Women of Genre Fiction Reading Challenge

  I’m taking the challenge. Will you?

The Women of Genre Fiction reading challenge has a simple enough premise. 12 months. 12 books. 12 reviews. Picking female genre authors whose work you haven’t read before.

That’s the hardest part for me, actually. Picking ones I haven’t read before. That isn’t to say that I read a vast number of books by female authors, but more that there are plenty of female authors whose books I’m just not that interested in, for one reason or another. Or I’ve already read one or more of their books, so reading a sequel wouldn’t count for the challenge. I could cheat, I suppose, but where’s the fun in that?

I’m looking forward to this challenge, really. It will give me the prodding to pick up a couple of books that I’ve had lying around for a while but for one reason or another have gotten passed over in favour of other books. Books by Stina Leicht, Elspeth Cooper, Freda Warrington, and more. I always love a good challenge, and I think this one’s going to be quite interesting.

Anyone else signed up for this, or will be signing up? There are even prizes to be won, in the form of Amazon gift cards! But more important is the chance to spread the word about awesome authors who, as awesome and talented and well-loved as they are, still don’t tend to get the pbulicity that some male authors will get.

Not quite a medical miracle, but good enough.

I’m ba~ack!

I was discharged from the hospital on Saturday, as those who follow me on Twitter or Facebook may have heard, and all things considered, I’m doing pretty well.

The surgery itself was more complicated than my doctor expected. Turns out the tumour was more invasive than she’d thought, and instead of having to just cut it from the top of my uterus, she also had to cut into the uterus itself to remove it all. And she had a hard time stopping the bleeding despite “a ton of sutures.” I could rant at length on why this bothers me (in fact, I did, if anyone cares to have a read of the complete account on my personal journal – be warned, I go into a fair bit of detail recounting my experiences, both the good and the bad parts), but this isn’t the place.

Anyway, I was discharged on Saturday, and went for a trip back to the hospital to have my staples removed this morning. Of the 11 staples, only 2 hurt to be removed. Small infection near the incision for which she gave me a presciption for some antibiotics, but nothing she’s too concerned about.

If truth be told, I think I’m doing amazingly. My hemoglobin’s almost as low as it’s ever been, and last time it was this low, I was napping every day for 3 weeks and getting short of breath just walking from my bedroom to the kitchen. Now I’m pretty much in the same boat, only healing from having multiple body parts sliced open, and yet I’m still doing well enough to actually impress some doctors.

So now I begin the rest of my recovery. I have to walk every day, keep my incision clean, take plenty of painkillers, and try to get my body back into a shape that’s actually able to carry me through the rest of my life. Hopefully the tumour doesn’t regrow, and if it does,  hope that my doctor will actually take me seriously enough to avoid yet another surgery. Hopefully I should be back to work in late June or early July, if all goes well. And in the meantime, I’m taking it easy, watching a bunch of random stuff of Netflix, and catching up on some reading.

Thanks to everyone for all the well-wishes and hope you sent my way during this ordeal. I know it sounds cheesy, but it makes me smile each time I see signs that so many people are rooting for me. It means a lot.

Round and round we go…

It’s a sad thing that I get to use this image again so soon after the last time. :/

At 2:30 PM AST (6:30 PM GMT, 1:30 PM EST), I’m scheduled to be in surgery to remove the tumour that’s been plaguing my life for the past, oh, over a year and a half now. Through 3 failed treatments (one of which was a double-procedure in day surgery), complications that required a brief hospitalization last month, and being incapable of working since early February, this thing has been giving me some serious grief, and though it sounds strange to say, I’m glad that things actually got as serious as they did. Had I not been terrified of what work would think if I didn’t bring in a doctor’s note to cover my absense when I was still ill, I wouldn’t have gone to the emergency room, I wouldn’t have been admitted, they wouldn’t have found out that the tumour grew 3 cm in 6 months (which is about 6-12 times faster than that type normally grows), and the doctor I was seeing about it probably would still be trying less invasive things in the vain hope that I’d get better soon. As it was, her hand was forced and now I’m getting surgery to take the tumour out.

And possibly the organ it’s attached to, if she finds that the bleeding is too difficult to stop once she’s in there. Which I’m hoping for, by the way. This kind of tumour normally doesn’t cause problems, but even after removal, there’s a 15-30% recurrence rate after 5 years. I may get lucky. If it comes back, it might not be so bad next time. But between you, me, and the rest of the Internet, I don’t want to take the chance that in 5 years I’ll be in the same position I am now: broke, sick, and hoping a doctor will take me seriously this time. I want the damn thing out of me, and I want it to not have a chance to come back.

I want to come out of this healthy. I want to come out of surgery and know that not only can I start working again in 6 weeks (and start earning a paycheque again (because even though Canada’s healthcare system is paid for by taxes, that doesn’t mean that being long-term sick won’t make you scramble to borrow money to pay the rent…), but that I won’t be doing this again in a few years. I want my life back. I want this to work.

So I’ll be absent from the blogging world for a little while. Not sure how long. I’ve been told that I’ll be enjoying another stay in the hospital for anywhere between 1-3 nights, and then people tell me I’m probably going to end up spending a week not doing much of anything but sleeping. I’ve got a couple of guest posts set up in the meantime (large thanks to those who helped me out by writing one!), and hopefully I won’t be away for too long.

Beating the literacy odds

Last night, I was confronted by some disturbing statistics. In the city I live in, approximately 50% of adults have a functional literacy level of 2 or below.

To put this in perspective, this is around the reading level of those “I Can Read” books. The ones that focus on simple sentences and how letters can combine into slightly different sounds. The ones that have sentences like, “The ladder has steps. You can go up, and you can go down.”

And around half of the adults in this city have difficulty reading beyond that level. Have to sound out polysyllabic words. Probably would not be able to fully understand this post I’m writing, unless someone read it aloud to them.

It’s a very depressing — and sobering — thought.

I have a hard time imagining it, to be honest. If there are words, I have to read them. I’m one of those people who, from an early age, brought a book on every car trip. Even if it was only half an hour long. If I’m in a doctor’s waiting room and forgot to bring a book, I’m reading any stupid magazine they have, just to read something. My eyes are drawn to words and my brain is drawn to reading them. I can’t imagine it being any other way.

I knew this was unusual. I knew that most people didn’t like to read as much as I do, that they didn’t devour books with a voracious appetite like I can. (I’ve overheard people actually bragging that they haven’t read a book since high school. This is the kind of place I live in.) But I didn’t quite realise that some people can’t. That without help, they can’t read enough to do more than follow basic simple instructions.

In learning this, I couldn’t help but wonder why. Why is it that so many people can’t read beyond that level? How did it get that way? What part of society failed them so that they can’t achieve what some consider one of the most basic academic skills? Is it that they always had this trouble and schools forced them through the system anyway? Is it that they used to have a stronger ability to read but through years of just not bothering, the skill faded?

And what could be done to combat this trend? Do schools need to continue vocabulary and spelling tests beyond elementary school? Do we need more emphasis on reading aloud? More silent reading time? Or is this just an inevitable consequence of large class sizes and apathetic teachers?

Discovering this statistic really made me appreciate how lucky I am. I’ve talked at length with trusted friends about how there were multiple points in my life that could have made me look at reading as nothing but a bitter chore to be endured until I can go do something fun again. I got lucky. I discovered that reading was awesome, that when the rest of the world sucked there were fantastic worlds between the pages, just waiting for me to visit them again and again. I even watched TV shows about reading, (though I think I may be the only person in the world who remembers Bookmice).

For me to not only be able to read well but to also enjoy reading the way I do means that I beat the odds in a big way. I stood a 50/50 chance, statistically, of only being able to read simple instructions. Instead, I read fantasy and speculative fiction and all sorts of nonfiction.

I could myself even luckier, too, after finding out that further north in this province, that 50% jumps to around 70%. The vast majority of people in northern New Brunswick cannot read past a second grade level.

If you can read this, you likely beat the odds. The fact that you’re stopping by this blog at all probably means that not only can you read, but that you too actually enjoy doing so, and in that, you beat even larger odds. Take a moment to marvel at that.

What are literacy rates like where you live? As dismal as here? Or more encouraging?

Man read 10,000 books in his lifetime.

This has been making the rounds over Twitter: Man reads 10,000 books in his lifetime.

And by “lifetime”, what I actually mean is between 1994 and 2013. Assuming the list is accurate, this is somebody who read multiple books a day. Many of then genre books, too, so you’ve got to praise him on good taste!

I think he may have been some sort of literary god in human form…

It made me wonder, though, how many books I’m going to be able to read in my lifetime. Now, I’ve only been keeping track of what I’ve read since 2005 (and I skipped 2006 and 2007, for some reason), but even counting duplicates, I’ve read 463 between then and now. And I know a good few dozen of those books are rereads, so let’s say that I’ve maybe read about 400 books in the 6-and-a-bit years that I’ve been keeping track.

Well, I know that I’m not going to make it to 10,000, at any rate. Not even half that! Not unless I suddenly win the lottery, quit my job, and do nothing else all day but read. Or possibly perfect the art of speed-reading.

This man is something of an inspiration to me. He took his hobby and he owned it! Nobody can say that he didn’t love what he was doing and what he was reading. Let’s face it, nobody devotes that much time and energy to something if they don’t love it (mandatory employment not withstanding). This man is somebody a voracious and prolific reader could look up to and say, “I want to be just like him someday.”

From the link, you can download a complete list of the books he read, duplicates removed, along with when he read them and what he rated them. Well worth a look.

What a Girl Wants: What girls in geekdom are allowed to do.

So you think you’re a geek girl, huh? Or you’re thinking about claiming the title for yourself because of all the awesome inherent in geekdom? Awesome! Good for you! But before you get too happy about it all, I’m here to burst your bubble. It’s not all fun and games. You’ve got to take this hobby seriously, don’t you know, and there are certain rules that need to be followed here. It’s not enough to just say you’re a geek girl. You’ve got to know where you stand, you’ve got to do the right things, project the proper appearance so that everyone knows you’re not just one of those wannabes.

Or worse, one of those girls who tries to usurp a place in geekdom that isn’t hers to take.

So to make sure you don’t step on the wrong toes, let’s take a look at the rules you’re going to have to follow if you’re going to be a socially-acceptible geek girl.

Anime

~ It’s okay for girls to like anime. But only certain kinds of anime. Girls are allowed to like shoujo anime, because it was made specifically for girls and contains all the things that girls like. Pretty clothes, adorable mascots or animal companions, magical powers to battle with, the whole shebang.

~ It’s okay for girls to like yaoi and shounen ai. Encourage, even. After all, nobody else is going to touch that stuff with a ten-foot pole. It’s pretty much understood that if you’re a girl who likes anime, you’re going to like yaoi.
~ Just… please don’t talk about it in public.

~ It’s acceptible for girls to like anime that falls outside these genres, on the condition that there are a suitable number of bishounen (ie. pretty boys, aka. “bishies”) in the cast. Otherwise, there’s no real reason for girls to be interested in the anime at all.

Video Games

~ Contrary to popular belief, it’s actually okay for girls to play video games. That’s why the entire RPG genre exists, after all. Rather than forcing girls to put up with boy games, like sports games, fighting games, or first-person shooters, girls will be more attracted to RPGs because they have a greater emphasis on dialogue and story development and stay far far away from anything resembling realistic violence or unpleasant things that might be difficult to handle.
~ The jury’s still out on whether girls enjoy games like Skyrim. The lines are a little blurred here. I guess it might be okay if you play a female Khajiit…

~ Games that involve you raising and battling monsters (or “animal companions”), such as Pokemon or Monster Rancher, are acceptible also, because there are plenty of cute and pretty things in those kinds of games.

~ Simulation games are also fine, because they don’t involve any violence, and often incorporate an element of domesticity, which naturally makes them more appealing to girls.

~ Remember, girls, the surest way to prove that you’re a fake geek girl is to say that you like playing games outside of these genres. Telling somebody that you enjoy playing Halo, Call of Duty, or similar games instantly gets you marked as someone who’s trying too hard. Come on, I mean, it’s obvious that you just heard some game names on the Internet. We all know you haven’t really played them. What’s in there for girls to like?

Books

~ Girls in geekdom are encouraged to read plenty of genre books. The paranormal romance subgenre is booming, and there are plenty of options to read about strong beautiful women getting swept off their feet by any number of gorgeous alpha males.

~ If you absolutely must read something else, stick to fantasy, especially fantasy written by women. Those women writers know how you think, and they’ll write about all the things that other women want to read. You wouldn’t be that interested in fantasy written by men. Too much violence, too dark. Really, it’s in your best interests if you just go with fantasy written by other women.

~ Science fiction? No, no, honey, you’re not getting it. That stuff’s filled with spaceships and laser battles and all kinds of complicated technology and war and stuff. There’s nothing there was would interest you. Look, here’s a nice paranormal romance about werewolves! Wouldn’t you like that more?

Cosplay

~ This is a controversial and touchy subject, but when you get right down to it, cosplay is the best part of geekdom, and girls are absolutely encouraged to participate. Girls love to dress up, after all, and this gives them a great chance to pretend to be their favourite magical girl or healer.

~ It’s going to happen that you’re going to dress up as a sexy character, and boys around you are going to appreciate it. A lot. Vocally. Sometimes physically. This is okay, and girls should expect it and play along when it happens. If you object to this kind of behaviour, then you’re setting a bad example for others, and causing a great deal of confusion. If you didn’t want people to view you as a sex object, then you shouldn’t have dressed up as a sexy character.

~ And while we’re on the subject, do remember to cosplay within your body type. Girls are very concerned with their images, and Sailor Moon was never meant to have rolls of fat on her stomach and thighs. If you don’t cosplay characters within your body range, then you’re cosplaying badly.

Collectible Card Games

~ Do girls even play these? Well, maybe a couple. The weird ones. Best to steer clear of these games; they’re usually too complicated for girls to play well anyway.

TV and Movies

~ There are plenty of offerings on TV for geek girls these days. Shows like the classic Buffy the Vampire Slayer, The Vampire Diaries, and even Supernatural. These shows either tackle the hard-hitting issues that girls experience (like romance and fashion) or else contain a large number of attractive men for women to ogle.

~ Sci-fi shows like Stargate or Battlestar Galactica don’t have much to appeal to women, because of the scientific content inherent to sci-fi.

~ There are many movies these days that are great for girls because they’ve got a good blend of strong female role models and romance. And women will be happy because now they don’t have to sit through the more action-oriented sci-fi that their boyfriends always want to watch whenever movies are discussed. If presented with the choice of watching World War Z or The Mortal Instruments, you know which one to pick.

Appearance

~ Geek girls come in two varieties. There are fat ugly unpopular girls, who got into geek culture because no other high school clique would have them. And there are pretty girls, who contain the largest percentage of fake geek girls but are far more pleasing to look at. These groups have rigid boundaries and there’s no crossover. Ugly girls, stop trying to make yourself look good. Pretty girls, stop pretending that those are real glasses.

Hard though it is to accept, geekdom, like any other aspect of life, comes with its own set of rules and etiquette, and in order to keep everything running smoothly, you have to be aware of when you’re about to step out of bounds. If you can remember to follow these guidelines, you’re going to have a much more enjoyable geeky experience.

April in review

For really only just having gotten back into the blogging game this month, I think I did pretty dang well. Especially considering the health crap I keep running up against, and the fact that I ended up spending a few days in the hospital to boot. (Have you ever tried getting any serious reading done in the hospital? While you’re hooked up to awkward IVs? It’s not easy, trust me.) I’m whittling down the number of reviews that were backlogged while I took my gigantic hiatus at the beginning of the year, and I’m feeling pretty accomplished, over all.

April’s reviews

Take a Thief, by Mercedes Lackey
Another: volume 1, by Ayatsuji Yukito
Son, by Lois Lowry
Brightly Burning, by Mercedes Lackey
The Tainted City, by Courtney Schafer
Indigo Springs, by A M Dellamonica

In addition to reviews, I also wrote about the state of things in regard to Night Shade Books (twice!), and had a fandrogyne moment over finding out that The Last Unicorn was having a gigantic movie tour. I also ran DNF Week, which highlighted certain books I had tried to read but couldn’t finish, along with my reasons for not finishing them and my thoughts on DNF reviews in general.

Looking forward

I wish I could honestly say what May is going to bring when it comes to content here. I can guarantee 3 more reviews (which have already been written and scheduled), but I’ll be checking back into the hospital on May 15 for major surgery (2 weeks from tomorrow…), and won’t exactly be up to posting much. I put out the call for guest posts, but so far only 3 people have said maybe, and that still leaves me about 15 posts short of the time I expect to be completely out of commission. If you want to have the chance at a guest post here, please email me at bibliotropic.reviews@gmail.com and let me know. I’d really appreciate it.

The days fly by…

…and once again I’m going to be returning to the hospital. Not immediately. But yesterday I got the call from my doctor. My surgery date is May 15.

I’m surprised it’s so soon. 3 weeks from today.

It’s a little bit scary, to be honest. I’m glad it’s happening, because that means that the gradually-worsening hell I’ve been living through for the past year and a half may soon be over. But it’s still a bit scary, because although I’ve been in the OR before (only a few weeks ago), this one’s going to be my first major surgery. The kind where they fully put me to sleep and start opening up parts of my body with a sharp instrument.

After the surgery, I’m going to be out of commission for a while. I already have the forms telling me that I won’t be able to return to work for 6 weeks after, and I expect a good half of that time will involve me lying in bed not able to do too much. Or so I hear from people who’ve undergone similar surgeries, anyway.

So where does that leave me when it comes to Bibliotropic? Well, I technically do have enough backlogged reviews to keep plenty of content going during that time, but I thought I’d try something a little different. I’m opening up the blog to guest posts. I’m putting out the call.

So, bloggers, reviewers, and authors, if you want a chance to ramble about something on someone else’s blog, now’s as good a time as any. I’m looking for a total of 18 guest posts, to be posted here between May 15 and June 2. If you’re interested in doing a guest post here during that time, please send me an email: bibliotropic.reviews@gmail.com. Preferably posts about things related to fantasy and speculative fiction, fitting the theme here. Other than that, topics are wide open.

Thanks again for all the wonderful support I’ve been getting through this, and for anyone who considers doing a guest post here to cover the time I’ll be out of commission.

3 units of blood…

…2 ultrasounds, and a partridge in a pear tree tumour growing faster than it should.

On Tuesday morning, I went to the ER, because after the precedure I had done on April 5, things weren’t so much not getting better as they were steadily getting worse. After baffling 2 ER doctors and overhearing the sympathy of a couple of nurses, I was admitted. Like, actually registered as a patient staying overnight in a ward.

Kinda freaked me out.

They said it was mostly a precaution, and at the very least I’d been seriously anemic long enough that they wanted to make good and sure that I finally got a transfusion. Considering that for the past few months, if I walk 20 feet my heart starts to race and I get short of breath, that was fine by me. Finding out that the anemia caused a small heart murmur just sealed the deal.

So I spent Tuesday night getting absolutely no sleep while they gave me 2 units of blood and had to check my vitals every hour to make sure that I wasn’t having a negative reaction to it.

On the upside, I found out my blood type. Finally! Turns out I’m O-, which is both good and bad. Good for me, because… well… erm… they gave me blood. Okay, in actuality, it’s not the best. O- is the stuff that can be received by all blood types because it has none of the crazy antigens and such that will react badly with your natural blood type. It’s the stuff they give emergency victims before they’ve had a chance to tke a few hours to properly type-match them. It’s in constant demand, and they’re always running out of the stuff.

Not surprising, when only about 6% of North Americans have that blood type.

And due to circumstances related to me having lived in England during a small part of the beginnings of the Mad Cow scare, I’m not allowed to donate blood so that other people can make use of the same stuff that I ended up needing. It was bad enough before, knowing that I couldn’t donate, but knowing that I can’t and they always need that stuff is just a real kick in the pants. :/

Anyway, day 2 consisted of me getting 2 ultrasounds and a x-ray to discover that the initial procedure I had done? Failed. And the reason it took so many images to discover that is because that pesky tumour has apparently grown by about 40% in the past 6 months, and is now large enough that it kept obscuring the ultrasound. it’s now 10 centimetres in diametre, and has pushed a few things out of place enough that it can actually be felt through the fleshiest part of my stomach.

I just… What the hell do you say upon finding out something like that?

Fortunately, this spurred the specialist I’ve been seeing into stopping dicking around with ‘reversible’ treatments and instead just let me opt for a more major surgery that will remove the tumour. And since that thing apparently has a ton of blood vessels feeding it, if she removes it and can’t stop the bleeding well enough, she might have to take my uterus while she’s at it.

No skin off my back, really, since it’s not like I even want to use that organ or even appreciate having it around.

Still waiting for the surgery date. Once it all happens, I should be in the hospital for a few days after being cut into, then sent home to rest for 4 weeks before I’ll be able to return to work. I’m missing so much time this year, but at least after this, if all goes well, I should be able to get back to a normal life in a few months, and start actually enjoying said normal life once again. For a year and a half now I haven’t been able to reliably attend my job, or leave the house for longer than half an hour, or even stand up straight on some of the really bad days. It’ll be nice to have this all over with.

So that’s the state of things. More news when I have it. I’m sorely tempted to reach out to people and see if they’ll write guest posts for the time I’ll be convalenscing, instead of busting my butt to write a whole load more reviews in advance. But we’ll see how it all goes.

What the eff, brain?

Last night, I had a dream that John Scalzi laid a curse on all books, and refused to remove it until authors were paid at least minimum wage for all the hours they spent writing.

What the hell, brain? Is this a sign that I shouldn’t read Redshirts and eat turkey bacon club sandwiches before bed anymore? Because too damn bad, that sandwich was worth the crack-dream.

This isn’t the first time I’ve had dreams involving authors. It is, however, the first time said dream has been so monumentally screwed up.