Yearning for a DNF Option on Goodreads and Some Housekeeping With Another Delay

I won't bury the lede for what goes without saying—the travel blog for my late September Boston trip will be pushed back to next month. Not going to set a specific timeline for it this time because, admittedly, I did not work on it at all last month. This was, more or less, similar to why I delayed the Goldeneye book review back in August. Even with the holidays looming, I'll do my best to pace myself accordingly so that I can properly work on the post and eventually get it online. I had a full tumblr of Yerba Mate earlier today and almost forgot how it helps in motivating me to write—it's probably the best thing about this week's cold snap.

I did think about the other book I planned on reviewing in December and I thought, instead of possibly marking it as a "Did-Not-Finish", saving it for February. This will give me an opportunity to give it a proper read and, well, finish it...

...but as November went on, I started thinking of other ideas. With an official tie in the poll I did months ago, I technically didn't need to review The Good Luck Girls of Shipwreck Lane. The truth of the matter is, I added it into the queue to impress someone locally. It would have help me further acquaint myself with a genre that I don't usually read, but the problem is with the writing—how the characters are written, the narrative's tendency to mesh opposing tones together, and so much "telling" instead of "showing". 

I have my Mom to thank for pointing out that I picked out what is usually considered a typical romance novel—at least here in the States anyways. She recommended other romance novels that having better writing including Red, White, and Royal Blue, and Love Theoretically. The former happens to have an audiobook version, which now sits on my Libro.fm wishlist waiting for me to drop a credit on it.

I'm going to set up a poll tomorrow after I publish this post to see if I should continue on with Shipwreck Lane or change course and read one of the other books instead. Or, with the fourth option, I could play through a visual novel in the same literary genre. You could blame a particular episode of CheapShow for this, but it was Leighton Gray's talk at the Game Developers Conference (GDC) that made me think about giving this game a shot! 

I'll be posting the polls in the usual places, Twitter and Mastodon, like usual. Although it will probably end up being the last one for the former considering how that guy's essentially run the network into the ground and that's putting it lightly. 

Mastodon on the other hand has essentially become my online home, social media-wise aside from Goodreads (and StoryGraph). That won't change for the for the foreseeable future, especially as the Fediverse gains traction alongside other services taking advantage of the ActivityPub protocol—there's an article from the Verge that explains it a little better alongside Cory Doctorow's recent DEF CON talk. 

That's it for now! Hope you all have a good weekend!       

Swapping Places

Just writing to note that I'm switching the ETAs for the review of Shipwreck Lane and the second travel blog on Boston. I'm planning to work on the latter within the next couple weeks and I'm aiming for mid to late-November to have the post up on the blog. 

Ideally, the book review will be for December, but it's been a challenging read. There's work and the usual excuses that I mention every time this happens, and while I've made decent progress on the book itself, it's been difficult to pick it up.

Admittedly, a part of the challenge is the it's the print copy. I'm not afraid to share online that I'm reading it, but I'd probably get strange looks at the local Starbucks or on a bus ride somewhere. That's minor though...

I briefly mentioned this on a Mastodon post with my Friday reads for October—more or less the month's reading list—but the writing makes it a rough ride at times. The comedic and narrative hooks also seemed off to me at times resulting it weird shifts in tone.

The book may be more or less "not for me" at this point, but I do plan on finishing it and reviewing it though. (No, it won't be like a Kermode-ian rant.)

Hope you all had a Happy Halloween!