BA's Posting Challenge 5 &6: In the Design / Other Loves

I missed last week because I was sick with a pretty nasty cough, sorry, so here are two posts for the price of one!

Week 5's topic: How did you come to have your current blog design and what do you love about it?

Honestly, I haven't put a huge amount of thought in to my blog design and layout. I prefer to keep it simple and uncluttered, and I like purple. It's just one of the Blogger default themes. The Goodreads widget is new this year, since I started my reading challenges. The tagline, "You never get wise, you only get older" is a line from the Dandy Warhols' song "Big Indian". To me it's not a negative sentiment, it's saying that there's always more to learn and that there's things that you will never learn, but that's not a bad thing.

Week 6's topic: What else do you love to talk about besides books, on your blog or off it?

I talk about food a lot here. I love food. I love baking. I love to make food and share it, as a gift to my friends. Right now I have chilli jam cooking in my Thermomix, to give to some of Dave's friends from work. And we're cooking beef pot roast in the slow cooker for dinner. I wish I had more time to cook and bake more.

On my tumblr, besides reblogging cute animal pictures, I reblog a lot of feminist and fat acceptance stuff. I like to read and share that stuff and think about it, and sometimes talk to a couple of friends who "get" it, but I tend not to write it myself or share it outside of safe spaces. There's plenty of great bloggers out there who say it better than I ever could.

I also talk about computer games, sometimes here on this blog but also with my friends. My biggest time sink right now is XCOM: Enemy Unknown which is a game from one of Dave's favorite franchises. I hadn't picked up XCOM when it came out because it didn't seem like my sort of game: I prefer RPGs. But after watching Dave play it I decided that I'd check it out, and I picked it up when it was a Steam Daily Deal last week...and I love it. In fact, I'm going to go play it right now!

This post is part of the above Posting Challenge

BA's Posting Challenge 4: Meet and Greet

This week's topic: Who are some of the authors you have met or would love to meet and why?

I've only met one really famous author, and that was Raymond E. Feist when he came to do a signing in Wellington. I have a signed copy of the extended version of Magician. This was years ago now. I remember we had to wait in line for ages and that he was not doing dedications, just signing his name. He was complaining bitterly to his assistant about the quality of the coffee while he signed. Wellington has a great café culture and so I remember being offended about that. I know, now, that most big-name authors won't do dedications at bookstore signings either, because there's just not enough time. But at the time I was really disappointed.

One author I would love to meet is George R. R. Martin, author of the series A Song of Ice and Fire. He came out to Australia in 2010 for WorldCon. I really, really wanted to go but we couldn't afford it. Now of course he's super-famous thanks to the HBO series of Game of Thrones so I've probably missed my chance :(

This post is part of the above Posting Challenge

Off The Shelf 2013: April

April was a great month because I finally finished off The Dresden Files so can move on to other, more varied reads! Since the March update, I've read books 13-14 of The Dresden Files, plus Side Jobs, the short story collection. I'm currently about halfway through The Casual Vacancy by J. K. Rowling. I'm not really sure what I think about it yet. There were a lot of characters introduced really quickly and I'm still finding it hard to keep track of who's who and on what side of the main conflict they fall. Like many others, I picked up this book because I'm a Harry Potter fan and I was excited to see what Rowling could do in a different genre and with a different target audience, but to be honest I'm not impressed so far. Once I finish reading I'll do a review.

I'm currently sitting at 18 books read for the year which is back ahead of my reading goal. I'm really loving how much I've gotten back in to reading because of these twin challenges and thanks to Goodreads. Finally I've got my reading mojo back and I'm loving it!

One thing I am struggling with though is that because of the large number of books in my Off The Shelf challenge, I don't really have the wriggle room to read other things that I might want. I'm a notorious re-reader, which is partly why I took on the challenge in the first place, but sometimes I just want to read something familiar. I'm meeting that need currently by listening to the audiobooks of the A Song of Ice and Fire series...but I have less than an hour's listening time each work day, and these books are looooooong - A Game of Thrones is nearly 34 hours, and that's the shortest. In fact, I just did a quick calculation: at this rate it's going to take me the rest of the year to listen to the series. Longer than this year even. Eeep.

I also don't have much room to squeeze in other books that I want to read if they come up. For example, there will almost certainly be another book in The Dresden Files out later this year that I'll have to fit in. My plan right now is to blast through as many of my Off The Shelf books as quickly as I can, so I have spare time towards the end of the year to read other stuff. So far that's working well, but I haven't really started reading the non-fiction on my list, and that tends to take me longer to read.

Still, I'm meeting my goals for now, which is great, and really enjoying using Goodreads to see what others are reading and enjoying. If you love reading, you should join Goodreads too!

If you want to see my rating and/or review of each book, check out my Goodreads page.

This post is part of my Off The Shelf 2013 Reading Challenge

BA's Posting Challenge 3: Disgruntled Blogging

This week's topic: What are some of the cons you've discovered when it comes to blogging?

The two main problems I have with blogging are essentially two sides of the same coin.

Side one: sometimes I just don't feel like blogging. There's more than one failed (sorry, "on hiatus") blogging challenge in my blog history. There's stretches of weeks at a time where I post nothing. I think I'm learning to not do daily blogging challenges because that's what I struggle the most with. This weekly one is going well so far though.

Side two: sometimes when I blog I have verbal diarrhea and spit out long, rambling posts that are quite possibly only of interest to me (see yesterday's post for an example, 1800 words after excluding the block quotes). Sometimes I just really, really want to write, and write, and write. So my blog swings from nothing at all to overloaded and back again with alarming rapidity.

Luckily, because my blog is pretty small and personal and not 100% focused on a particular theme, I get very little spam or hate mail. But I know other bloggers (especially Fat Acceptance bloggers) who get daily hate mail and even death threats. So I know I'm lucky in that regard.

Otherwise, no real disgruntlement here!

This post is part of the above Posting Challenge

The Dresden Files: Book Series Review

Yesterday I finished reading Side Jobs, the collection of short stories and novellas/novelettes set in the Dresden Files universe, and with it the series to-date. Fourteen novels and the short story collection, and I'm finally done. For now. Unfortunately, the series is far from over - Jim Butcher is apparently planning around 23 books total, which means I'll be reading The Dresden Files books for many years yet. At least I got in to the series halfway through - the first book, Storm Front, was first published way back in 2000. This review is also a general introduction to the series and its concepts. I'll try to keep this review as spoiler-free as possible, but I'm sure there will be minor spoilers. You have been warned!