Superior by Jessica Lack ☆☆☆☆

Superior is a novella by Jessica Lack from the point of view of Captain Superior’s intern, Jamie. It follows his life as he is repeatedly kidnapped by supervillains trying to hurt Captain Superior and as he falls in love with Tad, who is Terrorantula’s (what an amazing villain name!) apprentice.

I give this novella 4 stars for a couple reasons. It is highly readable and Jamie’s voice is enjoyable. The situations are believable, despite the whole superhero/supervillain angle. The author intentially blurs the line between “good” and “evil,” which adds so much depth for something so short.

The romance was also believable. I am not someone who enjoys insta-love romances, where the characters fall madly in love in 5 minutes and spend the rest of the book pining and moaning and being generally obnoxious. Jamie and Tad circle each other because of their jobs but their friendship and flirting come off as real. I am such a fan of these two.

I highly recommend this novella. It is an original concept with a sweet gay romance. Much love to the Galactic Suburbia podcast for mentioning it and bringing it into my life.

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Okay, real question time

Bookshelves. An essential part of any book lover’s home.

I have seen some truly gorgeous bookshelf photos around the internet and on booktube. My envy levels skyrocket after every bookshelf tour.

Here’s the thing — none of my bookshelves match. I have a 6-ft and 3-ft red wood, two black 6-ft, and one 6-ft robin egg blue and gray bookshelf. I just moved into a new apartment and for the first time I will have all of my bookshelves in one room.

So I need to know– where are my folks at with the mismatched shelves? I know there are some folks out there who got a bookshelf from the side of the road, like me (it was a gift, okay). Where are the Good Will/thrift store/charity shop book lovers at?

Point me to their YouTube videos so I can feel better about my own mismatched shelves.

Not dead, just busy

Hi

I’m totally not dead! I’m still here! Kinda.

I’m moving in 10 days (eek!) and I’m packing all my books (more eek!) to bring to my new apartment. So many books, so much packing.

Do you ever look at your book collection and think DAMN I’ve got a lot of books!! That’s basically been my whole last month. I’m donating quite a few to the library, but so far I’ve packed 13 boxes and I’ve barely made a dent.

I love books, but man they take up a lot of space.

Multiply this by like 1000

So here’s my question for you: is there a maximum amount of books a person should own? Do you feel there should be self-imposed limitations on the number of books you own? Do you limit your library or let it flow free?

Feel free to comment! I sincerely want to know.

On Tie-In Lit

As I have been sitting in this waiting room, trying to not fall asleep while my car is serviced, I started to think about what I’ve read lately. I haven’t read much this year (yet) but I can see a theme in the books that I’ve bought in the last couple months.

Star Wars. So much Star Wars. Tie-in novels, tie-in comics. I have a problem.

I’m not sure what the literature community at large thinks of tie-in novels, but I imagine that it is generally not positive. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy capital-L Literature, but sci-fi tie-in novels have been a big part of my reading life for as long as I’ve HAD a reading life.

I wasn’t a reader until I discovered that all books weren’t as awful as the ones that were foisted off on me in school, which was the summer after 8th grade if memory serves. There is a book stall at my local flea market that has an amazing selection of old sci-fi paperbacks, which is where I discovered Star Trek tie-in novels.

Oh, yes, the old original series Star Trek novels, with the cheesy covers and cheesier plots. I devoured them as a teenager. The characters I loved brought me to reading and engaged me in a way that only Harry Potter had up until that point.

Skip forward 15 years and here I am again. The influx of tie-in material for Star Wars: The Force Awakens has grabbed me and pulled me back to following my favorite characters through multiple forms of media. The comics are also not new for me; I have a small collection of Star Trek comics that I also found at the flea market a million years ago.

All this has been to say that, given my persistent reading slump, returning to tie-in novels has been something that has made me read more in the last week or two than in a long while. I’m sure somewhere a 70-year-old white male English professor is having indigestion and doesn’t know why, but there is a real value to this genre that has an impact of people in general and me personally.

Hi Hello I am a Bad Reader

I am sitting in my car, waiting for it to be time to meet my coworkers for bowling (ugh), so I thought I’d give a little update on my reading life at the moment.

I barely have one. I am a bad reader, you guys. Bad. Reader.

I have finished 13 books this year according to my goodreads account, most of which have been comics or short books. This reading slump has lasted me a good six months at this point, and I am more than tired of it.

I am switching jobs in a week (!!!) so I will be busy there, but once I get settled I hope that the stress melts away and I can focus on what is most important to me (BOOKS and CATS, in case that was unclear).

Book Slump City, population: me

It is January 9 and I have yet to finish a book this year. A single book.

I’ve been doing this thing in the last several months where I start a book and then put it down without finishing. I pass it where it sits abandoned on some random surface and sigh and say I’ll come back to it, but I probably never will.

Book slumps are the worst.

Quick thought #1

Hello hello!

I had a quick thought, figured I would make a little post this chilly January morning.

I’ve recently become a library user (small apartment + limited funds = borrow free books as much as possible) and I find that I check out more books than I can read in 2 weeks’ time. I try to tell myself that the books will be there next time but WHAT IF THEY AREN’T?

At least, that’s where my brain goes, which means I end up checking out a ton, which means I feel guilty for having so many out, which means I put them off even more. Getting books from the library shouldn’t be stressful. Rather the opposite.

This is going to be one of the things I work on as the year moves forward. I’m going to work on reading the ones I have out now, return them as I go, and start balancing the books I already own with the FEW (key word there) I check out from the library.

Until next time,

tysephine

On 2016 goals, procrastination, and renewals

Aha, hello. I started this blog back in August of this year and promptly never did anything with it. That is why I want to begin by discussing my year in gross procrastination and my goals for 2016.

2015 has been a year of procrastination for me, as I said. I have had very little motivation to do much of anything this past year, and something that has really taken a hit has been my reading. In 2014, I read 95 books, which was an all-time high for me.  This year, I have so far managed 66, with an alarming amount of books that I started and then abandoned.

66 is not a bad number, but personally I have felt that I have been unmotivated to do much other than sleep, troll Twitter, and read fanfiction on my phone. Basically, I have subsisted on comfort food all year, with little to show for it.

I have decided, on this day 26 December 2015, to make 2016 my year or renewal. I am going to set myself certain goals for this year, some book related and some not. Here is what I have come up with:

A. Maintain this blog on some kind of regular basis, be it weekly or biweekly. I want to have something for myself that I have consciously kept up.

B. Though my reading goal on goodreads will stay at 50, I will try to at least double that number this year.

C. On that note, I want to mainly stick to the books I already own, with library books intermixed.

D. If I buy a book, it must be something that I am planning to read immediately and that is not something readily available at my local library.  I will also come up with a monetary restriction here, like a monthly budget not to be exceeded.

E. Interact more with readers online. I have a bad problem with lurking that I have never managed to kick, and I want to make some progress on that this year.

F. Get out more. I have been such a homebody on my days off that I have gotten stuck in this wallowing, self-pitying mindset that I really need to kick.

G. Be more active. Maybe download a ton of podcasts and walk my apartment complex a couple times a week. Would try audiobooks, but they’re hella expensive.

H. Clean out my bookshelves so that I am not so overflowing in books by the time I have to move in September. On that note, find a good place to live.

This is only the start of what I want to work on this year. I have some other, more personal goals (like finding a better job, being a better pet parent, etc) but I think this should work for now.

Hopefully, I’ll be making another post really soon.

tysephine

 

Do you TBR?

Okay, so I’ve been thinking about this one for a while, which makes it worthy of being my first discussion post. For some reason, 2015 seems to be the year of the TBR, as in everyone and their mother wants to reduce theirs. There has also been a lot of discussion around whether TBRs matter, book guilt, etc. So are TBRs a thing? Does the number of unread books you own really matter? Should we feel guilty for buying more books when we have so many unread already?

SHOULD WE BUY BOOKS AT ALL?

Okay, that was a little dramatic. I apologize.

Here is where I am leaning with this issue. Feel free to tell me I’m wrong. Basically: do what feels right. You want to read that back log of books you have stashed in your house? Do it. You want to go on an epic spending spree and buy ALL THE BOOKS? Go for it. As long and you’ve got the cash and you’re not hurting anyone, you’re good.

I fell into the book guilt hole earlier this year. I kept seeing posts and booktube videos about getting your TBR down to 0 by the end of the year, and I felt ashamed of the amount of books I own that I have not read. It’s not a small number, that I can guarantee. I also work across the street from a bookstore, which makes buying more books very easy. Payday hits – BAM. A few more for the pile.  I felt worse and worse.

I tried to limit my book buying, to little avail. I swore I would power through a bunch of books this year, give away a bunch of books I bought a million years ago that I hadn’t yet touched. Just looking at my shelves made me feel bad about myself. But then I thought: why the hell am I doing this to myself? All I am doing is making myself miserable and ruining the thing I love most. I had to stop beating myself up about what makes me happy and just be.

Yes, I have a bunch of books that I own that I haven’t read yet, and maybe I’ll never get to them all. Maybe I’ll die tomorrow on the way to work, a reading life tragically cut short. Who knows? All I know is that I own some bomb-ass books, and I’m going to read keep reading bomb-ass books until I kick it.

Happy reading, friends.

Hello!

Welcome to the inaugural post for The Neverending Unread, a blog about all the books that I am reading and want to someday read.

Let me begin by introducing myself. I am Sarah, but on most social media I go by tysephine. I am in my late 20s and I work as a receptionist at a veterinary hospital. Around age 13, I fell into a pile of books and I have yet to emerge. I spend a lot of time thinking about all the books that are yet unread, which is where I got the idea for this blog. Every time I finish I book, I am struck by the thought that there are so many books out there that I haven’t even scratched the surface of what is available.

Now that you know a little about me, let’s talk content. This blog will contain reviews of books that I have read, musings on the reading life, and maybe some book-related rants once in a while. I plan to update on a semi-regular basis, most likely once a week. We shall see.

Please feel free to comment and talk with me about books and stuff.

Happy reading, friends!