Autumn Books

Posted on by A.R. Geiger

Every year, I get way too excited about fall.

Annoyingly excited, actually.

I’m one of those people who plans out my autumn before it starts, just so I can be sure to get everything I want to done before winter blows in. This is the first year I’ve actually written down my list, but I think it’s going to be a yearly tradition.

How else am I supposed to plan for all my corn maze excursions and the hot apple cider bonfires?

But the very first list I always make is my autumn reading list.

It’s vitally important.

Some books just have a certain time of year attached to them, and what is autumn without a few ghostly stories and some thrillers packed into it? This year, I got a bit of a jump on my reading list, mostly because I barely read at all this summer. The combination of a new business, a month-long vacation, and a long illness put a huge dent in my usually lengthy finished-reading list, and this fall, I’m determined to make up for it.

I started with Death on the Nile, by Agatha Christie.

What better way to start an autumn reading list than with a murder mystery? Agatha Christie is one of my all-time favorite authors, and Hercule Poirot is my favorite of her characters. It felt very right to start off with this particular book. It has a chilling element of evil to it that captures that creepy, ghostly autumn vibe perfectly.

Sherlock Holmes has been on my list too lately. His books perfectly capture that rainy day kind of feel, and the minute I started The Hound of the Baskervilles, I knew it was just the right book for my reading list this year. Gloomy, dark, suspenseful, and with just the right amount of intrigue and action to make a good mystery. I’m a big fan of all the Sherlock Holmes novels, but this one is by far my favorite.

I have a few others on my list as well. Coraline, by Neil Gaiman. Frankenstein, Dracula, A Wrinkle in Time. Possibly The Witches and Anne of Green Gables too, if I can find the time. I have to remember not to let the list get too long, or I won’t have time for my Christmas reads this year either.

That’s another list I’ll be making soon. In a few months.

What are you reading this autumn? Tell me about it in the comments!

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

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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!

Finding Normal

Posted on by A.R. Geiger

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My new morning commute is forty-five minutes.

One way.

Does that sound a little crazy to anyone? That means every week I am driving about 7.5 hours back and forth to work . . . not including the time spent on the road if I happen to need a trip to town on a weekend.

I’m scaring myself just by adding up the numbers.

But do you want to know a secret?

I love it.

When I was first offered the job, one of my friends asked me if I was going to move into town to be closer to my new building.

I said no.

She understood.

First of all, I live in the middle of absolutely nowhere and have a tiny writer’s cabin tucked away in the middle of a pine forest surrounded by farmland and country roads. When I wake up in the morning, I hear magpies and bluejays and woodpeckers outside my house . . . not traffic and people and all the other city noises you can think of. I have deer and turkeys in my yard. I can go for walks at midnight down our dirt road if I feel like it. (I don’t usually feel like it.)

But besides loving where I am, I just . . . don’t hate my commute. In fact, as an author running a blog, writing books, and working full-time, my commute is some of the only time I have to really remember how much I love books myself.

Thank goodness for libraries that let me borrow 24 audiobooks at a time.

Really, my commute has been the saving grace for my reading habits. Thus far this year, I have read 66 books. Most of those have been audiobooks. With 7.5 hours of driving to do every week, I figure I can plow through at least a book a week. Maybe more, since I have lunch breaks too.

Finding out my library loaned out copies of audiobooks was a revolution for me. I have been devouring them while I paint for my mum, while I drive, while I work sudoku puzzles on my phone to keep my brain sharp . . . really just any time I have a few minutes of silence. I’ve been rediscovering some old favorites—right now I am listening to A Wrinkle in Time, by Madeleine L’Engle—as well as discovering new treasures—Michael Hyatt’s Living Forward and as many of Agatha Christie’s books as I can find. As an author who still believes the best way to learn to write is to read, I am very grateful to have an unlimited library on my phone.

And plenty of time on my way to and from work to take advantage of it.

What are you reading these days? Any suggestions for me? I’d love to hear them!