Jun 27 2018
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The Overflowing Bookshelf Challenge: Niki’s Mini Challenges Strategy

The Overflowing Bookshelf Challenge: Niki’s Mini Challenges Strategy

If you caught my post The Overflowing Bookshelf Challenge: How it Works, you saw all of the mini challenges I created to help my FBR Goodreads group tackle their collections. I’ve tried most of them, and current the ones that are working the best for me are the 3 for 1 and the Book Pledge challenges. Here’s how they’re going:

->The 3 for 1 Mini Challenge

This challenge entails reading books from your collection to earn credits to buy new books at a ratio of 3 to 1 (I’ve adapted it to 5 for 1 for my own personal needs… I have a lot of titles to get through). It’s actually a system I’ve been loosely using for years (allowing myself to buy books after reading 5 of any books, not just ones I owned), but am finding it especially motivating in this challenge. I’ve only started doing this one recently, so I’ve only “earned” one new book, but if I focus on owned books, I could easily justify bringing home at least 2 new titles per month. ^_^

When spending my credits, I’ve been operating under two personal rules:

1. Only buy books you’ve already read and loved enough to add to the collection.

2. If you do buy unread titles, they must be read immediately.

Luckily I have access to most of the things I want to read through digital and audio library services, so it’s easy for me to obtain and read a book before committing hard earned cash to it. If I didn’t have such an extensive unread section already, I might feel limited by this, but as it stands I’m happy that my methods have kept me from adding to my problem these last few years.

Plus, I have the flexibility of being “allowed” to bring home unread titles as long as I read them immediately. This comes in handy when I only own the first couple of books in a series. If they’re not worth reading the moment I bring them home, then that tells me I need to abandon the series and move on.

->The Book Pledge Mini Challenge

This Mini Challenge is the simplest of the bunch. It involves committing yourself to reading a specific number of owned books by a specific date. My current goal is:

To read 100 books from my physical collection by 12/31/2018

It’s kind of lofty for me, but I wanted a goal that would force me to focus. I’ve already made a lot of strides this year and might actually come close. Here are the titles read so far:

Titles Read [Start 9.8.2017]: Heart’s Blood, An Alchemy of Masques and Mirrors, A Sending of Dragons, Yendi, Dragonsinger, Dragonmaster [DNF – Donated], The Infinity Gate, Dragondrums, Magic Shifts, Bard’s Oath [DNF], Rakkety Tam, Oathbringer, Fragile Eternity, When the Heavens Fall, The Emperor’s Blades, Magic Binds, High Rhulain, Radiant Shadows, Naamah’s Blessing, The Providence of Fire, Child of a Mad God, The Demon Spirit, Darkest Mercy, Teckla, Dime Store Magic, The Girl of Fire and Thorns Stories, Lord of Misrule, Sword-Bound, Industrial Magic, Dayfall: A Novel, The Lost Hero, The Last Mortal Bond, His Majesty’s Dragon, The Son of Neptune, An Accident of Stars, Haunted, Carpe Corpus, Skullsworn, Unclean Spirits, Fade Out, Broken, The Mark of Athena, Throne of Jade, A Tyranny of Queens, Wildfire, Kiss of Death

Total: 46/100 (personal achievement: I’ve actually reviewed most of these too)

In addition, I set myself a goal of donating 50 books from my collection. If you follow me on Instagram, you’ve seen that I’m already smashing that. My overall goal of The Overflowing Bookshelf Challenge is to par down my collection to just books I’m excited to read – ones I can reasonably get to within the next 10 years (I’ll shoot for 5 once I hit 10). Part of that is coming to terms with the fact that I just won’t be able to get to some of these titles for over a decade, so then I have to decide if they merit hanging onto for that long.

Overall, the straightforwardness of this Mini Challenge is exactly what I need. Right now volume is key.

Here’s a link to my Goodreads Challenge Thread if you’d like to see how I organize it on there.

There’s nothing I love more that talking book challenge strategy haha. Thanks for tuning in. :) My next post will be about how I’ve organized my unread collection to help me meet my goals.

by Niki Hawkes

Jun 26 2018
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Book Review: Iron and Magic by Ilona Andrews

Title: Iron and Magic

Author: Ilona Andrews

Series: The Iron Covenant #1

Genre: Urban Fantasy

Rating: 5/5 stars!

The Overview: Hugh d’Ambray, Preceptor of the Iron Dogs, Warlord of the Builder of Towers, served only one man. Now his immortal, nearly omnipotent master has cast him aside. Hugh is a shadow of the warrior he was, but when he learns that the Iron Dogs, soldiers who would follow him anywhere, are being hunted down and murdered, he must make a choice: to fade away or to be the leader he was born to be. Hugh knows he must carve a new place for himself and his people, but they have no money, no shelter, and no food, and the necromancers are coming. Fast.

Elara Harper is a creature who should not exist. Her enemies call her Abomination; her people call her White Lady. Tasked with their protection, she’s trapped between the magical heavyweights about to collide and plunge the state of Kentucky into a war that humans have no power to stop. Desperate to shield her people and their simple way of life, she would accept help from the devil himself—and Hugh d’Ambray might qualify. -Goodreads

The Review:

Iron and Magic somehow managed to become my favorite Ilona Andrews book to date! It joined a very small percentage of books allowed on my all-time favorites list, and no one is more surprised at that than me.

It’s a true testament to these writers’ skills that they managed to make me fall in love with a book about a character I don’t even like. And furthermore to get me feeling deep empathy towards him. I can say with confidence coming out of this book that I’m 100% rooting for Hugh (even though he’s still an ass ;P). He was always an interesting character in the Kate Daniels series, written well and all, but I couldn’t think of a character I’d least like to read more about. I tell you what – it’s a good thing it wasn’t left up to me. Hugh’s story was brilliant!

One of my biggest joys in life is reading argument scenes between Ilona Andrews characters. Each person is so well-rounded (even the side characters) that they feel like real people. And the inter-character dynamics always gives them that extra spark of life and makes them incredibly relatable. Even though some of these conflicts are repeated across series, I find them so delightful that I don’t mind seeing it over and over. Because Hugh is such a hard-headed personality, the “intense negotiations” in Iron and Magic were especially satisfying. He has truly met his match in Elara.

The pacing in Iron and Magic was fantastic – leading up to a jam-packed ending that had me glued to the pages. I can’t believe how much rich content they managed to pack into the last 10% of the novel. So good! They were already my favorite authors, but that killer momentum is was truly set this novel ahead of the rest in my mind (for what it’s worth, Magic Strikes also landed on my favorites shelf – to give you an idea of the comparative quality we’re dealing with here).

I love the Kate Daniels series, but appreciated how far out of that familiar framework this story took me. It felt like a fresh fantasy read, but still had enough references and politics to keep it in the same vein. I can’t wait to see how things are going to come together in Magic Triumphs (the Kate Daniels finale) because I’m thinking there’s going to be even more crossover.

Overall, every aspect of Iron and Magic worked for me, and I can’t wait to see what happens next!

Recommendations: Iron and Magic takes place right between Magic Binds (book 9 of the Kate Daniels series) and Magic Triumphs (book 10 of KD). The story is a spinoff, and very much connected to the main series to the point where I’d urge you to catch up with Kate Daniels before reading Iron and Magic as this book discusses almost all of the major spoilers from that series. However, of you happen to be caught up and on the fence about this one – READ IT!!! You won’t regret it. :)

I’d like to thank Inscribe Digital (NYLA), Ilona Andrews, and Netgalley for the chance to read and review an early copy of Iron and Magic!

Other books you might like:

by Niki Hawkes

Jun 21 2018
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Book Review: A Tyranny of Queens by Foz Meadows

A Tyranny of Queens by Foz Meadows

Title: A Tyranny of Queens

Author: Foz Meadows

Series: Manifold Worlds #2

Genre: Fantasy

Rating: 3.5/5 stars

The Overview: Saffron Coulter has returned from the fantasy kingdom of Kena. Threatened with a stay in psychiatric care, Saffron has to make a choice: to forget about Kena and fit back into the life she’s outgrown, or pit herself against everything she’s ever known and everyone she loves.

Meanwhile in Kena, Gwen is increasingly troubled by the absence of Leoden, cruel ruler of the kingdom, and his plans for the captive worldwalkers, while Yena, still in Veksh, must confront the deposed Kadeja. What is their endgame? Who can they trust? And what will happen when Leoden returns? -Goodreads

The Review:

Reading A Tyranny of Queens positively changed some of my overall impressions of An Accident of Stars (book 1). You see, the story arc and general issues with pacing in the first book (where I thought a lot of things were inconsequential) actually came full circle in this second book, completing the story. I’m now looking at it as one full novel separated into two parts and, as a whole, the story ultimately provided me with all the components I felt were missing in reading book one as a standalone. Honestly, I don’t think that’s necessarily the best marketing strategy, but luckily for me I was committed to finishing, so no harm done. It does make it a bit harder to recommend though.

That’s not to say the first book was bad, by any means – it had engaging (LGBT friendly) characters who carried the story and were just as strong in Tyranny of Queens. The world-building was good, if a little shy of its potential (but still creative enough to keep me intrigued). And it gave the religion and politics a good base to expand on in the second book (which it did, kind of).

Tyranny of Queens felt like it had more separate POVs, and I did find myself more interested in some than others. However, when they all started to merge again, the story really gained momentum. I have to say, though, as interesting as the characters and the story were, I kind of expected more travel and adventure from a self-proclaimed “Portal Fantasy.” I basically wanted a Stargate experience. I’m hoping Meadows continues to write in this saga with a heavier focus on exploration. The cover image world was really cool and exactly the kind of stuff I was after, but we didn’t get do spend a lot of “page time” there, which is a shame.

One thing I’d like to mention about the author is how impressed I was with her writing (as in, the components that make up her sentences). She’s really good at imagery and nuances within a scene, such as facial expressions and gestures, and I found myself admiring how well she could “articulate” her thoughts. It’s hard to describe what I’m talking about (ironically), but every time I’ve seen other writers try to add what she does, it always comes off as overworked. So, issues with story components aside, the writing gets an “A” from me.

Series status: Up to Date. If Meadows writes more in this world, I’ll definitely read it, but at the moment I’m sitting satisfied with what felt like a completed duology (with potential for more but no real loose ends). I’m going to mark this as a finished series until anything else pops up on my radar.

Recommendations: this “portal” fantasy is a great pick if you want something heavily character-driven. It’s also LGBT friendly, which is always awesome to see on the market. I’d venture in with the mindset that you’ll have to read both books to get the most out of experience.

Other books you might like:

by Niki Hawkes

Jun 20 2018
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The Overflowing Bookshelf Challenge: How it Works.

The Overflowing Bookshelf Challenge: How it Works

As I mentioned Monday, I spent a lot of time creating this Overflowing Bookshelf Challenge for my Fantasy Buddy Reads group, so I’d like to take a moment to share with you the fully composed post I uploaded on there. I won’t be running the challenge here on my blog for others to join, but would love to hear if you end up trying one of my mini challenges and how it works out for you (however, feel free to start your own tracker thread in the challenge folder on the group page – it’s open to the public and we’d love to have you). Here’s a look at what the challenge entails:

Are you a few books away from being crushed to death under you personal TBR? Do you have waaay more owned books than read books? Do you love signing up for yet one more challenge?? If so, the Overflowing Bookshelf Challenge is for you!

The challenge is for those of us who buy more books than we ever get around to reading. The overall goal is to tackle as many titles as you can from your personal library and start making owned books more of a priority. As with our Incomplete Series Challenge, each participant will create their own thread, list out their unread/read owned titles, and come up with personal goals that suits your needs.

Pro tip: If you have too many books to list, you can always paste a link to a Goodreads bookshelf or any other database to your thread for quick access. Goodreads has a scan feature on the app that makes it super easy to upload all of your titles to a bookshelf.

That’s it – track your progress, let us know how you’re doing with updates, and have fun! If you want to get really serious about getting through the books you own, I have some Mini-Challenges below to give you some ideas on how to take this challenge to the next level (i.e. obsessively organized). :)

The Overflowing Bookshelf Mini Challenges!! :D

1. The Book-Buying Ban Mini Challenge: Are your overflowing bookshelves caused by your inability to stop buying books? This 3 for 1 Mini Challenge will help you get through the books you already own while still allowing you to treat yourself to new books. (Nik’s Notes: I’ve been using this challenge for a few years now and it has totally changed my bad buying habits – I love it! My favorite aspect is that it makes me really think about which books I want to spend my “reward” on, so I don’t waste money on books I’m only kind of interested in).

How it works: You must read 3 books from your personal collection for every 1 book you bring home (3 for 1 is an example ratio, so feel free to adapt it for your needs). Here’s a look at the tracker:

Niki’s Book-Buying Ban Challenge [1]:
1.
2.
3.
Purchased:

Nik’s Notes: You can also do a page-count version rather than a book count version (1500 for 1). The benefit is that you’re rewarded for effort, as longer books carry more weight towards completion. If you think the page version will work better for you, here’s how you adapt your tracker:

Niki’s Book-Buying Ban Challenge [1]:
1. The Shadow of What Was Lost 602/602
2. Knight’s Shadow 606/1208
3.The Aware 318/1526 <-the 26 pages over becomes my first entry in my next log.
Purchased: The Legion of Flame

The Borrowing Ban Mini Challenge: Are your bookshelves overflowing because you can’t resist the call of free books from the library? (Or because you can’t stop requesting ARCs from Netgalley?). The goal of this mini challenge is to help you reprioritize the books you actually spent money on.

How it works: You must read 3 books from your personal collection for every 1 book you borrow from the library or request from Netgalley (3 for 1 is an example ratio, so feel free to adapt it for your needs). The tracker should look familiar:

Niki’s Borrowing Ban Challenge [1]:
1.
2.
3.
Borrowed:

The Book Hoarding Mini Challenge: Are your overflowing bookshelves so stacked that you couldn’t possibly read all the unread titles within the next 10 years? If so, the Hoarding Ban Mini Challenge might be the one for you!

How it works: You must get rid of 2 books from your personal collection for every 1 you bring home. (2 for 1 is an example ratio, so feel free to adapt it for your needs). The tracker should be annoyingly redundant to list at this point:

Niki’s Book Hoarding Challenge [1]:
Purchased:
Let Go:
1.
2.

The Book-End Mini Challenge: Is your bookshelf brimming with first-in-series, which would require you to purchase/borrow even more books to get through your collection? If so, the Book-End Mini Challenge might be for you!

How it works: Line your books up approximately from longest owned to newest (or sort your online bookshelf by date added. Focus your reading on the books you bring home immediately (the front of the bookend) and the books you’ve been hanging onto the longest (the back of the bookend). This will help you think about the books you bring home: “will I want to read this immediately?” This is also an opportunity to look critically at the books you’ve been hanging onto the longest to see if you still even want to read them. This challenge pairs well with the Book-Hoarding Challenge. Possible log entries:

Niki’s Bookend Challenge:
Newest:
1. Apex
2. The Stone Sky [Read] <-Moved to a completed section and replace with a new title.
3. The Shadow of What Was Lost

Oldest:
1. Aurian
2. Shatter Me [Got rid of] <-then moved to the “Let Go” pile and replaced with a “new” old title
3. Ghost King

Bill’s FBR Challenge Masher Challenge: Do you love challenges? Do you also like killing two birds with one stone? If so, Bill’s FBR Challenge Masher Challenge might be for you! [Nik’s Notes – Bill is an FBR member who we’ve teased for joining all of the challenges. I think the initial idea for this one was initiated by him, so thanks, Bill!]

How it works: Choose any of the other challenges offered by our group and try to completed as much of them as you can only using books you own.

Current FBR Challenges:

The A-Z Topics Challenge
The Bingo Challenge
The Book Cover Challenge
The Incomplete Series Challenge

You may not own enough titles to complete the challenges entirely (the Incomplete Series Challenge would be difficult), so the goal is to get as many of them as possible with your current collection.

The Book Pledge Challenge: Do you like challenges but don’t have the time or energy to get really complicated with them? The Book Pledge Challenge might be the one for you!

How it works: Decide how many books you’d like to read from your personal collection within a given timeframe. Then track your progress towards your goal:

Niki’s Book Pledge Challenge [Goal: 5 by 12/2017]:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Total: 0/5

Overall, the Overflowing Bookshelf Challenge is designed to be as relaxed or intense as you choose, based on what types of goals you’d like to achieve. There’s a lot of info in this post, so please let me know if you have any questions. :-)

That’s a lot of options, right? I’ve bounced between several of them, but am currently using the Book Pledge Challenge and the 3 for 1 Challenge (adapted to 5 for 1 because I have issues). My next post will be more details on how these Mini Challenges have been helping me so far and what goals I’m hoping to achieve! :)

How are you with bookish challenges? Do you stick with them?

by Niki Hawkes

Jun 18 2018
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The Overflowing Bookshelf Challenge: A Pre-Introduction.

Niki’s Overflowing Bookshelf Challenge

Several months ago I created an Overflowing Bookshelf Challenge for my Goodreads group (Fantasy Buddy Reads), but was too wrapped up in my Incomplete Series Challenge to give it much attention. Now that I’m only down to 11 open series (from 129), it’s time to get serious about my overflowing shelves.

If you follow me on Instagram, you’ve probably seen me posting updates on my New Bookshelves Project off and on for the last several months. The project has afforded me the opportunity to really dig into and organize my unread titles. The blunt fact of the matter is that I have waaaaay too many (over 1100). Even if I focus only on owned books, it will take me about 8 years to get through them all. If I’m realistic about how many new books and borrowed books I’ll want to read outside of my collection, I’m looking at more than 20 YEARS!! O_o.

My goal with this challenge is to par down the number of unread titles to just those I can reasonably get to within the next 10 years. Some of these titles I’ve been hanging onto for almost 15 years and a lot of them are medium-high priority titles I keep passing up for low priority “do I really want to keep this? Maybe I should read it to see” books (well, Niki, there’s your problem). From now on I’ll be reading exclusively high-priority titles until I’ve whittled my TBR down to something I can manage. Excessive prioritizing has been working for my Tackling the TBR method, so I don’t know why I haven’t implemented it here before now.

With my next post, I’ll get into the specifics of the challenge, but for now (if you need me) I’ll be digging through my collection. :)

Has your collection gotten out of hand?
On a scale of minimalist to death by TBR, how buried are you?

by Niki Hawkes

Jun 11 2018
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Book Review: Naamah’s Blessing by Jacqueline Carey

Naamah's Blessing by Jacqueline Carey

Title: Naamah’s Blessing

Author: Jacqueline Carey

Series: Moiren’s Trilogy (Naamah) #3

Genre: Fantasy

Rating: 3/5 stars

The Overview: Returning to Terre d’Ange, Moirin finds the royal family broken. Wracked by unrelenting grief at the loss of his wife, Queen Jehanne, King Daniel is unable to rule. Prince Thierry, leading an expedition to explore the deadly jungles of Terra Nova, is halfway across the world. And three year old Desirée is a vision of her mother: tempestuous, intelligent, and fiery, but desperately lonely, and a vulnerable pawn in a game of shifting political allegiances.

As tensions mount, King Daniel asks that Moirin become Desirée’s oath-sworn protector. Navigating the intricate political landscape of the Court proves a difficult challenge, and when dire news arrives from overseas, the spirit of Queen Jehanne visits Moirin in a dream and bids her undertake an impossible quest. -Goodreads

The Review:

I think I’ve gotten the question “is this trilogy worth reading?” more times since starting it than I can count. People obviously know how much I loved Phedre’s and Imriel’s trilogies (and in most cases they share that love), and are wondering how this final series compares. I’ve been waiting until finishing the trilogy before giving a final assessment, and here it is:

Its not quite as good, but it’s still worth reading.

In some ways it’s like apples to oranges. Phedre’s and Imriel’s stories were a lot more narrowly focused, where the court dynamics and political intrigue played a huge role in lending complexity to the series. It focused on the beauty of Terre d’Ange and its surrounding lands in a manner that made the places almost ethereal. Comparatively, Moiren’s tale focused on a much broader scope. As fun as it was to explore the world, this structure kept the story kind of superficial because we didn’t get to spend enough time in any of the places to really dig in to the nuances of politics. Not that Moiren’s character profile was set up to handle nuance, anyway. Part of what made the first two trilogies such page turners for me was how politically savvy the characters were. They always had their fingers on the pulse of Terre D’Ange, which allowed a narrative driven by the small details. This trilogy is significantly more straight-forward because Moiren (a cave-raised bear witch) doesn’t have the background or the training to really engage in all the politics. Her ignorance of societal dynamics was both refreshing in it’s innocence yet frustrating because it kept the plot from gaining any sort of depth.

Moiren is a lovely character, and if I take anything away from this series, it’s her beautifully kind outlook on the world and her determination to do what feels right despite brutal consequences to herself. Her love is given without expectation, and reading about a character so poignantly selfless was a treat. Even though I wasn’t as in love with this trilogy’s love story, I definitely always felt the depth of Moiren’s love for other characters and mourned the losses fiercely. So, even though a few elements fall short of expectation, Moiren is why you read this series.

Moiren is Naamah’s child, and bid to do her will, which essentially means that she’s compelled to use sex as a healing mechanism whenever required. Where Phedre’s encounters never felt inappropriate to her character or the story, for whatever reason many of Moiren’s encounters felt a little cheap and forced (almost to the eye-rolling point at times, if I’m totally honest). Maybe that’s because the encounters were more of a “duty” where’s Phedre’s came off as a mutually agreed “pleasure,” I’m not sure, but by this final book I was physically cringing every time the story headed in that direction. It is what it is.

Overall, even though the story lacked the plot depth, political intrigue, and oddly compelling sexual encounters (elements that made the first two trilogies so special), it offers instead a beautifully poignant main character and the chance to explore many wonders of the world through Carey’ slens. It might not satisfy the same craving, but it is still definitely a journey worth experiencing.

Recommendations: venture into this trilogy only after reading Phedre’s (Kushiel’s Dart) and Imriel’s (Kushiel’s Scion) trilogies, as this is a future generation continuation. Because I love Carey’s writing and stories so much, I’d definitely recommended it if you haven’t gotten around to continuing yet, but with a few disclaimers to moderate your expectations.

Other books you might like:

by Niki Hawkes