Phew, that was fun!

The A to Z Blogging Challenge is OVER!

I actually loved posting every day. It was a challenge because I haven't blogged in so long. I this lapse with a post a month, on average. I've missed sharing reviews, but I've also spent a lot of time trying to decide what I want this space to be. I'm not good enough a reviewer to have it exclusively be reviews. Plus it's how I FEEL about books, so my reviews will be more casual and personable. And it won't be just books, it will be everything relating to books and literacy and media.

Really developing It's Not Easy Going Green has been a lot of fun. Some of my posts were just thought vomit, and some were more developed. I want that to be a mix of a lifestyle blog and minimalism/environmentalism/financial blog, but all very personal. I'm not trying to be an expert on anything, here or on my green blog, I just like sharing my experiences.

Since launching my photography business, I've posted on Allison and Her Camera, but not regularly. This challenge has pushed me to get back to my blogging roots (because of course those need to be rediscovered?) and I want to stay in the practice of writing often. I've been publicly blogging since 2008, and writing online (diary-x and LiveJournal, anyone?) since 2000. As lame as it might be, I like sharing some things online, so... here I am. And here I am trying to stay while being interested and relevant.

I've loved connecting with so many different bloggers, and hope to keep up with you all, and hope you stick around for my journey and share your experience.

X Marks the Spot

Scavenger hunt books are a trend in children's/middle grade lit lately, and I am loving it! I love suspenseful books, mysterious books, and books with cases you can try to solve along with the characters, à la Encyclopedia Brown. I've included short reviews of some of my favorites below. I have NOT read the latest Mr. Lemoncello, though, so no spoilers!

It kind of looks like an X!

Book Scavenger by Jennifer Chambliss Bertman
If you never read any other book I recommend, please read this one. I love this book SO much, I already want to re-read it. Codes, hidden books, visiting landmarks in an historical city - what’s not to love? Emily has been an active Book Scavenger for years, so she’s excited when her family moves to San Francisco, even though she’s tired of moving once a year. Now she’s in the hometown of the man who created Book Scavenger, and he’s about to release a new game! But when he’s mugged in a subway station, no one knows if the game creator will make it, and Emily is worried her family will move again before she can participate in the game.

RE-READ: I read this book in May 2016 but wanted to re-read it so I could read the second one and be in the Book Scavenger mindset. I LOVED re-reading it! I had also just met the author at ALA Annual, so it was really cool to kind of immerse myself into this world. This book is so good and solid, and I can’t stop recommending it to people of all ages.

The Unbreakable Code by Jennifer Chambliss Bertman

The second Book Scavenger book - so good! I had just met the author at ALA Annual and re-read the first book, so I was totally immersed in this world. I loved the twists in this book, and can’t wait for more! Escape from Mr. Lemoncello's Library by Chris Grabenstein I was sucked in to this book from the beginning - books and riddles and codes and a super-cool library?! I’m in. It was a really good story, and I appreciate how it will get younger kids, especially those who aren’t readers and are more into games, into reading. There were book titles and references galore in this book, so it was fun to place those. It reminded me of Book Scavenger. Mr. Lemoncello's Library Olympics by Chris Grabenstein I liked this second book a lot… maybe even more than the first? I felt like the puzzles and games were more involved, or perhaps just better written than the first book, because I felt very into the story. There was some suspense, and it will definitely engage middle grade readers. Happy hunting!

Volunteering

I've been a volunteer since childhood, delivering meals on wheels for MIFA with my mom and grandmother. I volunteered at my church a lot in middle school, and volunteered at my local library branch in high school. I've volunteered with people with disabilities, and continued to volunteer at the library in different ways.

I was a volunteer coordinator at a learning center for people with disabilities and the library. I know how important volunteering is to so many organizations, especially nonprofits who need more staff than they can reasonably afford.

I also know that volunteering is important for the volunteers themselves. Volunteering might seem like a selfless act, and it's wonderful to give up your time for a cause. But you're volunteering to get something back, and that's fine! It's important to feel proud of what you're doing to help out. And for many teens when I worked at the library, it's important to get service hours for school, or experience in a career field you might want to explore, or to earn a letter of recommendation for college.

Volunteering helps everyone, and I love still being an active volunteer with many organizations. I write book reviews for Teen Bookletters for my library system. I conduct storytimes at preschools, and want to expand that to parks and community centers in spring and summer months. I have experience doing storytime programs for adults with disabilities, and I want to start that again. I also love the idea of one-off volunteer experiences, in case you can't commit to a set schedule.

I am currently writing a volunteer manual for libraries, and I'm so excited to put all of my knowledge on paper. It's a subject I'm passionate about, and I love that I can put it all out there and help other libraries, and honestly - any other organization, form their own quality volunteer program. I'm just getting to the meat of the book so I have a lot of work to do, but Memphis has a wonderful volunteer scene, so I have a list of people to interview to really flesh out this manual.

Have you volunteered before? What did you do? What would you like to do as a volunteer if you could do anything, anywhere?

Unreliable Narrators

Unreliable narrators are a huge trend right now, and have been since Gone Girl swept the literary stage.

I love suspenseful novels. Some are really well done, and I love feeling my heart pound just from reading words on a page. It's powerful! But unreliable narrators are pretty much the worst character you can read or write about.

I remember being warned against unreliable narrators in my writing workshops. It can be done, and it can be done well, but in current mainstream fiction, I don't think it's being done well. I don't think *I* can do it well, either, to be fair. I'm not trying to be holier-than-thou. I know a lot of people enjoyed Gone Girl and The Girl on the Train and all of those other books almost exactly like those. They're bestsellers and movies so clearly something works!

But for me, I can't stand unreliable narrators. I think mental illness is something that should be explored in fiction, but using it as a deus ex machina is a cop out. Same with alcoholic characters, like The Girl on the Train. Suspense is one thing, but leaving out sections of story because the character blacked out, only to miraculously remember them at the end of the book to solve the mystery is a big hoax. I'm sure I'm not the only one who feels like the author conned me when that's the sad resolution to a story.

The worst part is, there are so many of these! All of these new books are being compared to The Girl on the Train and Gone Girl and, like I said, I understand they are bestsellers - but that doesn't mean they're good. It frustrates me that these books are touted as good literature when other books are tossed off as "chick lit" or "romance" or "fluffy" because they're not as "heavy hitting".

How do you feel about unreliable narrators? Have you read the books I mentioned? What did you think? Have you read books that seem to have the same "formulas" as each other?

Tattoos

Literary tattoos are a growing trend, and there are some gorgeous ones out there. I've seen some quotes in beautiful script, images from childhood favorites, or a book commemorated with a picture that means something to the individual.

I have three literary tattoos - two quotes and one image that was the author's "trademark". Well, I kind of have four - I have a typewriter with a blank page in it so I can write what I want, forever.

I want many, many more tattoos - many literary. There are just so many books I love, books that have spoken to me and make me want to have their words on me forever. There are so many illustrations I love that would make an amazing children's lit sleeve. The thing is, I'm running out of room, and have other things I want done, also!

What I love about tattoos is they tell stories, whether they're literary or not. Someone can ask about any of my tattoos, and I'll tell a story. I'll either talk about what it means to me and why. I can tell a story about how I chose it. I can tell about the day I got it. I can tell something funny that happened when someone else commented on it. They are definitely conversation starters and stories all in one!

Do you have any tattoos? Are any of them literary tattoos? If you hate tattoos, why? I've met so many people that absolutely hate tattoos - not just for themselves, but on me, too!

Strategic Sticker Placement

Well then.

The Odd Sea

I've read this book countless times since high school; it's one of my top three favorite books. Ethan Shumway is sixteen when he disappears - literally disappears: his younger brother, Philip, sees Ethan at the end of the driveway one minute, then he's gone. The book is Philip's searching for (or "not-finding", as he calls it) Ethan. There is something about Reiken's writing that makes the whole story vague and mysterious, yet complete enough to be satisfying, regardless of what the resolution may be. It's on my shelf of Favorite Books and has been there since I got my own copy. It's a beautiful, little-known book that you should read.

Fun Home

Fun Home: a Family Tragicomic by Alison Bechdel

This is a graphic novel about a girl who finds out her father is gay only after she comes out as a lesbian. He dies shortly after, and she remembers her strange relationship with him, as well as her childhood growing up in and around funeral homes. There could have been a lot more emotion to the story, but I think telling it as a graphic novel kind of diminished that possibility. The drawings didn’t add much depth or insight, but it would have been a sparse story without them.

I've also read Are You My Mother? by Bechdel and had a similar reaction regarding the emotion in the book. I can see how both books were therapeutic for Bechdel to write and illustrate, but I didn't get much of that from the drawings or even the story. They were both interesting, but dragged a bit with the navel-gazing, heavy literary references, and other stuff that could have been cut out to make a snappy, impactful graphic novel.

Fun Home is going to be performed as a play at Playhouse on the Square in May, so I'm excited to see how it translates to the stage. If you've read much of this blog at all, you know I love comparing books to movies and play versions of themselves, so we'll see how Fun Home turns out!

Almost April!

This space has been sadly quiet for some time. I’ve missed sharing books and program ideas here, but it’s been hard to carve out time for it. I’m excited to take the A to Z blogging challenge for April, because it’s gotten my wheels turning. I’m excited to blog again, to share reviews and thoughts here.

I don’t really have a “theme” for the challenge, beyond the theme of this blog being based on books, reading, and, to a lesser extent, writing. Some of my posts are about favorite books or series. Some are about favorite authors. Some are book reviews of what I’ve read recently. Some just revolve around books in some way.

Basically, any thoughts I have involving books and a letter of the alphabet have made it in. I’m pretty proud of the posts, and proud that I made time to do the challenge. I’m excited to keep up some sort of blogging momentum after this, also – though certainly not every day!

Blogging from A to Z!

Back in 2011, on a different blog, I took the A to Z Challenge. I blogged every day in April, except Sundays. Each day was based on a letter, but the theme or subject matter is up to the participant. It helped me get out of my comfort zone, it pushed me to write, and it helped me gain so many followers. Which meant I also found tons of new blogs to follow. Bottom line, it was a great thing.

I think I signed up the next year, or the year after, or the year after that. One of those years. But I didn't complete the challenge. I might have ONLY signed up, and never even gotten started.

It might be crazy, but I'm taking the challenge again this year. Threefold. I am blogging here, on my green blog (Not Easy Going Green), and on my photography blog, Allison and Her Camera.

I am really nervous about this, because I am so out of the blogging loop. Look at this blog... watch the tumbleweeds blow by. Ridiculous. I used to write all the time, scheduling posts in advance, writing every day... but that trickled off and I have no clue why, but honestly? I miss it. I miss writing and sharing and creating an online community.

I've started outlining a few posts to make sure I have enough to say about each letter of the alphabet. I'll be writing about favorite books, authors, illustrators, characters, and more. It's going to be a lot of work, but here I am, Blogging from A to Z to see what I can create. Follow along, and join up if you're interested!