February Books: 2/4 (Six of Crows and Crooked Kingdom)
(I read Crooked Kingdom in three days. Been a while since I’ve plowed through a 500 page fantasy novel.)
Sorry for the Saturday post, squiders. But I’m sick of talking about things that are problems, so let’s ignore all that, shall we.
Writing
I’ve made good progress in the last week. The new microphone works great, and I’ve done all the theory videos, one of the workshop videos, and the intro and outro videos. Did run into an issue on Thursday where the videos were not recording sound for no apparent reason (everything was plugged in, power was on, settings were correct) but the recording software seems to have gotten over itself, thank goodness.
Only video left is the outlining workshop. I’ll do the outlining as part of that video, but I’m debating how much prep work to do first. Typically I brainstorm before I outline, and it may be easier/less obnoxious if I do that part not on video. But fingers crossed that I will figure out my plan forward and record on Monday, and then it’s on to the editing.
Where, fingers crossed, I shall not discover a ton of sound issues like I did that one time.
I’ve also done several exercises out of my Steering the Craft book, and am now nearing the end.
And someone gave me a bunch of tiny notebooks at work that they no longer wanted, so I’m toying with the idea of writing a single tiny notebook page of a story each day.
I’ve actually done something writing related every day this month except February 13 (though I did blog that day, so maybe that counts).
Reading
I finished up Six of Crows (which I know everyone else read ages ago) and went immediately into its sequel, Crooked Kingdom, which I read in three days, as I mentioned above. I don’t tend to go directly from one giant fantasy book into the next any more, so that’s noteworthy (but it is a duology, so really one long story anyway). I enjoyed both.
Other than that, I’m through Volume 15 in the Promised Neverland manga I’ve been reading (Volume 16 has yet to show up, so I may hunt it down on ebook, because of course Volume 17 has shown up). There’s 20 volumes total, so I’m about done with that. This, too, was published a while ago, but I guess it’s good to finally work through some things on my TBR list.
AND I’m also reading The Murder of Mr. Wickham, which, as you can guess from the title, is a mystery based on Jane Austen’s books. It’s got characters from every book (I never read one of them…Mansfield Park, maybe?) which is proving to be Too Many characters, and I’m having a hard time keeping people straight. Which is bad, because everyone gets a viewpoint. We’ve finally gotten to the murder now, though, so I’m hoping things improve.
AND also When All the Men Wore Hats, which is by Susan Cheever on the stories of her father, John Cheever. Have I ever read anything by John Cheever? I don’t think so. So one could ask why I picked this book up, and I don’t rightly know, except it had a write-up in the BookPage (a free magazine my library gives out about upcoming and new books) that caught my interest. And it’s good to read outside one’s normal genres from time to time. Broadens the mind and so forth.
Art
I have done a few pages in my trip sketchbook, but have run into a potential issue that is going to become a problem quite quickly. Normally I take notes when I go on trips. I know myself, and I know, like many things in my life, I tend to binge working on scrapbooks or sketchbooks or what have you, so taking notes allows me to remind myself what we did when I get around to actually working on things.
I’m working through a cruise we took in November of 2024 (ahhhhhhhhhhh why do I do this to myself) and I just…stopped taking notes on Friday. (The cruise went through Sunday.) Now, I know why, the kids got norovirus and spent all of Friday throwing up all over the cabin, but it does mean I don’t know what the spouse and I did that day, or what any of us did on Saturday (our port got cancelled so we toodled around the ship). Sunday, well, we got off the ship and then I got sick at the airport and had the most miserable flight of my life. Yay.
Video Games
I’ve played some video games this month, but I’ve not done any of the real games I’m supposed to be playing.
If you recall, I have 60-some games in my library that I’m supposed to be playing through and either beating, or at least categorizing them for later.
This month I’ve played: House Flipper, which is a game where you go into people’s houses to clean, decorate, repair, etc. them, whatever they want. Also you can buy houses and fix them up and them sell them to other people. I’m pretty sure you cannot beat this game, that there are always more houses to clean. It is relaxing though, just painting or vacuuming or what have you. I played this earlier in the month to deal with the Stresses Related to Stupid Drama.
The Perfect Tower II, which is a tower defense game Steam just put in my library one day. I liked it a lot the first time I played it, but was less enamored of it this time around. I may give it a few more chances and then chuck it into a category.
Among Us and Goose Goose Duck, which you’ve probably at least heard about unless you’ve been living under a rock. If you’ve been here for a while, you’ll know that I was big into Among Us during the pandemic, even competing in and placing in tournaments. Goose Goose Duck is essentially the same game as Among Us. It’s free and I’ve had it in my library for years, but had never gotten around to it til a few weeks ago.
All four of these games are in my “Fun!” category already, which means they’re games I go back to periodically as the mood takes me. None of them count toward my goal.
So that’s me this week, squiders! Hope your week is going well, and that you’re taking care of yourself.
