Scenario: You’ve just bought some complicated gadget home . . . do you read the accompanying documentation? Or not?

Do you ever read manuals?

How-to books?

Self-help guides?

Anything at all?

It usually depends on the kind of gadget, but since we’re talking complicated here, I assume that means that it needs assembling and that I haven’t used/assembled one before. In that scenario, yes, I do read accompanying documentation.

Otherwise, if it’s fairly straightforward (i.e., a digital camera) I’ll usually wait a while before I even crack open the manual (usually in search of some esoteric thing I want to do).

(Yes, I’ve decided to start on Booking Through Thursday.)

The last few meta information that the collect is fabulous. I’ll admit I haven’t frequented a lot of book library sites (because it’s always frustrated me at some point) but this last bit was something I was looking for in these types of sites for a long time. I don’t necessarily have all the books I’ve read, after all. A lot of my books are kind of co-owned with my sister. Having these options made me go into a book-adding frenzy.

Until I got frustrated because the editions I wanted weren’t exactly there, did not have the right title, and/or did not have the right cover. For example, I have The Gunslinger put up as The Dark Tower, even though it’s obviously not — it’s only part one of The Dark Tower series, people!

I don’t know if it’s just me, but I’m nitpicky enough to need them to list it correctly, and to get annoyed that I can’t get the right entries. I had the same problem with the books from The Chronicles of Narnia, which is a travesty! I now don’t have Voyage of the Dawn Treader and Prince Caspian in my shelf precisely because of this. Not to mention, the books in my shelf aren’t all from one edition! It’s annoying, really annoying.

What online book library sites do you use? Is there something better than this, that maybe I just haven’t explored enough? Or should I just roll my own?

The rules:

1. Pick up the nearest book.
2. Open to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the next three sentences.
5. Tag five people and post a comment on Tina’s blog (she’s the one who tagged me) once you’ve posted your three sentences.

I started reading Eldest by Christopher Paolini just yesterday, as I wanted something not very intellectually or emotionally taxing, and I had previously picked it up at the last MPH warehouse sale (book haul coming soon).

They soon left the buildings and found themselves crossing the barren fields at Tarnag’s base. Beyond those, they reached the stone quay that edged the still, gray water.

Waiting for them were two wide rafts tied alongside a pier.

I am now tagging:

1. Angela
2. Caroline
3. Michelle
4. Danielle
5. Lenneth

I just finished Christopher Paolini’s Eragon, after resolving to read it since it’s been turned into a movie (no, I haven’t watched the movie, and yes, I heard it wasn’t good). As a YA fantasy novel, to me it was pretty typical: fast-paced adventure, magic, dragons, a likeable protagonist who is coming of age. It was an enjoyable read, and I’ll definitely be picking up the next installation soon.

(Spoiler warning! I will be talking about some plot elements that affect the ending of the book.)

I don’t exactly know if I feel it’s doing a good bit of foreshadowing or if it’s too much. I obviously haven’t read Eldest, but already I feel like it’s going to be a no-brainer. For one thing, Angela the witch’s foretelling of Eragon’s future felt like… wait, already? So we already know there’s a near-death, someone who’s family will betray him, and there’s a noble love on the horizon.

I felt the near-death would be Brom right off. I mean, seriously, who else was it going to be? Who else (who’s still alive) was close to Eragon other than Roran, Brom, and Saphira? If Saphira dies, there goes the story. There was a chance it would be Roran, but I felt that Brom would make more sense, more impact.

And besides, there was the whole thing about the betrayal of someone who’s family. That instantly pointed to Roran, but! We skip to the end of the book, where we, omg, find out about Murtagh’s past. Murtagh Son of Morzan who, when sparring with Eragon, was his equal in every respect, even when they tire. There was mention of them being so alike each other, but yet differing in beliefs. Let’s not forget Murtagh’s mother, who came from an unknown village, who mysteriously left when Murtagh was three, and returned just as mysteriously.

Oh, what’s that about Eragon’s mother? His mother, who had become apparently rich, went home to Garrow five months pregnant with Eragon, gave birth, and then pleaded that he be raised there, and then disappeared. I mean, seriously? You don’t need to be a rocket scientist to put, omg, two long-lost brothers together and, in the end, have them face each other in a heart-rending, emotional battle between good and evil! Not to mention battle for the heart of a noblewoman, Nasuada, apparently. There was a stray thought about it being Arya, but you never know. Would that be possible in Eragon’s world?

Okay, maybe I’m wrong about some of these points. I don’t even know what I think about all these guesses of mine. I feel like, what, why is this so easy?? I don’t know if I enjoy it, making all these guesses.

I have to admit, being on challenges adds a bit of motivation for me personally, mostly because I love seeing that progress bar fill up slowly. It tells me where I am, and how I’m doing… not to mention it’s forcing me to keep reading a book even if before I’d have decided to leave it “for a while”… and then I invariably end up not reading for a while, because I keep thinking, “but I’m reading something else right now!”

I have this… compulsion to finish books.

This sounds promising, so I signed up — I love me some SF/F.

Lately I’ve just put down Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West by Gregory Maguire and I have to say that it was brilliant — I loved the fully-realized political and spiritual backdrop for the tale, and Elphaba was certainly a character. She’s the title character, but it was so well written that you actually feel and know her to be an outsider. The outsider? In her own book. Hence the politics and the spiritual/religious backdrop aren’t really a backdrop after all, but they’re pretty much the meat and core of the tale.

Being the hopeless sap that I am, you’d probably guess what my favorite part is. Spoiler alert, for those of you who don’t want to be spoiled ;) but Elphaba and Fiyero’s ultimately-doomed relationship was a treat. I was half expecting her and Boq to end up together — the other half was that I didn’t feel like I wanted her to be in a relationship. But when Fiyero and she did end up in a rather complicated relationship, it was a suprise, a good surprise, a treat. She was a little “closer” then, not so much an outsider, while it lasted.

I think I’m definitely picking up Son of a Witch now, which I had read a bit of in a bookstore back in the Philippines. It’s definitely an intriguing read.

I pretty much disappeared after mid-November–from my writing log, anyway–mostly due to a lot of things happening at the same time. Some of them are personal, but most of them were work-related and season-related. I flew home to the Philippines on December 20, flew back to Singapore on the 27th with family in tow, and took them around until January 2, when they went back to the Philippines.

Even with all of that, however, I was able to finish my 50 Books for 2007 challenge. Just barely made it! The above link also goes to the full list, which admittedly still needs a bit of sprucing up: one more thing that I haven’t gotten around to doing. I am starting a new 50-book challenge this year, and have so far read two books. In time I’ll put up my challenges page, which will link to all the challenges I’ll be doing that are reading- and writing-related.

I also got to 50,000 words for my NaNoWriMo novel this year, but I wasn’t able to finish the memoir; there are still a lot of events to go through and a ton of editing to do once that’s over. I’m not abandoning it, however — I’ll continue to work on it as I go along. The exercise has definitely been one of the longest-running writing exercises I’ve ever done since I graduated high school almost eight years ago. I’ll have to make sure this keeps up.

NaNoWriMo 2007

words: 20,299 / 50,000 (41%)

That’s almost half of the goal by the eighth day, which isn’t bad at all (this might still grow within the day, as it’s only 9pm). Unfortunately, I’m still not half into the 2.5 years that my memoir is supposed to cover. Granted, there shouldn’t be too much after the first year, but I’m unearthing a lot of things from my journals as I go along that I never really know.

There are two things that are bogging me down from going through the events:

1. Research. There’s a lot of journal entries to wade through, both relevant and irrelevant to the memoir, but things I need to go through anyway.
2. Processing. This does chronicle a trying time in my life, and going through my journals is painful and troublesome.

I’ve come to the conclusion that creation itself is also scary. It’s not just the pain that going further in the memoir is going to give me, but also the general reluctance and fear that comes packaged into translating something into writing. Already I’m running into decisions that I’m putting off until the second draft: decisions and questions like, should I be as faithful as possible to what really happened or can I combine certain conversations together in order to conserve space? and how do I filter out effectively all that’s not needed, or how do I compact these into shorter, more concise scenes?

Already, I see that whatever my output for this month is, by the second draft, it’s going to be cut by half. I’m going to have to wade in with a highlighter and highlight important scenes and ideas and emotions, and find out how to make it more concise (see Questions Number One, above) and cut off the rest. I also see that I am going to need a printer, and lots of scrap paper. Oh joy.