The Process

No it’s not a book called The Process, though that would be interesting. I thought I’d briefly detail my process as to how these entries come to be, in case anyone thinks that this is professional at all.

This blog is first and foremost for fun, and honestly I just really enjoy this sort of thing. I’ve loved Jenny Trout’s Jealous Hater’s Book Club since I discovered it five years ago through Let’s Read with Nella! on Chez Apocalypse. The latter two are now gone, which makes me very sad. I really enjoyed the series, because it focused on Tiger’s Curse. Which she righteously ripped apart. Her series is part of why I’ve never tackled Tiger’s Curse.

On the former, I adore Jenny Trout, she’s amazing. I also absolutely love her books, she’s very thoughtful and wonderfully creative. Can you tell I’m a bit of a kiss ass? I know. But she’s awesome, please read her books.

So step one of my process: be woefully naive and believe that every book has the potential to be good. Schrodinger’s book. Every book I have not read is simultaneously a great book and a horrible book. I just have to crack it open to find out.

Right now I my process involves getting the book on Audible, since I have a subscription and I really like audiobooks. As an ADHD sufferer it can be hard to focus on words on a page sometimes. Most significantly, I can listen to audiobooks at work, but reading is much harder. I can also listen to them while I drive, do art, etc. It’s just all around more convenient. I can read at lightning speed but when I have a billion other things to do, listening is just genuinely easier.

So I pick up whatever nice shiny looking book I find through audible’s recommended and grab it with a credit. I don’t typically spend cash on them, yes I know that I’m paying for the credits, but semantics.

Naturally step two: listen to the book.

There’s not much more to say about step two.

Step three: typically get enraged at whatever garbage I ended up picking out. There are the rare book that doesn’t anger me, and I mean very rare. It’s probably because I typically end up picking out mostly Young Adult paranormal romance, and I want them to be good, but they typically end up with the normal pitfalls of the genre. After all, that’s what makes them popular.

I think the main problem is I know the kind of genre I want to read, but there doesn’t seem to be a whole lot of it available on audible. See related image.

Step four: quit the book.

Step five: start doing research. Typically that’s not like your college level research, it’s just poking around on Goodreads, finding the cover, looking a bit into the author and their other work, or looking at summaries for the rest of the series–if there is one.

Step six is punish my keyboard with my pent up rage at the book or series that has attracted my ire. Most of it is just flow of consciousness, so I guess welcome to my twisted mind. No, no, I kid. Yeah I was absolutely one of those teenagers. I promise I’m past that phase. But if I’d had a blog ten years ago it probably would have had a similar heading to that particular phrase.

Step seven: Grammarly. No, I’m not sponsored. Could you imagine?

Step eight: post.

Of course, if this is a rec and not a DNF switch rage for adore, ire for love, etc. If it’s a TLC then… a mix of the two?

I really don’t do a lot of editing on these posts simply because I’m not a professional. I’m doing this for fun and I don’t care if I put grammatical mistakes out into the world. I’m already doing that with my books and those things go through so much editing.

This is all just because I like to express my feelings about books that I read and frankly I think my friends and loved ones are sick of hearing me go on and on about it for hours.

So I’m sparing them and making all of you suffer.

But no, I really do hope someone gets some enjoyment out of my inane ramblings. It just makes me feel good to complain about things. I like having an outlet to express my feelings about bad writing, and also good writing too. It’s cathartic.

My life is rather mundane and reading and writing is all I really have. That probably sounds depressing, but I feel like the mundane existence is something we can all relate to. Books are my escape, writing them and reading them. And when I escape to a bad place, I want to well… ultimately complain about it.

Thanks for coming to my Ted Talk.