October Book Club Reads

October isn’t over, yet but my Book Club reads are close enough to get this post done and done.

Pints and Prose (Greece Public Library)  

The Winter People by Jennifer McMahon.  I finished this one in September so it was in my last wrap up post. It started off pretty strong with a lot of wonderful feelings of creepiness and dread. But then it ended up meh, in general. I really liked the writing. There was just a lot going on in it, like the author was hoping it could cross all the genre lines. The general census in the book discussion was also meh, because some people loved the hell out of it and two people put it down without finishing. I’m not planning on reading the November book but I haven’t decided to abandon this gathering, yet. The group is a little too large to be really invested though, so it’s the book club I’m most likely to drop if I have to. I love the cidery, though.

June Book Club Reads

I joined two new book clubs recently, through two separate local libraries. They both meet monthly.So, June was a lot of reading about White women who were mostly boring. Not that I didn’t enjoy the books, mind you. I love boring white women.

Pints and Prose is through Greece Library. We meet at Blue Barn Cidery, which is a great space for hanging out and eating buffalo chicken dip but isn't the best for book discussion. I plan to go a few more times to see if it gets better.

Read Women is through Gates Library and focused on, yes, reading women authors. It's a group of about 7 people right now. 

Read Harder (Rochester)

Each year, Book Riot releases a book challenge list consisting of 24 categories. The Mission, if you choose to accept it, is to read one book for each category through the year. Books can count for multiple categories.

In Rochester, SarahSaysRead and I facilitate an unofficial group of readers who get together once a month to talk about the books we are reading for the challenge. We split the categories up into pairs so that we all have some idea about where we are and where we are headed. This (2018) is our second year of meeting. We've got about 4 or 5 folks who are regulars and then a few who come sometimes.

We typically meet on a Sunday but the location varies, as we’ve decided this is a good way to also try different foodie spots. If you are interested in joining us, please email me (Kenya) at kacophani at gmail dot com. Put Read Harder Roc in the subject line or risk that circular file. 

Read Harder 2018
January	First book in a new to you YA or middle grade series	Essay anthology
February	Book published posthumously	Romance by or about a POC
March	Book of Social Science	One sitting book
April	About Nature	Cover you hate
May	Comic written and illustrated by the same person	A book set in or about one of the five BRICS countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China, or South Africa).
June	Sci-fi with a female protag by a female author	An assigned book you hated
July	Children’s classic published before 1980	Genre fiction in translation
August	Book of Colonial or postcolonial lit	Comin that isn’t Marvel, DC, or Image
September	Western	Oprah Book Club selection
October	Book of true crime	Comic written or illustrated by a person of color
November	Celebrity Memoir	Mystery by a POC or LGBTQ+ author
December	Classic of genre fiction	Female protag over the age of 60

  

What I've Been Reading (Outbox March 2018)

If I were still an active blogger, this would be an outpost. As it is, it’s a picture of my March Reads. You never know what it might turn into later.

Feel free to let me know if you've read any of these and what you thought of them.  

Reader Harder 2018 - The Beginnings

It’s actually almost like failing the Book Riot Read Harder challenge is becoming a tradition! Well. Here's the list. I'm already ahead of the game. So, I should totally win this time!! Right! Just lie to me, yall. 

Here's the list and how Sarah and I broke down the 24 categories.

What I've Been Reading and How the Hell I'm Gonna Read Harder

I am working “frantically” to finish the Read Harder challenge over the next week. How could I have read so many books and still have categories unsatisfied for this damn challenge!? I guess, this is the point of doing a challenge: to expand what I’d typically read. But I’ve read about 7 books in the last 3 weeks!!!! I’m ridiculous. I'm also on the brink of quitting so that I can start thinking about 2018 challenge. Because that makes sense. ::eye roll emoji::

But, whatever. Here are my favorites over the last few weeks. No real surprise that my favorites are parts of series I've been loving.

Read Harder Progress - November

I’ve gone from being ahead to sucking. I have books checked out from the library that will satisfy 4 of these… AM I GOING TO MAKE IT!?

Oh gawd how I hate travel memoirs and short stories! ::Shakes fist::

MONTH	BOOK 1	BOOK 2
January	Read a book about war. A GIRL AT WAR BY SARA NOVIC (Jan)	Read an LGBTQ+ romance novel. Everything Leads to You (April)
February	Read a book you’ve read before. A LION, WITCH AND A WARDROBE INVISIBLE MONSTERS	Read a collection of poetry in translation on a theme other than love. SONG OF A PRISONER
March	Read a book about sports. JUBA (October)	Read a book that has been banned or frequently challenged in your country. The Outsiders (April)
April	Read a book that is set within 100 miles of your location.	Read a book wherein all point-of-view characters are people of color. THE BRIEF AND WONDEROUS LIFE OF OSCAR WOA (March)
May	Read a book that is set more than 5000 miles from your location. SNOWFLOWER AND THE SECRET FAN	Read a superhero comic with a female lead. MOON GIRL AND DEVIL DINO
June	Read a fantasy novel. THE DIABOLIC (Jan) AMULET OF SAMARKAND (Jan)	Read a book published by a micropress.
July	Read an all-ages comic. MOON GIRL AND DEVIL DINO	Read a book in which a character of color goes on a spiritual journey.
August	Read a debut novel. MORE HAPPY THAN NOT (Jan)	Read a book published between 1900 and 1950. AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF AN EX-COLORED MAN
September	Read a book about books. LITTLE PARIS BOOKSHOP NEVERENDING STORY	Read a nonfiction book about technology. THE CARD CATALOG
October	Read a classic by an author of color. AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF AN EX-COLORED MAN	Read a collection of stories by a woman.
November	Read a book set in Central or South America, written by a Central or South American author.	Read a travel memoir.
December	Read a book by an immigrant or with a central immigration narrative. DROWN – Junot Diaz (March)	Read a YA or middle grade novel by an author who identifies as LGBTQ+. MORE HAPPY THAN NOT *(Jan) Everything Leads to You (April)

(link to Read Harder Challenge)

Read Harder Roc - Poems in Translation

This month’s two Read Harder challenge reading categories were A Book about Poetry Written in Translation on a Theme Other than Love and A Book You’ve Read Before.This post is about the poetry. We had estimated that this would be a harder category for most people, based on our own feelings about poetry, and we were right! 

So, all the members of the Read Harder Roc group had a hard time with the poetry. It was kind of difficult to find something in this unfamiliar genre, especially given the very specific kind of poetry that we needed. The librarian at one of my local libraries just pointed me to the poetry section and told me to "see what I could find." Nothing. I found nothing that day.

Read Header Roc: A ReRead

This month’s two Read Harder reading categories were A Book about Poetry Written in Translation on a Theme Other than Love and A Book You’ve Read Before. This post is about the rereads. This was considered an "easy" task and based on the group, we were right! 

Read Harder - ROC: A Book about War

Last week was the first meeting for the Read Harder Rochester book group! We had four whole people show up! Whoott!!

The group is new and each month we plan to get together to talk about two tasks from the challenge. This month’s categories up for discussion were: A Book about War and A LGBTQ Romance. This post is about the former.

Read Harder - Roc: An LGBTQ Romance

Last week was the first meeting for the Read Harder Rochester book group! We had four whole people show up! Whoott!!

This month’s categories up for discussion were: A Book about War and A LGBTQ Romance. This post is about the latter.

 An interesting point that came up doing the discussion about this category is that all members agreed that it would be important, moving forward, to choose books in the “diversity” categories that were written by authors from the under-represented group. Not all of our books this time reflect this approach and the readers could tell that an "insider" voice would probably have been better.

Read Harder 2017

Last year I did a bunch of reading challenges and have since decided that keeping up with them was too much of a chore. I do plan to do a few Readathons throughout the year but Book Riot’s Read Harder challenge is the only reading challenge that I’ve officially decided to do for 2017, though Book Riot recently posted the 59 Book Fandom reading challenge that I might check in with unofficially and I haven't decided about participating in the Review Diverse Books challenge, yet. As a blogging challenge specifically, that one would be a new thing for me. Appealing or terrifying? Hard to say!

I've participated the last three years, failing by two categories (THE HARD ONES!) each time. This year, I've teamed up with other local readers to meet each month to talk about two categories to encourage me to get those books read. 

Here's the official Book Riot Link

Here's the PDF you can download to play along

Sarah (over at Sarah Says Read) and I went through the the 24 tasks and paired them based on "easiness." Hard tasks were basically those that might require more research to know if it will work, be harder to find, or have more difficult content. We tried to pair each hard task with an "easy" task and put all the hard tasks earlier in the year. Here's how it came out and my running log: