I scour the shelves for authors I love, or for titles that have already been added to my TBR list.

But I don’t even know when the last time was when I searched for something new that I had never heard of before.

Before I started my book blog, before I started reading other book blogs, I got my book recommendations from a few friends or family members IRL who were readers. So I had to delve through the stacks to find something I had never heard of before that might strike my fancy. I would spend hours in bookstores or the library. Now I’m lucky if I have enough patience to spend more than a half hour looking for books that I’ve read about over and over on blogs or twitter.

This is one of the biggest downfalls that I’ve found has been a side effect of the book blogosphere: there is so much good stuff that I’ve heard about that I don’t feel the need or desire to really hunt for the unknown. And sometimes the unknown is the book or author that’s going to become a favourite…

It’s actually a little depressing to think about all the awesome unknowns I am missing out on, haha.

Do you find that you still have a desire to browse through bookstores to find that one little treasure that you’d never heard of? Or are you like me now, and only grab what you know you’ve heard about?

It turns out that this year was the year of Georgette Heyer. And I am happy that there are still so many more of her regency books to read. Huzzah, love regency romances!

Here are some other random stats from this year:

Random Book Stats

Books Read & Reviewed: 59
Books by Canadian Authors: 10
Books by Female Authors: 32
Books by Georgette Heyer: 7
Non-fiction: 6
Fantasy/SciFi/Etc: 28
YA/Childrens: 27
Series/Trilogies Started: 11
Series/Trilogies Finished: 4
Series/Trilogies I’m Now in the Middle of: 37

Concerts

NKOTBSB! Emm Gryner! Great Big Sea!

Plays

Only two this year. The first was Billy Elliot, and was totally awesome, as it was a 30th birthday gift from the bf. The second was Doctor Faustus while I was on holiday in England, and Arthur Darvill was in it, huzzah!

Goals

2011′s Goals

Read / Review more books than last year: Two books short. So close!
Read more books by Canadian authors. Last year, I only read 8. This year, I read 10. Better, but not as awesome as I’d like it to be.
Own less books that I haven’t read. Well….. I don’t own MORE at this point in time. But I just don’t own any LESS. So I’m about on par with that one.
Come up with or join a new weekly featurette that I will actually remember and care about posting every week. Meh. Didn’t happen. Ah well.
Continue tweaking the layout for my blog. Been working on this continuously. Will continue to do so.

Goals for 2012

Read & review 60 books on the blog. That’s about 5 a month. Should be do-able.
Read more books by Canadian authors. I still feel like I should be doing more of that.
Own less books that I haven’t read. I feel like this is a pipe dream.
Re-read books! I haven’t reread any books in a long time, and there are some I really want to revisit.
Finish the books required for the RGD of Ontario test. Want to finish those and take the test, yes yes.

Do you have any goals for 2012? What are you hoping to accomplish?

When I was growing up, a few days after Christmas, my dad’s side of the family would have a Christmas gathering of our own. It wasn’t often when we would all get together (my dad had four siblings, and all of them had 2-3 kids, along with my grandparents, etc, which made it hard for EVERYONE to be able to get together at any one given time), but most of the family made an effort to be around on Christmas.

Every year, my grandmother would make dessert – both Christmas pudding and English Trifle. Because the Christmas pudding was always such a favourite among her children (my parents, aunts & uncles), she made additional small Christmas puddings for each family to take home with them. My father would always put his pudding into the freezer until the following year on Christmas day.

As with most people when they start getting older, my grandmother’s memory started going… which posed a problem, as she always made the recipes from scratch and never wrote them down. One year when this started happening, she spent a day with a couple of my aunts to teach them how she made the Christmas pudding. I think the plan was that they would take over making the pudding from her. Unfortunately, neither of the aunts ended up writing down the recipe either, and have since forgotten how exactly my grandmother made it… but that particular year, when my aunts helped my grandmother, was a bit of a special treat for those who got a taste of the pudding.

Like some recipes for Christmas pudding, my grandmother always added alcohol (brandy, I believe) to her pudding. During the year she was teaching my aunts, my grandmother added the alcohol without letting either of the aunts know that she was doing so. Then both of my aunts proceeded to add the required amount of alcohol, both sure that it had been overlooked by my grandmother and the other aunt that was there. Needless to say, when it came time to eat the pudding that year, it certainly packed a bit of a punch… and the following year, when we took my father’s pudding out of our freezer, we found that there had been so much alcohol in it that it hadn’t even frozen!

Last year, I made my first attempt at making Christmas pudding from scratch. (Those store bought ones don’t taste nearly as good as homemade ones!) I borrowed my maternal grandmother’s recipe collection, and found about 6 or 7 different Christmas pudding recipes. After much debate, I decided on making King George’s Christmas Pudding, as it seemed to be the most similar to what my paternal grandmother would make. I think I made the right choice – my dad quite enjoyed it, and will be eating the frozen one this year on Christmas day!

King George’s Christmas Pudding

Ingredients:
6 Tbsp. all-purpose flour
1 tsp ground allspice
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp ground nutmet
3/4 cup mixed candied peel
1 cup chopped blanched almonds
1 Tbsp. molasses
1 cup fine dry breadcrumbs
1 cup melted margarine
3/4 cup brown sugar
1 medium apple, peeled and grated
1 small carrots
1 1/2 cups golden raisins
3/4 cup sultana raisins
3/4 cup currants
grated rind and juice of one large lemon
2 medium eggs, beaten
1/3 cup stout or beer
1/3 cup brandy

Thoroughly combine all ingredients. Stir well, cover and leave mixture 24 hours to mature.

Press into greased two-quart bowl or mould and cover tightly with wax paper and foil.

Steam for six to eight hours. Remove covers and cool. Remove pudding from bowl and let dry. Wrap tightly in foil or plastic and store in cool dry place. To reheat, unwrap and place in bowl; cover and steam two hours.

Notes: If cutting in half (or if making two smaller puddings), you only need to steam for 3-4 hours.

As Christmas pudding wasn’t always something that us kids would enjoy, my grandmother also always made English Sherry Trifle. This is still one of my favourite desserts – partially because I only eat it at Christmas time (and so is extra special!) and partially because it is just SO PRETTY. Sadly, I don’t have any amusing anecdotes about this one. I have taken over making it for my immediate family, and have been doing so for the past five or six years. This year I will need to figure out substitutions for a few ingredients, since I can no longer eat gluten, which is a little frustrating, but I am determined to not let that deter me from having my favourite Christmas dessert on Christmas day!

English Sherry Trifle

Ingredients:
jelly rolls
1/2 cup sherry
2 pints raspberries
1 pkg raspberry Jello
Custard (we use 1 package of Bird’s instant custard!)
3 Tbsp. sugar
1 cup whipping cream
sprinkles

Cube jelly rolls; arrange in glass bowl, lining sides and bottom. Pour sherry over jelly rolls. Layer raspberries over top. Dissolve Jello in 1/2 cup boiling water and let it cool; pour over raspberries and cake. Cover and refrigerate until chilled and set. Meanwhile, make custard. Spoon cooled custard over set Jello. Meanwhile, whip cream and sugar. Spoon over custard. Top with sprinkles.

So, those are our traditional Christmas desserts that we’ve been eating for as long back as I can remember.

I hope you all have a wonderful holiday season, and that you too get good noms on Christmas (or whatever holiday you celebrate)!

And so now it’s time for me to do my yearly “hey! If you want to receive a Christmas card from me this year, fill out the form below!” post. (Form brought to us by Google docs, which keeps me crazy organized.) So yes, if you want a card, fill out the form below. If you want to send me a card too, I’ll send you my address shortly.

And if you want to send cards to anyone but don’t have any cards to use, I totally sell cards in my Etsy store. ;)

Yay fun!

To anyone who knows me IRL, it is no secret that I love Christmas. It is my most favourite time of the year. Last week, I went out and bought a few new decorations for around the apartment, and I even started my Christmas shopping over the weekend! (One trip to Chapters down, books bought all around, huzzah huzzah!)

One of my favourite things to do at Christmas every year is to send out Christmas cards. I’m going to be picking up my cards from the printer today (super excited!) and will be posting about that later this week – a sign-up form for a card exchange. Writing out cards while drinking tea and watching a Christmas movie – could there be anything more wonderful? I think not.

There’s a lot of Christmasy stuff going on in the blogosphere already. And if you haven’t signed up for at least one thing, then you really should! This year, I’m going to only be participating in two things – the Virtual Advent Tour and the Book Bloggers Holiday Card Exchange.

My personal favourite is the Virtual Advent Tour. This is going to be my third year participating in it, and it’s always such fun seeing how other participants celebrate the holiday.

For the second year in a row, Anastasia is hosting the Book Bloggers Holiday Card Exchange. This was a lot of fun last year – I got a lot of recs for books I had never read and was introduced to a number of new-to-me blogs. Signups for this are only open until November 30, so if you want in on the fun, don’t wait too long to get signed up!

Yay, fun community-ish holiday-related stuff! Perfect way to start off the season.

* Disclaimer: Yes, I’m sure other blogs have something of this title. I’m sorry if they decide that I am copying them, because I’m not, I just wanted a title for a biweekly rambling post and “musings” sounds so good when combined with the day “Monday.”

So, to share my shame, I thought I would share with you what is on the TBR piles. Yes, piles. I have different piles for each genre. Now, this isn’t the full TBR list – that can be found here – these are just the ones that I already own on the TBR list.

Non-Fiction

1. Making Of Pride And Prejudice Bbc Tie In by Sue Birtwistle. Originally Published 1995. LT. Came with P&P DVDs. Can’t not read it. Love P&P.
2. Design Elements: A Graphic Style Manual by Timothy Samara. Originally Published 2007. LT. Purchased as it’s recommended reading for the RGD test.
3. Graphic Design: The New Basics by Ellen Lupton. Originally Published 2008. LT. Purchased as it’s recommended reading for the RGD test.
4. Bachelor Girl by Betsy Israel. Originally Published 2003. LT Procured from BookMooch. Sounds good, but am nervous to start it as some people in blogosphere didn’t like it overly much.
5. The Graphic Design Exercise Book by Jessica Glaser. Originally Published 2010. LT. Got at San Diego Comic Con 2010.
6. Flaunt: Designing Effective, Compelling and Memorable Portfolios of Creative Work by Bryony Gomez-Palacio and Armin Vit. Originally Published 2010. LT. Purchased.
7. The Girl’s Guide to Being a Boss (Without Being a Bitch) by Caitlin Friedman and Kimberly Yorio. Originally Published 2007. LT. Purchased. Really enjoyed another book the two women wrote together, but as am not a boss nor will I be one any time in the near future, there isn’t a pressing need to read this.
8. Atlantis and Other Lost Worlds: New Evidence of Ancient Secrets by Joseph Frank. Originally Published 2008. LT. Gift.
9. A Designer’s Research Manual by Jennifer Visocky O’Grady. Originally Published. LT. Purchased as it’s recommended reading for the RGD test.
10. The Corporate Creative: Tips and Tactics for Thriving as an In-House Designer by Andy Epstein. Originally Published 2010. LT. Purchased.
11. In Spite of Myself by Christopher Plummer. Originally Published . LT. Purchased when he was in Caesar and Cleopatra at Stratford – got it signed after the show. LOVE.

General Fiction

1. Two Solitudes by Hugh MacLennan. Originally Published 1945. LT. Procured from BookMooch. Don’t remember why though.
2. Absolute Honour by C.C. Humphreys. Originally Published 2008. LT. Rachel gave this to me. Read other two in this series. Currently reading.
3. These Old Shades by Georgette Heyer. Originally Published 1926. LT. Purchased while in England; always need one Heyer on TBR pile.
4. A Beautiful Blue Death by Charles Finch. Originally Published 2007. LT. Procured from BookMooch. Don’t remember why as it doesn’t seem like my type of normal read.
5. Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy by John le Carre. Originally Published 1974. LT. Borrowed from mother. Wanted to read it before seeing the movie (but seeing as I already saw it, WELL…).
6. Still Alice by Lisa Genova. Originally Published 2008. LT. Borrowed from mother. Don’t remember why.
7. The Dovekeepers by Alice Hoffman. Originally Published 2011. LT. Sent by publisher.
8. Jeeves in the Offing by P.G. Wodehouse. Originally Published 1960. LT. Purchased. I love Jeeves and Wooster. Really love them. Oh yes.
9. The Crocodile on the Sandbank by Elizabeth Peters. Originally Published 1975. LT. I think Rachel gave me this.

Speculative Fiction

1. Grimspace (Sirantha Jax, Book 1) by Ann Aguirre. Originally Published 2008. LT. Purchased so I could read the third one, which I already had.
2. His Majesty’s Dragon (Temeraire, Book 1) by Naomi Novik. Originally Published 2006. LT. Got at San Diego Comic Con 2010.
3. Personal Demons (The Jake Helman Files) by Gregory Lamberson. Originally Published 2009. LT. Got at FanExpo 2011. This is the first in the series – author mentioned that Cthulhu is in the third. Needed.
4. The Clockwork Man by William Jablonsky. Originally Published 2010. LT. Got at FanExpo 2011.
5. The Midnight Mayor by Kate Griffin. Originally Published 2010. LT. Purchased as it’s second in a series, and loved the first. Currently reading.
6. Dreamfever by Karen Marie Moning. Originally Published 2009. LT. Purchased. Loving this series!
7. The Summer Tree by Guy Gavriel Kay. Originally Published 1984. LT. Procured from BookMooch. Wanted to read more Canadian fiction.

Young Adults

1. The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins. Originally Published 2008. LT. Purchased. Want to see what the fuss is all about.
2. Guardian of the Gate by Michelle Zink. Originally Published 2010. LT. Got at San Diego Comic Con 2010.
3. A Long, Long Sleep by Anna Sheehan. Originally Published 2011. LT. Purchased while in England because it sounded so cool.
4. Fragile Eternity by Melissa Marr. Originally Published 2009. LT. Read first two in the series, loved.
5. Wings by Aprilynne Pike. Originally Published 2009. LT. I think Rachel gave this to me…
6. Road to Nowhere by Christopher Pike. Originally Published 1993. LT. Procured from BookMooch. I was feeling sentimental and wanted to revisit them.
7. The Eternal Enemy by Christopher Pike. Originally Published 1993. LT. Procured from BookMooch. I was feeling sentimental and wanted to revisit them.

Children’s

1. The Grey King (The Dark Is Rising Sequence) by Susan Cooper. Originally Published 1975. LT. Purchased; making my way through the series. Currently reading.
2. School of Fear by Gitty Daneshvari. Originally Published 2009. LT. Purchased; saw it around the book blogosphere when it was first published and it sounded like something I would love.
3. Driftwood Ellesmere (Driftwood Saga) by James Davidge. Originally Published 2006. LT. Got at FanExpo 2011 because it just sounded cool.
4. Shattered by Eric Walters. Originally Published 2007. LT. Rachel gave this to me.
5. Alex and the Ironic Gentleman by Adrienne Kress. Originally Published 2007. LT. Got at FanExpo 2011 because there are pirates.

Later in the Series that I Can’t Read Yet Because I Haven’t Read the Previous One(s) in the Series

1. Doubleblind (Sirantha Jax, Book 3) by Ann Aguirre. Originally Published 2009. LT. Got at San Diego Comic Con 2010; haven’t read first two yet.
2. Total Eclipse (Weather Warden, Book 9) by Rachel Caine. Originally Published 2010. LT. Got at San Diego Comic Con 2010; haven’t read first eight yet.
3. Silver on the Tree (The Dark Is Rising Sequence) by Susan Cooper. Originally Published 1977. LT. Purchased. Haven’t read fourth one yet.
4. The Glasswrights’ Journeyman by Mindy Klasky. Originally Published 2002. LT. Procured from BookMooch. Read first in the series and loved it. This is the third – need to find the second before I can read this one.
5. The Glasswright’s Test by Mindy Klasky. Originally Published 2003. LT. Procured from BookMooch. Read first in the series and loved it. This is the fourth – need to find the second before I can read this one.
6. Predator and Prey by Christopher Golden. Originally Published 2001. LT. Procured from BookMooch. Read first in the series. This is the third – need to find the second before I can read this one.
7. Driftwood’s Crusade by James Davidge. Originally Published 2007. LT. Purchased at FanExpo 2011. Haven’t read books in series before this one.
8. Driftwood Saves the Whales by James Davidge. Originally Published 2009. LT. Purchased at FanExpo 2011. Haven’t read books in series before this one.
9. Driftwood and the Necessary Forest by James Davidge. Originally Published 2009. LT. Purchased at FanExpo 2011. Haven’t read books in series before this one.
10. Driftwood’s War by James Davidge. Originally Published 2010. LT. Purchased at FanExpo 2011. Haven’t read books in series before this one.
11. Devoted by Hilary Duff. Originally Published 2011. LT. Requested from publisher. Didn’t realize it was the second in a series/trilogy/whatever. Whoops. Need to find the first one.
12. Shadowfever by Karen Marie Moning. Originally Published 2011. LT. Purchased. This is the fifth (and last!) in the series – am going to be starting the fourth (relatively) soon, and if the past few are any indication, I’ll want this as soon as I’ve finished the fourth.

Le sigh…

How are your TBR piles looking?

There were a lot more book-related panels this year than there was the last time I was at FanExpo (two years ago). I only got to about half of them, as there were so many other things going on that I wanted to see as well. But, I wanted to share some of the interesting things that were mentioned in the book panels that I saw this year.

Paranormal Potpourri (Thursday)

This panel had James Davidge, Crissy Calhoun and Gregory Lamberson on it. Davidge and Lamberson write original paranormal fiction (though Lamberson’s sounds more leaning towards the horror genre), while Calhoun writes guides to TV shows (like The Vampire Diaries). This focused both on the paranormal genre in general and on writing paranormal stuff – while I have absolutely no desire to write a book, it’s always interesting to hear what authors have to say advice-wise or craft-wise about writing. Interesting tidbits brought up included:

• paranormal fiction is powerful because it helps us explore humanity in a more hightened reality, and it allows readers to get more involved
• the more research you do on any given subject when writing a book can often lead to making a standalone into a series because there is just so much to write about – more research creates more stories
• when writing a book, research can contradict what you want to happen – this is a good thing, as you’ve caught it before your readers do

When Worlds Collide (Friday)

This panel included Gregory Lamberson, James Davidge, Evan Munday and Sarah McCully. This panel focused a lot on bringing the fantastical into the real world – urban fantasy/horror/etc. One of the biggest factors these authors seemed to like about this genre was that it allows the writer to cover social issues while not making the book too close to home for the reader. One of the most interesting things I found discussed in this panel was how the authors, who all create in other mediums in addition to written novels, found creating in other mediums influenced their writing. For example, McCully is also a songwriter, and finds that that has helped her get the message across faster, and Lamberson also writes screenplays, which has helped him with pacing of novels.

Words Driven by Steam (Saturday)

Authors on this panel included JM Frey, Rob St Martin, Ed Greenwood and Adrienne Kress. This was possibly the most fun of the panels – the panelists all had great chemistry going on between them. Like urban fantasy, the authors in this panel mentioned that writing steampunk allows you to address certain stories and issues, while not being too close to the reader’s comfort zone. One thing of note is that for some reason Gilbert & Sullivan (in particular, Pirates of Penzance) was mentioned on a frequent basis, and seemed to have an influence on their writing (not just the steampunk writing). They discussed the differences between hard steampunk and soft steampunk, characteristics of different types of steampunk (Victorian is grittier, where as stuff in the wild wild west seems to be more positive) – even how Canadian and American steampunk are different (American is more dustpunk, where Canada is more explorer/prairie related).

Fantasy Worlds and How to Get There (Saturday)

Leslie Livingston, Violette Malan, Ed Greenwood, and Robert Paul Weston were all on this panel. They spoke about where they drew their inspiration from, as well as the creation of said fantasy world. For example, Greenwood spoke about how well-written books are about the characters, not the setting – the setting is always in the background, but it still needs to be developed by the author. Just not being obvious about it. Malan made an interesting point, too: if you’re writing historical novel, you should research what people believed in at that point in time as well (ie – demons, etc).

Horror: Heroes an Villains (Sunday)

Oddly enough, this was the only panel that was actually moderated. I really wish the others had been, as that seemed to work a little bit better as far as formatting went. Authors on this panel included Heather Brewer, Alyxandra Harvey, Karen Dales, Robert Paul Weston, Greg Lamberson and Max Turner. I took a lot of notes on this one, and here’s the condensed version:

• We got from Superman to more complex heroes like Dexter because as a society we are more cynical. We need fuller heroes with flaws as we realize there’s no more black and white (good vs evil), but that everyone has shades of grey in them.
• The perfect monster has to be something that scares the author. Often, you want to like them as much as you like the hero, and it should give the reader a hard time deciding who they want to win.
• Monsters and villains are different!
• Irrationality, not being able to reason are good for monsters, but not for villains.
• The villain is the hero of their own story – they are typically doing what they are doing for a rational reason

Books I Got

• Gregory Lamberson’s Personal Demons
• James Davidge’s The Driftwood Saga
• Conor McCreery, Anthony Del Cor and Andy Belanger’s Kill Shakespeare Vol 1
• William Jablonsky’s The Clockwork Man
• Adrienne Kress’ Alex and the Ironic Gentleman
• Matti Mclean’s Catalyst

Books I Have Added to the TBR (as they aren’t published or as I didn’t buy them)

• Alan Grant’s The Loxleys and the War of 1812 (not yet released)
• Sarah McCully’s Female of the Species
• Evan Munday’s Dead Kid Detective Agency
• Adrienne Kress’s The Friday Society (not yet released)
• JM Fry’s The Skylark’s Song (not yet released)
• Leslie Livingston’s Once Every Never
• Robert Paul Weston’s Dust City
• Willow Dawson’s Hyena in Petticoats: The Story of Suffragette Nellie McClung (not yet released)
• James Davidge’s Thirteen Minutes

So, um, yay lots of new books? I had told myself that I needed to focus on finishing the ones that I already own that I haven’t read yet, but well…. I got a little caught up in all the shiny. Can you blame me?

The weekends have been pretty intense for me; between visiting parents and grandparents, having a Downton Abbey marathon with Shannon (huzzah!), going to a friend’s bachelorette party, and the upcoming FanExpo this weekend, I feel like I haven’t had any down time.

I haven’t had much time to read at all, which is frustrating… of course it doesn’t help that I’m also attempting to make my way through two non-fiction books right now (Virginia Nicholson’s Singled Out and Naomi Oreskes’s Merchants Of Doubt), which always take me so much longer to read. They’re both very good, so I don’t want to put them aside for the time being, but I feel like I’m taking fo eva to finish anything.

But! As mentioned above, FanExpo is this weekend, and it’s going to be pretty awesome. It usually is, but I feel more excited for it this year than previous years.

For one, it’s four days instead of three.

For another, have you seen the list of people attending? Eliza Dushku, Tom Felton, Michael Shanks (HELLLLO Daniel Jackson, excuse me whilst I swoon!), and so many others. Plus, there seems to be a lot more bookish things going on this year (which I’m totally stoked for). It’s going to be so much fun.

So that’s what’s going on. I’m sure I’ll be posting at least once during FanExpo (or shortly after it) to talk about some of the stuff that went on at the panels I’m going to be seeing.

And hopefully I’ll actually finish another book at some point soon.

People feel quite strongly about the fictional worlds they imaginatively inhabit. For comic book readers who invest hours of thought and mind-painting into the universe of their choice, they become as attached to character development and progression and relationship as the 19th Century Dickens reader on tenterhook for the next installment of, say, Great Expectations ( the most comic-booky of the Dickens’ novels, perhaps).

I was going to post a comment there, but it got long and full of rambling, and so I decided it would be better to post my thoughts on it here.

From a certain point of view what DC’s doing makes sense… I mean, for anyone getting into comics for the first time, it’s confusing as anything to attempt to read anything about one of the famous superheroes… And someone who is unfamiliar with the genre will probably want to start with something they know a little bit about – so the characters who are in television shows, movies, cartoons, etc. But going in and seeing that what is readily available in comic book stores are going to be pretty far into the series, or finding out that you have years worth of back issues to read if you really want to know all of the character development, etc….. it can be quite scary! It certainly was for me, and I only read comics a little bit. Like any business, DC would want to expand their market and having the consumer start partway through a series IS extremely intimidating, especially when the reader has no real idea what’s going on.

I don’t read much of DC, so I’m not completely familiar with how they deal with their storylines. But I think Marvel does it well. Yes, there are many different series about the X-Men going on at any given time. You can always find a new series that you can start, and you just need a little bit of background info on the characters involved, but you still see the beginning of the story. For the most part you get the same characters in any of the arcs, but they’re sometimes different depending on the series you read: Astonishing X-Men, Uncanny X-Men, Marvel Noir… Wolverine, for example, is in all of them, but in one of them he’s a detective in an almost film-noir story, but in the others he’s the same Wolverine we know from other things. I mean, it’s almost like you need to think of each series as a separate fanfiction story (and yet not really fanfiction, because they are all canon) in which it’s an alternate universe where anything else that has happened in another story has absolutely no bearing in the one you’re reading now.

This could also be why the smaller presses are gaining in popularity, I suppose… their characters don’t have the huge backstory, you don’t have to invest five million years reading all the previous comics to know what’s going on. Like The Walking Dead – these are all new characters. Like the Firefly, Farscape, Buffy, Muppet comics – these are ones that people invested television or movie watching time into already (mediums that are a lot less intimidating than starting comic books is)…

I think DC’s decision is smart as far as doing what you can for a business to survive and make money, and allowing new fans to be introduced in a non-overwhelming way, ESPECIALLY with the massive amount of superhero movies that have been produced in the past few years (and all the ones that are going to be made in the near future).

What do you think?

What I have noticed, however, is that the number of non-fiction books is so much greater than all other books there. All of the ones I have are about topics that interest me greatly, but I just rarely have the motivation to actually pick up the non-fiction books. I am going to try to work on that.

And of course, that’s not to say that the TBR list is doing any better – it keeps growing, I just have acquired less of them.

So, since the TBR pile is doing so well right now, I decided to turn my attention to the actual number of series/trilogies/what-have-yous that I am in the middle of. Each year I count the number of books that I read that are related to a series or trilogy, but I’ve never really looked at the total number I’m in the middle of – which, considering the fact that I don’t always read a book from every single thing I am in the middle of, seems a little silly in hindsight. So I took a more in-depth look (in spreadsheet form, of course) and I discovered that I am in the middle of 34. Thirty-Freaking-Four Series/Trilogies/Etc. What boggles my mind is that for a whole bunch of them I only need to read one more book and then I am finished – so many of these I was so excited to read more after the second-last book… and then just never got around to reading the last one. Hello, D.M. Cornish’s Monster Blood Tattoo, I’m looking directly at you.

I don’t feel as badly about the books like Ally Carter’s Gallagher Girls books, Scott Lynch’s Gentleman Bastard Sequence, or Arthur Slade’s Hunchback Assignments, as in these cases not all of the books have been published yet. The ones that really worry me are Christopher Golden’s Prowlers, and Mindy L. Klasky’s Glasswright series that were published early 2000s and are extremely hard to find copies of all the books now. I really don’t know how I’m going to be able to get those finished, and I quite enjoyed the ones I’ve read from them.

Then, of course, there are Terry Pratchett’s Discworld books, or P.G. Wodehouse’s Jeeves books where there are five million books in the series and I’ve only read one so far. At least with these two, I don’t necessarily HAVE to read them in order, and can just pick up a random one whenever I feel like it. (Which is actually what I’ve just done with the Jeeves books, as have just started Stiff Upper Lip, Jeeves.)

I think I really need to work on a plan to tackle this list.

How do you deal with (and keep track of) the trilogies and series that you’re in the middle of?