I'm trying on a new blog name and avatar. I talked about doing this months ago, and today I decided I've been Darth Pony for long enough. Time for a change. So it's out with the Pony and in with the Pedant and a new avatar to match.

Thanks for everything, My Little Pony Dressed as Vader picture! I'll always love you, but I'm embracing my love of porgs and obsession with details now. XOXO

I am:

• swamped with work
• not getting much reading done
• super tired but not sleepy
• still mildly annoyed, weeks after reading it, that Morning Star contained the phrase "Bye, Felicia."

I'm in a little reading slump at the moment. I've tried to start a new book, but I've read the first few pages several times now and my brain is all, "Nope, not absorbing that. Oh, look! It's that chip in the ceiling that looks like a spider!" Or, as was the case this afternoon, "Book, schmook. Oh, look! The internet!" So I put the book down (again) and started scrolling through my Facebook feed.

And I saw an author doing that whole comparing books to coffee thing.

You know how they do. They say something about their book costing the same as a fancy cup of coffee only their book is a superior investment because the coffee takes mere minutes to make and consume while sometimes years go into writing and publishing a novel that will entertain you for hours and can be read again and again. So the book is totally a better deal and you should buy one instead of coffee!

My problem with this is that it callously disregards all the colossal effort that goes into each and every cup of coffee.

Do you know how long it takes a coffee plant to grow to maturity before it starts producing beans? Three to five years, depending on the species, and then add in another nine months for the fruit to ripen. During that time, the plant requires constant maintenance lest it should get too wet or too dry or too cold or too hot or produce too many blooms, etc. etc. Coffee farming is hard work! If you want to grow your own coffee and produce enough beans to have just one cup a day, you'll need to plant thirty fricken' coffee plants.

Yes, it only takes one barista a couple of minutes to brew a cup, but that barista isn't equivalent to an author in this analogy. They're the bookstore cashier or the computer that wirelessly delivers your ebook. And yes, it doesn't take long to drink a cup of coffee, but the caffeine buzz lasts for hours, and who could forget that lovely taste?

Dear coffee-bashing authors, quit being dicks to coffee farmers and overlooking their massive, labor-intensive, often thankless contribution to society. You see, the coffee farmer is your equal, possibly your superior, so show some respect, will you? Many of us booklovers have enough room in our hearts for coffee and books. Don't try to make us choose which one to spend our money on. There are plenty of authors who don't bash coffee, and libraries are free.

I met my personal, secret 2015 reading goal earlier this month, so I decided to celebrate by rambling about myself and why I review. It's going to be VERY rambly, but it's all sort of loosely connected. Here goes:

More than twenty years ago I was diagnosed with a number of medical problems. First mono, then chronic fatigue syndrome, and eventually fibromyalgia. I've decided the first two were probably cases of misdiagnosis, but oh well. My family doctor was doing the best he could for me with the info available at the time. I spent most of junior high and high school with home tutors, a handful of friends who stuck by me even though I was a boring, sleepy sloth most of the time, and books. Lots and lots of books.

In my 20's I got a little better. I was able to hold down a steady job and make it through my shifts without collapsing, and I even had a bit of a social life, which resulted in me finding someone crazy enough to want to spend the rest of his life with me.

My thirties have been a bit of a health rollercoaster. I've had good years, I've had bad years, and I've had really bad years. I started using Goodreads to catalog my Kindle books during one of the bad years. Did you know chronic pain and fatigue can adversely affect your memory? I didn't. I thought maybe I had early-onset Alzheimer's until the doctor told me my memory lapses were normal for someone like me. "Fibro fog" (or the inability to concentrate) can affect short term memory. I turned to Goodreads because I kept trying to buy books I already owned and had no memory of buying.

I started blogging on Booklikes during one of the really bad years. I was having so much trouble concentrating that I would find myself going through the mechanics of reading without absorbing a single word. During really bad spells, this is me:

I'm going to borrow a little from spoon theory to explain why this was happening. (If you don't want to click the link and read the whole article, spoon theory in a nutshell is an analogy equating the energy it takes to perform physical tasks to spoons. People with chronic illnesses have fewer spoons and run out of them faster, which is why we curl into useless balls after such strenuous tasks as taking a shower and getting dressed. My physical spoon drawer was mostly empty today. I'm still in my nightgown at 7:30 PM.) Spoon theory as Christine Miserandino wrote it mainly applies to the physical aspects of chronic illness, but it's also applicable to the mental aspects. Thanks to the fibro, I only have so many spoons in my mental drawer and I have to use most of them for work. When I run out, I shut down. My concentration is shot and I have trouble even holding a conversation.

So during this really bad year, I was spending all my spoons on work so I wouldn't let my clients down--and reading books to unwind after I'd already hit the shutdown point. Sometimes I could remember them afterward, sometimes I could only remember vague impressions, sometimes nothing at all except that I'd read it. Sometimes not even that much. I decided to start reviewing as a way to help me remember what I'd read and how I'd felt about it. I remember things better if I write them down, and I'd have an online record in my own words. My very first review was basically a much needed reminder to myself not to buy the sequels because I didn't like the book enough to continue with the series. There aren't a lot of details about the story because it had been a while since I'd read it and I couldn't remember much.

Once upon a time, I devoured a novel a day. The library staff in my hometown practically watched me grow up and knew me by name. Half the Barnes & Noble staff knew me on sight. When I started keeping track of my reading, I realized how profoundly the fibro has changed that. I buy most of my books online because I haven't got enough physical spoons to fit in a trip to the library (and there's no guarantee I'll have enough mental spoons to read the books before their due date anyway). No one in the local bookstores know me by name or even by sight, except for the one cashier who knows my husband. In 2014 I read all of 38 books. 38. Some books took me weeks or even months to read. That depressed the hell out of me.

So this year I made a promise to myself. Without neglecting work, I would try to average a book a week and read 52 books this year. It's a far cry from what I used to read, but I thought it might just be manageable. I didn't set up an official reading challenge because I knew that would just give me anxiety, which would defeat the therapeutic purpose of reading. And by not making it official I was also giving myself permission to fail, and if I did no one would be the wiser.

But I didn't fail! Somehow, some way, I scraped together enough mental spoons to meet and even pass my goal while still giving my clients quality work. Which is why I decided to tackle The Goldfinch this month. If it takes me weeks to read it, that's okay. I've met my goal. I can pat myself on the head, take my time, and look forward to all the books I'll read next year.

I think there was something else I wanted to say, but I'm out of spoons and I've hit a wall, so I'm just going to post without proofing and stare blankly at the television. And if you made it through all of that you should come over to my house for chocolate or cupcakes or something because you deserve some sort of reward. Anyway, thanks for indulging my oversharing mood. Y'all are awesome.

I'm way behind in watching Bond movies (the last one I saw was Casino Royale), so when Quantum of Solace came on TV I put down my book and gave it my full attention. I had somehow forgotten how over-the-top the action scenes are in these things. This was me during every single action scene in the movie:

"Hahaha! That so would've killed him. Oops! Dead again. Ouch! Broken legs for sure. Oooh, dislocated shoulder. Ahaha! Dead again! Yep, dead. Ooh, that'll need skin grafts. Dead. Maimed for life. Never walking again. Dead. Double dead. Oho! Really, thoroughly, super dead!"

And my favorite semi-spoilery moment of movie precognition:

It's probably a good thing I didn't see it in a packed theater. But I had so much fun that now I really want to see Skyfall and Spectre.