Category: Random

ArmchairBEA 2014: Expanding Blogging Horizons & Novellas/Short Stories

Posted May 28, 2014 by Michael @ Knowledge Lost in ArmchairBEA / 24 Comments

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 We are back for day three and today’s topic is Expanding Blogging Horizons and Novellas/Short Stories. So, let’s kick off with Expanding Blogging Horizons. This is a topic I think a lot about; what will I be doing in the future? I would like to think that my blog will still be going but I’m always looking for ways to evolve and improve. I want to be seen as a book critic and to do that, I need to work towards improving myself; see my book blogging manifesto for information about how I plan to do this.

I also need to think about how blogging is changing and what I can do to continue to make my own blog interesting and exciting. I’m not sure if I’m ever going to be involved in a podcast, but I love the idea. I think a good podcast needs two or more people that interact well (I’m too introverted) and has differing opinions (I have that). There is also vlogging or the terrible name ‘book tube’, I’m not bubbly or interesting enough to ever consider that option, but I hope to see more vloggers out there that do something other than YA.

I’m not sure what the future holds, but I like to think there will always be a place for book bloggers; I would love to see more male book bloggers and some diversity. I tend to worry when everyone is reading the same books, almost makes me not want to read that book. I understand new books are always appealing and we all get excited when we receive a book in the mail that looks great. I guess I worry about all the books that get missed. Life is short and we all have too many books to read, better get back to it.

As for novellas and short stories, I’m trying to make an effort to read more short story collections but I’m often not too sure how to review them. If all the stories are a little different then writing a very general view can be difficult.  Novellas are easier and I love novellas, there are so many great ones out there that come to mind.

Great novella examples

ArmchairBEA is a virtual convention for book blogger who can’t attend Book Expo America and the Book Blogger Convention. Button by Sarah of Puss Reboots

ArmchairBEA 2014: Author Interaction & More Than Just Words

Posted May 27, 2014 by Michael @ Knowledge Lost in ArmchairBEA / 29 Comments

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Day two here at Armchair BEA and we are talking author interaction & more than just words. Where I live we tend not to get many authors up, but when we do, I often try and catch their readings, book signings or talks. It can be difficult when they are authors that you’ve never read or have no interest in reading; I want to be supportive of the authors that do come to this city but I also don’t want to be stuck buying books I don’t plan to read.

I’ve had some great experiences with authors, from hanging out with them at a cocktail party (Trudi Canavan, Rachel Caine and Felicia Day), to having great conversations them on Twitter (I still get excited when Megan Abbott replies to a tweet or Gary Shteyngart favourites a tweet) to awkward book signings (I’m thinking about the time Nick Earls signed a book ‘My apologises for not being Russian and long dead’). Some authors know how to interact to the public and I have to respect them.

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However there is the other side of the pendulum, the authors that should just get off social networking or take a leaf from J.D. Salinger’s book and avoid all people. Authors need to remember and accept the fact that not all readers are going to enjoy their books. I write negative reviews and I do try to be constructive when I do so but authors can get so defensive and venomous towards negative feedback that they should stop reading their reviews. I’m not just talking about personal experience, I’m talking about comments you see on Twitter or the bullying on Goodreads. I do understand this can be an issue for reviewers as well but I tend to think if you can’t handle negative feedback (this goes for reviewers too) then stay away from the internet.  I’ll end my rant there.

Moving on to the topic of more than just words, where I want to discuss a few things. Firstly audiobooks (as long as they are unabridged) counts as reading. Just because you are getting a book read to you doesn’t mean you are not experiencing it. Sure an audiobook is a completely different experience but I think it does not matter that the listener has not read the book. Our brains are wonderful and complex things, I think to read the book aloud in my head and an audio book is similar but someone else reading it. I still process it in similar ways and retention levels tend to be the same (for me anyway). I listen to a lot of audiobooks; mainly become I work on a computer all day with headphones in. Sometimes music is good, but I find audiobooks (especially when it comes to non-fiction and hard novels) can be a great way to experience a book while working.

Now there is the concept of graphic novels, I’ve seen people really take them on board and others avoid them at all cost. For those who do avoid graphic novels I’d love to know why. I worry people get the wrong idea about graphic novels and think they are all about superheroes with powers, but there are some great ones out there. If you want some recommendations check out my post where I suggest five different graphic novels to try that don’t feature super heroes.

ArmchairBEA is a virtual convention for book blogger who can’t attend Book Expo America and the Book Blogger Convention. Button by Sarah of Puss Reboots

Ten Books I Read to be more Pretentious

Posted May 27, 2014 by Michael @ Knowledge Lost in Top Ten Tuesday / 16 Comments

toptentuesdayIt’s Tuesday again which means time for another round of Top Ten Tuesday; I like joining in on this meme because I have a set topic to work with. Top Ten Tuesday is a book blogger meme that is hosted by The Broke and the Bookish and this week the theme is: A free choice, which means I can pick my own topic. I love books and I have to admit that sometimes I pick up a book to make more of a book snob. I like to think it as increasing my pretentious levels, however dispite picking on books for this reason, I found that I enjoyed most of them; once I spent a lot of time working these novels out. I thought I might post ten book I picked up to increase my pretentious levels.

ArmchairBEA 2014: Introduction and Literature

Posted May 26, 2014 by Michael @ Knowledge Lost in ArmchairBEA / 30 Comments

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This is my third year participating in the Armchair BEA event. While I am not an American I do like the opportunity to join with book bloggers around the world and talk about our favourite subject, books. I am sure most people know already but just in case; BEA is the Book Expo of America, held in New York, where people in the book industry of America get to be enticed with new books from publishers. There is an event now known as BookCon where book lovers can experience the same enticement, however they won’t get any diversity. Putting aside the problems with BookCon, I’m pleased to join all the fun with Armchair BEA. This is a virtual conference for the book bloggers that can’t make it to BEA. Over the next few days I will be joining in with this event and their daily blog post topic suggestions.

For the past two years I’ve been enjoying this event, it is a great way to meet new bloggers and show off your own book blog. As this is the first day of Armchair BEA I probably should move on to the topics for the day. Today we are introducing ourselves and talking about my favourite topic…literature. As a way of introduction Armchair BEA has provided ten questions and asks everyone to pick their favourite five and answer them.

Please tell us a little bit about yourself: Who are you? How long have you been blogging? Why did you get into blogging? Where in the world are you blogging from?

My name is Michael, I hail from North Queensland in Australia and I only became a reader in 2009. I started blogging not long after that over at Knowledge Lost as a way to sort my thoughts and explain what I had learnt along the way. I know I need to spend more time on that blog and I’m hoping to get back into it now that I’m forcing myself to write every day. I started Literary Exploration as a way to document my book journey and soon discovered I’m very passionate about books and book blogging. There is one thing I hate about book blogging but for the most part I really enjoy the whole experience.

Describe your blog in just one sentence. Then, list your social details — Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, etc. — so we can connect more online.

Literary Exploration is documentation of my bookish journey as I explore literature in all its forms.

You can normally find me on twitter: @knowledgelost or my blog @litexploration as well as Facebook, Instagram, sometimes Tumblr and Pinterest. I’m also very active on Goodreads (also check out the Literary Exploration Book Club), Literally and Booklikes.

What was your favourite book read last year? What’s your favourite book so far this year?

Highlights of 2013 include;

For more books check out my best of 2013 post

Highlights of 2014 (so far) include;

What is your favourite blogging resource?

One of the best investments I’ve made for my blog is the Ultimate Book Blogging Plugin. This one plugin has saved me a lot of time and makes my life so much easier. I can collect a lot of relevant information thanks to this plugin and it automatically updates my review index. It has a lot of cool features and I highly recommend it to all book bloggers. Of course you’ll all have to move to a self-hosted WordPress platform but that is a good idea anyway.

Spread the love by naming your favourite book blogs:

I’m always happy to recommend some great book blogs; here are some that I’m always happy to see updates from;

Time now to look at that all important topic of Literature: I’m a bit of a pretentious reader, so I’m always interested in reading books that are considered high literature. I’ve even set myself a life goal of reading the entire 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die List, I might even try to review them all too. I find myself drawn to literary more as I become a better reader; there is something about the prose and structure that stands out. As a literary explorer I try not to entrench myself in just one genre, but luckily there is plenty of great literary genre novels out there. I don’t have to sacrifice quality in order to read genre fiction.

However there are so many classics out there that I still have to read and I feel bad for not having read books like Middlemarch, The Brothers Karamazov, The Woman in White, The House of Mirth and so on. I want to catch up on all these great novels and I think classics are an essential part of the reading journey. I recommend every reader try to read more classics and to help you along, I suggest joining something like The Classics Club is a great way to challenge yourself to more classics. I want to take to the conversation to the comments but I’d like to ask some questions of the readers to help the conversation along;

  • What is your favourite literary novel (in any genre)?
  • Which classic would you like to read but are dreading?
  • What genre do you spend most of you time reading?
  • What genres tend to scare you?
  • Finally, are there classics that just seem too hard and why?

ArmchairBEA is a virtual convention for book blogger who can’t attend Book Expo America and the Book Blogger Convention. Button by Sarah of Puss Reboots

Top Ten Tuesday: Books on Friendship

Posted May 20, 2014 by Michael @ Knowledge Lost in Top Ten Tuesday / 13 Comments

toptentuesdayIt’s Tuesday again which means time for another round of Top Ten Tuesday; I like joining in on this meme because I have a set topic to work with. Top Ten Tuesday is a book blogger meme that is hosted by The Broke and the Bookish and this week the theme is: Books on Friendship. So many choices, pretty much all of John Green’s books could work here. I did try to avoid too many YA novels but here are some books on friendship worth checking out.

Monthly Review – April 2014

Posted April 30, 2014 by Michael @ Knowledge Lost in Monthly Reading / 2 Comments

The MagiciansApril has been an interesting month; I expected to get heaps of reading done and, to one extent, I have done just that. But also, I got rather sick during my time off and that did limit some of the reading time I was so excited about. Overall April was a great month, with plenty of books read and some extra time off work. I hope everyone else’s April was just as fruitful without any illnesses.

This month our book club read was The Magicians by Lev Grossman as part of our fantasy challenge. This was an interesting selection, more coming of age than fantasy, check out my review to find out what I thought. Next month we are going to dive into The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett. This is a classic novel and is part of our children’s literature theme; I can’t remember what this is about so this will be a new experience for me and I will also be using the novel for The Literary Exploration Reading Challenge. If you’re not aware, the book discussion and everything else will be happening over on the Goodreads forums, so feel free to join in there.

I read some decent books in April included the first Veronica Mars novel The Thousand-Dollar Tan Line plus others along the lines of The Fever by Megan Abbott, The Wives of Los Alamos and Summer House with Swimming Pool by Herman Koch. The biggest highlight will have to be The Sorrows of Young Werther by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, which will probably get read over and over again. What have you been reading this month and what were the highlights?

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The Magicians by Lev Grossman

Posted April 29, 2014 by Michael @ Knowledge Lost in Book of the Month, Fantasy / 4 Comments

The Magicians by Lev GrossmanTitle: The Magicians (Goodreads)
Author: Lev Grossman
Series: The Magicians #1
Published: Thorndike Press, 2009
Pages: 691
Genres: Fantasy
My Copy: Library Book

Buy: Amazon, Book Depository, Kindle (or visit your local Indie bookstore)

Quentin Coldwater is about to graduate high school; his future is catching up with him.  Suddenly an offer to a very exclusive private college has become a real possibility, but this is no ordinary university, this is a school of magic. Not only will Quentin have the normal college experience of sex, love, booze and friendship, he will also discover his magical abilities. Not just a coming-of-age novel, Quentin will also discover that the world of Fillory from a children’s fantasy series he obsesses over is very real.

Lev Grossman’s The Magicians on the surface reads like a cliché fantasy novel but there is something deeper here. If you think of The Magicians as a homage to series like Harry Potter, The Golden Compass and Narnia, you can focus on the coming-of-age element of the novel. I found similarities to The Neverending Story but if I looked deeper I would say this is more of a magical version of The Catcher in the Rye. Quentin Coldwater follows the Holden Caulfield archetype, full of angst, self-loathing and all the normal teenage boy awkwardness, almost to the point where he could be considered an antihero.

Quentin not only has to work through his new found magical abilities, this only takes a side plot to what is really happening in The Magicians. The novel depicts and often amplifies the prototypical teenage boy experience, the depression, angst and emotional carelessness. The idea of magic being a gift turns out to be more a curse for Quentin. Unlike Harry Potter this novel looks at the magic being a curse, choosing Brakebills to get an education was possibly a downfall in his adolescent life, or at least that would be how Quentin will view it.

This is not an escapist novel; in many cases The Magicians is anti-fantasy. Viewing magic as a curse was an interesting way to view life and the fantasy genre. While it does this in a very interesting way, the homage to children’s fantasy novels was a bit over the top, while trying to avoid being a cliché; it ended up falling face first into the formulaic. I would have liked to explore the ideas of education and growing up with a gift/curse more than the actual fantasy elements but that might have risked alienating the target audience.

The Magicians is not without its flaws; in fact this novel could have been so much better if it took a more focused approach. The coming of age elements were interesting, the homage and Fillory parts of the novel were annoying and I think it would have worked out better without them. If the next books in the series continue to explore magic as a curse, I will gladly read it but I’m not interested in the Fillory story arch.

My Plans for the 24 Hour Read-a-thon

Posted April 23, 2014 by Michael @ Knowledge Lost in Bloggers Event / 9 Comments

The Dewey’s 24 Hour Read-a-thon is a mini reading challenge that happens twice a year in April and October. Traditionally I’m never prepared or often hear about a reading challenge like this too late. This time I made an effort to participate; I want to be more involved in the book blogging community. As this is my first 24 hour read-a-thon I’m not sure what to expect and how much I need to prepare. I may have gone overboard, but I’m planning on focusing on cleaning up my NetGalley list. I’m not going to get through all these ARCs but it would be good to clear of a few of these books. The read-a-thon starts at 11pm Saturday here in Australia, who what I’ll finish but here is a list of the books on my reading list in order of priority.

  1. Shovel Ready by Adam Sternbergh
  2. The Fever by Megan Abbott
  3. Summer House with Swimming Pool by Herman Koch
  4. My Salinger Year by Joanna Rakoff
  5. The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P. by Adelle Waldman
  6. The Lowland by Jhumpa Lahiri
  7. Constance by Patrick McGrath
  8. Celebromancy by Michael R. Underwood