Amber Stults – Book Reviewer and Writer

You visited a few times and I would appreciate your thoughts on this post, why not comment?

Last year an acquaintance of mine gave a mid-year tally of her publications, writings, movies watched, books read, etc. and it inspired me to look at the numbers for my year.  I’m repeating my mid-year tally this year.

• read 30 books
• watched 73 movies
• wrote 25 book reviews (2 published)
• wrote 0 poems
• wrote ? short stories

Last year I found I was poor at keeping track of such things.  It’s been much easier to keep track of the movies I see and the books I read.  Keeping track of the short stories I’ve read is an impossible task. 

LibraryThing has been a great tool for me this year for book tracking.  I have a much better idea of exactly how many books I have in my TBR pile and I can tell with certainty that I’m not making much progress on it.  This year I’ve obtained (some borrowed from the library) 54 books but since I’ve read 30 that leaves me with a surplus on the pile.  Gotta get reading (and doing some less obtaining).  I’ve also got to finish the new short stories I’ve been working on.

You visited a few times and I would appreciate your thoughts on this post, why not comment?

For a long time I resisted posting book reviews here because I was afraid of being pigeonholed.  Nearly all of my publications are reviews but that is just one venue I use for my writing.  It appears my reviews bring readers to my site but hopefully they find more when they start looking around.

Here is my list of books read in 2008.  I only began keeping track in July so I read more than 34 books but I couldn’t remember all of them.  If there is a book review published here or elsewhere, I’ve included the link for it.  The bolded ones are my favorites. 

1. Woman’s Best Friend: Women Writers on the Dogs in Their Lives – Pam Houston and Megan McMorris
2. The Unseen – T.C. McMullen
3. Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street – Robert Mack
4. ErRatic – N.D. Hansen-Hill
5. About Alice – Calvin Trillin
6. The Lost Episodes of Beatie Scareli – Ginetta Correli
7. Gimp: When Life Deals You a Crappy Hand You Can Fold – Or You Can Play – Mark Zupan with Tim Swanson
8. The Hunters – Claire Messud
9. Red Ant House – Ann Cummins
10. No One Cares What You Had for Lunch: 100 Ideas For Your Blog – Margaret Mason
11. The Renegade Writer: A Totally Unconventional Guide to Freelancing – Diana Burrell and Linda Formichelli
12. Heat – Bill Buford
13. Twilight – Stephenie Meyer
14. The Rule of Four – Ian Caldwell and Dustin Thomason
15. Born Standing Up: A Comics Life – Steve Martin
16. The Renegade Writer’s Query Letters That Rock: The Freelance Writer’s Guide to Selling More Work Faster – Diana Burrell and Linda Formichelli
17. Faceless Killers – Henning Mankell
18. Let the Northern Lights Erase Your Name – Vendela Vida
19. Greywalker – Kat Richardson
20. New Moon – Stephenie Meyer
21. Eclipse – Stephenie Meyer
22. Breaking Dawn – Stephenie Meyer
23. Poltergeist – Kat Richardson
24. The Jane Austen Book Club – Karen Joy Fowler
25. In The Night Kitchen – Maurice Sendak
26. The Headless Cupid – Zilpha Keatley Snyder
27. The Good German – Joseph Kanon
28. Dirt: An American Campaign – Mark LaFlamme
29. Any Given Doomsday – Lori Handeland
30. Ever – Gail Carson Levine
31. Sarah’s Key – Tatiana de Rosnay
32. The Soul of a Chef: The Journey Toward Perfection – Michael Ruhlman
33. Things the Grandchildren Should Know – Michael Oliver Everett
34. Sweetsmoke – David Fuller

You visited a few times and I would appreciate your thoughts on this post, why not comment?

Here is the list of my publications in 2008.  This includes book reviews that have not appeared on this site. 

I had two writing goals for 2008.  The first was to start my web site and the second was to get some more of my writing published.  2008 brought a lot of rejections my way but I did send out more original work than I had in 2007.  As for actual items published… I’m even for 2007 and 2008!

Book Reviews
The Lost Episodes of Beatie Scareli by Ginnetta Correli in Niteblade, December 2008 Issue
Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street by Robert Mack in Niteblade, June 2008 Issue
The Unseen by T.C. McMullen in Niteblade, March 2008 Issue
The Sweetest Hours: Love Stories… of a Kind by Laura Pedersen on OnceWritten.com
The Bird Woman by Kerry Hardie on OnceWritten.com

Fiction
“The Monster Under The Bed” in the September 2008 issue of The Shine Journal

You visited a few times and I would appreciate your thoughts on this post, why not comment?

An acquaintance of mine gave a mid-year tally of her publications, writings, movies watched, books read, etc. and it inspired me to look at the numbers for my year. 

• read 7 books
• saw 58 movies
• wrote 5 book reviews
• wrote 2 poems
• wrote 35 short stories (most still in first draft stage)

I found I am poor at keeping track of such things.  My husband generally keeps track of my movies for me.  For the remainder of the year I will need to do a better job of tracking my read books.  I won’t even attempt to keep track of the short stories I’ve read.  Since creating the tally I’ve read two more books and added them to a Word document that has the books I can remember reading this year.  See?  Already I’m doing a better job! 

Prior to last year’s move I had over 125 books in my “to be read” (TBR) pile.  I’m starting to work on that pile though it goes ever so slowly.  It wasn’t built in a day though, so I have no illusions that it will disappear in a day, or a week, or even a few months.