What's What in the Sunday Salon: First Sunday of Summer

What I’m reading

• in print / on screen

To my own surprise–because it’s been a while–I’m on track with review deadlines for Shelf Awareness. I have one more July release to submit to them, and am trying to decide which of the August review candidates they’ve sent me to start first. And I think I may be able to double-team it with something completely discretionary—I haven’t decided what it will be yet, but I’ve added quite a few titles to iBooks since I last read an ebook, so I’m going to look there first.

• on audio

I’m on the verge of starting something new this week on audio as well…again, I haven’t decided what it will be yet, but having just purchasedThe Silkworm the same day I posted my review of The Cuckoo’s Calling, it may be that. I finished The Martian on Thursday, so I’m playing between-audiobooks podcast catchup at the moment.

Finished listening to #TheMartian on this morning's drive. Who else could barely breathe for the last 45 minutes of it? #AudiobookMonth
— Florinda PVasquez (@florinda_3rs) June 19, 2014

What I’m watching

We started Season 3 of Supernatural on Netflix this weekend, and are debating putting Orange is the New Black into the queue.

What I’m writing

BlogHer’s 10th-anniversary “Selfiebration” prompted me to write about online friends a couple of weeks ago, and asked me to talk about where I was 10 years ago this week. That post will go up on Wednesday…and it was not the most fun I’ve ever had writing anything, so consider yourself warned.

It was much more fun writing, and talking about, my feedback for the BEA Bloggers Conference planners, which I posted this past Tuesday.

What caught my eye this week

"The phrase “blogging for books” suggests that the work of bloggers is done in service of publishers in order to get more books. That is just not the case – and not the motivation – for all the successful bloggers that I personally know. 

“When many of us started blogging five or six or seven years ago, the idea of getting books to review wasn’t even a consideration. Bloggers weren’t on publisher’s radars until they started to see us as active, engaged, excited readers they could reach out to directly. At that point, the narrative shifted to this idea of ‘working with’ each other or that writing reviews was a ‘favor’ that bloggers could do for authors/publishers.”

—Kim’s ontinued discussion (read the comments, too!) of “Blogging for Books versus Blogging Because of Books” at Sophisticated Dorkiness

“Suddenly, in my late thirties, I was binge-watching a television show. I was pining over fictional characters – and I was writing my own stories for them when the official versions ran out. I was making costumes and going to conventions. I was lit up, inspired, excited as I hadn’t been by anything since childhood.”

—I was a little older when it happened to me, but “A Brief History of Fandom, Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Being a Fan” at The Mary Sue definitely rang some bells!

“When I went back to work, I read on my breaks and during lunch, and after the boys were down for the night. It became less of a hobby and more of a thing I did to remind myself that I was still my own person with my own interests outside of breast pumps and nap schedules- something I think is important for kids to see. How do you find time to read when you have kids? You make it, because it matters. I want my boys to recognize that mommy (and yes, I mean specifically mommy) is a fully-developed human whose life is not entirely composed of them.”

–And I was a good deal younger when this happened to me, but I wholeheartedly applauded Amanda Nelson’s “Have Babies, Keep Reading” rant at Book Riot.

Gratuitous Photo of the Week

First Day of Summer, 2013, Boston

Happy First Weekend of Summer!