Writing
As I'm sure you know, my goal for this session of Camp NaNo was 10k words, as it usually is during the camp months. You may also recall that I strongly felt this was the year I'd win both camps. Well...I'm sorry to say I didn't, but I did get halfway there! I wrote just over 5k of Follow the Raven in July, and I've finally gotten past that scene that was keeping me from moving forward, so I consider that massive progress. I'm feeling much better about it now.
"Everything Changes" was very slow going this month. I only released one chapter. I wanted to go ahead and release the rest of the story in July (since I literally only have three chapters left to post), but things just got kind of crazy with Camp and BookTubeAThon, and I wanted to give those two things priority. So while I may be a bit "behind" now, I feel that I'll be able to wrap up the story in August when I get back from my vacation and move on from there. My current stats are 2,208 reads; 193 votes; and 51 comments. (I find it worthy to note that at one point this month I got over 50 reads on this story in one day. That never happens. I don't know what all the sudden hype was about, but hey, I'm glad people are still liking my content!)
Reading
I'm further along in my Skulduggery Pleasant readthrough now; I'm officially in unread territory! And I have to say, it's been an interesting experience breaking away from the familiarity of the first three books and entering into a whole new arc of bad guys and evil plots and fresh characters. But along with the couple of SP books I read in July, I also read another couple of on-the-side titles as well. Here's what I managed to finish this month:
- The Faceless Ones by Derek Landy
- Beauty and the Beast (Movie Novelization) by Elizabeth Rudnick
- Dark Days by Derek Landy
- Easy by Tammara Webber
As with Playing With Fire from last month, reading The Faceless Ones (SP #3) for the second time was like reading it for the first time in that I really didn't remember a whole lot of the story, save for the very end. The ending I remembered almost exactly, probably because of that cliffhanger I've been clinging to for so many years. But the one thing I really want to note about the third book is that I understood so much more of what was going on this time around and how all the events in the first three books combined led up to the moment when Skulduggery was lost. It all made so much more sense; I really understood the weight and importance of his loss. Thank goodness I had book four to dive into immediately after this time!
Dark Days was really different from the books before it in that Skulduggery didn't show up until almost 100 pages in, whereas he usually made his first appearance in the first chapter of every other book. It just made me miss him more, and helped me realize how messed up things were without him around to keep everyone in line. It was also really different to see him almost totally disoriented and temperamental when he returned from what everyone in the book simply deems as "hell," where he'd been tortured daily and struggled to keep his sanity. He would train his weapons on good guys and spontaneously explode with rage for a while, which was way out of character for him, but I think that it was an accurate change considering what he'd been through. I'm not entirely convinced he's completely readjusted to life on Earth, but I suppose I'll see whether or not that's true as I move on to book five in August.
The basic idea of the Passenger Book Challenge is to find/read/recommend books that take place outside of the country you live in. In my case, of course, that's the United States. The challenge was inspired by Passenger by Alexandra Bracken and is over a year old now, but I've been reading way more beyond-USA books as of late so I thought this was a good opportunity to finally do this myself.
1) Skulduggery Pleasant by Derek Landy (takes place in Ireland)
- Do I really even need to say why I'm recommending this one at this point? Haha!
2) The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini (takes place in the Middle East)
- I recommend this book because it is super informative and oh my goodness it messed me up so much, but that's probably a good thing.
3) The Complete Maus by Art Spiegelman (takes place primarily in Germany)
- I usually hate reading books that talk about the Holocaust, but this one really stood out and I feel like I learned more from it than from any history book. (This one also messed me up.)
4) Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe (takes place in Africa)
- I didn't know much about African culture before reading this book, and even though it was required reading in college I have a personal copy for myself because I liked it so much.
5) Mutant Message Down Under by Marlo Morgan (takes place in Australia)
- I knew nothing about Australian culture, which is exactly why I picked up this book last year. I learned a lot, and it touched on certain details that are usually left out of survival stories, which I very much appreciated.
Honorable Mentions:
These are books that I wanted to have on the above list but disqualified because they are based 1) in a neighbor country, 2) another popular country for books, and 3) not on Earth.
1) The Story of Owen by E.K. Johnston (takes place in Canada)
2) Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Warlock Holmes by G.S. Denning (take place in England)
3) The Word For World is Forest by Ursula K. Le Guin (takes place off-world)
And with that, I'm off for a vacation to Yellowstone National Park - which I've never been to! Maybe I'll get lucky and see some wolves. If nothing else I'll see Old Faithful. Be back next month!
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