Storm Front

by Jim Butcher
audio book narrated by James Marsters
Book 1 of The Dresden Files

So well, apparently I'm one of few who wasn't immediately enamored of this book/series.  And strangely, I'm not sure if it was the book itself or my own personal habit of not getting along with urban fantasies.  Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed the book enough--it was easy to listen to on audio, and there were some parts that were interesting to an extent.  And it's not like I purposefully go into any book, ever, planning not to like it.  In fact, I was excited about listening to this book because I'd seen so many great reviews about the series.

Unfortunately, history has shown that I somehow just don't really get into urban fantasy very well.  I try, because I've always been interested in urban fantasy, and all of the series sound like something that I would love to follow... but so far, there's only really been one or two series I've found that I like.

Ultimately, there was more about this book that didn't really hook me in the way I'd been expecting to be hooked, based on all the squee and high star ratings I'd been seeing all over the place.  Of course, I know better by now that I don't always have to like what everyone else does, so no big deal.  It's entirely possible I'd over-hyped myself.  And maybe things get better as the series progresses.

As far as the story goes, the mystery itself was intriguing, and the entire concept of a wizard private investigator had loads of potential.  Harry Dresden had his appeal, but I think that he maybe sometimes went a bit overboard with the snark... and that maybe he's a bit of a doormat compared to pretty much EVERYONE in this whole book.

I had a hard time seeing the close friendship between Harry and his Chicago P.D. connection, Karrin Murphy.  In fact, the two of them seemed like master and slave, going by the way they interacted with one another.  I understand that Harry wanted to remain on good terms with Murphy so he could continue to consult with the police through her, but there comes a time in life when one can only let another harass, insult, and bully him so much before maybe drawing a line somewhere. 

As friends, Murphy seems to readily beat and threaten Harry without a care for him when he tells her that he can't help her with the murder investigation they way she wants him to help.  I mean, would it kill her to just listen to Harry's reasons as to why he probably shouldn't go and research how to use magic to explode someone's heart?

As business associates, Murphy seems to have little respect for the help that she requests from Harry.  He'd give her a bit of information, and all she tells him is, "That's not good enough, Harry."  And when he requests some information that could potentially help him figure out what he's dealing with, she refuses to tell him anything.  Ya'know, cause that's reasonable somehow.

Of course, it probably also doesn't help that Harry keeps his secrets as well.  As much as I'd like to argue that Harry needs to be allowed to explain to Karrin why he can't do certain things... well, he doesn't exactly try very hard.  It's kind of martyr-ish, in a way.  And the annoying kind at that.

I keep listening to him get abused and insulted and bowled over by everyone in the book.  I keep seeing him get angry, outraged, even... and then he just moves on without setting people right about mistaken ideas or whatnot.  He mopes about how alone he feels and how no one understands the difficulties of his position... but doesn't bother telling anyone why.  And even dismisses all of their behaviors as just not really knowing or understanding.  Kind of a, "It's not their fault they didn't know this about me..." type of ordeal.

Well, Harry... TALK TO THEM!

The rest of the book was kind of a play on cliches, as Harry's life (and this book) is surrounded by sexy women who are attracted to him despite his social awkwardness, and self-proclaimed "terrible luck with women".  There is not ONE character in this whole book, except maybe Bob the magic skull, whom I actually really liked--everyone is either rude or just plain mean.  Even the EMTs who make a brief appearance are assholes.  Seems like Harry, flaws and all, is the only person in this book who acts rational... until he doesn't.

Are there no good, nice people in the "Harry Dresden" world?  Is it a given that all people in urban fantasies have to act like jackasses?  Because I seem to keep coming across this kind of thing.

Maybe I just don't read the right urban fantasies--though, as I'd stated earlier, there IS one particular series I'm hooked to.  But others seem to only appeal to me long enough to read just the first book.  This is probably my own problem.

Anyway...  I'm considering hopping into the next book anyway, just to see if the rest of the series will hook me enough to keep me going.  I'm not out to flambe a series I don't like.  I'm genuinely hoping I'll get hooked.  So... we'll see, I guess.

On a side note, the audio narrated by James Masters was quite good.  He's not the best narrator in the world--there was a LOT of huge breaths being taken and a LOT of sighing going on that kind got a bit irritating after awhile.  But Marsters seems to give Harry that snarky, dry sarcasm that's scattered all over the book.  He doesn't exactly manage the rest of the characters all that well, but the audio book made it easy to follow the story.

I have been frightfully lazy in the bookish world lately.  Of course, being frightfully lazy still managed to finish me two books for the week of Bout of Books 26.  Except that I'd started both of those books way before the readathon even started.

So I took lazy and laid back to another level.  After finishing my Storm Front audio book, I took my sweet time, reading a chapter or two of Death in the Stocks a day until I finished it.

It was... actually kind of nice to not think about blogging or reviewing for a while.

With Halloween Bingo coming up in less than a week, I know I'll be doing a lot of updates and trying to keep up with my reading.  As much as I want to take it easy and not stress myself over my Halloween Bingo reading list, I have an obsessive streak that won't let me just take it one book at a time.  I've already made plans and have an idea what direction I'll be going with my books.


In the meantime, I've been spending more time than anything watching YouTube videos about bullet journaling.  I came across an interesting post about habit trackers, and then spiraled into bullet journal layouts, ideas, and more and more articles and videos.

For anyone unfamiliar with this, there are some nice YouTube tutorials for how to manage your daily tasks and future tasks, and just about anything using a bullet journal format.  The ones I've been watching are the ones by YouTuber AmandaRachLee, and here's her bullet journal playlist.

Of course, as I'd told my BFF the other day, I don't have the patience to sit there and hand draw out calendars, journal layouts for different weekly spreads, shopping list set ups, etc...  As pretty as a lot of those spreads look, and as much as I love to doodle, I'm not really that artistic... and also, I'd probably give up bullet journaling pretty soon, getting super tired of redrawing layouts each month.

On the other hand, I'm more of a spreadsheet person.  I use spreadsheets a lot to track a lot of things.  In fact, I'm more willing to spend hours stuck in detailing and formatting a spreadsheet form for my planners.  Because I can make subtle changes to the forms without starting completely over, and if I mess up, I can use the handy 'undo' button.  I can copy and paste these forms for future use for other things.  It just seems easier.  And also, I'd get straighter lines using a spreadsheet than trying to draw them on my own, really...

So rather than getting into bullet journaling, I decided to take some ideas and incorporate them into some of the weekly planner layouts and monthly calendars I'd already been using regularly.

And then, going a step further, I decided to take the Habit Tracker idea to help make myself accountable for things I'd like to get used to doing routinely.

The photo's lighting is a bit dark, but the gist of it is that I've got a lot of activities on the left that I'm wanting to do on a daily (or at least a routine) basis, and the days of the month are along the top.  I have the form spread split into three specific sections, 'A.M.', 'P.M.' and 'Exercise.'  Exercise is the biggest habit I'd like to make myself get into more routinely.

Each day, when I do the activity, I color in a box.  Or in the case of the bottom 'Exercise' section, I'm simply writing in numbers, such as how much time I'm spending on the elliptical, or how many reps and sets of a certain exercise I did.

Since I didn't start the tracker until a few days ago, I decided to mark off the entire first part of August... and while at first I was just going to put a big 'X' through all that space... I just started doodling lines and the next thing I new, I had diamond patterns going on.

The entire form was created on my computer with Google Sheets, so as you can see there's a whole block where I merged a bunch of boxes so I could add a message for the weekend pertaining to the exercise activities... basically that I wasn't going to start the exercise stuff while working twelve hour shifts this weekend.  I figured that was reasonable enough.

And this is my Habit Tracker I went ahead and set up for September and printed out.  I didn't think I was going to do a lot of decorating aside from drawing in a header... but I was thinking about trees and leaves, then looked up some tree doodles, intending on just adding two trees in the bottom corners... and then ended up filling the entirety of the bottom of the sheet with tree doodles...

And yes, I realize now as I'm typing this that the bottom of the sheet got cut off on the photo.  But I'm too lazy to go back and re-upload a new picture, so everyone will just have to use their imaginations.

Finally, here's my typical layout for a monthly calendar.  It's a blurred picture, but the green boxes I have pre-inserted in Google Sheets and have my work schedule.  There are about five lines for each day for tasks and other planning activities.  Then there's a side bar for weekly to-dos that I don't have specific dates for.

To spiffy things up, I decided to draw some leaves around the 'September', which doesn't show very well.  And then added some grass and a tree.  That was about when I hit the extent of my artistic abilities and called it a night.

This is what I'd been up to for the past few days when I probably could have read another book.  But, hey, this was a pretty fun and relaxing activity.


Anyway...

Enough about my side activities (soon I'll probably end up pulling out some old Mandala books and spend hours coloring).

As far as bookish stuff goes, as I'd stated earlier, I finished two books for Bout of Books 26, both of which were already about half read when I started the week.  In total, I read 189 pages of Death in the Stocks by Georgette Heyer, and finished listening to the last 265 minutes of  Storm Front by Jim Butcher.

This wasn't the progress I'd hoped for, but it was what I'd expected.


Oh, and while I'm at it, guys...

Bear's back!  It's hard to tell if Baby's all that happy with that...

I don't really know what I'll be reading next in this week before Halloween Bingo starts.  I might rush through a romantic suspense if I feel like it... or I might just keep watching bullet journaling videos.  Who knows?

So I don't really want to list any tentative reads at this point since I'm not really in that mind set.

So this was probably the most un-readathon related update post I've ever written.  But oh well.  It's my blog and I'll talk about what I want to, right?  =D

For day 6 of Bout-of-books we were told to post a review of something we’d read this week, but I decided instead to clump it together with today’s task instead. My review will be a short one as loads of other people have already said it much better than I ever could, but here’s what I’ve got.

I loved The Importance of Being Ernest so much that I decided to read all of Oscar Wilde’s 9 plays, by today no less, but I’ll get to that later. The play is about mistaken identities and all-the-while pokes fun at the Victorian middle classes.

I enjoyed it from the start, no more than when Lady Bracknell enters the stage. In the audio-version I listened too this part was played by Judi Dench and she was a great representation of the rigidness and immovability of the Victorian middle-classes. She objects to the protagonist, Ernest, marrying her daughter as his history and lineage aren’t in keeping with what she expects.

The real fun begins when Ernest returns to his country home and his friend Algernon turns up and assumes the identity of his brother. This part was ingenious and I had much fun listening to it.

I’ve just read part of a fantastic review for it over on GR that expounds on what each portion represents and where it means to poke fun at Victorian life, so I would recommend you go there for a full dissemination. As it is, I could never do the play as much justice.

Today’s challenge, the final day or Bout-of-books is this:

Stretch Goal

It's the last day of the readathon, so today's challenge is to take a look at the goals you set for the week (if you have them) and decide a) how you can stretch yourself to complete them or b) how you can revise them so you can meet them. Because yes, you can revise your goals! If you didn't set goals for the week, set a small one for yourself today!

At the beginning of the read-a-thon I set myself the ambitious and (I now accept) ludicrous challenge of finishing *all* of the books I’m currently reading. I also thought I’d try and read all 9 of Wilde’s play’s, as well! I had to adapt this hugely! I decided to spend today reading with the goal of finishing *1* book and I’m pleased to say I managed that. I finished Fleishman Is In Trouble and I’m happy I did. I read 1 more of Wilde's play's (a far cry from all 9!), but plan to read another now. I’ve also been beta-reading a novel for someone in the US this week and read roughly half of it, so I definitely read more this week than normal. I’d call that a success. I’m really glad I participated and will do so again.

I'm quite sick at the moment (I get a little sick every year after I return from the music festival in England), so didn't update yesterday. Anyway, today I'm going to do the challenges for day 4 and 5.

Day 4 challenge

If not this, then that

Basically this means: if you like such-and-such an author or type of book, then try this

author

I'm going to stick with what I'm currently reading and recommend Fleishman Is In Trouble by Taffy Brodesser-akner as I absolutely love it. I would recommend it for people who enjoy a character-driven story and who like to think a little deeply. It would also work for those who like to think outside the normal confines of society and question. Okay, that's a bit vague, so I'll say for fans of Jonathan Franzen and Margaret Atwood.

Day 5 challenge

I Want This Book!

I don't watch much T.V. and if I do it tends to be of a non-fiction variety, but there's this crime-drama T.V. show that I love called Animal Kingdom. It's about a very dysfunctional crime-family. Mostly it's about their screwed-up relationships with one another, but occasionally they pull jobs to bank-roll their lifestyles. It'd make a great character-driven book with just enough action to keep things interesting.

I also think James O'Brien's podcast on LBC would make a hilarious novel if it was dramatised.

Here's the challenge for day 3:

Pick your favorite book and recreate it OR reimagine the cover either live (with yourself or a willing participant as the cover art) or drawing, sculpture, crafts, painting, etc.

There were so many I liked that I put up 6! I'll give a brief summary of each one.

• Where'd You Go Bernadette

I like the simplistic nature of this one and I love that shade of green, so soothing.

Asking For It

The plastic image of the doll relates so much about this book and the way woman are objectified. It really speaks to me.

F*ck Love

Tarryn Fisher's covers are lovely, but this one stands out as beautiful

Every Heart A Doorway

What's not to love about this image?

The Travelling Cat Chronicles

I love cats and snow, so it's a perfect combination

Conversations with Friends

This cover is so vibrant and simple. I love it.