Category: Reading

NaNoWriMo Wrap-Up 2016

Posted on by Ellie Rose McKee

Four years ago, yesterday, I had the joint book launch for Still Dreaming and Wake. That was also the first year I won NaNoWriMo (and won it properly, by working on a novel and not just lots of smaller writing projects).

This November? Well… let’s just say it’s been very different, and not just with the many, many small projects, either.

Main point: I didn’t win. I got sick for three weeks and went on holiday (not in that order), but I also managed twenty-two thousand words and I’m really happy with that.

November =

  • 1 Holiday
  • 7 boxes of tissues
  • 6 blog posts (1,100 words)
  • 20 micropoems (800 words)
  • 4 bottles of cough medicine
  • 3 and half fanfics (17,000 words!)
  • numerous squares of chocolate
  • despair about a lack of client work, followed by…
  • a lot of client work
  • 3,000 words towards my novel
  • a partridge in a pear tree 

While I’m here, I should also probably get my reading update out of the way – not that there’s much to report!

Books Finished: Diary of a Wimpy Vampire by Tim Collins, A Choice of Emily Dickinson’s Verse

Books Started: White Night by Jim Butcher, No Life But This by Anna Sheehan, one fanfic novel

Books Bought: The Female Line: Northern Irish Women Writers

(Okay, so that was a little more than I actually remembered. Go me!)

How was your November?

Reading and Writing in October

Posted on by Ellie Rose McKee

2016-reading-challengeI’ve been quite busy, this month, but the main thing to report is that I completed my 2016 Goodreads Reading Goal. That’s a total of forty-five out of forty-five books read, several weeks early.

Books Completed in October:

Words Written in October: 12,000

  • 5,500 words of Novel Work
  • 3,500 words of Fan Fiction
  • 1,300 words of Poetry
  • Piece of Flash Fiction (1,000 words)
  • 2 Blog Posts (700 words, combined)

An Epic Month for Books! (Reading Wrap-Up Sept. ’16)

Posted on by Ellie Rose McKee

Stack of Recently Acquired Books
Stack of Recently Acquired Books

After a couple of months of not reading much, September had me flying through books (at least, by my standards). I completed eight things – count ’em, eight!

Current Tally: 39 books read out of 45

Currently Reading: Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell, and Summer Days, Summer Nights: Twelve Summer Romances edited by Stephanie Perkins.

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A Seasonal Summary

Posted on by Ellie Rose McKee

At the launch of the Bangor Poetry CompetitionFirst years at university often fall foul to what’s called ‘fresher’s flu’ – a really bad cold resulting from coming into contact with so many new people and their accompanying germs.

I managed to attain this affliction for three years running. (Thanks, immune system!)

This September, I seem to have defied the odds once more. The cold that seemed to have vanished at the end of August, returned during the night last night. Maybe it’s only fitting, seeing as I’m due to start a poetry course this semester. Or maybe it’s because I’ve been really busy, meeting a lot of (wonderful) people.

Last night I was at the launch of The Fourth Annual Bangor Poetry Competition, and the night before that I coordinated my second Women Aloud & FSNI Poetry Recital.

In five months – to this day, exactly – I’m getting married.

…needless to say, things are crazy, and exciting, and amazing, and scary cool!

The season has changed, and I’m trying to set myself up to make this new one a good one, knowing that good things are coming at its end.

Going forward, I’m once more gonna try and implement a weekly work schedule in which I spend two complete days a week writing for myself, completely disconnected from the internet and phone.

But before all that, let me catch you up on last month…

Last month, I finished reading To All the Boys I Loved Before by Jenny Han, I read Belonging to Myself (a poetry collection) by Jenny Cleland, Why I Write by George Orwell (review here), and I listened to Summer Knight (fourth book in the Dresden Files series) by Jim Butcher. As such, I’m 31 books into my 45-book goal for the year.

What I wrote during August? A bunch of blog posts, a piece of flash fiction, notes for a novel I have on the backburner, five poems, and two pieces of fan fiction. Total words: just over four thousand.

Read about my recent client work over on my work blog.

Reading Wrap-Up – July 2016

Posted on by Ellie Rose McKee

mini book haulThis month, I finished reading The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner by Stephanie Meyer (which I had started last month), I read A Long, Long Sleep by Anna Sheehan cover to cover, I listened to the third audiobook in the Dresden Files series: Grave Peril, and I started reading To All the Boys I Loved Before by Jenny Han, which I’m currently about 60 pages into.

Books I bought this month were Spinning Thorns by Anna Shehan, Room by Emma Donoghue, and Why I Write by George Orwell.

Goodreads Goal Update: 27 out of 45 books read (60%) – 1 book ahead of schedule.

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Lots of Library Books (Reading Wrap-Up – June 2016)

Posted on by Ellie Rose McKee

Library Book HaulWhile volunteering for Write Club*, recently, I picked up and read a copy of The Pencil – an award-winning children’s picture book. 

This month, I also delved into Goose Eggs and Hoover Bags by Dawn Cairns (review here), and got back into using my local library, where I picked up Four: A Divergent Collection by Veronica Roth, Eleanor & Park by Rainbow Rowell, The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner by Stephanie Meyer, and To All the Boys I Loved Before by Jenny Han. Of those, I read the first two, and have started the third.

Also, I bought a Kindle version of Black Rainbow, and a paperback copy of The Stars beside the Sun – a poetry book by Samuel McConnell. Knowing Samuel personally, I’ve read his other poetry collection – By the Roadside – already.

Goodreads Goal Update: 24 out of 45 books read (53%) – 2 books ahead of target.

*Part of the volunteering I do for Fighting Words Belfast.

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Reading More Diversely

Posted on by Ellie Rose McKee

WNDB_ButtonI’ve heard the phrase “we need diverse books” batted around for a couple of years, now. And I’ve always agreed, always shared tweets and statuses that said as much, with great enthusiasm. But, well, that was kind of it. I thought it was the place of publishers to see what people wanted and to respond, but now I know that there needs to be more. I, personally, feel compelled to do something – to take action instead of saying words. But where do I begin? I asked myself. And the answer is that you can only really start from where you’re already at. For me, that place was YouTube.

I watch a lot of ‘BookTubers’ – that is, people who make videos specifically about books for YouTube – and so I began by looking through recommendation videos, trying to find out who the people I follow, follow. That introduced me to a few new faces, but it still didn’t feel enough. I did a search for diverse booktubers, and came up with some more. Subscribed to those, and watched their videos; had a look at what they were reading and recommending, and now I have more diverse list of voices that I’m listening to, as well as a list of books by black, LGBTQ+, and disabled authors to check out.

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Chased Stars, Cat Save-age, and Comic Superheroes (Reading Wrap-Up – May 2016)

Posted on by Ellie Rose McKee

Chasing the Stars by Malorie BlackmanThis month, I finished We Were Liars by E Lockhart (the ending almost ruined me, I swear!), read A Room of One’s Own by Virginia Wolf, and X-Men: The Unlikely Saga of Xavier, Magneto, and Stan (a graphic novel, binding up four individual comics).

I also started Save the Cat: The Last Book on Screen Writing You’ll Ever Need by Blake Snyder.

Buffy and Angel ComicsSpeaking of Comics, though, I was lucky enough to attend Showmasters ComicCon in Belfast this month, at which I picked up three Angel comics, and a Willow comic, as well as Malorie Blackman’s new novel: Chasing the Stars.

Goodreads Update: 18 books into my 45 book goal for the year = right on target.

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Reading Wrap-Up – April 2016

Posted on by Ellie Rose McKee

This has been a fairly slow reading month for me, but I did work my way through a stack of old magazines about the history of Belfast, as loaned to me by my partner’s father.

I also read The Servant, a short story by the same author as The Horologicon, which I read last year. And I started We Were Liars by E Lockhart.

Just yesterday I got a paperback copy of Career of Evil – the new Robert Galbraith book – which I’m mega excited about (maybe even too excited!), but that’s pretty much it.

Goodreads Update: 15 books into my 45 book goal for the year = 1 book ahead of schedule.

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Demons, Dresden, and… Sea Legs? (Reading Wrap-Up March ’16)

Posted on by Ellie Rose McKee

The first book I read this month is one that I got for Christmas, but forgot to mention in my December book haul: Demons of the Hellmouth – a Buffy the Vampire Slayer companion book. Now, I love this book for many reasons – not least of which is the fact that I’m a massive fan of the show.
With its hardback cover and good quality binding, it’s a nice novelty item, written from the perspective of Rupert Giles and including amusing annotations from the rest of the main gang. But there were also bits that irritated my inner pedant, that left me wanting to annotate the thing myself.
At many points, Giles gives details about events that he wasn’t there for, and couldn’t possibly know about, including goings on in an alternative universe. That’s bad enough, but sometimes he even goes further, including direct quotes for some reason. Even if there was a small chance that someone somehow could have passed him details about goings on he missed, I highly doubt they’d tell him what people said, word for word.
These things probably wouldn’t bother most readers but, for me, it kind of broke the spell and detracted from the experience. I gave it three stars.

Carrying on the vague Buffy-related theme, I’m still working through audiobooks including voice work by James Marsters (the actor who played Spike on the show). As such, I listened to She Stoops to Conquer and Hound of the Baskervilles, and am now onto the Dresden Files audiobook series, finishing books one and two (Storm Front and Fool Moon by Jim Butcher) – Loved all of them!

Finally this month, I read Sea Legs and Other Stories, a poetry book by Candice J O’Reilly, leaving my Goodreads reading challenge at fourteen books off my forty-five book target for the year (thirty-one percent complete, three books ahead of schedule).

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