I Need to Write Something Today

November 27, 2020 1 of 1

I’m not even going to lie to myself that I’m going to do more than the one post. I may not even make much of this one post.

I mean, one of my standard posts is what I had for dinner. And what I had for dinner was one human-palm-sized chunk of duck breast with barbecue sauce to make it slightly less dry.

Yeah.

So. Post.

Oh! How about if I write about the dream I remember from last night.

I was getting still another degree in education. I mean, the first one, the one I got when I was awake, was a mistake. Why would my subconscious be “Hey, why don’t you dream that you’re getting another one?”

And this was a mistake as well. In real life, I wasn’t exactly popular, but I had a few friends in school. In my dream, everyone in my program hated me. It was like grade school all over again but with adults.

And I had a class that I forgot about. This is a pretty standard dream for me. Usually in my going-back-to-college dreams I’ve forgotten that I’ve gone back to school at all until the end of the semester, when I have to somehow get myself together for finals when I know nothing about what the finals are on.

This was earlier in the semester, fortunately. How much earlier? I don’t know.

At any rate, I was with the same group of students for all of my classes and I saw them walking and caught up with them. I asked where we were going and they all just kind of looked at me and were, like, “Physical education. Duh.”

I didn’t remember having a physical education class. We all walked into the gymnasium together and they started changing into bathing suits. I realized then that we were having a swim class.

The pool was an entire room. It was like, there was a balcony that was where you stand to get into the pool, and the room itself was just water. I think this pool has appeared in my dreams before.

I believe I went in search of a bathing suit. Maybe like a bookstore or something? I’m not sure. There was some extra guy in there, and I guess it all became illogical and dreamlike after that.

I got my state park pass today, so that’s good.

I also have tomorrow and Monday off, so hopefully I’ll be able to make some actual progress on NaNoWriMo on those days.

I’m still cleaning up my Goodreads account. There are so many books from series that sounded promising but fell apart towards the end (I’m looking at you Michael Vey) and I just don’t want to revisit them at all. So I’m just assigning January 1 of the year I added them to my Goodreads list as the date I started reading them and December 31 of that year as the end date. Then my undated books will be ones that I want to reread to add accurate dates to them.

Speaking of Goodreads, our Gratuitous Amazon Link for this post is a return to the Nancy Drew series. We have The Clue in the Diary, by Carolyn Keene today.

My Goodreads Account

November 22,2020 2 of 8

It seems like I shouldn’t need a Gratuitous Amazon Link this time. I mean, this post is about books. My Amazon link should be organic. I’ve already done all of these books that I’ve mentioned, though. Well, this blog isn’t chronological, so let’s just use the first book that I mention in this post even if it is a repeat.

I really need to get my walking in for today. But first, reading and writing. No ‘rithmetic. Sorry.

Anyway, I finished another couple of books recently, leading my currently reading list to be 22 books. I think we started at, like, 35?

My favorite of the statistics . . . things at Goodreads is the Books by Publication Year. It’s a scatter plot graph with dots at the intersection of the date read and the year published. Of course, with the way I read, there’s no real trend, but it’s cool to look at anyhow. I haven’t reread any classic literature in the time I’ve had this account, because the oldest book there is The Hidden Staircase. I wonder why that is. I mean, shouldn’t the oldest be the oldest Nancy Drew book, The Secret of the Old Clock? I wonder if I somehow picked the wrong edition. I’ll have to look into that.

But as of this month, I have a, like, vertical line of blue dots where I’ve reread all of my Ms. Marvel and Unbeatable Squirrel Girl comics and also my Avatar: the Last Airbender books. I wish I could specify a date range on that graph so that I can see this month (or even just this year) more clearly.

My Poor Bed

November 20, 2020 2 of 8

I worked my way through most of those books in that photo I posted a while back and then went into Alex’s room and got more.

So now I have more FoxTrot books and a few other novels, including two that I had totally failed to put on my Goodreads page on the other side of my bed.

I’m thinking that I may have to buy ebooks for most of my collection and then take the hard copies to, like Half-Price Books to unload them. Most of what I own is books, but I own so many, that when I downsize back into an apartment, I may have to use books as my furniture.

I hope it doesn’t come to that. I think I need to make a definitive list of all of my books and maybe even start buying milk crates or something to store them in and then move them into the storage room, just to get some kind of idea of how many books I have and make some sort of plan for them.

I mean, Tsundoku is a legit hobby separate from reading the books, but I think there has to be a limit.

I was thinking I could add whether I own the book to my Goodreads page, but there are so many books there (I’m up to 295 read books), that it’ll probably take forever.

Well, I’m going to give that a shot. I’m only going to be counting books that I have in hard copy. No ebooks. No audiobooks.

For our Gratuitous Amazon Link, I bring you the second Discworld novel: The Light Fantastic, by Terry Pratchett.

Reading Update

November 19, 2020 2 of 8

This probably isn’t going to be terribly long, because I’m not sure how much detail I’m going to go into.

I just realized yesterday that a kidlit trilogy that I’ve always really enjoyed — Atherton by Patrick Carman — was missing from my Goodreads account, so I added them and now I have three new undated read books.

However, the number of undated read books has gone down overall, because I’ve finished the first six of the Avatar: The Last Airbender continuation books. And just discovered that I’m one storyline behind. Dang it.

Alex is finding my old FoxTrot books in his room and I’ve reread and marked read dates for two of them. I’m also caught up with with Ms. Marvel and almost done with The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl.

And since I’ve posted the second and fourth Streetlights Like Fireworks books, I figure I’d better get some read dates for the first and third books. It’s fun rediscovering that series.

And somehow I’ve got to fit some foreign language reading in there.

There really needs to be some kind of “you’ve read this; you’d like that” website that crosses forms of media and languages. I’d love to find comics in my languages that are similar to the ones I love in English.

I was kind of hoping that Kindle would do that, or that Goodreads would, but so far, I haven’t had any luck. I wonder if the Amazon sites for other countries would do any good. Time to do some digging.

But first, our Gratuitous Amazon Link. We’re back to Nancy Drew again (I went through a Nancy Drew reread a few years ago, so it’s going to be Nancy Drew on-and-off for quite a while: The Hidden Staircase, by Carolyn Keene.

You’ve Gotta Crawl Before You Can Run

Also: I’ve gotta learn how to apply makeup quickly

November 16, 2020 4 of 8

So I went in to get my fingers printed for my pharmacy technician license renewal and they needed to take a new photo. I basically only wear makeup for photos. I don’t object to makeup on any kind of philosophical ground or anything. It’s just that makeup has always made me break out and I’d rather have bare clean skin than cover up pimples with makeup.

So I recently bought some foundation and eye shadow in tubes, so that I can squeeze out just what I need, apply it with my clean hands, then wash my hands and never have to worry about contaminating the container or the application tools with germs from my face.

So that’s what I did today, and it took, oh, a good five minutes that I hadn’t planned for. I mean, that’s not much, but my usual skin care routine is wash face, apply sunscreen, and go. So, yeah.

If I’m going to start working on my makeup application skills, I wonder how long it’d take to do a full face? Would I have to start getting up two hours before I have to be somewhere, rather than an hour and a half? It’s a pity I can’t do it the night before and just stick it on my face in the morning or something.

Oh, well. I put makeup on today and maybe I’ll do it again someday. Or maybe not. We’ll see when we get there.

And for our Gratuitous Amazon Link, we have The Heroes of Olympus Book 5: The Blood of Olympus. I really do need to reread Riordan’s complete mythology series. They are so good. Also travel-y, which is huge as far as I’m concerned.

Reading Update

November 16, 2020 3 of 8

So I’ve spent about half of my blogging time this weekend* reading in order to catch up my Goodreads account. After all, if I don’t read enough to keep up with my blogging, then there go my Gratuitous Amazon Links.

I’m only reading graphic novels, comics compilations, and comic strip compilations this weekend in order to get the most undated read items from my Goodreads account knocked off. And so far, I’ve reduced my undated books from 9 of the 14 pages to 8 of the 14 pages. If I keep this up, by the end of the week,** maybe half of my Goodreads pages will have dates! Yay!

Gratuitous Amazon Link time! Though since I’m talking about reading, maybe less gratuitous than usual. This post, we have Magnus Chase and the Gods of Asgard, Book 2 The Hammer of Thor, by Rick Riordan. I guess the first book, The Sword of Summer, is buried somewhere in the wilds of the undated books in my Read category. There’s a surprise.

I only have one Unbeatable Squirrel Girl compilation to go. I’m starting on FoxTrot compilations and Avatar: The Last Airbender graphic novels.

*I had a three-day weekend, then worked a short (7.5-hour) day, then had another day off. It all feels like one weekend to me.

**Tuesday November 17 through Friday November 20.

More Musings on My Future Reading

Pray for My Goodreads Account

November 14, 2020 3 of 8

So I’m going through my next Goodreads account for future Gratuitous Amazon Links and, oh, my God. Like, I’ve got read dates for the first and third of Brandon Sanderson’s Reckoners series but not the second. And one of the books on my bed right now is Sanderson’s The Rithmatist , which I’m pretty sure I’ve read at least twice, and it doesn’t have a read date, either.

And none of my Foxtrot compilations (two of which are on my bed right now) are my Goodreads account at all. I’m marking all of those books as “currently reading” just so I don’t have to go dig them out of the morass of 300-some read, currently reading, want to read things on my Goodreads account.

I’ve been pretty good about actually keeping up with the Dark Horse Comics Avatar: The Last Airbender books, but they aren’t on my Goodreads page either.

I think the easiest way to tackle this would be to lie and make up read datesdo all of the cartoon/graphic novel things first and then maybe pick the other books by how thick they are?

So. Flagging all of the cartoon books that I can think of as “currently reading” has caused that topic to balloon to 35 books. Fortunately I should be able to knock them out pretty quickly.

I hope.

Gratuitous Amazon Link time! We’re going to finish off the Madman’s Daughter trilogy here. I remember liking the first two, but can’t remember anything about this one, so read at your own risk. A Cold Legacy, by Megan Shepherd.

My Bed Is Covered in Books

November 14, 2020 1 of 8

Supposedly I’m reaching the end the “difficult” week of NaNoWriMo, so let’s see if I can make that work out and get my wordcount way up. Granted, after this post (or maybe the next one), I should be farther than I got the last time I tried to NaNoWriMo my blog, but I’d really like to actually win once.

Anyway, between trying to update my Goodreads page and Alex moving out and giving me back all of my books that have been accumulating in his room and that I just don’t have any room for, the spot that used to be Thomas’s is now dedicated to my books.

Below, I threatened to take a picture of my bed with all of the books on it. Well, there you go. And maybe the blanket isn’t really *teal* per se, but I did make it that bluegreen color with teal dye.

Oh, and I got my latest book from The Fantastic Strangelings Book Club, which is a book about books bound in human skin. So that promises to be interesting.

OMG. I just realized that I don’t have any of my comic strip compilations on my
Goodreads account. Crap. I guess I’d better get to that, too.

I really should take a picture of my bed. My bedroom is really dark, though, so who knows what it’ll look like in a photo.

I found another cookbook in Alex’s bedroom, so that’ll be a new source for recipes now that I’ll just be cooking for myself. The cookbook is *also* on Thomas’s side of the bed.

For today’s Gratuitous Amazon Link, erm, I don’t know how the oldest Nancy Drew book in my Goodreads page is the 16th in the series (I wonder if my Overdrive account with the San Antonio Public Library has the dates I read the first 15 books), but it is. So, here’s The Clue of the Tapping Heels, by Carolyn Keene.

Catching Up on My Goodreads Listings

November 9, 2020 1 of 8

Let’s see if I can actually make it to eight posts today. I’m off today; it’s 3:30 pm; that’s a little more than 1 post per hour.

While trying to get read dates on my dateless Goodreads listings, I’ve added dates to five Ms. Marvel compilations. There are also three more books that I didn’t even have on myGoodreads. I’ve read those and am adding them to my Goodreads account right now.

Or I will if my computer ever catches up to where I am. I really need to close all of my windows and tabs and restart once I’ve finished this post.

Oh, my God. My computer is so slow.

I’m almost caught up with the Ms. Marvel comics (though apparently there’s one more compilation, from when they changed writers from G. Willow Wilson go Saladin Ahmed, that I didn’t notice and that I’ll have to go back and read it.

I don’t know if my collection of Unbeatable Squirrel Girl comics has read dates, but I know that some of my Avatar: The Last Airbender comics don’t, so one of them will be the next thing I read once I finish Ms. Marvel.

I have read a bunch just yesterday and today. I guess I’ll go with Teenage Wasteland, by G. Willow Wilson and Nico Leon.

What Is Olivia Reading Today?

November 3, 2020 3 of 8

I am in the middle of so many books right now that I think I should maybe put some up for later.

The two books I’m spending the most time on right now are El Ladrón del Rayo, the Spanish translation of The Lightning Thief, the first book of Percy Jackson and the Olympians and The Woman who Would be King, Kara Cooney’s book on Hatshepsut.

On the back burner at the moment are Harry Potter e la Pietra Filosofale, the Italian translation of Harry Potter and the (Sorceror’s/Philosopher’s) Stone, Children of Virtue and Vengeance, and La Travesía del Viajero del Alba, the Spanish translation of The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. I think that’s it.

I also have another Fantastic Strangelings book club book coming in the not-too-distant future (the next week or two), Dark Archives: A Librarian’s Investigation into the Science and History of Books Bound in Human Skin.

I also might have another couple of things I’m working on on my Kindle. Oh! I noticed that my Ms. Marvel and maybe my Unbeatable Squirrel Girl compilations may not have read dates on them, so I’m going to probably be rereading them so they can fit into the Gratuitous Amazon Links. And for this post, you’ll see that our Amazon link is less gratuitous than usual.

And my current National Geographic issue is August 2020. I need to get back to that one.