My Afflation

I made it! Had to add in a few audiobooks that I had forgotten to, but it all counts, right? My 2017 in books. You can see my whole list here . What was your favorite book of 2017? What are you looking forward to reading in 2018?

This was the worst year for me yet since I started keeping track on Goodreads . I pretty much stopped reading, including audiobooks, once I moved to Houston. It's time to change that fact. This year, I might try one of these lists to broaden my horizons: I've already been given a few suggestions and yes, my To Read Shelf has increased what feels like exponentially. Add your suggestions in the comments or on the G+ post.

I set myself an ambitious goal this year, 30 books (because, where was I going to find the time to read, right?) Apparently I found the time to complete 34 and I am in the middle of 35, but I don't think I will finish Drums of Autumn before midnight tonight. There should be more here, I started a lot of free ones that turned out to be rubbish and a waste of time, but the ones that I did finish, I at least rated so I could go back later and write reviews for. Maybe that should be my resolution for 2015 -- to finish everything I start writing. As much as I love real books, my tablet is infinitely more portable. I read almost entirely on my Nexus 7 using either the Kindle app, Google Play Books, or Overdrive . At the beginning of the year I used the library a LOT (until I forgot to return some dead tree books ... and, some of you may know how that goes). My goal this year was to actually read more than listen to books, though sometimes audiobooks are the only way I can get through...

Tweet We're very excited to announce that, beginning Friday March 18th , our resident  Wheel of Time  re-reader Leigh Butler will begin  A Read of Ice and Fire ! Not only that, but Leigh will be tackling the books as someone brand new to the series. We can't wait to see where her entertaining perspective of A Song of Ice and Fire brings us. That's not all! Theresa DeLucci and Ellen B. Wright have started an  anticipation thread  for HBO's upcoming  Game of Thrones  series and will be recapping the show as it begins airing this April. As   A Dance of Dragons   nears, we'll have even more Song of Ice and Fire surprises in store on Tor.com. Stay tuned! In her post, Leigh asks commenters to avoid spoilers as best as possible since it's her first read through the series (I know, right????) One possible way around this would be for commenters to white-text spoilery comments, so that they are only visible when highl...

As if there weren't enough good things about Nathan Fillion, he now signs books as Richard Castle ! I am going to be in Nathan-Heaven! Have you watched Castle yet? If not, you SHOULD . You can watch online or order the DVDs Time for a new series to read. So far the few reviews I have read have been favorable And now, off to order my copy from Amazon so I can get it signed on 10/19 -I'm not obsessed, really! Related articles by Zemanta Castle: Deep in Death (season premiere) (tvsquad.com) Castle: Kicking It Off With A Bang (tawnyweber.com) ABC to Publish Novel Tie-in For Hit Show Castle (readersread.com)

Image by FoXMuLD3R via Flickr Last night I watched Benjamin Button for the first time. A few months ago I read the short story by F. Scott Fitzgerald . Talk about taking license with a story! The general premise was the same, but there the similarity ends. Events, characters, settings – all different. The movie changed the books events to coincide with Hurricane Katrina . I feel robbed. I would have liked to see Benjamin Button ride with Roosevelt and the Rough Riders , as well as show up as a 15 yr old in his uniform for the reunion. The movie really rode rough-shod over the latter half of Benjamin’s life when it truly became hard for him for him to deal with his very unique way of aging. The movie romanticized it to the point of being nearly unrecognizable. In the story, he goes to college, marries, has a child, and raises his son, all while aging backwards. This causes a similar set of problems as when he was first born. If you are so inclined, please read the story in Fitzgerald’s...

Image by corwinok via Flickr So, guess what?!?!?!?!?!? You’ll never guess!!! O.K., I guess I can tell you. I got to talk with Tee Morris for almost 2 hours on Sunday (3/21)!!! Yes, that Tee Morris if you bother to read my blog at all. Tee is working on a book for Que Publishing and somehow it came about that I get to be a consultant for the chapter on G1s (that’s gotta earn me #geekgirl points too, right)? I was thrilled, and charmed, and surprised. Thrilled that he would even consider giving me his phone number (I promise not to stalk you, Tee), instead of over Skype. Charmed at how well he handled the interview, including getting me back on track when I’d go off on some tangent (like how talking to him was totally unlike when I met David Brin , though we didn’t talk about that). And surprised at how easily we had a conversation. Truly, it was more like a conversation than any sort of interview or brain picking. And he didn’t misquote me! If you have no idea ab...

For those of you have been on the net for a while, you may remember getting the Darwin Award emails on a regular basis. I had no idea that they were still around. So ... for your viewing pleasure ....

and why is even this dumbed down these days? to go along with it, though the text is compelling ... funny and etc, i guess not too dumbed down, but St. Augustine it's not.

Another one of those days where I can’t concentrate. Can you imagine how ANNOYING it is to want to be able to read a good book, like Good Omens , and then not being able to focus clearly on the words, concepts, timeline, characters, etc.? Damn annoying, that’s for sure! So here we are, playing UNO, and in between I am blogging, trying to read, drinking my yummy Razzamatazz Jamba Juice, and listening to a co-worker go on about her crusie (she’s going in about a month) and wishing I could go with her, and trying to decide if I want extensions again or if I should just have my natural hair braided, or try to relax it, or … wow, I haven’t had a run-on sentence since 4th grade. Ah well, more later, gonna try and get back to Good Omens before lunch. What am I having for lunch anyway? I need to stop eating out, it’s not good for our budget.

Home sick, Zoe sleeping, catching up on feeds .. this one from podiobooker (and oh yeah, I LOVE Podiobooks.com , some good stuff there, like Shadowmagic and Tracy Hickman's latest . Now while these fungi owners don’t have to worry about pesky things like maintaining an inventory, updating your database or any of the stuff that business have to deal with, some of the more enterprising ilk have taken to spamming Technorati, Del.icio.us, blogs, forums and the like. And this, happy campers, is where my weenie gets a little chapped. It’s been bad enough that I have to wade through their asinine posts designed to try and siphon as much Google juice as possible, flooding my aggregator with crap. I can handle that. Cost of doing business. But when they start showing up here and spamming my posts on my webite? Then I get a whole lot torqued. These sites add nothing to the conversation. It’s homogenizing the offerings available, and probably turning more than one person off who’s just disco...