Top Ten Tuesday: Books on my Winter 2021 To-Read List

"Top Ten Tuesday" is a weekly bookish tag hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl!

Listen. I can't be the only one staring down the barrel of a year reaching its end left feeling slightly... left behind. I mean, don't get me wrong, I'm fully prepared to greet 2022 as a new friend, but in a very real sense, it's never been easy for me getting through the end of a year. Too much room for self reflection. 

Which is probably why I liked this week's Top Ten Tuesday so much! Instead of focusing in on the numerous end-of-the-year lists I've been seeing floating around friends' blogs and bookstagrams lately, this topic serves as a reminder that you're not running out of time to chalk up a few more reads; in fact, you're far from it. Sure, the year's almost over. But soon enough, you'll have a fresh start, a fresh perspective, and a fat stack of books remaining from the ones you didn't manage to make it through in 2021.

How lucky are we?

Yes, there are still a few more weeks left. Let's make them good ones, shall we? And if we can't, then at least let's fill them up with as many cozy corners, animal companions, and mugs of hot chocolate as we can. Oh, and books.

BC : Before Christmas

1. Christmas After All: The Great Depression Diary of Minnie Swift, from the Dear America series, Kathryn Lasky

If you've been reading this blog for years (Hi, Dad), then this title is a familiar candidate for you. If you have no idea of who I am as a person, then this probably seems like an odd choice for a 28-year-old's seasonal fixation. The short story is this: I've read this Dear America installment every single December, advent-calendar-style, since I was a kid. It's partially to blame for my love of the 1930s as a time period, and I'll always adore the woefully outdated original cover I own, because I've always kind of thought the girl on it looks like it could have easily been a member of my mom's side of the family. And if that's not enough of an explanation for you, then you should know that Lasky is also responsible for the Ga'Hoole books, another youthful obsession of mine. 

2. A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens

There will never be a Dickens title I love more than this one, and that's coming from someone with an enormous soft spot for Great Expectations. But to be clear: whenever anyone asks me some kind of oversimplified question like "What are some of your favorite books?" this one ALWAYS makes the list. I'm a sucker for a good moral tale, Christmastime, and anything that gives me an excuse to watch a great Muppet movie. 

3. All I Want for Christmas is a Vampire (Love at Stake #5), Kerrelyn Sparks

With the end of the year rapidly approaching, I'm running out of time to close out the dockets on my 2021 Paranormal Romance Reading Challenge... and wouldn't you know it? This title is a perfect contender for one of the end of year slots. I've still got two other books - and a whole lot of reviewing - to do, in order to dispense with the rest, but this is the one that has earned its place in this line up... partially because I'm just so excited about its terrible font and chapter header illustrations. The rest of the books, on the other hand... I'm sure I'll get around to them before January. 

Soon-ish : Either the End of the Year, or the Beginning of the Next One

4. A Murder is Announced, Agatha Christie

Thanks to a couple Anglophile best friends back in middle school, there is little as comforting and nostalgic for my brain as sinking into an Agatha Christie mystery. After taking it a little easier as an adult, I'm finally beginning to find my way back into the backlog, and picking up as many sweet little copies as I can find at random thrift stores and secondhand shops. My slim vintage copy of this one might be fragile, but so far, the words have been holding up, and I can't wait to slip further between the covers for a good, cozy read. 

5. Crying in H Mart, Michelle Zauner

I bought this in support of one of my favorite independent bookstores this summer, and quickly found myself surrendering it to my mother only days later because she had committed the cardinal sin of only having brought ONE book on a week-long vacation. My impulses served as correct, as she was not only immediately hooked, but handed it back to me with the solemn declaration that "You are going to cry. So hard." I've been looking forward to it ever since!

6. An Everlasting Meal, Tamar Adler

An absolute favorite, and masterclass of the food writing genre. I also happened to only have read it for the first time two Decembers ago, back in 2019, and I have been borderline evangelical about it ever since. Most likely as a result of a youthful obsession with M. F. K. Fisher - one that, as an adult, I have been trying my damnedest to pass along to my fledgling college kitchen lurker baby brother - this sustainability and instinct-guided entry into the world of home cooking is definitely going to be worth the reread. 

7. The Blacktongue Thief, Christopher Beuhlman

Speaking of my bro, this Fantasy novel served as an easy-choice birthday gift this past August, one that was immediately validated by the fact that he finished it and passed it back along to me within the space of a week. I've been leaning towards a good Fantasy novel for a while, but didn't feel like reaching for an old favorite, so I feel like this one will make for a good craving crusher during the last lazy weeks of the year. 

8. Trick Mirror, Jia Tolentino

Here's the thing: I tried my absolute best to give this book my full attention during a recent flight down to California, and it's a total testament to its strengths in voice and subject matter that it was able to distract me, even for a matter of minutes, from the soul-crushing anxiety and borderline tangible doom that I felt while traveling 1. alone, 2. on an airplane, 3. during a pandemic, and oh, right, 4. for the first time since, I kid you not, Election Night 2016, when I was on a five-hour plane trip back from Florida while voting results were being counted. I only made it 30 pages in to this collection of essays, but those were precious moments I wasn't spending staring out the window and considering whether or not I had told my family I loved them enough times before I left Seattle. Might as well give it another shot, now that I'm safely on the ground. 

9. The Realms of the Gods (The Immortals / Daine #4), Tamora Pierce

I started this wonderful series back during my siblings' Spring Break of this year, and it would make zero sense not to finish the tetralogy out before we hit the new one. I'm actually halfway through this thing, but have been postponing picking it up again, for fear of not being able to enjoy it enough. I mean, do I even deserve to read a good book, if I'm not appreciating it properly??

10. Much Ado About Nothing, William Shakespeare

I've gone back and forth a couple of times, trying to decide which of the many titles stacked on my bedside table deserves this final spot. Should it be Circe, by Madeline Miller, whose high-floating words and moody subject matter just don't fit my reading mood at the moment? Or should it be The Seven and a Half Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle, by Stuart Turton, who I have attempted to start reading what is probably a stingy estimation of four or five times so far, but have never been able to get into? In the end, I'm forced to consider a conversation I recently had with my brother: Shakespeare used to be one of my perennial favorites, something I had an encyclopedic knowledge of and could quote from extensively. Now I can barely get through them, unless accompanied by an audiobook. #pastenglishmajorproblems. It would be nice to get back to basics in the new year. 

What's in your Top Ten? Let me know, in the comments below!

I Beat NaNoWriMo 2021!

Well, I did it again: I beat my writing challenge for National Novel Writing Month 2021!

Did I beat it recently? Well, no: I beat it exactly a week ago, back on November 25th, at like 12:34 in the morning. You see, my annual goal is getting it all wrapped up by Thanksgiving, and after pulling out 9,281 words in a 24 hour period, I actually did the damn thing, which - up until about a week previous to that point - I wasn't even sure was going to happen at all. 

So perhaps you can imagine why I've been putting off writing about it here so strongly. I had a convenient excuse or two... there's Thanksgiving with the family to get through, of course, and then setting up the house for Christmas in the two days following, but subsequent to those points, there was a lot less in my favor to argue for continuing to not acknowledge my tremendous victory.

Then again, that's almost 10K words - a good fifth of the overall challenge - that I wrote in one day. In just the drafting for this blogpost alone, I've misspelled the word "novel" twice already. I had to let the word gardens of my mind flower and regrow again before I made another pass over them with the absolute garbage hacking lawn mower I call my personal writing habits. 

In total, this is my seventh year participating in NaNo and winning, which honestly feels pretty damn good... and only continues to set up for the inevitable year when I am unable to meet the challenge, and all of the self-worth I've stacked on the flimsy collapsible table of "I can write a lot in a short amount of time" will someday fall down. 

But yes, I am the champion, and all that. 

For now. 

Let's continue to just ignore the fact that I'm still 11 books behind on this year's already-reduced Goodreads goal, shall we?

Anyways, here's some of the important stuff that came to mind while writing this year:

1. I acknowledge I left you on a bit of a cliff-hanger in my last blog entry, so you should know, that I ended up picking up "Ferdy Fernsby" again - my previous year's story concept, for which I wrote a 50K word outline - for pretty good reasons. You could argue that it was the right choice because it provided the strongest foundation for building a compelling story, you could say that it was the one that came with the most peer expectation driving it, you might have chosen it yourself based sheerly on the principle that it's a gem of a concept and deserved a little extra attention. 

All told the reason I chose to pick it up again was this: I reread approximately two pages of the outline, and was immediately overwhelmed by a feeling of abandonment so strong that I knew immediately that revisiting this world that I had created was of the utmost priority. I didn't want to leave my characters sitting all alone and unsupervised in some incomplete Word document.

Or, as I phrased it to my younger brother: 

2. I wrote the actual novel itself... through Chapter Three. 

This should only be half of a surprise: because my last year's Challenge was spent constructing an insanely detailed outline, it should have been easy enough to guide myself through writing elements like world-building details and character dialogue, which, if we're all being honest here, are definitely the most fun parts of writing fiction. However, things didn't shake out that way... because I kept finding myself adding more and more detail. And characters. And set pieces. And backstory. 

I may have tapped out at 51,590 words, but that's only because each of my Chapters that far had qualified practically as it's own short story, and thanks to a 25K word Chapter One, maybe even a novella. 

3. As it turns out, writing a detailed 50,000 word outline is NOT going to give you everything you need to know about the characters who fill out of the population of a whole kingdom-state. And while I have previously lauded my own ability to organically generate compelling character names - which, to again toot my own horn, I am - I certainly had a devil of a time coming up with actual people to occupy the world, deciding whether they were important enough to even get a name, and then dealing with being surprised when they inevitably come back 'round into the narrative again later. 

Honestly, NaNo can be a bit of a mind-killer when you get too bogged down with the fact that upon revising, some of those hard-won words are going to have to be taken out. It can really get into your head, and affect the flow in which you keep writing... which doesn't exactly make the Challenge easier, either. 

The frustrating part about being a writer, is that everything - both the good and the bad - is your own fault. Thanks, brain! 

Am I glad I did it? Obviously. I always am. But will I forever be perennially frustrated when the process is not as easy, charming, or enjoyable as I expect it to be? Yeah. NaNoWriMo 2021, you really sent me for a loop.

But on the flip side, you also make me want to write again on my own terms, when I'm not staring down the barrel of having to make up for a 13K word deficit when I'm only 10 days into the challenge. So maybe deconstructing negative self-guided behaviors is a win? 

Did you take part in NaNo this year? How did things go? Did any of this stream-of-consciousness-while-on-cold-medication blogpost make sense? Let me know, in the comments below!