Written by a person of color

During the last two weeks of September (September 14th - 27th)

I have two candidates for this being: Stories of your life and Others by Ted Chiang, which incidentally is the month's pick for the Sword and Laser book club and Adulthood Rites by Octavia E. Butler, but once again, the second one is a maybe IF I manage to get to it.

That takes us to at least 4 books this month doesn't it? Well, the thing is I've been a bit behind with all my reviews, and this off course affects future reviews. So after trying it 2 times I've decided to start doing some Mini reviews. I believe there is always something to say about a book, but sometimes since I have very little to say (for example with certain sequels) I postpone the review in hopes I will get more to say later...but I don't. I don't think I will go back to write mini reviews for some of the books I've finished but haven't reviewed but you never know.

In the matter of my 2 year long challenges "Where in the world are you Reading" and "Sequel and Prequel Challenge" I think I am doing well. You can see my general progress in their respective tabs.

So that's it for the Blog life. Now for the personal part. This month A and I will celebrate 5 years together. I am so very lucky to have him, he is sweet and supportive and a big geek. It is also the first month that he is officially out of the lab. He still has to finish writing up his thesis and we are waiting for news on a job he interviewed for before we left for a week.

It will also be (hopefully) the month when I finally get my driver's license...well, I have mine from Colombia, but it took me a while to do the process to change it for a Canadian one because...I really don't like driving, guys. But with A no longer going to the lab with me, and the winter coming, we both agreed it will be who might be needing the car more often and so, here I am, getting ready for my driver's exam.

Now I am off to read. Happy September everybody!

TSS: Mid year Re-Cap

Hello everyone, 

I'm a bit late to this post, and it won't be that original, since I think almost everyone of us did the half year re-cap, but here I am. 

I have to tell you, I'm a bit disappointed this year. Yes, I have read 30 books already of my 42 year challenge...but I haven't LOVED most of them. Don't get me wrong. I've enjoyed my reading life this year; is just that I haven't fell over heels over that many books and that makes me wonder whether I have  become more critical, or I just haven't found my sweet spot in reading yet.I cross my fingers is the latter.

 

On the other hand, and thanks to the book club I'm part off, I've widened my reading spectrum, and, a big plus, this year I don't have a book that I didn't like at all, thus far. That's a great thing you guys, last year, with Jersey Angel I was so frustrated!

Also I have to consider something, and that is that there are several books that I have keeping untouched, waiting for the R.I.P. Challenge this year, as well as the autumn read-a-thon. So, fingers crossed, that will tip the balance to a more "loveable" reading year. 

So far, my favorite book of the year has to be between Ready Player One and Gone Girl; both very different and both kept me reading past a decent hour. Least favorite has to be, hands down I Don't know how she does it. Not much to say on that one; I wasn't expecting a great book out of it, but even with low expectations I ended up very disappointed. 

Anyway, here is to a great rest of the year for all of us!!!

TSS: Back once again

Hello everybody!

OMG, it's been such a long time since I did a TSS post! Maybe I mentioned, maybe I didn't but I had a huge exam recently...long story short if you don't pass this exam you are not allowed to graduate from your PhD. I passed!!. You can only imagine how happy I am, how relieved and how relaxed I am right now. 

My reading life was not in a pause however, I was a good girl and kept on reading...ok, it had nothing to do with being a good girl, but mostly needing to do something different than studying every night. So I did finish 8 books since my last TSS post. 

However, as you may have noticed I did not post the reviews for the last 6 :S. But I'm catching up, yesterday I posted the reviews for Gone Girl, The Buddha in the Attic and Wool. Hopefully during this week I will be able to post the other 3; I'm lucky to have a long week-end all for myself and work on this.

Other than that everything is going fine. Weather is not very summery yet, but I will change my banner soon, just the window image. Maybe that will hint mother nature that is time to summer things up?

Anyway, have a wonderful week, and fingers crossed you will be able to drop by and actually find new stuff in the site. I'm a bit behind updating my lists of challenges and books reviewed, but I will get to it soon enough.

TSS: Quick post

Hello everybody! How is everybody doing? How many of you are dead tired because you were up all night for the Dewey's Read-a-Thon?

Sadly I wasn't able to be part of it as a reader, since I have to study (you are jealous, I'm sure) but I did participate as a cheerleader, using my mental pauses to cheer for the people reading.

Also this week I was able to post 3 new reviews: Dragonflight for my Sword and Laser Book Club and Beautiful Darkness for the Sequel challenge and Ready Player One, that one was just for me ;).

As I mentioned this is a quick post, I will try to continue uploading reviews, but I might not be able to post a lot of discusions until June 18, the day of my exam.

Have a wonderful week!

TSS: The Perfect Reader?

Hello everyone,

I hope you are having a nice  week-end. It snowed on Friday but everything is practically gone by now, the sky is blue and the house is clean :) Did You notice that the weather changed in my banner too? Is officially spring in this blog you guys!

First what I have been reading. I finish Cinder, Shopaholic and Sister and Beautiful Darkness during my vacation (not bad, hu?). As you can see the first two already have their review available. I'm advancing (slowly but surely) with The Historian, and on Thursday I received my copy of Ready Player One from the library. I started it and so far I'm enjoying it a lot. I have to make time to study for my PhD exam (a huge thing in the middle of your PhD, just in case you needed more stress) and hopefully I will be able to make all of this fit into place.

Do you guys follow Book Riot? Friday there was this article about "the perfect reader". It was a satire of course, but it got me thinking if there is such thing as a perfect way to be a reader. The obvious answer to me is that no, there isn't. When you think about it, there is possibly as much type of readers as there is books, and since in my opinion there is no such thing as the perfect book, it means there cannot be a perfect reader either.

However, I do think there is such thing as the perfect reader for a book and vice versa. By this I do not mean books that fit perfectly a target audience, since this is too broad. But I am sure once in a while you find that book that is perfect for you, that hits all the right buttons, you can't find any flaw in it...and when this happens I believe you just found the perfect book for you and you might be just the perfect reader for it too.

There is also a even better possibility, someone finds a book, and is amazing, but there is something missing there. This person cannot pinpoint what it is...and then this person shares the book with you and you find what was missing! That too would make you the perfect reader for this book because in a way you could make this book "grow". It is not actually possible, since the book was already written, but still. 

I think I've found several books that are perfect for me, but I don't dare to say that I've been the perfect reader for one of them

TSS: Packing books

Hello everyone,

I’m posting a bit earlier today but I have a good reason for it. You see…we are leaving on a trip later today and I want to make sure that everything is left tended. I am very exited to go, it will be my first time in Europe!! And even though the forecast announces a bit of rain, it is all in the positives, compared to the negative temperatures we are still having around here.

Anyway, I’ve been planning this trip for a month now, and I already know what I was going to pack, clothes wise that is. But I spent the last week thinking what exactly should I bring to read. You would think is an easy enough task, but as it turns out is not!

You see, we will be gone for only a week, but is a week full of long flights, long waits at the airport, trains, etc. And you have the fact that it is me we are talking about, so going without at least one book seems ludicrous to me. At the same time, since we are going for a wedding, most of our packing space is dedicated to fancy clothes, and I was told to leave some empty space in my bags since they have at least 4 books for me to bring back.

So you could think that with that my problem is solved, because I will arrive and there will be books waiting for me, right? Wrong! First of all, we won’t see the family until the third day of travelling which means a plane and a train in between, not to mention the inevitable waiting time, since they make me arrive super early to the airport to check that all my documents are in order (the perks of being a Colombian, sigh).

And then you can tell me, yeah, but you have a new e-reader, don’t you? You can “pack”  a bunch of books in that thing…true, very true, but which ones? I guess by now you have realized I am a huge over thinker to say the least.

At the same time that this was going on in my head, I happened to open my new account with OverDrive at my local library trying to get a copy of Dark Paces since I loved SharpObjects, something you probably already know with my review. Turns out they have tons of books both on EPUB versions and Audio. Now, I have never tried and audio book before since I always felt that unless I wasn’t doing anything else (quite rare in my life) I wouldn’t actually get the whole book, it would be like skimming it. But this is the perfect opportunity to give it a try, on the plane, listening to a book instead of the movie. I took out Cinder. I’ was curious about this one for a while, so two birds, one stone…well, one iPod, but never mind that.

Finally, along with my first audio book ever (I started it just to see if I liked the voice) I also got all the Beautiful Creatures books and the second and third book of Master Li and Ten Ox series.  All of them light, fun simple reads that seemed appropriate to me for vacation reading.

What about you, how do you choose what to read on a trip? Do you always pack a back-up book?

TSS: You are what you read

Ok you guys, I know I did not post anything last Sunday. My PC was bugging (it would seem it would never end!) so let's say my priorities were somewhere else. But I have been reading. Proof of that I present to you not one, not two, but 4 reviews! How about that? We have Destined and Hidden for my Sequel Challenge, The Clearing from LybraryThing and Downbelow Station from the Sword and Laser Book club.

Now, I would like to talk to you about something that caught my attention this week, and maybe you've already heard of it. A group from the University of Cambridge recently published an study about how private traits might be predictable form digital records. This is very interesting in a world where our digital records are more and more common. You can try simpler version of it by going to www.youarewhatyoulike.com It will basically use your Facebook likes (some of them) and try to predict some of your traits. I did it and it was (in my opinion) 60% accurate.

I'm sure you are wondering why did I wanted to share this with you since is not necessarily bookish. Well, in a way it is; you see, most of my likes are related either to music or to books and it was with those likes that I'm assuming the system used (it doesn't tell you though). The website "predicts" that I am spontaneous and flexible, although they are very clear by saying that your likes might not reflect your personality correctly and thus your score can be wrong, and this off course makes sense (when was the last time you disliked something you used to like?). You see, I am not flexible, far from that, I like my things organized, on scheduled...but then...I do read a lot of fiction and is easier to pinpoint what I don't read (self help for example) that what I do read. So I can't help by wonder which of/if my books are telling this algorithm that I'm spontaneous! I wouldn't stop liking them, but I would like to know.

So what about you? What do you think your books say about you? Have you tried the website? If not, would you?

Have a lovely week! Spring is almost here!!!! (sort off, is still snowing a lot around here)