Wrapping Up November 2018

This is my second attempt at writing this wrap up on WordPress because the original draft vanished. I need to rethink where I write my drafts. So, it’s the end of November, and I want to share what happened and what I found. But first, I want to share an update about the Fanfiction Reading Challenge.

Update on the Fanfiction Reading Challenge

I am planning on hosting the Fanfiction Reading Challenge in 2019, but I’m trying to improve it before I make the official announcement for it. One thing that was a big fail this year was that I didn’t come through on graphics, and another was that I didn’t keep it very active. I’m working on making the challenge more flexible and more active for next year. If you have any feedback on the challenge, please comment on this post or my feedback post from last week.

My Month in Review

Now let’s review what I posted this month. It started with what I learned from the #FinnFury October Bookstagram Challenge. It’s made me more active on Bookstagram. I also wrote about an awesome talking hen from Ozma of Oz by L. Frank Baum for the I Heart Characters! Meme. My third non-book review was me sharing my thoughts on Love, Simon. It finally reached HBO, so I got to watch it this month, and it was disappointing to me.

For actual book reviews, I posted three. The first is for a graphic novel adaptation of The Pied Piper of Hamelin, now under the title of Piper. Jay Asher and Jessica Freeburg worked with Jeff Stokely to rewrite the story with a backstory for the piper and gave him a love interest. I also reviewed another audiobook that took me a long time to finish. It’s Holly Black’s The Darkest Part of the Forest, which is about a two kids have pledged their lives and love to the service of the horned boy in the glass casket. Then on Monday I shared my bullet-point review of Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt by Anne Rice. Also known as The Young Messiah, this piece of Christian fiction retells the childhood of Jesus/Yeshua (he goes by both names in the book).

Where does this leave me with my current reading? I’m reading Wolf Children by Mamoru Hosoda and A Very Large Expanse of Sea by Tahereh Mafi. Both are pretty good, but I think I’m approaching a reading slump. I noticed it when I tried starting Leah on the Offbeat because I couldn’t figure out why I had to dnf the book when I related a lot to Leah. Maybe I need to try something different. Maybe I’ll work through it.

Interesting Finds

These finds are pretty disjointed in my organization of them, but they’re all worth reading.

As an English major, I think it’s healthy to still look at both positive and negative perspectives on the degree. Consequently, I loved “‘Gaining Critical Thinking Skills’ Is No Defense for the English Degree” by Krysta from Pages Unbound. Many majors teach this skill, but English does have its own merits.

On a slightly different note, Vicky from Vicky Who Reads shared “The Many Ways YA Books & The Community Isolates Teens.” She gets into the money problems and the way characters are written. It’s a thoughtful read about the target audience of books we love.

Neko Neha, the author of BiblioNyan, made a list of the top 5 translators of Japanese literature. I haven’t read enough books translated to English from Japanese, but I like hearing about who has amazing skill in translation. In this post in particular, I love that Neha explained the beautiful skill of these translators and how they’re able to work with difficult passages of text.

I love reading about why an anti-hero is who they are or what made a villain evil, but I want it to be good. I don’t want to lose sight of the fact that they do bad things, that they’re villains. This is why I like The Orangutan Librarian’s discussion post, “Why Can’t Characters Just Be Evil?,” and its conclusion.

Michelle from Chelle’s Book Ramblings asks, “Are We Forcing Diversity?” I’m going to leave it at that, but it’s a good question for us to think about.

>^..^<

That’s all for November, so have a jolly December. How was your November?

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