Book Lists

Posted on by A.R. Geiger

I recently sat down and reorganized my ‘finally read that’ book list. Mostly because 2020 was coming to an end, and I wanted a fresh start for a new year.

Also, I decided it was time to face the reading disaster that was 2020 and figure out how to move on from it.

I read 62 books in 2020.

I’ve decided to consider it an accomplishment, considering that I survived a global pandemic, learned how to successfully work from home, started dating my best friend and subsequently married him, and somehow planned an entire wedding in three months.

Reading was not a top priority. So we’re calling 62 a massive victory.

Thankfully, 2021 is here at last, and since I am not planning on arranging an entire wedding this year, I’m hoping that my time will be somewhat less limited. There’s nothing worse than a writer who doesn’t have time to read. We get cranky. Our idea box gets all stopped up. It’s bad.

While I was reorganizing my ‘finally read that’ book list, I did a few quick calculations and discovered that—including the two books I’ve already read this year—I have read 292 books since the beginning of 2017.

I’m hoping to add another 100 to that in 2021.

I’ve discovered that the best tactic for building a solid book list is to start the year off well. I’ve read two books already this year: The Inferno and The Purgatorio. Paradiso would have been next, but I buy most of my books in thrift stores, and that’s one volume that I haven’t found quite yet. Since I haven’t been frequenting thrift stores lately, I took the plunge and ordered it.

Thank goodness for Barnes and Noble.

While I wait for it to show up, I’ve been reading a collection of George Bernard Shaw’s plays. I don’t read plays often, but the ones I’m reading now have convinced me that I need to read more of them. The dialogue is quick-witted and smart-mouthed, and the characters are vivid and interesting. As a scriptwriter for a radio program, my writing lives and dies on the quality of my dialogue, and it’s been fascinating to study these plays and the technique that went into them.

Everything I read, whether history or children’s fiction or classical poetry, is part of my education as a writer. I am firmly convinced that you can learn from anything. The best books teach me what to cultivate in my own writing, the worst ones, what to avoid.

Here’s to another year of learning, and another book list!

Any books you’re planning on reading this year? Tell me about them in the comments!

Who Has Time To Read???

Posted on by A.R. Geiger

No, really. Who has time to read?

And can I borrow a little bit from you?

I promise to pay it back the next time I have a few spare minutes.

Which will probably be next year sometime.

Actually, I’ve had more time to read lately than I think. I’ve finally finished with wedding planning, I’ve been married for more than a month (!!!!!), things are starting to settle, and life has found a rhythm.

I have afternoons again.

And evenings.

And time in the morning before I start work.

Of course, most of those times are taken up by personal writing, working out, and time with the husband, but I’ve gotten a few pages in here and there. I finally, finally finished Dracula while we were on our honeymoon, and let me tell you, that book had me panicking right up until the very last page.

Not to spoil anything, but I thought Dracula was gonna come after me.

Freaked me out.

But that book has been added to my ‘read’ list, and I’m on to the next classic. Which happens to be Les Miserables. So, I’m going to take my time with it. There’s something extremely comforting about a book so long that you can linger through the pages, enjoying the writing and the story, because you just know it’s going to take you a few months to get all the way through.

At the very least.

In the meantime, I picked up a fantasy novel at the library. My husband and I were on our way to purchase his new car, and I realized I neglected to bring a book. Or my phone. Or writing implements. So I panicked and we stopped at the library, which turned out to be a good decision.

It took us hours to finish at the dealership. I plowed through 150 pages, and read an entire magazine to give my brain a break.

I almost starved too, but that’s another story.

In short, I am venturing into the literary world again. My books aren’t caked in dust anymore, and I can tell you, it’s a relief to be able to find refuge in a book after being much too busy for so long.

I’ve missed them.

What are you reading now? What were your Halloween/Fall picks for this year? Tell me about them in the comments!

The First Of The Year

Posted on by A.R. Geiger

closeup-photography-of-book-page-folding-forming-heart-1083633.jpg

The first book, that is.

That’s right! My book list for this year is up and running. I have two books on it so far. A Map Of Days, and The Hygge Life. Thankfully, I’ve had a bit of time to read and relax this weekend, because the last few weeks have been crazy and hectic and busy, and my books got the worst of it.

I didn’t pick them up. For days.

But I’m back into the regular swing of things, and the age-old question that every bookworm/adult asks is now knocking at my door.

“How in the name of bookmarks and sanity am I supposed to find time to read as an adult?”

What a great question!

I have no idea how to answer it.

Obviously, there must be an answer. I know amazing, fantastic adults who tackle so much more than I could ever dream of doing who read. And not just read, but read a lot. It is possible.

And now that I am entering a new year with a new set of pressures and deadlines and expectations, I am determined that I am going to find my own answer to this question. Because, of course, every adult who faces this question has to find their own answer.

Unfortunately, there is no universal key.

No one-size-fits-all.

No secret formula.

For me personally, I know already that a good deal of whatever books I plow through this year are going to have to be audiobooks. I have an hour’s ride to work in the morning and an hour home, and it’s amazing how many audiobooks I can devour with that time. For the rest—I’ll have to catch them in minutes. In the last half-hour before bed. During my lunch break—when I’m not trying to be social and have friends.

I am still convinced that bookmarks are the adult reader’s best friends.

I don’t have anything even remotely similar to a ‘to-be-read’ list for this year, but a few that will hopefully feature on my ‘read’ list are . . .

Nicholas Nickleby

Les Miserables

The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry

The Lord of the Rings

The Girl in Cabin 10 (which I am reading now)

and Garden City.

I like to scatter old and new books through my list. Old favorites and new experiences. Since I always choose my books by what I feel like reading at the moment, none of these are certain. But at least I will have tried!

What’s on your to-be-read list this year? Tell me about it in the comments! And I’d love suggestions for my own list as well!

Who Has Time To Read??

Posted on by A.R. Geiger

This week, I spent Friday night nannying at someone’s house.

Because I party hard, ya’ll.

I don’t normally nanny anymore, mostly because I work forty hours a week in an office, then get home and work on side hustle/personal career/books until I go to sleep. But this particular job fell into my lap, and I couldn’t say no. I mean, who DOESN’T need a little extra cash the month before Christmas, right?

At least, that’s what I told myself when I got home at 10 o’clock and realized I’d been awake for seventeen consecutive hours and really, really wanted to have been asleep a long time ago.

Not that I was counting.

But, aside from a little extra cash and an excuse to go out to dinner, this nanny job also gave me an excuse to sit on my butt and read for an hour or so. I mean, the kids were in bed, parents weren’t headed home for a while, and I had time.

And time, lately, isn’t something I have a lot of.

Actually, my reading has slowed down a little in the last few months. And by slowing down a little, I mean it’s fallen off a cliff into the ocean. I generally read a lot—in fact, I’ve read 96 books this year. But finding time to read when you work forty hours a week and run your own side hustle is a little—demanding.

So I listen to audiobooks in my car—with the volume all the way up, because due to personal reasons, my car sounds like a monster truck. Please don’t ask. And I sneak in a chapter here and a few pages there. I’ve started to bring a book to work with me, so I can read during my lunch break. That tends to have mixed results. Mostly because I do want to be social as well and hang out with my coworkers.

Because being social is definitely a priority in my life.

Wink wink.

Just now, I am working through Seven Years In Tibet. Actually, I’ve reviewed this wonderful book on my blog before, and I can truthfully say that it is just as magical and engaging the second time around. Despite having to read it in bits and pieces. I also have an audiobook waiting for me, which I WILL start today. Lately, the temptation in my car has been to turn on the radio and listen to music on the way to work, and several of my audiobooks have been returned to the library unheard.

Definitely not my proudest moment.

But today I am jumping back on the bookwagon, so to speak, and am determined not only to listen to this audiobook, but to fill up my queue again.

Soo… any suggestions?

What kind of crazy things do you do to find time to read? Tell me about them in the comments!

Mattimeo

Posted on by A.R. Geiger

I love reading aloud.

Not reading aloud like in school, while everyone is looking at you and the teacher is waiting to pounce if you have the audacity to mispronounce a hard word like ‘anxiety’ or ‘quinoa’. (Hint: neither of those words sound the way they are spelled. You have been warned.)

No, I mean reading aloud at night next to a wood fire, with candles burning and a few select people listening. There’s something magical about an evening like that.

 

Once or twice a week, I invite my younger siblings to my house for just this sort of night. They bring drawing supplies, sewing materials, or letters they are writing, and we curl up in my living room while I read aloud one of my favorite books to them.

Mattimeo, picture by A.R. Geiger

Right now, we are reading Mattimeo, one of Brian Jacques’s many, many brilliant novels. This English author has been one of my absolute favorites since I was in my preteens. He was one of the first authors I dreamed of meeting, and when I found out that he died in 2011, I was devastated.

His books all revolve around Redwall, a mythic abbey buried deep in Mossflower woods. Its inhabitants—squirrels, mice, moles, badgers, and otters—live within its dusky, sandstone walls, farming the orchards and grounds and keeping their peace with the trackless forest that surrounds them. The characters change book to book, but the feel of peace in the abbey and the promise of an action-packed, thrilling storyline is always the same.

In Mattimeo, the summer feasts are upon Redwall, and the excitement of the celebration is high. But when their young ones are stolen away by a slave band from the south, the air of celebration turns to one of grief and thoughts of vengeance. Matthias, the warrior of Redwall and the father of one of the missing young ones, leads an expedition to return their missing children to Redwall.

Meanwhile, Mattimeo, the son of Redwall’s warrior, finds that the leader of the slaver’s band, a disfigured fox known as Slagar the Cruel, has a long, very bitter, past with his father. His desire for revenge on his hated enemy incites a string of cruelty against the young mouse, and he quickly finds himself fighting for survival on the long journey toward an unknown, and very dangerous, destination.

Book Picture A.R. Geiger

Brian Jacques writing is beautiful, descriptive, and fast-paced, a difficult combination to find. My younger siblings are already enthralled by the story we are experiencing together, and whenever I pause for breath or to rest my voice, they are always impatient for me to continue.

Reading aloud together is one of my favorite ways to maintain relationships. I still associate several books with my father, because he read them aloud to us when I was small. They continue to be some of my favorite books, because of the many memories packed away inside them.

“Weapons may be carried by creatures who are evil, dishonest, violent or lazy. The true warrior is good, gentle, and honest. His bravery comes from within himself; he learns to conquer his own fears and misdeeds.”