D Day is coming closer (at the time of writing, anyway, but as with pregnancy, who knows when that is?) so I thought I’d give you an update, some information and… a challenge!?
All my scheduled posts have sadly come to an end now, and hence there will be no regular updates after this post. It’s a bit sad, but I’ll try to post something every once in a while and give you all an update what’s going on. And in that train of thought…
My birthday passed earlier this month. It was pretty calm, and I spent it with my partner and our unborn child. Well, a tiny part of it. I was kind of tired and in pain, so I didn’t feel like doing anything. But I turned a year older, and with that turn of leaf, my life will also change a lot. It’s weird. I didn’t plan for this at all at the beginning of the year.
The baby is doing fine. Growing well. I’m less fine, as my medical condition reminds us continuously that it exists, by making me hurt in ways pregnancy doesn’t usually make you hurt. But it’s almost over. (Or maybe it is already – by the time this is posted the little one might have debuted into the shoujo romance story for real.)
I really miss the positive stress and sense of doing something with my pain, while sharing my thoughts on things I like (books, games, animated shows and comics). I’ll openly admit that. I get a lot of reading done while in bed, but it ranges from cookbook and non-fiction to series with several books in them. Not to mention the languages are somewhat random, since I can read in English, Finnish, Japanese and Swedish.
(Though admittedly, the amount of books I have in Japanese and Finnish are low in amount. The stores I frequent are Amazon, Google Play Books and Adlibris for ebooks – which is what I mainly read now – and Amazon is mainly English while Google Play Books and Adlibris Sweden offers mostly English and Swedish books.)
So, I’ve spent a lot of time reading. And I’m always in need of more to read. If you want to help out you can:
- Gift something off this Amazon ebook wish list (it’s full of non-fiction and Japanese comics)
- Offer a bit of money to TheAnnyBlog@gmail.com for me to buy a Kindle to not kill my eyes reading on my phone or a tablet when it’s just regular fiction or text-based
- Or offer money so I can buy a new Android tablet (Can you believe it? Mine died!) to read books on Google Play or comics on the Kindle app/Kobo app (not sure which one yet, but I’d likely get one with a bigger screen to more easily read comics – you can always give suggestions with your sacrificed money)
- Send money so I can buy (English) light novels on Google Play Books
- Or send money so I can buy (Japanese) light novels on Kobo to read on my Kobo Touch ereader
Right now little time is spent on gaming or watching much, so your best bet on me posting anything is book reviews. And ebooks are handy in that regard, because I can bring a couple of ereaders and a tablet anywhere, but I can’t bring a 12 volume book or comic series out of the apartment. Besides, with a baby soon crawling the house I decided to start going for a digital library over a physical library for my books. It won’t always be my first choice, because not all books are available digitally, and I still prefer physical books, but it’ll both make moving together with my partner and keeping my precious books away from tiny children easier.
(Games, however, I’ll still prefer physically. It’s not that I value books less, but books are generally cheaper than games. I treat my ereading devices like I treat my gaming consoles and games though – like they’re made of gold and diamonds.)
If you instead want to sacrifice time and money on me and/or the little one instead, you can send a mail to Cas who has been taking donations at AnnyBabyShower@gmail.com and check if there’s anything you can do.
So that was the information and the update. So what is the challenge?
Well, I’ve mentioned books, and it’s related to that. At the time of writing I’m participating in a reading challenge with different themes called “quests”. That inspired me and I decided I’ll do something similar myself, but not to try to read 5-25 books in a month – as the challenge I’m sneakily participating in – but one for the entire year of 2018.
My challenge to you, my dear reader, is to come up with quests! They can be anything from “A book you’ve forgotten you own” to “Book with a white wagtail on the cover”. You can name the quest as well to something more quest like (what about using a book title like “Never Let Me Go” for that forgotten book?) and then give me the details on what exactly the quest entails.
There are a few rules to this challenge though:
- You may not request anything language specific such as “a book in Chinese”
- You may not make the quest “read x amount of books”
- But you can make it “A book with x+ pages”
- You may not put a time limit such as “500 pages in a week”
- You’re free to choose a genre, cover, title or other easy to find elements and characteristics to what a book needs to have to fulfill a quest
- But you can’t choose if it’s going to be an audiobook, a comic, fiction or non-fiction
- Last date to submit a quest is December 1st.
My rules will be that:
- A book can’t fulfill more than one quest, so if I had forgotten I owned a book with a white wagtail on the cover, I have to choose before reading it which quest it’s for.
- I will have a publicly viewable spreadsheet which I update with how much I’ve read and what book is part of what quest and which quests I’ve finished. Suggestions will also be listed there.
- It’s completely up to me if a book is an audiobook, a comic, fiction or non-fiction.
- I will “level up” as I go along with my quest.
- And since the spreadsheet and quests will be viewable to all, you are free to join in or take upon yourself to complete a quest too.
The Anny Blog 