The Clockwork Scarab (Stoker and Holmes #1) by Colleen Gleason

This was included in my Fall Reading list and I just finished it over the weekend. The premise is that Mina Holmes, niece of Sherlock, and Evaline Stoker, sister of Bram, have been asked by Irene Adler to investigate the mysterious deaths of several young socialites. There is time travel, Egyptian mythology, steampunk, and literary allusions aplenty.

The Clockwork Scarab was a fast-paced, plot driven read. It was perfect for destressing from exams and just escaping for a couple hours into this fun world. Although the plots are not very similar, I kept finding myself comparing this to The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. Both are steampunk and feature characters from Sherlock Holmes, though that is where the comparison stops. In many ways, this is what I wanted The League to be. The heroines are smart and witty, they get themselves into trouble and work together to get out, and the mystery at the heart of the story is intriguing.

This isn’t to say that I have nothing but praise for this book. While I enjoyed the steampunk world, it didn’t really have an effect on the plot. The book would have been exactly the same without the steampunk elements. There were also some subplots that seemed shoehorned. The time travel and Dylan character made little sense – I actually kept forgetting that he existed. There’s a chance that his character was just an introduction to a plotline that will become more important in the rest of the series, but in this novel I just didn’t get it. There’s also some angst for Mina about her mom which just never quite fit. It also drove me crazy that Mina and Evaline were so antagonistic – they’re both smart and kickass ladies and there’s really no reason for each to assume the other is a jerk (shine theory, people).

Despite my qualms, I really enjoyed this and look forward to picking up the sequel The Spiritglass Charade, which just came out. SInce the first book ended on a bit of a cliffhanger, I’m looking forward to continuing the series!

Book to movie adaptations

I don’t get to go to the movies nearly as much as I’d like, but in the next few months there are several movies coming out that I’m going to try to find a way to see.

The Imitation Game

This is one example where I haven’t read the book, but may read it after I see the movie. The movie is based on a biography of Alan Turing, a British mathematician who made major strides for computer science during World War II, but who was later punished for his homosexuality. The movie stars internet-fave Benedict Cumberbatch. The book is consistently listed as an amazing biography, and the movie is already getting good reviews.

Mockingjay pt 1

I was late to the Hunger Games hype. Like, five years late. It originally came out when I was deep in my high school lit snobbery, and I didn’t end up reading the trilogy until last year. I know a lot of people didn’t like the final installment, but I thought it was an amazingly brave ending to the trilogy. Based on the first two movies, I can’t wait to see how the third installment is handled. There’s so much going on – politics of war, PTSD, the realities of rebellion. I can’t wait for this movie to come out.

Horns

Another one where I haven’t read the book (by Joe Hill), but the trailer looks great. I love when a movie adaptation can inspire you to read the book, and the trailer definitely makes me want to read this book. I probably won’t read it before the movie comes out, since my reading has been slow-going lately, but the movie looks great. Daniel Radcliffe plays a man who is suspected of killing his girlfriend and wakes up with horns. These horns give him the power to see anyone’s deepest, darkest secrets and he uses them to track down her killer. It’s supposed to be dark and supernatural and a tiny bit funny, which sounds like the perfect Halloween movie.

Fall Reading and Watching

In case you didn’t notice, it’s fall y’all.

Every fall, I find myself (like many people) drawn toward creepy and supernatural books. I also have a slew of must-watch fall movies and TV shows, so I’ve narrowed it down here to just a few.

Last year, I read Dracula and Frankenstein in October, but I think this year I’m going for newer fare.

The Clockwork Scarab (Stoker and Holmes #1)
I’m about halfway through this one, so expect a review soon. This is the first book in a new steampunk series that follows Evaline Stoker (vampire hunter) and Mina Holmes (consulting detective). They are set up by Irene Adler to investigate the mysterious deaths of several society ladies. Victorian England, steampunk, mystery, and supernatural makes for the perfect October book.

The Sandman: Preludes and Nocturnes
I recently picked up the first volume of Neil Gaiman’s comic series The Sandman. While I obviously won’t be able to finish the whole series this month, the first volume seemed appropriate for October. The series is a fantasy series about Morpheus, King of Dreams, and his family the Endless. I’m really excited to start this series.

Gilmore Girls
Like the rest of the internet, I couldn’t contain my excitement about GG being added to Netflix. Since then, I’ve rewatched more episodes than I’d like to admit. Gilmore Girls is always the perfect fall show: Stars Hollow seems to be eternal fall, always covered in leaves and vaguely sepia-toned. Add in the lovable, quirky townfolks and the Gilmores themselves and you’ve got yourself an afternoon.

You’ve Got Mail
Does it get anymore fall than the scene set to The Cranberry’s dream? I didn’t think so. The whole first half of the movie is so fall-tastic. Every October I find myself craving this movie, and wishing for my own bouquet of sharpened pencils.

Honorable mention: It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown! and Halloweentown

Tracking reading habits

When I was a kid, I used to track my reading obsessively on yellow legal pads stolen from my mom’s desk. I had pads upon pads documenting every book I read for probably five years. When I went to college, it was one of the things that was ruthlessly thrown away in attempts to pare down my belongings.

These days, I am an avid Goodreads user. I like that it’s really easy to track your progress on a particular book and store all your TBR and read books. Data-wise, Goodreads leaves a bit to be desired. There’s not really any helpful way to look at your reading patterns other than the list of books you’ve read. One of my favorites book sites, BookRiot, recently had a couple articles about how different people track their reading, and a follow up where one writer shared her extensive spreadsheet.

I figured I’d give it a try and exported my Goodreads data into a spreadsheet. The resulting spreadsheet was a hot mess. It included ISBNs and ID numbers that crowded the sheet with lengthy and it didn’t do a great job of labeling the columns. However, I was able to get the information I needed from it and copy it into the BookRiot template.

Since, I’ve been filling in the information on the spreadsheet that wasn’t on my Goodreads sheet, like gender and race of the author. Some information I’ve discovered has been surprising, some not so. I wasn’t surprised to see that I didn’t read a ton of books by authors of color, but I was surprised by just how bad the reality was. I haven’t finished cataloguing all my books, but I can already tell that is something that needs to be changed. Similarly, I knew I read in fits and spurts (ten books one month, none another) but the spreadsheet highlighted patterns that lined up exactly with my school syllabi.

Some people in the original BookRiot post got very up in arms about tracking things like gender and race, but I think it’s important. If we want diverse perspectives represented in books (which we do), we need to make an effort to read books by people with different perspectives. Since those authors tend to have smaller marketing budgets and get reviewed less, reading diversely is something that takes effort.

I’m going to keep using my spreadsheet, and see if it changes my reading habits for the better. Let me know what other methods of tracking to try!