On one hand, this is the smallest my TBR shelf has been since July. On the other hand, the Christmas Books haven’t hit it yet, and my January reading is not going to subtract a single book off of this shelf since all of my Stormlight books are already shelved in the living room. Am I doomed? Yes, I’m doomed.
Also, I’m amending my reading goals: see that stack on the left? It’s entirely nonfiction. That’s half the year’s goal right there. So instead of 25 specific books, it’s now 20% of all of my reading is going to be nonfiction. The math/teaching goal is going to stay the same, and I think The Anxious Generation is going to count toward that goal even though it’s not explicitly about teaching.
Expect several posts today, by which I mean “at least two.”
Can’t wait to see what sort of suggested tags the system throws up for this one.
So I’m definitely doing this stupid “read the entire Stormlight Archives in January” contest with myself, and I decided to make it even harder, because there are two novellas alongside the five canonical novels, and I decided I’m going to read those motherfuckers too. Pictured there is the doorstop-ass hardback copy of Wind and Truth, weighing in at 1344 pages and 2.31 pounds. Worth pointing out: while this is the longest book of the series, it is not the physically largest of the series, which still goes to Words of Radiance, the second book, which is about 300 pages shorter but presumably uses thicker paper.
Pictured next to it: the two novellas, which are somehow smaller than they look there.
And if you are like me you are already aware of why I want to have a conversation with someone about this, and why that conversation might involve hitting them upside their fool heads with one of those three books, or perhaps all three of those books stuffed into a pillowcase.
My sole accomplishment this weekend, if you want to grant it that status, was taking this spinning bookshelf out of its box (fresh from the TikTok shop!) and putting it together, which means that I now have this little spot for all of my YA books, or at least I have this little spot for all the YA books I have right now, because I’m going to outgrow it in about five more books. It’s pretty and colorful, though, and the fact that every book on there but one is exactly the same size grants it a really pleasing symmetry. I’ve said this before; there is a difference between being a reader and a book collector, and I am very much both of those things.
That’s about all I did. I’m about halfway through R.R. Virdi’s The Doors of Midnight, which is 800 pages long so it’s taking me a while, but I took one pill on Friday night because I was having trouble sleeping and it knocked me on my ass for a day and a half. So there’s not much else of note worth talking about at the moment.
This happened Friday at work, so I can’t count it as an achievement, but I’ve got all of my classes planned out through December 4th, an event so rare that, statistically speaking, it didn’t actually happen. Any number of things can upset my plan (which is why I’m never planned out this far ahead; it’s mostly pointless) but we’re in a sort of autopilot-type unit right now, where C has to follow B which has to follow A, and the only real changes that could happen is delays either due to school closings, further sickness, or my kids just not getting something, and then really all I have to do is back everything up a day, which is no big deal. There are seven instructional days until Thanksgiving; I have no plans for Thanksgiving and we likely won’t make any either, since Bek’s family is the weekend before Thanksgiving and my family is the weekend after Thanksgiving. So that weekend will probably be filled with Lego, reading and video games and not so much massive amounts of food. But I have to survive that long first. We’ll see.
Book of the Month is going to be Shannon Chakraborty’s The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi, with The Fury of the Gods, In the Hour of Crows and The God and the Gumiho nipping at its heels.